Party in the attic

Last weekend, our new next-door neighbor knocked on the door. She introduced herself and said that she and her boyfriend were would be having a party that night, and if it got too loud I should just knock and ask them to keep it down. I didn't. Yesterday, Matti from downstairs stopped me on the stairwell. He told me that he was having people over tonight to watch the big game. It was the Bundesliga championship soccer game between Dortmund and Bayern (Bavaria). Bayern is the team that everyone in Northern Germany loves to hate. They are like the NY Yankees. Matti is a law student who probably spends more time playing video games than watching sports on TV. But yesterday's game was like the Superbowl, so fanatic or not, almost everyone was watching.

During our conversation, Matti mentioned that the party would be not in his 3rd floor apartment, but in the attic. Since he'd never had a party in the attic before, he explained, he wasn't sure how loud it would get. I told him it was ok, we were going to a friend's garden for a barbecue anyway. "But not until 4 in the morning," he said, with a grin. And if it got too noisy, I should just come up, knock on the door and tell them to keep it down.

I have several questions about this:

1. Have we been going about this noise thing all wrong? I thought that the best way to keep your neighbors happy was to invite them to join your party. The last two weeks we have only gotten warnings, not invitations. Of course, it's possible that our neighbors invited the entire building except us - it has happened before. We get in trouble for running the washing machine on a Saturday morning. Is that noise somehow unforgiveable, while attic parties at 4am are ok?

2. What was Matti doing in the attic anyway? Where did he get the key? And why would he have the party there rather than in his own apartment? I could have asked him these questions. The problem is that I thought of all of them about 15 minutes too late. I am pretty bad at coming up with timely and relevant replies when I have conversations in English, so in German it's even worse. The delay in thinking of subjects I should have brought up, witty remarks, or the ideal comeback is 3-5 minutes post-conversation when it's in English, 7-9 minutes in Spanish, and 12 minutes plus in German.

3. This whole concept of "knock on the door if it's too loud" is an easy out for the party host. He/she feels like neighbors have been forewarned and it's ok to fire up the karaoke machine and belt out play bad German pop music until the sun comes up (lately that's around 5:30am). The forewarned neighbor, on the other hand, likely won't do anything. Nobody wants to be the one to show up in pajamas and mud mask and hair curlers, bang on the door and tell the young fellas next door (or in the case of the attic party, directly overhead) that they are causing too much gosh darn ruckus. Of course, it the pop music is really awful, extreme measures might be necessary. Fortunately, this neighbor/blogger is a heavy sleeper.

Biking home from Andrew and Katja's garden last night was oddly calm and peaceful. At 10pm the sun had just set and the streets were empty. Everyone was in front of a TV somewhere, watching the big game. The only ones out were us foreigners.

Bayern won in overtime, in case you were wondering. And I fell right into bed. If there was noise coming from the attic, I didn't notice and didn't need to tell anybody to knock it off. I may, however, do a little laundry in the middle of the night tonight, just to see if anyone dares to knock on the door and complain.