Herman and I are beset by water poltergeists. Every home, condo and apartment we have ever occupied has developed leaks. But the best evidence of a ghostly creature shacking up with us took place in our temporary home in the Netherlands right before we emigrated to the U.S.
We were waiting for the final approval for Herman’s U.S. permanent visa, at which point we would only have 30 days to leave the Netherlands and reach the U.S. where the visa application would get the last stamp in his passport (a rather anti-climactic affair as it turns out). Thus, we had to sell our home and car (just as we’ve done now) and take up residence in a small vacation bungalow that was part of a large recreation park for families.
From day one, the shower drain was determined to make me understand how much water I was using by filling the space between the shower floor and the top of the lip, which I estimate was about four or five inches tall. Finally, I’d had enough and I marched over to the administration office to ask for a plumber to come and unplug the drain.
Now, you should know my Dutch was fairly reasonable after three years in the Netherlands, lessons in an elementary school alongside a little Vietnamese boy, and family members who didn’t speak a word of English. At least I thought I understood the language until the two men who eventually came to look at my shower predicament removed the toilet from its drain hole, stuck a small pressure washer type implement into the hole to run water through and hopefully dislodge whatever was stuck in the pipes, then ran out into the street to remove the manhole cover to see if anything began to float away. At first, there were nods of approval that, yes, this was having its intended effect, but then a concerned look crossed their faces.
The man in the street yelled to the man in our bungalow, “Wij hebben nodig het brandslang!” (We need the fire hose!). Fire hose? They didn’t say fire hose, did they? They did!! So, along came this guy carrying a regulation size firefighter rubber hose that was at least five to six inches wide when flat. He hooked it up to the hydrant in the street, unwound it and stuck the nozzle in the toilet drain hole. Back in the street, he turned the hydrant on and the formally flat hose was now bulging with pressurized water that raced into the bungalow and slammed down into the drain. Not to be deterred, the blockage didn’t budge. However, I now had fountains erupting out of both the kitchen and bathroom sinks! And the solution to this problem, so I was commanded, was to grab towels and run back and forth trying to stop up those drains.
Now, dear readers, you would think that we would have had a successful, um, evacuation of said blockage after such an assault, but alas, all that was accomplished were two perplexed men and a flooded bathroom. It took another 24 hours before the illustrious crew determined that there was a broken pipe and all that drama was for nothing, so they moved us to another unit. Fortunately, the water poltergeists must have been too exhausted to follow us.
Trambling 