I would have never thought that this would happen to me, but I had to evacuate out of emergency because my Airbnb apartment got flooded with 2cm depth of water.
As I talked about in my previous log, I have been doing this Airbnb apartment hopping thingy and I moved to a new place on the 22nd of October after finishing a one and half month lease in Deuil-la-Barre in Paris suburb.
I really liked the new place. First of all, it was an apartment and there were neighbours. Previously, I lived in Deuil-la-Barre in a studio in a house. It was a lovely studio, but I felt quite isolated since I didn’t really see any neighbours there.
Secondly, I could have the whole space to myself. It was a fairly large apartment in Paris standard and it had a large living room. The place had a modern decoration with wooden floors and American open kitchen.
Last but not the least, it had a large balcony and the window view was stunning! I chose this place mostly because of this reason. I knew it was going to be a nice experience if the room had a large window, and it was.
However, the bathroom was causing troubles when I first moved in and the host sent people to come to fix the problem. It didn’t seem like it was fixed, so he came by himself to fix it. For me, it looked like there was a big issue going on.
Though it was fixed in the end, it just wasn’t working as I expected it to be.
Therefore, after around two weeks after moving in, one day I heard noise from upstairs who seemed to be fixing their bathroom again.
I was annoyed at first, but I thought it would be over after a couple of hours. I put on my headphone and decided to focus on my work.
At first, I sensed my socks were getting wet, first the right foot then the left foot. I thought I got them wet earlier when I was in the bathroom doing some cleaning, having no awareness of what was actually happening while I was completely absorbed in work.
When I looked down the table out of curiosity, the entire apartment was already filled with water that is 2cm in depth! I was literally sitting in the middle of a pond formed inside an apartment!
I was shocked!
I look off my socks immediately and walked into the bathroom barefoot. And I saw the water was flowing out from the pipe underneath the toilet .. (you will find video in the end of the article)
I froze there and had no idea what to do with it.
I stood there, in the water, in front of the bathroom for a minute, then realised that I need to tell the host immediately.
Out of panic, I didn’t find the host’s number on my phone. I could only text him on the Airbnb chat: The apartment is flooded! Help! Your number please!
He called back right away and asking me what was going on.
I lost all the French words in that second and said things in gibberish to explain what was going on.
He called back in FaceTime to evaluate the situation. I showed him the floor that could be described as a beach front, only if there was sand.
The only positive thing could be that luckily it was all clean water.
/
I thought about leaving when I heard about the bathroom issue at first, but I decided to give it a benefit of a doubt to stay and to believe that things will be fixed. Yet, no, the reality didn’t go well.
In that moment, I told the host that I have to go. It was not possible for me to spend a night there in the flooded apartment.
I took out my luggages from the closet after hanging up the phone call and put them on the bed. I took everything I owned and throw them into the suitcases while walking around in the water that was flowing like a river.
After around 30 mins, I was ready to go and carried everything outside the apartment.
I was only able to put on my shoes when I walked outside the apartment after drying my feet with napkins.
/
After telling a friend that I needed to go spend a night at her place, I headed out to the other side of Paris to my friend’s apartment.
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I ended up staying not just a night, but already a couple of days here.
However, only now, I am looking back and reflecting on the crazy situation I was in!
Novermber
Paris