Apartment Complex(ities) in Jerusalem

When I had finished my first day of classes I attended a sort of international student tutorial trip on how to find your way downtown, where’s good to eat, where’s good to shop, and how to get to the old city. Due to my long day I didn’t even manage to get back to my apartment until well after 10:00pm.

My first downtown view of the Old City.

After returning I packed up my bag and walked to the nearest wifi hotspot in a building a little ways from my apartment. Unintentionally, the night wore on full of cultural conversations with others in the computer center until it was after 2:00AM. Returning to my apartment, I realized I had a problem. My roommates had gone to bed, dead bolting the door.

After about 10 minutes of knocking and ringing the door buzzer I heard the sound of water from a sink… in the apartment behind me. Slightly mortified, I knocked on my neighbor’s door praying I hadn’t ticked off my whole floor in my loud attempt to wake my own roommates.

It took an awkwardly long time before the door cracked open and one of the guys who lived in the apartment peered at me. At first I figured he was probably just confused as to why his brand new hall-mate was knocking at his door at 2:30AM on a Wednesday morning, however he greeted me, “Oh thank God! I thought you were security!” Confused, I stepped into the smokey apartment.

Apparently he was drunk. And, as he explained to me, once well liquored up he likes to attempt to cook. He had set the fire alarm off trying to make Cajun chicken. I pleaded my case and he let me borrow his cell phone to call my roommate… who didn’t answer. Just to make sure I wasn’t crazy, I had him check the door and spend a few minutes leaning against the buzzer to no avail.

A little concerned due to having spent the better part of half an hour switching back and forth between knocking and rapidly hitting the buzzer, I cursed the fact my roommates had ever called themselves “light sleepers”. And, a little shook up, I turned to the only place I could think of – technically the only other apartment I know. I went to go beg for help from my friends.

Knocking on their apartment at 2:40AM also didn’t help a whole lot. I took the stairs back out of the building and circled around the side. I knew my friend Noah was probably still awake as he had been hanging out in the computer center with me. Thankfully, he had also left his window open. With an awkwardly loud and echo-y whispered shout of his name, he actually appeared in the window. I tried to quietly yell my story to him, before I decided to just run back up the stairs.

Acting every bit my savior, he marched back over to my apartment building with me where he held the buzzer nonstop for a good 5 minutes before I finally heard shuffling footsteps inside. By the time I had the door open whoever had woken up had disappeared. I went to enter my dark apartment, thankful that even if I may have terrorized my roommates only two days in, at least I have friends willing to come to my apartment at 3:00 in the morning and terrorize them with me.