I know I live in a crappy apartment but this crossed the line!

[pippy-pops]

I know exactly how you feel about this!

When we were in the process of immigrating to the UK, my mothers uncle offered for us to live in his flat after we'd sold our house. The flat was completely empty except for a rather odd smell which seemed to get worse and worse over a few days! (He didn't live there - he live in Germany, just owned it and rarely ever allowed anyone other than his son or daughter to stay there on visits home to SA) We'd not properly moved our junk into the flat yet, so we weren't cooking in the kitchen (which was a very good thing) and were ordering in take away's instead!

Anyway, my sister and her best friend (who lived with us at the time) decided one day that they needed to get the house into some kind of order and started cleaning the kitchen while my mom and I were at work (the girls had already given up their jobs)! Leigh (the BF) was scrubbing down the sink (she's a complete OCD about the sink and always gives it a good scrub before she washes the dishes!) but the water wasn't going down! She got out the new plunger I'd bought and gave it a plunge or two but nothing! So she got out some bicarbonate of soda and vinager (which makes a brilliant sink unblocker btw) and tried that... Still nothing!!!!!! The next thing she said this most awful rotting smell started coming up from somewhere and she had to get out the flat because it smelled so terrible!!!!!!! My sister ran (From what I've heard and smelled ....bravely) into the kitchen to grab the house keys off the counter and there were thousands upon thousands of maggots - big and small - coming up from the sink plug hole!

 

[mirinae]

Rotting turkey legs and maggots: lovely.

I've stayed in pretty sketchy places, but I don't think any of them stank or had a maggot problem. Cockroaches, yes; mice, voles, rats and other random vermin, sure. Maggots only happened once (because, as my messy roommates found out, you can't put dishes with milk and/or meat products on them in the sink and leave them there for a month).

I did, however, have a caravan of gypsies living in the parking lot behind my apartment. And I mean actual, literal gypsies: Travellers, living in trailers, straight out of Snatch or a novel. They had family living in one of the apartments down the street, so they were invited to stay (and I was terrified of the neighbours who invited them: loud, scary, intimidating people with a pair of unneutered, aggressive-as-heck rottweilers). They'd have loud parties alllll the time, there were smashed beer bottles all over the place, and their trash littered the parking lot -- which we couldn't use, because their trailers took up all our parking spaces. It was delightful. I called the police -- anonymously, because I was afraid of what would happen to me and my roommates if the neighbours knew I called -- almost every night to complain about the noise (I practically had the police on speed-dial), and did my best to spend my summer at friends' houses so I wouldn't have to deal with the mess and chaos.

I also lived in another house where my roommates were paramedics and search-and-rescue workers (they were amongst the Canadians sent to help out in the search for 9/11 victims); the guys were also army reserve and gun enthusiasts, and they left loaded weapons all over the house. I tripped on one coming out of the kitchen. We also lived next door to drug dealers (the police raided their house while I was home; I got evacuated to a nearby business just to be safe) and there were violent fights in the street all the time.

I am now extremely grateful that the worst I have to live with is a crazy old lady who lives downstairs. I can't stand her and she hates our cats, but fortunately the landlady is on our side and agrees the old woman is nuts, so all we have to do is ignore her wacky antics and highly inappropriate comments.

I am very much looking forward to eventually owning my own house.