Living In Florence: Noisy Neighbors are Normal

Sunday, October 15, 2006
Melinda Gallo

It seems like Sunday is the day when I hear my neighbors the most. Our windows are open because the weather is still nice, but at 9AM I heard the elderly man downstairs whistling at the pigeons and another girl, probably one of the new tenants downstairs, singing along with the radio.

During the week, we hear the elderly man yelling at the younger woman who lives with him in the apartment underneath ours. Doors slam and windows bang shut quite often in the middle of the afternoon. There is a small child that lives above us in the building next door to us who cries almost every night at 11PM.

And, now our new neighbors downstairs come home late at night, around 1AM, and talk outside in rather loud voices as if it were the middle of the afternoon. They also have a German Shepherd that barks sometimes and usually never before midnight.

We had one neighbor woman the first year that we were living in this building who would scream at the top of her lungs twice a day. It got so bad that if anyone wanted to come by our apartment, I would make sure it was during a time when she wouldn't be screaming.

I found out that I'm not the only one with noisy neighbors. It's quite typical here in Florence, if not in most of Italy. One of my friends, Sara, said that an elderly woman who lives next door to her yells a lot as well for hours on end. Luckily, she's not home much, but still the elderly woman isn't going anywhere.

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