Noisy neighbours

Dear All,

we recently were forced into moving flat due to living below students and the noise they generated. Basically to cut a long story short we were the whipping boys for anything that went wrong in the apartment block. For example the lady (loose description) went to her lawyer because i left my window open for an hour or two in the winter. All this patheticness was resolved by us moving.

To cut a long story short we now find ourselves in another situation. The flat above was empty when we moved in so it was perfectly quiet. Now it is occupied by a German who gets up a 4am and seems to be break dancing and jumping around , cursing and kicking the heating system etc etc , in general waking us up. I went to complain to him with the best possible intentions, merely to point out he was disturbing us and even took a letter i had pre-written with the most polite german i could manage. The result was he called the police , stating i had threatened him , unbelievable. The landlord cannot do anything about him because it is not his flat above. I am at a complete loss , i have been to the lawyer place that deals with such problems (cant remember its name) and got some German lobotomized reply which was in no way helpful.

I am now suffering from a severe sleep disorder problem as a result of these lovely Germans. If any of you have any advice or similar problems i would like to hear from you. Also if anyone knows the jail term for GBH in germany i would like to know.

Cheese

Speak to the owner of the flat upstairs (if the bloke upstairs is a tenant).

Speak to the head of the Eigentümerversammlung (the homeowners' association of all the owners in the building). It could be that other people are being disturbed by this guy too.

Get legal advice if you have a Rechtschutzversicherung (legal costs insurance). If you don't, get one.

Do you mean the Mietverein? They really should be able to advise you. If this is where you went, I would recommend going back and talking to someone else. You usually have to be a member to receive advice, but it's not expensive to join.

Here's the website for the Frankfurt organisation: Frankfurter Mieterverein

Firstly, try being as nice as you possibly can be to him, invite him round for dinner or something, always give him a big cheesy smile when you see him. Nothing scares people like this more than being as nice and polite as you can. Secondly, I don't really know... shoot him or something.

Funny. People on this forum are usually the ones being accused of excessive (whatever) from their German neighbours. Anyhoo, have you tried ear plugs and white noise type music at night time? *Supposedly* you can even get serious noise cancelling ones customised to fit your ears... similiar to shoe inserts. Even the cheap ones and a cd of soothing background noises might help you get some sleep until you get this sorted.

Good luck!