The bullied takes on Goliath in the true horror stories in modern Paris part 44

What is not widely known is that there is in fact a regulation that forbids all the restaurants in Paris to make noise after 22:30.  However, the authority will force it only if a resident of the building places a call to the police.  Therefore, it is one regulation that is defunct because most tenants do not know this.  Hell, even I did not know this until so informed by Mme. Landlord.  Then what about the owner-residents, you may ask.  After the arrival of AIRBNB, the landlords now prefer to lend their apartments out for a big profit while they move to the suburbs.  They do not care if their tenants suffer any noise.  There will always be unsuspecting tenants applying for apartments in Paris.  Their cold attitude hardened even more by the system of AIRBNB. 

Therefore, it fell on me to call the police because the tenants on the same floors had already left.  Their landlords did not knock the rent down like my landlord.  She was a rare gem.  Mme. Landlord would call the police herself, but she did not live in the building.  So with a shaking hand I dialed 17, the police.  The message was given in French and English.  Relieved, I opted for English.  However, the person who took the call blatantly lied to me that ‘Paris never sleeps’ and hang up.  He thought I was a tourist.  So, I tried again in French which was not good yet.  The woman who took my call had no patient and hang up.  I thought I heard a jeering laughter of Mme. Empathy as the music blasted on filling up my apartment along with the extractor vibrating noise.  I had to cower back to the small corner of my kitchen and cried.  

The following day, I rehearsed my lines over and over.  I called the police for the third time and a young man answered.  He tried to pull one over me, but I insisted in French that it was against the rule to be noisy after 22:30.  I live in Paris, I added.  He uttered, 'Ah' and transferred me to the police station of the appropriate district.   A sympathetic major answered my call and he took the address of the restaurant from HELL.  He also took down my phone number and promised to send his men.  After the call, I waited without much hope.

Then it happened.  30 minutes later, all the noise stopped, the ventilator and the music.  Well, not all because I could hear a hysterical voice of a woman.  Mme. Empathy?  Or her new waitress?  Whoever.  The police in Paris had taken my call seriously and stopped the devil…for the night.  I would have to place several more calls before the police would intervene on a larger scale.  Still, the battle was on.  

To be continued.

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