Romania is not the United States >:<
The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, of which I am a proud volunteer.

For the first time I have been really annoyed that Romania is not the United States. It started around 4 am this morning when a car in my neighborhood's car alarm when off - and proceeded to blare for two hours until 6:05 this morning.

Usually it is screaming cats. bloody snarling dog fights and occasionally a rooster cockadoodling at 5 am which make up the annoying noises heard in my alley, and I've learned to live with it. This car alarm pissed me off though. I lay in the dark with a second pillow and my arm over my head trying to drown out the noise waiting for one of my neighbors to call the police. I imagine no one did.

I didn't call the police because a) I don't have a non-emergency number for the police department
b) I don't know if they would understand my Romanian, and because
c) I'm not sure if letting your car alarm blare for two hours in the early morning is illegal.

But it should be. It doesn't seem fair that one person's car alarm falsely going off should deprive people in three bloc buildings of a night of sleep - and for the record that's a lot of people. And I can tell how many people were up by how many lights went on in the apartments in the other building.
In fact, at one point I put my headphones in, flicked on the lights in the bedroom out of solidarity with the neighbors and to show the police should they ever show up just how many people were disturbed by this, and buried my head under the pillows and tried to sleep in the living room.

After breakfast this morning I sent an irritated email to our Safety and Security officer describing the situation and asking what I can do should it re-occur. I not so sensitively pointed out that this is illegal in the US, that playing sirens to deprive people of sleep is a torture technique, and told him I might call him at four in the morning next time it happens so that he can call the Deva police for me.

I signed off, Tired and Cranky, Laura.

Luckily as daylight broke the wailing siren stopped. I popped a couple of ibuprophen to help get rid of my screaming headache, put my eye pillow over my face to simulate darkness and turned off the alarm so I could sleep in till 10. Unfortunately at 9:30 I was awakened by someone in my hallway cutting metal with a chainsaw because they are making some renovations I don't understand to the building - but that is what I am used to.