breaking the ice

For me summer usually starts when I start sleeping with an open window. This also means that I start hearing all the noises that my neighbours make. My bedroom window goes to the inner courtyard and as I live on the 1st floor only; I can hear all the kids playing in the areaway and the yard. Several houses with lots of corners compose this whole inner courtyard. There are some sounds where I have no clue where they are coming from. The easy ones are the kids playing ball, the people that beat their rugs or bring their litter to the collection. Every night at midnight there is an alarm clock ringing and 10 minutes later a motorbike departs, I still wonder what kind of job this person might have. Or the lawn sprinklers, actually a relatively unexciting sound, till those f… things hit the metal benches in this little park and start making a tremendously loud concert. Every Friday the garbage collectors come at around 7am to empty the litter boxes. Sometimes I hear people getting passionate with lots uuus oooos and aaas. I have a neighbour who is totally into folkloristic Balkans music and a guy that sings. I am still not sure if the singer is trying to be a tenor or just singing prayers in Hebrew.
This summer was special; one of the houses linked to the inner courtyard is under renovation. The construction workers start their work at the inhumane hour of 6:30 am, and guess what they start their shift with – with a CIRCULAR SAW!!!!! So for nearly 8 weeks I have been woken up at 6:30 am – an hour that is not even supposed to exist – by a circular saw. Which also announced to me that almost exactly half an hour later the kids would be downstairs playing, as they were woken up by this diabolic apparatus as well. This was especially problematic during July, where it was definitely too hot to close the window.
Now school started in Vienna again which means that the kids are not playing in the mornings anymore – all that remains in my last days of summer is the soul-destroying sound of the circular saw.