toilets and cross cultural experiance(life)

This morning, showing off some of my plumbing skills, I attempted to fix my toilet. It seemed to me that the chain had slipped off of the flush valve. I lifted the lid off of the tank and attempted to jiggle the stuff around (which is actually the vast majority of my previously mentioned plumbing skills) and a pipe came off in my hands.

I called my Greek landlord and told him what happened. He assured me that he would call me back soon. I looked at the friend I have in from out-of-town and had to break the news that our plans needed to change--I needed to stay in the area to be on call for the plumber.

We waited all day. I realized my landlord and I have never been able to really understand one another over the phone. I called him back and he assured me he had left a message for the plumber. We waited. We walked. We found a meat market with multi-lingual butchers. We ate fresh biscotti. We wandered through an Egyptian and Moroccan grocery in search of Bengali flour (which we did not find). And, then my landlord called. I was a 30 minute walk from my house and he said the plumber would be there in 15 minutes. When my landlord said the plumber would look and probably fix my toilet tomorrow, I realized had never actually told my landlord that I thought the toilet was not currently able to perform it's toilet-y duties. And, then practically ran home.

When I arrived, Spiro was waiting. He came up and looked, told me that the toilet is old and would have broken soon any way, and said he would call tomorrow to let me know when he could fit me in. Not such good news when you had plans on showing a friend around the city. But, as he said, that is always the way. And, then he told me how I can flush the toilet in it's current state.

The good news is I get to spend all of this waiting time with a friend tomorrow. And, tonight's dinner will be the dry sausage the Eastern European butcher gave my friend and me for free.