Don't Know What You've Got Til It's Gone:

Day 2 Without Running Water in the 21st Century.

I had just coughed, sneezed, hacked, hawked and spit my way through Day 5 of my Yearly Common Cold when the water went out in the building. I desperately wanted to wash every trace of rhinovirus from my fetid skin, so I turned on the shower. Drip, drip, fffsssssst. Nothing. Fuh. Kin. Ell. Suddenly the need to shower felt dire. My clammy skin started feeling itchier, and I imagined my rhinovirus reinvigorated and running rampant on my entire epidermis, teeming and multiplying and bashing into each other with tiny, infectious horns.

The wife had just called on her way home from work and she was hungry. I never know if she's going to come home hungry or grab something on the way home. Such is the mystery of my life. But I do know this: if She Who Must Be Obeyed gets hungry, She gets MEAN. So I managed to drizzle leftover water from the morning coffee pot into a cooking pot, add rice, and begin the boiling process. Fortunately I had some frozen, microwaveable Iceland Indian curries in the freezer, or I don't know what the fuck I would have done.

The Long Line For Water 

Nothing screams communism like a long line waiting for allotments of rare commodities. When a water pipe bursts somewhere down the road at 9 pm on a subzero night, the substance that covers two thirds of the Earth suddenly becomes as rare as a brain in a Republican White House. “Get some containers to fill with water! We're going out to get fresh drinking water!” She commanded. Apparently, She had done this before. We were not the only ones without water. The entire block was down at the end of the street gathered around a tanker truck with the words PITNÁ VODA (drinking water) painted on the side. We gathered a bunch of plastic containers and proceeded out into the cold, after a brief debate on whether or not the containers were clean. I saw drops of stagnant water on the bottom and squelched.

“I don't know...this doesn't look clean. Could be old bacteria,” squeaked my germ-addled brain.

“This ain't MEXICO! Let's go!” She prodded. No, I thought, it's Praha-Libeň, the rusty-dusty, moldy-oldy industrial suburb. What could be cleaner?

So we left. Halfway out the door she whirled around on me: “Go back and get a bucket!” She ordered. “Why?” I questioned, “Duh! Toilet!” She barked. Oh yeah. Even the toilets won't flush. How do people live like this? We dropped our plastic payload on the wet cobblestones and waited. There were people milling about the water tanker in desperate clusters. How can people in a European city run out of water in the 21st century? It was like we were suddenly thrust into an African village, with a UN aid truck dispensing water in the sub-Saharan desert. Only we were much colder. And much whiter. A woman in front of me fumbled with tiny glass jars until one of them hit the ground in an explosion of shards. She immediately started picking up the pieces of glass with her bare hands. I stifled the warning forming on my tongue. Maybe I wanted to see blood running on the cobblestones; the usual arcane thoughts crossing the mind of a bio-bag made up of flesh and 98% water.

My turn to fumble. There were two taps on the truck to serve about 20 or so people. The line was growing, but my turn came. I was trying to bend over and stand up the 5-liter plastic drinking water container while maneuvering the large black hose from the truck into position. I needed another hand. Suddenly the valve turned above me and the precious, life-giving, waste-removing water began to flow. All over my shoes and up my legs. I yelped and wrestled the hose into the container. I looked up and saw a grinning Czech man with his helpful hand on the water valve. The passive-aggressive fuck. Děkuji! I thanked him, pronouncing it more like dickweed. The wife asked the water truck driver about the situation and returned with the news: no water until the next morning. Maybe. He couldn't be sure. He was just the driver.

A Rude Awakening

8 am this morning, pounding and thumping on my ceiling. Great. Some more of that ubiquitous renovation that begins exactly at 8 am (7 am in East Berlin), continues for 30 minutes, then stops. I like to call it the Communist Rooster, the swaggering, proletarian cock which crows to announce the beginning of the dark new day, and the bane of my existence as a freelancer who craves sleep.

I threw the sheets off and splashed the drinking water from the 5-liter container into the coffee pot. The water was still off. After my coffee I ventured into the water closet to check on the toilet situation. The wife had already left to work before I woke up, and I wondered if she had any trouble hoisting that water bucket over the toilet to flush it in the morning. I opened the WC door. Mother of all creatures, great and small! It was like someone had slaughtered a water buffalo in there. Water all over the floor, pieces of TP everywhere, bucket half empty. I sympathize with you ladies. Y'all have to wrap your arms in TP every time y'all go to the loo. And hoisting a heavy bucket? Motherfuckit. I mopped up a bit and took my turn.

Libeň La Vida Loca

The drinking water should last for a few more hours, and the toilet bucket for one more flush. Before I went to bed, I managed to find a package of wet wipes in the bathroom, and that was my 'shower.' Since those little soapy baby wipes are about the size of a 20 dollar bill, and I am 6 foot five, 280 pounds, I had to use half the package just to clean my priority regions.

Day 2 of no running water, piles of dishes in the sink, wads of used baby wipes on the bathroom floor, mop, bucket, and a dead water buffalo in the WC. Yes, folks, we are indeed Libeň La Vida Loca over here. And paying cheaper rent always has its price. I just found out that the water won't be repaired until late in the afternoon. There's only one thing for me to do in these type of apocalyptic scenarios: go to the pub for pivo and smažený sýr.