© 2016 Cornelia E. Miedler

Verlag: Morawa Lesezirkel GmbH, Wien

Das Werk, einschließlich seiner Teile, ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages und des Autors unzulässig. Dies gilt insbesondere für die elektronische oder sonstige Vervielfältigung, Übersetzung, Verbreitung und öffentliche Zugänglichmachung.

This book is dedicated to Daniel,
who loves me for who I am and is supportive of all
my dreams.

This book is also dedicated to Jake,
who taught me to stop and look around every once
in awhile and to appreciate what I have.

„I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of
life as much as they are looking for the experience of
being alive.”

Joseph Campbell

Disclaimer

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.

The conversations in the book all come from my recollections, though they are not written to represent word-for-word transcripts. Rather, I have retold them in a way that evokes the feeling and meaning what was said and in all instances, the essence of the dialogue is accurate.

- C.E. Miedler

Why was everybody so damn happy all the time: Botox? Drugs? What was it? And, why did everyone look so perfect? Sure, the ladies of Los Angeles wore sweatpants for brunch, but they were $200 sweatpants with “Juicy” on the butt. Women jogging in the early morning hours along Palisades Park in Santa Monica had just rolled out of bed; yet, they already had make-up on. I felt like a frumpy, grumpy little girl who stepped into a Xanax-filled parallel universe. What was going on here?

Like most Europeans who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, I had only known about America, and L.A. in particular, from TV: Baywatch, Beverly Hills 90210, L.A. Story, Beverly Hills Cop, and countless other movies and TV shows. Suddenly, I was living there. And it was nothing like I had pictured. The lifeguards were not young and big-bosomed. Malibu was not a hip town, but instead, merely a highway lined with houses and a small strip of beach. Hollywood Boulevard was by no means glamorous. It was filthy and lined with drunks, bums, druggies, hookers and superhero panhandlers sprinkled in between.

It was September 2001, when I moved to Santa Monica in Los Angeles County, California. As I was packing up my belongings in Munich, Germany, it definitely had not sunk in that I was moving to California. Only when I woke up in an apartment in Santa Monica on September 22nd, 2001, was it suddenly real. Many dream of just visiting the City of Angels once in their lives. I moved there when I was just 23 years old, and I didn't want to be there…at all. I visited California twice with my American boyfriend before moving and I was not impressed. It was loud, dirty and lacked personality. The locals seemed fake and superficial. Besides, I loved living in Europe. With six weeks of paid vacation and free health care, what's not to love? But, my personal mantra was "You can forgive yourself for everything, except the things you don't do." It was graffiti I read as a teen scribbled on the wall of a public restroom. Pieces of wisdom can be found in unexpected places.

People often ask me what it was like to live in Los Angeles — a place known for the movie industry, gangs, crime, earthquakes and for having just one season. This is a glimpse into what my life was like in the "Hollywood

Bubble" – a common expression used in Los Angeles referring to the secluded and enclosed world that Hollywood represents – for nearly ten years.

This is my story: The story of an insecure girl from the Austrian Alps who moved to Los Angeles and morphed from an LAlien in jeans and sneakers to a whole-hearted Angelina in cocktail dresses and high-heels. This is the story of my transformation from hating L.A. and all it stood for, to absolutely loving it. And in the process, I also learned to love myself.

Touching Down

I met Barry at an Irish pub in Munich, Germany, on St. Patrick's Day 1999. He was seven years older and I was captivated by his life experience. He was an exotic American, and I was fascinated, although I always had more of a thing for British guys. It didn't matter to me if he was from Idaho or California. It was all the same to me: America. He wore suits to work. He stood with both feet firmly on the ground. He took me out to dinner. He asked me if I wanted to visit museums with him. He treated me like a lady. Barry bought me flowers and opened the car door for me. No one had ever done that before. I was twenty years old when I met Barry. I was not of legal drinking age under American law. Good thing we started dating in Europe.

I had moved from a village in the Austrian Alps to Munich, Germany, just a year before a friend introduced me to Barry. I wanted to get away from the small Austrian farming town with a lack of perspectives and discover the world, which I was certain, had a lot more to offer than finding a husband and milking cows. Barry was in Munich for a work project. He thought my British school-English was really cute. And, Barry also liked that I invited him for a drink after he took me out to dinner. He told me that he wasn't used to girls paying for anything. Just like he was a novelty to me, so was I to him. What also brought us closer was the fact that we both were foreigners in Germany. He spoke some German but was, by no means, fluent. My dialect always gave away that I was an Austrian. We both had to deal with learning to get around a new city and a new country. We started discovering things together by trying out new restaurants and traveling around Bavaria and beyond. It was an exciting time.

Before I met Barry, the few dates I had been on were to bars or someone's house. Maybe there was an occasional night out at the movies, but most dates were group events. This man wanted to talk to me, wine me and dine me. We spent every weekend together, and nine months into the relationship, I moved in with him. After about a year and a half, he found out that his work project in Europe was over. He asked for a different assignment in order to stay longer but his request was denied. By contract, he was required to go back to Los Angeles. I was devastated. Although I knew that going to America with him would be a huge risk, I asked myself whether I would regret it if I didn't at least try. I thought that I would. So when he asked me to marry him, I said yes.

I had visited Los Angeles with Barry twice before moving there. My main memory from these visits was my butt hurting whenever we were in the car because we had to drive long distances to go anywhere and the roads were in really bad condition. The second memory was about Barry's dad putting us in separate bedrooms because we weren't married. I thought that was odd because Barry and I had been living together in Europe. It certainly couldn't have been for "moral" reasons, as his dad was on his fourth marriage. Did he not like me? Was he afraid of "noises" he might hear at night? In the end, I found out it was, in fact, for moral reasons: unmarried couples were not allowed to share a bed under his dad's roof. I must have time-traveled back to the 1950s.

I moved to the U.S. on September 21st, 2001. Ten days after 9/11. It was an odd feeling to move to a country at war. Growing up in Austria and also living in Germany for a few years, I had a certain "idea" of what war meant. Elderly neighbors and family members were witnesses of World War II. I grew up in a house that had – as was required by law – a bunker you could go to in case of an air raid. Sure, my parents used it to stock potatoes and it lacked a door – but it was there.

My now fiancé was not allowed to drive up to the Los Angeles airport, LAX, the day I arrived. He had to leave his car at a nearby parking lot and took a shuttle to the airport. There were police everywhere. Men dressed in black uniforms with stern looks on their faces, holding weapons I had only seen on TV before, were patrolling the airport. I landed after dark and LAX seemed like a ghost town in a zombie movie. Under normal circumstances, LAX was a bustling place with lots of honking cab drivers and lost tourists desperately looking for the train going to the city center. Soon, they would learn that there wasn't one – no airport train and no city center.

When Barry picked me up with a bouquet of flowers in his hands at the LAX arrival gates, I had already been on two flights: Munich to Philadelphia and Philadelphia to Los Angeles. On the first flight, a bunch of drunken Germans caused a ruckus and the air marshal had to step in. After the 9/11 terror attacks, air marshals were a new sight on flights to give passengers the illusion of safety. A funny and at the same time scary fact: the air marshal on my flight was way over sixty years old. The drunken guys were in their early 30s. The air marshal's presence did not make me feel safe at all. I was crying for most of that flight holding onto a stuffed animal for dear life. I was so scared of moving to a "war zone" that I felt no shame about seeking comfort the same way a toddler did. The stuffed animal I was clinging onto was an orange mouse from a famous German kids' TV show. The middle-aged German man sitting next to me – who by his own account liked to wear a suit and a tie when flying - tried to involve me in a conversation by saying "Ah, I see you are also a fan of 'the mouse.'" We started a nice, long talk about the TV shows we grew up with and where we were going in the U.S.

Going through the security check in Philadelphia was a long procedure. There were armed security guards everywhere. The airport was nearly empty. Any sharp objects were removed from people's suitcases. Smokers had to fly without lighters or matches. You could cut the fear and the tension with a non-TSA-approved knife. I was scared. Growing up on a farm, I saw pigs and cows slaughtered, but I had never seen that many weapons before. I was afraid to say the wrong thing, despite that I had nothing to hide. So when the TSA guy asked me if I had any food on me, I told him I had some cookies in my backpack. He looked at me as if I had just told him that I was chewing gum and making a mockery of his job. "I said food!" I then asked if cookies weren't food. He looked annoyed and waved me through. I was confused. Cookies were not food?

The second flight was nearly empty. I had three seats to myself and the rows in front of me and behind me were also empty. It was a luxury I would never experience again. The same goes for the absolute silence on the plane, as well as the friendly passengers and flight attendants. It weighed heavy on my mind that all of the planes that crashed on 9/11 took off from the east coast and were bound for the west coast. But I had my one goal in mind: to be with the man I loved and wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

So there we were: him, me, my luggage, the flowers, my tear-soaked stuffed mouse, and a big bag of unknown on my shoulders. After taking a shuttle out of the heavily-guarded airport to the parking lot, we finally arrived at Barry's car. We drove to Santa Monica on a freeway with four lanes (in each direction!). About thirty minutes later, we were at the two-bedroom/two-bathroom apartment just a few blocks from the beach. For quite some time, I did not appreciate the close proximity to the "edge of the world" — a quote borrowed from the city's most famous band, and my new homies, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. To me, the beach was just a bunch of sand and water. What's the big deal? I realized many years later, it was quite a big deal!

There was a huge welcome basket from my in-laws-to-be waiting for me at the apartment. That was so nice. It included a beach towel, a toy convertible, a headache-inducing perfume, and most importantly, a Thomas Guide. This book of street maps would get me home many times. Since L.A. was not a city that fits on a simple fold-out map, the Thomas Guide was a letter-sized, horizontally-formatted book with about 100-150 pages. First, I thought it was a map for all of California, but soon, I found out the map for Orange County was just as voluminous. At the time, it was not very common to have a navigation system and since the streets in L.A were a simple grid pattern, a navigation system was not really necessary. Going towards the ocean meant going west. Going towards the (Hollywood) Hills meant going north. Going towards the skyscrapers meant going east. And if I ended up in the hood, I probably went south or southeast. Since I was living by the beach in Santa Monica, I always knew I had to go west.

The first six months, I refused to get a car. I figured I did not need one and could get around using the public transportation system. After all, I managed to survive without a car for 23 years. However, after nearly six months of hardly getting out of Santa Monica without Barry's help, and sitting on the bus with grocery bags and potted plants, I gave in and got my very first car. It was a little silver Honda Civic. I named him "Kenny," after Kenny from South Park, because the car had a salvaged title. Just like Kenny, my car came back to life after an accident. He was going to be my trusted steel companion for the next six years.

On my second day as an American resident, we took a stroll down the popular Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, which was only a short walk away from where we lived. The Promenade was a pedestrian zone lined with shops, restaurants and whimsical dinosaur fountains. It was featured in every guidebook. We sat down at an outdoor cafe and I ordered a veggie burger. Seeing those pigs and cows slaughtered on the farm had a lasting effect on me. I became a pescetarian, a fish-eating vegetarian, a short time before moving to L.A. The word "pescetarian" made it in the dictionary years later.

We sat outside and I picked up my burger to take a bite. You could immediately see the difference between an American and a European when they eat a burger. Americans eat it with their hands. Europeans use a knife and a fork. Apparently, my Americanization had begun. When I was just about to bite into my juicy veggie burger, a figure emerged in front of me just a few feet away. It was a homeless guy with filthy, long hair and a muddy face. He stared at my burger. Pangs of guilt overcame me. Should I give him the burger? Should I give him money? What was I supposed to do? I looked at the other patrons to see what they did. They did nothing. It seemed like they hadn't even noticed him. They kept eating, laughing and talking. And, so I did too. He eventually walked away. For the first time, I felt like I had a privileged life. At the same time, I felt guilty for it. This was a new and very confusing emotion for me. Why did I feel bad? I did not know.

The very next day, I started to explore my new home while Barry was at work. Before I had a car, I took a lot of walks around town mainly on the Third Street Promenade, Palisades Park, the Santa Monica Pier, and the beach. Sounds cool, right? I should have been so excited to be here, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t understand what was supposed to be so awesome— a word that seemed to be part of every other sentence— about this place. The beach was just lots of sand and freezing, dirty water. The Pier was a place for tourists and seagulls’ poop. The Promenade was just for shopping, which wasn’t what I wanted to do since I was unemployed. And the park was windy and smelly from all the homeless people. The rumor around town was that Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001, gave homeless New Yorkers a one-way ticket to L.A. to get them out of the city. And with L.A, being a city leaning towards the “other” political party (and there were only two no matter how often some others may have tried), it seemed like a believable rumor.

For many years, Santa Monica prided itself to be the "City of the Homeless" – meaning everyone is welcome. Even one of Santa Monica's mayors used to be a hippie who lived in his van before getting into politics. Santa Monica frequently conducted a "Resident Satisfaction Survey" and every year the "homeless situation" was at the top of the list of concerns. Parking was usually a close second. I once sent an email to the city asking why they kept conducting the survey if nothing was done with the results since they never changed. No response. In Santa Monica, the "issue" was really visible. Not only was it visible but also smellable. The city smelled like a urinal on hot days; especially along the stairs going down to the beach and in the stairwells of parking structures. I even saw a pile of, clearly human, feces on the stairs on my way to the beach. Another time, I saw a guy sleeping on a strip of grass next to the sidewalk along busy Wilshire Boulevard with his pants down by his thighs. His butt was exposed and smeared with feces. What was more baffling, however, was when a homeless guy was lying passed out on the sidewalk, in broad daylight, in downtown Santa Monica. No one cared. No one even looked closer to see if he was ok. And, no, I didn't either. I was not proud of it. I looked to others to find clues on how to behave. And, like everyone else, I stepped over him to keep walking along the sidewalk. Was this a normal occurrence around here? Only in Santa Monica? Or all over Los Angeles? Maybe even all around the state or country? I felt cheated by what I had seen on Baywatch and in the movies. Where was the glitz and glamour? Seriously! What was supposed to be so great about Los Angeles? I felt betrayed by Hollywood!

I could not understand how the richest country in the world had such immense poverty. I asked several people why the government didn't just raise taxes to help those people on the street, since taxes were so low anyway. They looked at me with sheer horror on their faces. Raise taxes? Crazy European! You and your communist ideas! Some Americans I encountered referred to Europeans as communists. When I tried to explain that I am from Austria, which was not and never had been, a communist country, they told me that socialism and communism were the same. And besides, the European media was certainly under government control and any non-communist messages were blocked. Wow! Hardly anyone knew where Austria was or what language was spoken there. I often was confronted with astonishment that I was fluent in three languages: English, German and Austrian. People seemed to think I grew up behind the Iron Curtain and must have been so elated about living in this free country now. I was certain they didn't believe me when I told them I was from a free country too. It seemed as if their eyes were saying, "Poor girl. She doesn't know what she's talking about."

Over the years, the situation with the homeless in the city center improved. New laws were enforced against sleeping in doorways after dark and there was a place that handed out food away from the city center. Maybe the situation did not improve but just shifted to different locations, or maybe I just got used to it. I even had "my" homeless guy. He always stood at the same large intersection, which had a really long red light. An elderly African-American man, wearing a U.S. Army uniform from the Vietnam War era, walked along the line of cars — waiting on the traffic light— almost every day and asked for money. I felt overwhelmed with giving many people a little bit, so I decided to pick one. For all I knew, the uniform could have been a fake or something he bought at a thrift store. I didn't know. I chose to believe that it was real.

I had no idea about the level of poverty in the U.S. before moving to California. How should I have? I certainly didn't see any homeless people when I watched Baywatch or Saved by the Bell. The impression I had was that, in America: your dreams came true; everyone had perfect teeth; and all people looked like they had just jumped out of a magazine. My new American life had started and I was extremely homesick.

I had no job to keep my mind occupied. I wasn't sporty enough to wear my body out and keep myself busy that way. I had no friends in the same time zone to talk to. What was I supposed to do? Europe felt so far away. My friends, who were all so excited for me, were on the other side of the globe. I really needed a shoulder to lean on. Barry did not want to offer me his. He couldn't understand why I was so unhappy. He was annoyed and felt that I was an ungrateful brat and "emotionally high maintenance." He kept telling me that I had no reason to be sad because I was living at a place most people would love to live. So? I wasn't most people. Why did he try to trivialize my emotions? Didn't I have a right to feel what I felt? Had it been worth giving up my secure European life for this man?

When I walked the streets of Santa Monica, I felt ugly next to those gorgeous women. When I was trying to deal with everyday life, I felt stupid because it seemed as if I couldn't even handle the simplest things. Being trapped in a machine-operated conversation over the phone for more than ten minutes often brought me close to tears. I started to yell "operator" and pushed zero a million times, so the voice-recognition system would eventually give up and put me through to a real person. Even grocery shopping was a challenge. Trying to find milk in a store the size of a soccer field was overwhelming. And why did American cheese and bread taste so awful?

I started listening to Austrian pop music on a loop to feel closer to home. I didn't really care much for that type of music when I still lived in Europe, but now, it was the most beautiful sound to my ears. When I listened to it, I would lie down on the floor in the living room, close my eyes and let the music transport me back to the cobble-stone streets of European cities lined with historic buildings.

I missed a sense of belonging and fitting in. I couldn't understand why I suddenly didn't feel good enough anymore. What was wrong with me?

Realizations

My old and new world could not be further apart: a farm in the Austrian Alps and the beach in Santa Monica. And not only because of the geographical distance and the different landscapes. Where I grew up, everyone had the same skin color, the same dialect, and pretty much the same story, in terms of upbringing and educational background. When I was about seven years old, a black man stood in front of our door on the farm. A person of a different descent other than white-European was an unusual sight in our small Alpine village. He said he was a student from Africa. He travelled through Austria during the summer to sell his art to finance his studies in Vienna. It was the first time that I had seen a non-white person in real life and not on TV. My father looked through his paintings and decided to purchase two. One with an African landscape in color and another one in black and white with an African girl who may have been about my age at the time. I hung the picture of the girl up in my room. I was curious about her and where she was from. Looking at her unleashed a flood of daydreams about getting to know other cultures and discovering other countries.

Ever since I can remember, I was curious about the world outside the village I grew up in. There were mountains everywhere I looked. Mountains and a seemingly-endless forest. Strange sounds came out of the woods at night. Every morning when I left the house, I was greeted by the smell of cow manure from the heap in front of our barn. The bus to the nearest town only ran four or five times a day. I felt trapped in a postcard picture. The older I grew, the more claustrophobic I felt. I hated everything about living in the countryside. There was nothing idyllic about growing up on a farm. It was depressing and a lot of physical labor was involved from childhood on. While others were cooling off at the local swimming pool, I was on the field gathering hay in the scorching heat with a pitchfork that was twice my size. I was so sick of the same routine and of seeing the same people every day. Nothing new ever happened. I felt that life was passing me by.

My favorite game that I liked to play as a child was "World Travel." I had a plastic suitcase, which was originally a case for board games, which I packed with books and clothes. I circled my room with my eyes closed carrying the suitcase and imagining what magical place I was travelling to next. Maybe that was why I was so intrigued by the little girl from Africa. What was her life like? Did she also dream about the world outside her village? Did she also hate math and get teased by her older brother?

I only knew about foreign countries from TV and weekly travel destination reports in our local newspaper. I had seen palm trees on our annual vacations to Italy. I loved feeling the sand between my toes and the wind in my hair. The warm sun on my skin was comforting. However, I never questioned that traveling to a place with palm trees was a once-a-year-occasion and could never be a "realistic" place to live for someone who was not born there. My first trip on a plane took us to the island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea when I was ten years old. It was a chance to apply the English I had learned in school. It was a rush to communicate with someone in a foreign language. It made me feel powerful, somehow.

As a teenager, I dreamed of moving to “the city.” Not even the Austrian capital city of Vienna, but the closest city that had more than 10,000 inhabitants. That was a large city, to me. I didn’t yet dare to dream bigger. But step-by-step, I made my way out of rural life into urbanity. My path later took me to the 200,000 souls city of Graz and then even to the beer capital of the world, Munich in Germany, thanks to the open borders of the European Union. But nothing compared to, or prepared me for, the city of Los Angeles. I flew over an endless-seeming sprawl of houses, many of which had pools in their backyards, before descending into LAX airport. It was much greener than I expected. In the distance, covered by a layer of smog, I saw the Hollywood sign. Am I going to see gangsters walking the streets with baggy pants and guns on their waists? Will someone in a red bathing suit drag me out of the water if the current sweeps me away? After running towards me in slow motion, of course. Little did I know that people who lived near the beach didn’t really go into the water. Why? First off, the temperature of the Pacific on the west coast was about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Even on the hottest day, a quick dip up to the waist was sufficient. It was so damn cold. I can count on two hands how often I was in the water during those ten years of living five minutes from the beach. Another reason for not going in the water was that it was actually quite dirty. After it rained, it was even banned to go into the ocean because of all the urban run-off ending up there, which could cause serious health problems.

To kick-off my new experiences in this strange land, something very distinct to California happened only a few days after I arrived. It happened on my second weekend in L.A., right around 8 AM. We were woken up by a moving bed and rattling windows. What seemed like several minutes of movement was probably only a few seconds long. It was my first earthquake! Welcome to California! My fiancé assured me that this was just a small one. Oh great, that’s comforting! What’s a big one like then? He told me that during the big Northridge earthquake in the 1990s he fell out of bed. That’s a big one! This just kept getting better. A million thoughts shot through my head. There was no bunker, so where should we go? Outside? I don’t think so since the electricity wires were hanging old-style in the alleyways. So we stayed inside – away from large bookcases and windows. For a second, I also thought that the war America got involved in after 9/11 was now not only in Afghanistan but had also reached the mainland. I thought terrorists were attacking us. My heart was racing and I felt tears welling up. It didn’t help that all day and all night, helicopters were flying up and down the coast on the lookout for anything and anyone suspicious. 9/11 was this generation’s Pearl Harbor. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the American people on TV to buy gas masks, plastic sheets and duct tape. Tape? Are you kidding me?

Months later, when I saw the South Park episode in which one of the moms was lying in front of the TV all day and night, watching CNN following the 9/11 attacks and waiting for the apocalypse, it reminded me of myself during my first weeks in the U.S. I barely moved away from the TV because I was worried I could miss the announcement for when to get ready to die. When the earthquake happened it was not that far-fetched for me to think "the day had come." But it turned out to be just a small three-point-something. So it was all good…

I learned a lot about my new home in the first weeks and months there. The learning curve was steep. What took me by surprise about Santa Monica and L.A. was how cold it got sometimes at night. In Santa Monica, the ocean breeze could be quite strong, even during the day. When sitting in the shade, I got goose bumps quickly. At night, it was even colder. No cozy summer nights, like in Florida or the Caribbean. Soon, I learned, this was the case because L.A. was actually a desert. In the 1800s, some slick guy diverted a river in Northern California to run towards L.A. instead of the Inland Empire. Since then, the L.A. area has been populated and the Inland Empire has been suffering from severe droughts every year. Another truth that ”came out” was that palm trees were not native to Southern California. What!? What would this place be without its palm trees? They were all imported and extremely expensive. When the palm tree in front of the condominium building started to look ill and needed to be replaced, we were told that taking the old one down and bringing a new one in would cost the homeowners nearly $100,000. The homeowners agreed to give the dying tree another chance. When I walked along Palisades Park in Santa Monica, I could actually see that the palm trees did not grow naturally. They were lined up perfectly forming a very long romantic tree alley. And there was not one palm tree on the beach itself, like in Hawaii or the Caribbean. It was a make-believe place through and through, down to the individual palm trees.

Another reason why the homeowners gave the ailing palm tree another chance was because they just had to pay for a new roof a few years earlier. The previous owner of the building did substandard renovations on it before he sold off the individual units. There were cracks in the common walkways and the outside walls. California structures did not have slanted roofs like European buildings. They had flat roofs and water could not run off properly during heavy rains. It did not rain a lot in Los Angeles; maybe two to three full weeks over the year. But when it rained, it rained as if the world was ending. There was no decent water run-off system in the city, which caused the streets to flood every time it rained. It looked more like a wild river running down the street and was quite strong at times. The water was up to my knees and walking my dog in it was a challenge because it could sweep him away.

The strong torrential downpour was also reason for me to slightly panic when I was home alone one weekend night and I repeatedly heard a subtle noise coming from the bedroom. It took me a while to find out what it was. There was a tiny crack in the ceiling about five inches away from the foot of my side of the bed. The carpet was already quite wet. I got a bucket to catch the new water coming in. There was no sleeping with that noise. And I didn't know whether the ceiling might cave in. I called my fiancé who was out of town. He told me to inform the building management after the weekend. I slept on the couch in the living room that night. Just in case.