There’s an unofficial soundtrack to life in a Polish apartment block. It doesn’t come from Spotify but from three flats renovating at once, their drills synchronised like a symphony orchestra conducted by Satan himself. One neighbour summed it up perfectly online: “An hour ago, all three flats next to me started drilling at the same time.” That’s not noise—that’s surround sound in its rawest, skull-rattling form. And what do the sages of experience say? One veteran explained that there are no written rules, only the customary “quiet hours” between 22:00 and 06:00. Workers often begin at six sharp because they legally can, and while you could sue, the renovation would almost certainly end before the court even set a date. Another offered the kind of advice that feels like surrender: if the drilling starts early, there’s nothing you can do. It’s still within the 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. window, unpleasant but legal. Go to a library, a coffee shop, or anywhere your sanity still has a fighting chance. Someone else went further, admitting that during lockdown they gave up entirely and moved to a detached house, because back then the entire country seemed to discover home improvements at once, and they couldn’t even hear themselves on work calls. The law, in its infinite wisdom, gives us cisza nocna—night quiet—from 22:00 to 06:00. In theory, this protects your beauty sleep. In practice, it means you’re fair game the moment the clock strikes six. By then, your neighbour’s drill is already halfway through the load-bearing wall. Housing cooperatives sometimes try to soften the blow with their own rules, limiting renovations to 08:00–18:00, but those notices usually live on scraps of paper taped in stairwells or basements, and few people bother to read them. What can you do? You can ask politely, though the most likely response is a shrug or, worse, a smirk. You can complain to the administrator, who will promise to “remind” the tenant—a reminder that usually materialises as another forgotten memo in the basement. You can call the police or municipal guards if the noise crosses into night hours, but unless the officer personally despises drilling, expect them to mutter “legal until ten” and move on. And you can take it to court, but by the time your hearing date comes around, the new kitchen will be installed, the tiles polished, and your neighbour’s grandchildren already complaining about your television volume. So, we endure. We stuff earplugs in our ears, turn up Netflix to maximum volume, and wait for the storm to pass. Because in Polish apartment life, there’s always another renovation lurking around the corner. The walls get smoother, the tiles shinier, and our patience thinner. It’s not quite hell, but it’s home improvement purgatory. And perhaps, just perhaps, the national bird of Poland isn’t the stork after all. It’s the hammer drill. Author: Mitzilinka (Turning grim reality into comic relief—without losing the truth)