If I had a hammer

Pictured at right is one of the (by my estimate) 3,500 cobblestones that were hammered into place outside my window this weekend. At the crack of 7 a.m. on Saturday (and again on Sunday) the clink of tiny hammers mixed with the merry laughter of Ukrainian workmen (really merry - drunken, it suddenly occurs to me) came drifting through my window.

They had lots to say to each other, and in my "don't speak the language" paranoia, I assumed, of course, that they were talking about me:

Workman #1: Watch this, I'm going to hammer these in as hard as I can! It is 7 a.m. after all, time to get up and spill the coffee! (A reference to the time I spilled a pot of coffee all over my stove just before the gas man arrived; I believe, of course, that the gas man somehow told the Ukrainian workers about my messy kitchen).

Workman #2: BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Workman #1: Why should we have to be up at dawn while lazy foreigners lie in bed nursing their Krusovice hangovers until noon? (More paranoia, the workmen not only know I'm foreign and hungover, they know what kind of beer I was drinking last night.)

Workman #2: BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Workman #1: Let's see, it's 11 a.m. We could finish this today or we could stop for no particular reason and come back again tomorrow at 7 a.m. What do you think?

Workman #2: BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Workman #1: That's what I thought you'd say! To the pub!