France

Awakened by a great noise, I jumped out of bed and experienced a strange feeling of being lost in space. The position of the bed against the wall was not familiar to me, and neither was the size, ceiling height, flooring, lighting, smells and the bed – everything was different. After a few seconds, I adjusted myself into reality while my friend kept telling me, "We’ve got to leave; it smells of smoke."

 
The elevator did not stop mocking me the past few days – it only worked once out of twenty times. I had been forced to climb 6 floors of stairs throughout my stay. This time, it had its doors opened as if to dare us to ride it. But the building was on fire, and naturally it was out of the question. The stairs were caught on fire, and we hid back in the apartment.
 
I quickly applied some learning from my first year in Architecture College. I stuck a damp cloth at the bottom of the door and sprayed the door with water. Caroline opened the window and we waited. The next twenty minutes were the longest of my life yet. Another thirty minutes passed before it was our turn to jump onto the ladder of the fire truck.
 
From the outside, this once charmless, gray and dying building suddenly seemed to be inhabited by a soul – a personality expressing anger and violence. It turned out later that the origin of the fire was from aging electrical facilities of the building. It was as if the building was tired of being mistreated, forgotten, ridiculed and marginalized that it decided to make itself heard once and for all.
 
In its anger, the building was still kind enough to save our lives, apart from some minor burns.

So many times...