My downstairs neighbours smell like dogfood - Germany

As summer has arrived early for most of us in Deutschland (hurray for global warming!), people are getting used to walking around in shorts, spending more time outside, indulging in public drunkenness, and leaving their windows open. And the latter is causing a problem for me any my girlfriend, our downstairs neighbours have recently started breathing normal oxygen like the rest of us and opening their windows, and when they do a hideous stench wafts up from their apartment to ours. I can only describe it as a mixture of heated pet food, combined with the ripe odour of a butchers dustbin. Before the warm weather, we would only catch wafts of the smell when they had the door open and we were walking past. At the moment we can't have our windows open for more than half an hour before we both start to feel physically sick. How do you broach a subject like this without permanently alienating yourself from someone? They are an old Ossie couple who have probably been living there for the last 40 years, (and I am fairly certain, but this is pure speculation, that he is an ex Stasi officer), so it's probably a given that they won't react well to any suggestions like 'maybe you should use some air freshener'

Be diplomatic. Say that you have finished your Spring cleaning and have some strong detergent left over that they can have for free. Even offer to help clean their apartment if they are as elderly as you depict them. Moan about how difficult it is to keep the place aired in bad weather but now it's become warm the best thing to do is rip the windows and doors open and let the fresh air in.

Or leave an anonymous note.

Easy. Perfume bomb - the only way to go. Find a cheap eau de toilette that you feel smells less offensive than decaying dog food, and fill a water balloon with it. Position yourself strategically outside their windows, and when one opens, chuck it in.
Job done.

Next.

Did the Stasi ban air-fresheners? Do they corrupt the state?

Find all the advertisements for house cleaning products, or carpet cleaning etc... and fill their mail box every day with them...see if they get the hint...you might want to wrap them in a Dr.'s brochure about testing your sense of smell

I was just thinking my neighbors here in the states smell like dog shit. Hmmm maybe a link...

This is the best suggestion so far

How about speaking to the Hausverwalter and see if other neighbours have complained as well and then do a formal letter. Depending on how confrontational you are of course. I for one wouldn't want to be the one telling someone their flat stinks.

You sure one of em hasn't killed the ohter one and kept the corpse as a momento?

We have had the same thought about our downstairs neighbour. There is this strange smell resembling a mix of perfume, insect repellent and rotten flesh coming from up from the window downstairs.

This sounds so German!!

Now you mention it...

Sign them up for any cleaning freebies you can find that can be sent through the post.

You don't live in Viechtach, do you?


The mumified corpse of a 65-year-old man was found approximately three months after his death by a neighbor. The body was severely decomposed, foul play is not suspected.

From Ossieland - say no more.

Some of this traditional German food - which you come across more frequently in the east than in the west, does smell (and probably also tastes) rather like dog food. So I think thats probably the explanation.

You could just say that you've been bothered by a bad smell in the building recently, which is making life there unpleasant for you, and ask them to check it out.


I can just see the report now: "Clive and Cynthia Robertson-Smythe, a British couple living on the floor above, had noticed nothing untoward. 'Mrs Fleischhammer seemed such a nice old lady. We hadn't seen her husband for a while, but didn't expect this'."

No, thank god.

Honestly I think this the most obvious explanation, Ossie food (in my experience) is usually heavily flavoured with Paprika and other noxious substances and meat obviously features a lot. Stuff like Jägerschnitzel and Jagdwurst combined with boiled vegetables is a deadly combination, I just don't understand how they can still breathe in there.