Being a 20 year old who enjoys a good party, I’m most likely the person MAKING the noise rather than the one complaining about it, but I have some tips for you readers that can definitely help!
If you’re experiencing some really loud and disturbing noise outside of your holiday home late at night, I would firstly wait until the next night to do anything about it. For all you know, this could be a one night thing and the rest of your holiday will be as peaceful as you’d hoped, and to be honest, not many people will take you seriously for complaining about one night of noise.
If it’s a group of holiday-makers like yourself:
Then you best bet is to go out and talk to them, ask them kindly to be quiet because they woke you up and you’re on your holiday. They’ll most likely be fine with it and move on, if they aren’t – contact the Mairie.
If it’s a group of young adults having a party or hanging out in the street:
Again, I think that the first step would be talking to them yourself. If you call the police on them and they know which house did it, you could very easily fall victim to having the same amount of noise or worse outside of your holiday home every single night that you’re there, as way of “revenge”. Young French adults are very understanding and I’m sure that if you just explain the situation to them, they’ll turn their music down or lower their voices, or even move away from your property.
If you’ve already tried this and it’s done no good, then I would advise going to the Mairie. But don’t go empty-handed, see if you can film or record some of the noise going on and take it down there and see what they say. In most cases, they’ll send over a Gendarme to monitor the area and tell the people making the noise to go somewhere else.
If you’ve already done this and seen no improvements, then it’s most likely time to call the Gendarme. Give them a call, explain the situation and tell them everything that you’ve already done, and they should send a few Gendarme over to deal with it.
Hopefully you’ll not have to deal with any of this at all!
Gina.
