The Hausmeister

So, a couple nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night to a drip-drip-dripping noise. I climbed out of bed and half-consciously fiddled with the faucet on the sink in my room. Then I crawled back under the covers, barely opening my eyes the entire time. But the dripping noise continued. I decided it must have rained or something; this is Aachen, afterall. The next morning, there was a large puddle of water on my floor. Beneath the sink, water was dripping from some funky-looking pipe things. I didn't know how to fix it. So I did the smartest thing I could think to do in this type of situation: I ignored it. Later, I had the idea to put a pitcher under it to catch the drips. It was dripping from a few places though, so it couldn't catch everything. The following day, today, I went to class in the morning (which, by the way, was kinda fun; we basically reviewed all the German I learned last semester over the course of two hours). Then the guys and I went to the cafeteria where I got a sandwich and some vanilla flavored milk. Next, I had a couple hour break until I needed to go to my institute to start research. I opened my room door to see even more water. The puddle had spread. I knew what I had to do. I'd been avoiding it, but it was time. Time to go to the Hausmeister. I'm sure you would agree; Hausmeister is a scary-sounding title for someone. It basically just means caretaker though. I headed down to the ground floor to his office. I stepped inside to see an old dude smoking at his desk. Another old guy was in there chatting with him, but they stopped so the Hausmeister could address me. The first thing I said was, "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" "Nein." Dangit. This was it--the first time I actually had to use German with somebody. I fumbled around for words; "Mein Sink ist kaputt." I used the wrong word; Sink is the kitchen sink. I should have said Waschbecken but oh well. Through lots of motions, I think I got the point across that I was having sink trouble. Then he asked me something, and I just stared blankly. The other guy said, "Which room?" "Funf hundert drei," I responded. Then lots more gibberish which the other guy explained as, "Five minutes." So I headed back to my room to wait for the Hausmeister. He came, gave a shocked expression at the amount of water on the floor, then left to get the proper tools to work. I mopped while he messed with the sink. This went for half an hour straight. My back was breaking from bending over (I was wiping up water with a rag and wringing it in a bucket) so I took a break. The Hausmeister explained that it was broken and I would have to leave the water off, only opening the valves when I wanted to use the sink. I don't know how I understood since he said all this in German, but I'm pretty sure I interpreted right. And once he gets some new parts for my sink, it will be back to normal.
By now, all my free time had been used up, and I had to go straight to the institute for research. I was pretty proud of myself; yay for German! And while I was walking to the institute, I was trying to open a bottle of Coke. I was too weak though. So I asked a random stranger passing me on the street to open it. Again, we spoke only in German. Sure, I only understood half of what he said, but I might have faked him out that I'm a native speaker.