Voltage?

About a week ago, I was home and getting ready for St. Paddy's Day celebrations. The plans had been made, and without a cell phone, I just needed to get myself down to the bar around nine. Integral to getting ready, is a collection of classics...the three Ss. After finishing the first, and drying off from the second, I got down to business with my beard trimmer. Thirty seconds later I was looking at half a beard and listening to the last dying sounds of a dead, battery powered, trimmer. Pumped for the festivities, I grabbed a plug adapter and set myself up for some more shaving.
In the minute that it took me to walk to the kitchen to check my email while the trimmer charged up, I heard a pop...followed by silence. I immediately knew that the power had been killed with a beard trimmer that was not rated for 220 volts. First, and worst, a great fear of having to resolve this problem in Spanish took over me. Second, I jumped on the internet to figure out why resetting all the breakers hadn't worked. With 9PM approaching quickly and no electricity, I decided to meet Caitlin at the bar and figure it out from there.
Trying to introduce the situation lightly, I made a joke as we sat down with our first green beers of the night... "I broke the apartment" Now, in my head, this seemed like a good way to bring up the subject. However, it apparently conveyed that the problem was a serious one that might cost quite a bit of money to fix. Long story short...we called our landlord, Nelson, to try and sort out the problem. Between Cait's concern that the apartment was currently burning, the language barrier with Nelson... we quickly found ourselves walking back to the apartment to meet him.
This is where it get's good! Not only do we miss the metro stop and have to wiggle our way through security to switch tracks, but once on the right train...it stops and announces that it will be delayed for a short while. Approaching the correct stop, Cait pulls out her phone to check the time and notices a missed call from our landlord. It's five minutes past the meeting time, and she also discovers that the pre-paid phone is out of minutes! With no way to call Nelson...and knowing that he must be already waiting for us, I exited the train a few minutes later at full speed. Sprinting the .6 of a mile to our apartment, I arrived a full five minutes after our landlord had already left. Breathless and on the brink, I explained the problem -in Spanish - to the concierge, and by the time Cait arrived five minutes after that...
He had knowingly smiled and accessed the common breaker box on our floor and reset the main breaker for our unit.
After realizing that, had I not been so scared three hours earlier, we could be drinking green beer and be in the good graces of our landlord...we headed back to the bar with the full knowledge that Nelson might kill us and that they were still serving green beer!

Happy Day :)