Trapped in a Hallway

This morning I found myself in an amusing/annoying situation, a situation which probably could not happen in the States due to fire codes. But first, a short geography lesson concerning our apartment building.

Our building has big, heavy double doors on the sidewalk, doors that can withstand a nuclear attack. It always takes a key to get in these doors. You can lock them so that it takes a key to get out too, although usually it is not locked in this way.

Past these doors is an interior hallway, and in this hallway there is a smaller door that can only withstand a speeding car. (This door has some mirrored glass panels, so it's possible you could force your way through it by breaking the glass.) This door is always locked on the hallway side, but on the other side (the stairwell side—we're getting there next), like the exterior double doors, it is usually unlocked but can be locked.

Past the smaller door is the stairwell, going 3 floors up to our apartment. The apartment door is only able to withstand a human assault, and it can be locked or unlocked, from the inside or the outside.

Back to this morning: I left the apartment with both girls to get some treats at a local patisserie. We exited the unlocked apartment door, went down the 3 flights of stairs, went out the interior hallway door, and came to the big double doors, which were atypically locked from the inside. Not a problem—except I had no keys.

Ordinarily I do have keys. However, this week our guests (my sister Jen and brother-in-law Marco) have my keys, because a spare set would cost us 125€, or about $160, and we're too cheap for that. So I'm trying to make do without my keys. And now I'm trapped in a hallway, where I can't get out to the street through the locked exterior double doors, and I can't get to the stairwell through the interior door to go back to the apartment to get help. And the doorbells are conveniently located outside the exterior double doors.

Eventually I remembered that I had a phone on my person, and I called up to the apartment, but by this time the second shift (Jenee, coming to take the girls to school) was already on its/her way down. Jenee to the rescue! JoJo and I made it to the patisserie and got treats, just in time to make the next bus. The patisserie did not have the usual, small, non-messy ones that JoJo likes, so I hope that the girls made it to school with Jenee (I just left them after they boarded the bus) without the more "difficult" treats causing too many problems.