While my pasta boils

I'll describe quickly a few things about where I work.

First off, it's in downtown Toulouse. You open the heavy old wooden door at the street and there's a long covered corridor ending in a little courtyard where three cars can park. The corridor is open at one point, but then another building covers it. In this long courtyard/corridor, there are at least 4 entries into different buildings.

My office is in a building at the end of the courtyard. You enter, and climb the staircase with wallpaper peeling off the walls in huge sheets up to the second floor.

My office is actually a former apartment, and this being an old building and all, we have lovely high ceilings, parquet flooring, and crown molding. There are also three fire places, plus a bathroom with a tub, and a large kitchen which doubles as the break room. This being old, we also have the toilet in the broom closet, several holes in the parquet, crumbling pieces of brick, doors that don't really close, and weird fake balconies which are outside our windows, but are walled in, one is covered with glass and has pictures hanging on the walls (but no way to get there aside climbing through the window).

The previous owners owned the apartment on the third floor as well, so they made a duplex. Except that when my company bought the building, they didn't want a duplex there, so they closed off the access at the top of the staircase, but left the staircase. That means that just inside the door, there's a spiral staircase to nowhere.

But I should consider myself lucky. I visited the small office on the ground floor that has access to the unused basement and they said it was always really cold because there was no door or closure to block off the basement.

Anyway, time to check on my spaghetti!