Piano saga, part trois

After yet another week with no piano in sight (despite promises to the contrary), we fired the piano moving company. They better give us our money back. M. went to collect this morning.

But now we're stuck with our original problem, which is how to get a big honking piece of wood and metal and ivory and stuff up to our apartment. I realize it's just not that easy to do this sort of job, which is probably why the "professionals" get away with all that craziness they pulled.

Does anyone know exactly how many people it takes to carry a piano? And how brawny those people have to be? We're wondering if it would work to just individually hire people, starting with our former Polish neighbor (I mean not formerly Polish, formerly our neighbor) and going from there.

I'm getting a sinking feeling that I won't even have the piano by the time I leave for the US, next week. And since I'll be there for almost two weeks, it will have been A MONTH AND A HALF between the day we bought the piano and I finally lay eyes on it again.