Monday 22 July 2013

Let there be light!

On the set:)
One of the reasons for me not writing the blog again for a week is not pretty. Everyone knows how we had problems with our licence, with the woman who lives up on the 6th floor, and tries to make our lives miserable. So, last Wednesday we said we have enough. I had a conversation with the Communal Representative in the building to ask her if everything went alright with our request when it turned out, that the neighbour is accusing us now with paying off the officer in the city hall to get our stuff sorted quicker. Hah! This was just painful to hear. I am not going to lie about the stuff that happens to us recently, but it is crazy how many times I heard since we are in Budapest, to pay someone to make things move quicker. Now, I am not that naive, and I know how things can work, but it also sad to think, nothing is possible if you actually just want things to get sorted on their own way. It is their job to give us the licence, to check the hygiene and to sort things out for a new business. Just to make it clear, we havnt paid anyone for anything, on the other hand, probably everything would go quicker if we would. Also, as a new business, we have to save all the money we can, and we cant pay people to do their jobs what we already pay for through tax. I know, it is no an ideal world....

Anyway, we headed down to the city hall, where we were so pissed off, as the administrative person who represents our business told us, he still hasnt done the check on the votes. Remember we have been waiting for it for 3 months now!! But surprisingly when he heard what people say about him being paid by us, things started to move faster and he wanted to report the woman, as this can actually mean his job for him too. We wrote a report and then went to the police, and we gave a report in as well, saying she is causing us a lot of money by trying to make our business go down and making things go slower at the city hall. Maybe she is not going to like the taste of her own medicine. I think in the past couple of months I became more and more aware of the fact, that being nice to people doesnt always work, and that there are many, who just dont want others to succeed. I am sorry, but there is a woman, who is about 35-40, sitting home, unemployed and all she does is going to court for stupid reasons and sue people, making them feel like shit and this is what makes her happy. It is a very sad life to live, and it feels like no one really understands that all we have is in this bar now, and it costs a lot to have it and if we loose it, we literally loose everything with it. Another fun story from the police station:
An australian guy comes in, kinda lost, only speaks english, we help him what he wants, someone stole his phone needs a report for it for the insurance. An interpreter comes out, middle aged woman:
-What can I do for you?
-My phone got stolen on the tram.
-So, you lost it.
-No. It got stolen.
-Have you been drinking alcohol? 
-No, my phone got stolen I need a report.
-We cant help, I hope you know that.

But this was only the beginning. We went back to the bar from the police station feeling a bit better, and organised, so I took the dogs for a walk, but only when I got back to the bar I heard Scott shouting from the end of the road. There were two people coming out and they cut our electricity off, saying we dont have a contract. It was 3 hours before the quiz suppose to starts, the phone was dying, I took care of all the paperwork, and really thought that we do have a contract. So, running off to the ELMU office, finding out it just closed, we called them and they said, it is true, they sent us a letter saying we were missing a paper for the contract. The only thing is that we have never seen this letter...so there is nothing to do, we have to wait till tomorrow and have a nice candle light quiz. I enjoyed it quite a lot, and the fact we still had cold(ish) beer and ice helped a bit...
In the morning we started at the electricity company, where they said, we have to do the contract, then you have to wait 1-2 days before we can pay and get the contract. After that is done, t takes officially 8 days to put it back on. We told them it not possible, we have to pay our rent, tax and so on, if we loose a trade for a weekend it almost means shutting us down forever. But there is nothing to do, we started begging, shouting, being nice, nothing worked, we were told that they are going to call once it is done. The phone remained silent, and talking to the hotline just proved it even more, nothing can be done on a weekend. The fact it is a business and our income and life just dont make any sense, how can they just cut off without warning when they had my phone number? What if someone has kids and they do that to them in their home for the weekend? Is there seriously not a single person who can do something about these? We paid our bills straight away, and it wasnt even a crazy amount. The weekend went by, and we made ourselves useful, did a lot of revamp on the bar, organised everything and Scott did his usual amazing artwork, so the bar looks cooler then ever. This is the plus side of the whole story:)! But it is not over yet, since probably we are not even gonna get the electricity back today only tomorrow if we are lucky. So, that is the story of the last week, we really seriously thought about giving p, but it cant go any worse (knock knock), so fingers crossed we are about to have the time of our lives:)!!

Dont forget, Friday we have a party on: LNF @ Lost in Budapest
https://www.facebook.com/events/441717115926634/

This video is made on how to open up a new business, I tried to say a couple of useful stuff:)
http://hasznostv.hu/video/hogy-inditsunk-el-egy-vallalkozast-manapsag

No comments:

Post a Comment