The trouble with Zličín

Nah, the trouble isn’t that it’s home to one of those Brobdingnagian shopping malls (Metropole) that litter the Czech Republic, provide an outlet through material accumulation for Czechs’ sense of spiritual bewilderment, and generally remind one of the mall sequences in Zombies’ Dawn of the Dead. It’s not even that it’s a favourite location for some innocent bus spotting. It’s that we still own a flat there and each year we have the same problem with finding new tenants after the current ones decide they need to move well in advance of the contractual agreement (well, ‘contractual’ in a very loose sense of the word – the missus doesn’t pay tax on the rental income, meagre though it is, and as a result she’s adamant that she’ll get banged up in jail if she ventures back for more than a holiday…).

Hence the potential installation of Rotten as a temporary property manager (sorry mate, I’ll provide more information as it comes to hand; will look good on the CV if nothing else). I’m getting it in the neck here because I didn’t agree to sell the place when an offer was made a couple years ago. I was motivated at the time by the requirement to have some domicile once we returned to live in Prague at a later date, but as you know, that’s all turned to custard. Much to my chagrin, the place does now have to be sold, so that’s the main driving force behind next year’s trip. But given that half of it belongs to the brother-in-law and given the mammoth expenses we’re now facing (discussed yesterday), we may not get too much loose change out of it.

I guess it wouldn’t have been that much fun living there anyhow, as the neighbourhood’s not that salubrious, even though Metropole is hidden from view. There are no pubs in the area, and the only place to whet your whistle is the bowling alley or the herna bar that tvc and I investigated last time around. Then again, the flat’s part of a činzak rather than a panelak, so you don’t get the pissing in a bowl effect from upstairs. And because it’s right on the southern edge of Prague, there’s easy bus access to the villages and walking tracks of Praha Jih-Praha Východ.

Perhaps if we have any money left we could invest in some nice property in nearby Brdy. I understand there’ll soon be lots of wealthy American technicians spending up large there. Cha-ching.