28-XI-2014.
The handover in Lalinski.
The long process. We went to Njujork (daughter maam with husband, without the old lady, and we three), into the white house, where everything is - the bank, city hall, tax authority and all important enterprises. klaanca used to have two or three divisions in there. At the ground floor there was that utility company which was my customer in times of Avai, the cadaster (serbian: katastar) was there, they stopped using Wordstar long ago, and the Goldstar TV set repair shop was also gone, so no confusion anymore.
And there was a fuckup right there. On the submitted paperwork nothing fits, not even the names are right. Where the house papers say name of the owner was Janči, on his ID it said Janoš, and 4-5 more of such things. The daughter maam started making a scene, as if the clerk at hand was personally to blame for the mess. Ah you goose, she only found them, the blame is on just about everybody upstream, this is the village administration in a municipality of semiliterates. I took them out to the lobby and „just wait here while I ask around“. Went back to the clerk in the cadaster and began „what bad luck that we ran into these folks... I so have no wish to see them again. Would you know of a way to set this matter straight? I see you were handed a heap of errors made by others... now it is what it is, that's the situation we have. If it would just somehow be possible that I never see these guys again...“. There she took another look and just said „come back in about fifteen minutes“. I returned to them, took them out on the street for a smoke break.
The husbant is my vintage, just a few months younger, so I seriously mocked him, callin him yellow, rookie, youngster. Specially that he had to drive behind me throuh Zrenjanin, not knowing the streets, having grown in one of those Bečejs. Empty talk just to pass the time before they notice that I was waiting for the clerk to finish. When the fifteen minutes have elapsed, I went back and appologized once more for the tactless goose and, voila, the papers were finished, waiting. It was important to them to have a writ where it says they aren't paying the taxes for the house anymore, it'll be on Lena now.
Then we drove the 5km to Lalinski and got the keys. She had a dream that they took out all the faucets. Which they actually did - in the summer kitchen only, where the faucet is a part of the 5 liter tankless water heater set. But that was all, the rest was as we said. I'm specially attaching this shot of the ceiling in the summer kitchen, for I never saw anything like it. Someone had an idea to cover the ceiling in plastic, but without actually making it lower... well not everywhere, wavy will do. On top of it there's the red bathroom and the hunting lodge with photo wallpaper with alpine landscape all over one wall.
The daughter maam also found time to kiss someone on the street a lot, as if Bečej was across the world and she'll never be able to come again. And then they drove to one of them Bečejs, and we to Čankovo (there's a shortcut, only 10km) so she would pick some chards.
And so Lena will register her agency as based on this address, and thus pay the much smaller lump sum tax in Njujork and escape the claws of Eči's wife. Over time this will prove to be a good move - the tax saving would buy two such houses every five years. This was revoked in 2021 - there were no undeveloped municipalities serving as tax havens (everyone says heavens... in several languages), the tax rate became same everywhere - but by then her status changed and she didn't have to have an agency registered, so she closed it. And she still has the house, for which she'd be able to get at least 4-5000€.
On 30th we celebrated the whole thing with a big barbecue. Got dad, Lena came with Milan, all the best. I even managed to forget to let the eos40 warm up when I brought it from outside, so I now have one really fuzzy shot through the foggy lens. Milan is allegedly alergic to cats, but then these syberian ones aren't alergens, and he almost made friends with johana.
Mentions: Avai, Čankovo, Endre Felbab (Eči), eos40, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Johana, klaanca, Lalinski Konak, Milan Nastić, Njujork, in serbian