Make Blog not Love

Just when I thought everything was going well with my car, something bad happened. Well, it’s always like that, I should really really get used to it, but still nothing. So what exactly happened this time?

In our country, there is a phenomenon called “block treatment”, which is basically idea of municipal council how to keep the streets clean. Essentially they organize four times a year a cleaning “party”. They distribute “no parking” signs all over a whole quarter and force people to move their vehicles from the street to somewhere else. Sometimes they do it in a more sophisticated way (i.e. leave some streets available for parking), sometimes not and you end up parking really far from your home.

Then if you do not move your car, a private towing company will arrive and tow away your car to a quite distant part of the town without prior or any other notice. You will not receive any information about this and you must find it yourself. The price for towing service is around $80 plus each day costs you around seven bucks for storing your car.

Few statistical facts:

An average czech salary is around $1000 monthly for common professions where for example IT positions can reach up to $1400-$1500 a month after all taxes. An average cost of few chosen things follows next:

8.8 oz of butter costs $1.2
1 egg costs $0.14
A brand new low end car with basic equipment costs $13.600
(e.g. Nissan Micra, Suzuki Swift, Toyota Yaris, Citroen C3, Peugeot 206+ etc.)
1 US gallon of gasoline (Natural BA-95) costs $6.4 ($1.7 per litre)

Average price for a flat (no matter if new or used) was in 2008 $133.300.

For example current (08/2009) prices for a standard flat 68 m2, worn away 40% (i.e. not new):

Prague – $174.000 (1.233.211 inhabitants)
Brno – $115.000 (370.592 inhabitants)
Ostrava – $63.600 (307.767 inhabitants)

(the values in the brackets represents the total number of town inhabitants for better comparison with towns near you)

Monthly rental prices for 68 m2 40% worn away flat:
(usually not equipped with anything and the price does not include water, electricity, gas or other services)

Prague – $570
Brno – $450
Ostrava – $400

In general, it may happen that they tow away your car even though you parked in a correct place. You cannot complain to the town authorities, since they will tell you, that a private company towed away your car, not them and that you will have to go to court, but if you want your car, you must still pay for it to the private company… Unfortunately czech laws have holes like elephant pits, therefore almost nobody goes through with it. And they know it so the towing business is quite a deal approved by the authorities.

So much for general description, nice, huh? And how was it in my case? Two days ago I was returning home after 14 hours, tired and there was no available spot in my street. Well, it’s not that common (because it’s vacation time), but I though to myself, that maybe people got back already and so it’s full in the evening. So I drove around the block and parked the car in a different street. I totally missed the “no parking” signs (my bad) and also this street was full of cars, so I would never thought they are going to do the “block treatment” the next day (as usually under such condition it is quite empty).

The next day I didn’t go to power yoga in the morning, so I went to work on foot and I found out the car is missing just the very next day. Unfortunately. So I called the local cops since I thought they will know what happened with it. Their website said it is 24/7 service. Well, no one answered my phone. I wasn’t quite surprised, it was evening, so maybe they had a nap or something. I decided to call other cop branch. Nothing as well. So I tried transportation department. Some cleaning lady answered the phone saying “Oh, there is no one. You must call the 158, they will tell you”. The 158 number is the main national number for calling police, but I did not want to use that in the first place, because I thought it should be used for emergencies mostly.

Anyway I called that number… rang ten times, twenty times, thirty times… Bloody hell no one, again, answered the phone. I thought that this is totally ridiculous, because if I was under heavy fire, being kidnapped or my cat got stuck on a tree, I would be really in a deep shit. Never mind, I tried another main national police number, this time for local police – 156. Finally (!) a tired guy answered the phone (ho hooo). I told him I want to verify if my car was towed away. He said he will check. He checked and found nothing, however he put me through to another department, where a nice girl told me, that she also does not have information about my car.

But she asked, whether it was wrong parking in general or the “block treatment” thing. I said the latter. “Aaaa, ok, that’s it!” she replied “there are private companies in charge of towing away cars that block the block treatment events”. I asked how would a person know, that his or hers car was towed away and where to and if they inform the owner somehow. She said they don’t and the only way is to call all the local towing service involved. I just sighed and asked for the numbers. At least she had them. She dictated me three different numbers (one mobile phone and two landlines). I tried the first one, where some answering machine mumbled another number I should call. I did and a guy there told me he does not have my car. So I tried the second company and finally there was a guy who said that they have my car, but unfortunately he is out of town and there is no one to open the gate for me.

At least we agreed on the other day and he kindly remitted the additional daily fee. Well, and that’s basically end of the story. Next morning I asked a friend to give me a lift there, since it wasn’t really close and then I paid and drove away.

Interestingly enough the gate sign said “used cars for sale”. Well at least this clearly explained what happens to cars that people forget to collect or think that were stolen. Silky smooth business.

Bottom line: I generally don’t understand this whole thing. They could just fine you for “blocking” the “block treatment” event instead of towing away the whole car to a distant part of town, because basically what they do is that they drive the sprinkler truck around the street and blow dust all over the place.

I also don’t understand why it is this way, when we have approximately 100.000 – 135.000 of unemployed people every year (unemployed in the long term!), who receive their social benefits for nothing and mostly just abuse the system (meaning they usually never worked before, worked for a very short time or especially do moonlighting jobs while receiving the social benefits as well). They could be the people who clean the streets and maybe then it would look much more like an average German street = clean and no towing necessary anymore.