Whilst walking the villages I took some other random photos
This is one winters wood all chopped up into logs so you can imagine if the owner of this house played poker he would have a neat and tidy stack!
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A working water well in the garden of one of the homes which was a tad dated so is probably still used daily
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Most of the older generation in the villages get around by using a bike similar to this and they just really look after them hence for a bike that is god knows how many years old they still get by.
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I also saw this being built in one of the villages which looks pretty sexy imo and look forward to seeing it finished next time I am back over there, if we ever did buy a decent plot over there I think we would go for something very modern or grand designs type as long as the plot was decent enough.
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Ok so onto the shop well its located in the centre of Rohoznik and there are 5 villages locally that would drive to the village for this type of shop along roads like this with scenery as per the clip
The shop itself is really basic to be honest but expected over there as they dont normally put a sign above the window in the village shops as there are no more than 4-5 shops in each village so people just know, we however have put a banner above and will improve it once we really see how the shop is doing as well as redoing the inside.
Here is the shop
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The windows and doors have recently been done just waiting on the finish and they are just waiting on the fronts to be painted and rendered and as you can see next door is a hairdresser and at the very end on the left is the village florist but if you didnt already know you would never know, I guess it shows in some ways how far behind they are due to communism where the Czech side kept the Slovaks as the poor relations before the walls came down so in esscence they are 10 years behind the rest of europe.
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Inside the shop
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This was just before the shop opened and if it does ok in a couple of months we will get the tiles off the walls and replaster just to make it nice inside as well as upgrade the rails which we purchased online for 150euro and will do for now so all in all this shop costs us £18/20e to run per day which includes rent and the wages and it's staffed by Petra's mum and her friend who work 4 hours per day each with one in in the morning and th eother in the afternoon and they receive the princely sum of £2 per hour to man the shop!!!
That does not seem like a lot but if you worked 40 hours per week even on that which is their equivalent of the minimum wage you could live very comfortably with a loaf of bread 20p and at the local workers bar round the corner to our shop a large beer and slivko on the side setting you back 50p.
By the time we had flown back on Tuesday (open 2.5 days) with a few pre sales added in we had taken roughly £500 which covers next months cost with 3 1/2 weeks left of the first month being open so we are happy with how it has gone so far. They have some strange tax areas over there wherby as Petra's mum works the shop she can work x amount of hours without paying tax as a direct relative of Petra and as the business is classed a small ie a sole trader at the end of the tax year Petra just pays 20% tax on the profit and the rest she can just keep as it's classed as "her money"
They also pay everyone on a certain day in Slovakia and from recollection I think it's the 12th so again as a not so wealthy group of people the villagers should have some extra euro's available for the next few weeks and as the standard of clothing we are selling probably exceeds what a lot of the kids are currently wearing we really hope this will do well.
On another side there is a very poor side to Slovakia so as we are locating clothes and picking up clothes from free cycle all the time as well as purchasing at boot sales ie yesterday Petra went to Dunton and purchased a car load of clothes for £200 which will now be washed, boxed into age groups and shipped over in 2 weeks time we are trying to find a charity in Bratislava that we will give any clothes we dont use to give a little back as well.
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