Translation of Machenschaft

It seems a little bit like a pot in which you want to be happy and rich and enjoy your luck not caring about others. For example, the population is diminishing (or it was so during the last decade).
The bus was supposed to leave at around 4 o'clock in the afternoon, so that I still had two to three hours to organize. I went for lunch at some strange place and hardly ate as it was too ugly.
I looked at the street name and saw that we were at the right hotel but on the wrong street. That is when I suspected that there were several hotels with the same name, one original and the rest copycats.