Day Three: The Dragon
We are trapped in a square. How this happened – a mystery.
Apparently, we visited the castle. Oh yes, Simon is here. He is enormous.
We are convinced he shouldn’t be here for another day at least. We did not plan for this…
We meet him in the street. We are not human – we are essentially beer and balls. Nothing more.
Shit went down, we seem to remember. Our hunger was, as it normally is, insatiable.
Simon, knowing a confusing amount about Krakow, takes us to a milk bar. We have not the slightest idea what is happening.
He orders Bigos – perfectly. You know…Bigos? No? Yeah, me neither. Odin barely even knows what it is. He tosses some Zloty at the women-behind-the-bar. She is not unimpressed…
Matt, by contrast, takes his balls in his mouth before uttering a sound. He gesticulates, hopelessly. Something happens and he winds up with a glorious concoction of cabbage and birds.
I take up the charge last. I choose the easiest of things to say, followed by the second easiest of things to say. Turns out this is foul onion soup with a hunk of awful, awful sausage.
Simon defines his own meal as a scoop of madness in a bowlful of regret. I am inclined to agree. It looks like mangled brains. It takes every fibre of me being not to vomit on his face. This is normal, when dealing with Simon.
Turns out the more complex the word, the better the food. Welcome to Poland.
Being curious for knowledge and glory, we head to the castle. Dragon fire explosion. This is what we learned:
There was a dragon and he was a badass and loved eating virgins. (Who doesn’t, right?) Sadly, this pissed people off, since eating virgins is essentially the best of things. So they tried to kill him. Good luck, losers (he killed them all). Eventually, one poor shoe-maker tricked the dragon into eating some sulphur. The Gods only know how, but it probably involved another virgin. The dragon didn’t like this, so he ran to the river to drink and drink and drink. When he had consumed exactly half the river, he exploded. The end.
This is why Krakow is the best of cities; they have a statue of this very dragon, which breathes fire. The Gods only know what happened to the shoemaker, but we are pretty sure he was Prince of Dicks and therefore we care not a single bit.
We stroll around the cathedral, blaspheming loudly (and correctly) and musing on just how agonised Jesus should look, when depicted on the cross. We conclude he should look very agonised. Who knew?
As is our wont, we stop for cakes and find ourselves trapped in the main square, surrounded by cyclists. The Tour De Poland?! Trapped. Cyclists. What the hell is going on?!
By this point, a million shits have hit a billion fans. Yet we regale in our own brilliance, for we have not shits to give between us and therefore…lose track of what we are saying.
Come the evening, we consume ham and make friends with Swedish people. This is thanks largely to Matt’s vague grasp of the Swedish language. Also, we all drink terrific amounts of awful lager.
As a unit, we head into the night. Being the better men, we lose the Swedes immediately – purposefully – and head into our rock bar.
We are hailed as heroes, for some unknown reason, probably related to our ability in song. Immediately afterwards, however, we are shunned as the worst of men. We weep, to ourselves, into our beers – these number at least a thousand.
Becoming bored of silence and beer, we head into the night to seek The Partay. We find 12 shots for about 450 pence. We consume them. They are nothing but piss and wind. We become enraged and consume them all in one, then laugh at how wonderful we are.
A million bars later, we head home. We are furious. So furious that we purchase 9% lager and drink it down. Delicious, we decide. God, we are wrong.