Although, don't get me wrong, there's definitely a rogue twist to it. No fancy lobby - we have to climb four flights of grey stairs, due to lack of a lift. Michael carries the bags to this loft room - exotically called Toronto - with its lovely pine floor, red-flowery duvets, ensuite power shower - and the pinnacle: two skylights to watch the clear Polish globeroof. When our guide goes we slam on the things we know. Fun TV, Viva. Hours and hours of your Beyoncés, your Lucy Lius, your GaGas. Largely American RnB grated into bitesize chunks of local patois. It's a solid mix, even if the hyper-contrived imagery, bling and dance routines get wildly tiresome.
The omelette morningsI'd better fill in you in on the purpose of all this; there has to be a purpose. Filthy Bastard and Professor Tiny Cat bobsleighing across the continent for no good reason except to redefine the borders of the Smash. Lost tribesmen, alone. But something else as well. To truly recreate ourselves. Bigger, faster, fatter European monsters of ourselves. To crack the giant albatross Prague and make it history. To move on from that. To clasp the myths we need to grab. Go deeper. And bring home a crucifix made out of salt. Europe's forgotten death.
Steam still rising. Nothing in the great high-pressure wilderness is ready to pop yet. I fart, the first truly meaty one of the trip. One thing on our agenda this morning - find a little alehouse where we can grab a full English. It's heartbreakingly far until the nearest stretch of huggable establishments. We gather pace and more direction for this foot flight and sort of in the near haze, approach blindly the opening expanse. Strange statues of human heads and six-feet long black poles. I don't know what this means, do you? No time to think. Morning cafes are chosen, along with Coke, cappuccinos, omelettes. Gigantic natives supping Tyskie in the dungeon. It's a fucking massive omelette this. Just as well cos I'm starving, feel as if the hayfever has butchered all of my initial energy tones. Layers of mushrooms crowding and peeking out a mammoth egg raincoat.
Next bit: fabulous Gothic market square, excellent all-encroaching cathedral, vista overlooking tree-lined Vistula, grass pollens attack, steep stairs back down to the world, a bridge made of padlocks, another astonishing mad-ceilinged church, pure quiet as the white man sniffles and prays, perfect roadside sitting, further sneezes, peering into the choking sun.
Bear in mind that I'm writing up this unreal torsion in the flaming boroughs of south London. I attempted to store up the minute, intricate details of every slam passage but you'll excuse me if several slinked away from what is a very brittle platter. Some stuff is easy to regurgitate: for instance the luminous brilliance of those former-paragraph churches. Only the Europeans know how to do that sort of shiz. Nothing tacky, everything needed and part of the whole. Like Sacré Cœur in springtime, opening up the heavenly valve. Why am I waffling on about god's buildings? On ground level, me and the Professor have spotted an open-air terrace and delve into a pair of sumptuous Okocims - pure fantasy resting on furnace frenzy picturesque moodportions.
Burning leg. Castles of clouds.
Roving and roaming, picking up pace, juggernaut from place to place. More Zywiec as the sun goes down. Paper-made dusk beer gardens and a glory-humid lustlornclub. Then: shimmering hip-gyrating to future classical Aberystwyth-era Timberlake-n-blues. Scattershot Neptunes soul-fingered powerplay dribbles. I won't fully go into what follows, as it's a hazy Snoop Dogg glittery car crash. There's, in the words of R Kelly, a little bit of bump and grind. And more. And more. And more. And vodka and Cokes. And unidentified liquids thrust between my lips.
After much debate we pole-vault from the glamorous cocoon to see various funned-up tossers act out their small but important part in a riot. Opposite from our den. We look on across in drunken paralysis. A broken-off chair leg flies through the air and only just, by centimetres, misses my right shoe.
The luminous pink plop of hungover fogBonding. That unseen, untalked-about great male game. A sort of non-weird way of getting to know your closest friends. Me and the Professor don't get much time together these days, mainly due to life and its unfortunate fuckpunches. But we'll try to make the most of this. Spare time together to see what we're really about, what we've missed. Banal chatter about learning to drive or the positives of Manchester in wintertime as we suck down pure silk iced coffees. It's a great ritual this one: bungee jumping back down towards teenage unfettered hanging out, shorn of responsibilities, crowbarred in during present years. A fabulous tradition - we've come to this eastern European outpost to somehow grab a motherfucking spark, to digest poignant things to us that fail to disappear off the nostalgia canvas. We're looking into the past, into the present, forming tentative steps that could classify this mess of emotions.
Stumbling along dark backstreets in humid zigzags. Underwater-eyed spectral drunken spittle clang. Edging towards sense.
I slink rusty footed into my cosy, cottony red-flowery bedspread and look at the impending storm through skylight, then sleep then dream of being in a marathon with Dizzy Rascal. Then grubby light. A well-deserved piss. Back in bed, I can hear the Professor in the adjacent bed motoring slowly into gear and tumbling away from his own Tyskie-generated mini-coma. Brief morning greetings further desecrate the slumber. The gorgeous room painting itself into view. Viva is now smashed full-blast. 'Pon de Floor'/Black Eyed Peas/David Guetta territory. How come all American tunes are now this average Euro-house gubbins? Me and the Professor get embroiled in a mid-morning exchange on this - it's crazy how the US producers have suddenly jumped on a somewhat dated continental musical mood, the 4/4 they probably would have laughed away through gold teeth five years ago. Rap aesthetics plastered over Urban Cookie Collective-lite. Maybe they finally get it, even if the meaning and purpose have been slightly (massively) warped.
© Copyright 2016 John Maher