Polish Misadventures

ASS PAINTING. Wait. What? Does that shop door say "ASS PAINTING?" It can't possibly be right. I step closer to find out what's going on. OH!

GLASS PAINTING!

That seems much more appropriate for old town warsaw. Although, I'm still not sure why the sign was in English. Either way I got a huge laugh out of it. But the shop keep still needs to replace the 'GL' lettering on the door. For now the door actually says "ASS PAINTING." Mind you, I'm not in any way against the idea of a business whose main goal is indeed livening up certain sets of buttocks with colorful ardor and panache, but I simply can't see the sustainability of such an enterprise, maybe in Warsaw...

I turn around and in my 360 degree view I see three gorgeous old catholic churches, a sort of fortress protecting Stare Miasto (the neighborhood of old town) a momument to someone I don't know for doing something I never learned in a language I can't read, a big open public space filled with restaurants and bars, plentiful youth with skateboards, guitars, and ice creams, and somewhere not so far off I hear polka. It sounds live. I gravitate toward the polka.

Open admission... I like Polka music. I especially love it when beer is involved, or when I'm in the former eastern block.

This polka sounds mildly strange, like only the tuba is live. When I find it around the corner I see that indeed it's only a tuba. He's got a boombox with him. Although, something else is strange about this guy...

FIRE IS COMING OUT OF HIS TUBA! What the hell is going on? Fire breathing Tuba. I'm pretty sure that sealed the deal. I love Warsaw.

I had to sit and watch for a little while. It turns out that I was in a slightly touristy area, but the locals hang out there too. This fire-breathing tuba guy doesn't seem to be run of the mill. A lot of people were looking at him. I was sitting and wondering what sort of contraption he rigged to make his tuba breathe fire. I also wondered how he'd tuned his tuba to keep it from being incredibly sharp. I took another walk around the block and came back to see the fire-breathing tuba from the other side. I walked very close behind him and found that he welded a contraption onto the bell of his tuba so that when he presses a small button with his left hand it releases some gas and flame. He was pressing the button when he was playing notes to give the impression that he was breathing fire. But it really looked awesome! Fire freakin breathing freakin tuba!