Oil Paintings and Beer

We spent much of this morning shopping at Warsaw's antique market. Allow me to rephrase that: Melissa spent much of this morning shopping at Warsaw's antique market. I spent much of this morning trailing after Melissa saying supportive things like: "Oh yes, that's nice dear." and "Yes, I would love that hot pink Victorian chaise, but do you think it's authentic?" In the end we left with a nice oil painting only a little bit smaller than the Mona Lisa.

Current value of the Mona Lisa: $500+ Million

Price we paid: 150 PLN (about $50)

So essentially, we got a painting of comparable size to the Mona Lisa for 1/10,000,000^th of the price! I'd say we did fairly well.

After a morning of shopping and bargaining we (meaning Melissa, myself, a group of her classmates from language training and their instructor) all decided to grab a bite to eat around noon. We had a small snack at an outdoor café and agreed to meet up again back across town at around 4 o'clock at a little restaurant that pani Eva (instructor) recommended. Frankly, I think most of us were hungry right then and there, but pani Eva assured us that we would have plenty of food if we could keep our appetites in check by snacking lightly for a few hours.

Pani Eva was true to her word. First, the braver souls among us, started the meal with a liter of beer. I'd never even heard of a liter beer before much less seen one. They were absolutely massive. Dana, who put us men twice her size to shame by being the only one to actually finish her entire liter of beer, had to use both hands to pick up her beer when it first came. I think I might have gotten half of mine down.

After much laughing at the incredibly ridiculous size of our beers the food finally arrived. I had ordered something that the menu called "Flaming Chicken kebob." I admit it, I ordered it mainly because I'm obsessed with fire and had hoped that they would bring out a skillet of several kebobs roasting in some kind of flammable alcohol. Instead what I got was a platter about three feet long with a tripod supporting one end of a single kebob that slanted all the way across the platter and yet still managed to overhang on both ends. All along the length of the kebob were chunks of chicken about 1/4 the size of your fist.

In short, I had what probably amounted to an entire chicken chopped up and speared on a javelin. Everyone else had portions equally massive.

After an indeterminate period of trying to force ourselves to eat as much as possible, we finally admitted defeat and rolled ourselves out of the restaurant; every one of us complaining that we'd eaten too much.

Then we went for dessert.

-Dave