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Talking dog? Talking bollocks more like

The premise of the "Gadający Pies" (and its cosmopolitan sibling Talking Dog International) is simple enough; a stream of performers are given access to the stage for five or ten minutes.

During that time they can are given free rein over what to inflict on the audience whether it is to give a presentation, read some poetry or perform a musical piece or two.

This was the second "Dog" event that I'd attended. And it was very different from the first one I had attended. The most fundamental difference was the first one was (mostly) in English and this one was in Polish. It proved to be a good test of my Polish comprehension skills.

We managed to arrive early at the venue Piękny Pies (Beautiful Dog) and that ensured us a good seat. Well, the view was pretty good until some guy arrived and set up a tripod right in front of me. The seat wasn't good in terms of air quality. The atmosphere was a wee bit smoky, even though there was a theoretical ban on smoking during the event.

The Polish hosts were certainly talkative, living up to the Polish title for the event of "Gadający Pies" (Talkative Dog). The theme for the evening was "Cold" and the various performers more or less stuck to this theme (apart from one who could only come up with a piece about going "cold turkey.") We were treated to a talk on the sport of curling by a member of the Kraków Curling Club. I had encountered this guy earlier at the bar in the other room and he'd annoyed me by almost hitting me with the curling broom (used for polishing the ice) that he had brought along as a prop.

There were a few foreign performers. One guy from Mali (or Somalia) who spoke remarkably good Polish told us about his experience of coming to cold, cold Poland. Then an guy from Jordan, gave a slideshow presentation on winter in his homeland. He spoke in some strange arabic tongue (imagine Team America), punctuated by the occasional command "next picture" in his broken English. The hilarity was almost too much to bear and we were sniggering like naughty schoolgirls at the back of class. I didn't really learn much about Jordanian winter as he was stood right in front of the Polish subtitles.

Musical performances were of variable quality and when it turned out to be not quite so good we decided to head off into the cold outside in search of a more comfortable bar, which more reasonable bar prices. All in all, not a bad evening. The Polish version (that I attended) was the venerable old dog's 34th edition, while Talking Dog International is a mere pup with only two events held so far.  I'm looking forward to the next event, (whatever language it happens to be held in). 

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