Life As A Professional Drunk

To create the perfect FAQ I asked my fellow guides what their most frequently asked questions actually are; and they barked these back in unison. Apart from the last one, that was Osh so you’ll have to excuse him. So in answer to your first question drunks and drunkettes, oh hell yes, we do this every god damn night. We are the party, without us there is no party, and we love to party. On some days we’re really naïve, and we think that just because we aren’t on the schedule to work we won’t be crawling into our beds at 6am after 10 breakfast vodka shots. Fear of missing out (FOMO) is rife in our staff house though, and it’s very hard to have a sober night in serial watching Game of Thrones when you know your friends are in Coco drinking copious zubrowka and red bulls.

“Sleep drunk, wake up drunk, eat drunk, drunk, drunk” – Dennis.

When we’re not being professional drunks, we’re posing as real grown-ups who can hold down 9-5 jobs and cope with pre-8pm sobriety. In the real world it’s very easy to make up excuses for not going on a night-out. “I’m broke, I have work, and I’m still hungover”. All of these are totally invalid here, we drink for free and we know better than anyone that the best cure for a hangover is an ice cold Tyskie. We love to meet new people, and we love to get drunk with new people…we may do this every night but every single night is different. My life runs like the start of one of my dad’s very bad jokes; “so an Englishman, an Irishman and a Canadian walk into a bar…” We were hired for our raging ability to drink ourselves silly at power hour and then still be able to lead a wild pub crawl, fairly umpire a game of beer pong, and make sure all our guests get home safely. Just the other day I consumed an upside down shot for spiritus before leading 100 guests to the best club in town…my parents are so proud of me.

“How many pub crawl guides does it take to change a lightbulb? Two, one to screw it in and one to make the room stop spinning” – Osh

In answer to the second question, I am not Polish. You may have sussed this out from the fact I already used the word “geez” but I am very, very English. Our staff are a confusing mix of English, Irish, Polish/Irish, Australian, American, German/American, Turkish, one very difficult to understand Glaswegian and our token full blown Polish girl. But we do all live here, because it would otherwise be a very long commute and drunk people can’t read train timetables very well. Most of us live together in a staff house affectionately known as the Craic Den. If you picture the Geordie Shore house at the end of the season plus another 20 years of homeless people living in it, it’s like that. At the present, there’s 10 people living there, so it’s really useful that we don’t all hate each other. If you ask nicely (or just stand near him and you’re female) then Graeme will bring you back for a sleepover and in the morning we’ll make you a breakfast mimosa with vodka instead of champagne…and no orange juice.

“*incoherent slurs*” – Travis

Your third question is one not many of us can answer. We all just ended up somehow living in Poland with no real reason for being here, I mean other than the amazing Krakow nightlife, beautiful scenery, wonderful people and the constant access to pierogis. But I don’t recall writing a Year 11 essay on wanting to become a professional drunk after leaving school…though I probably wouldn’t have rejected the idea had I known the opportunity was coming my way. Most of us were at one point or another a guest on the crawl, and when the Facebook page advertised the “best job in the world” we couldn’t just pass that up could we? Now in reference to that final question, send pics and we’ll talk.