Satire musicians

Country: Spain

Manufactory: Lladro

Date of establishment: 1969

Sculptor: Fulgencio Garcia

Height (cm): 27

Porcelain Story

Many years ago, the schedule of matches with the participation of Dynamo Kyiv developed in such a way that during one football season the Dynamo team had to play qualifying matches with two Belgian clubs Genk and Gent from small towns of the same name. The games were not very expressive. Unfortunately, both for the fans who watched the broadcast on television, and for us, journalists, who have been visiting Dynamo Kyiv away matches for more than 20 years. Therefore, for example, I remember more not what actually happened on the football field, but what preceded the game.

In the city of Genk, during a wonderful excursion, I noticed in the window of a souvenir shop a porcelain figurine with satyrs presented to your attention. In total, in this series dedicated to satyr musicians, four or five compositions united by one idea were released in different years. By that time, I had already collected all the works of this series, with the exception of the one I accidentally saw in Genk. Without thinking twice, I closed the issue with the replenishment of a rare set.

But the most interesting thing happened a little later. One of our journalists recalled that it is in Genk that there is a beer bar famous throughout Belgium, in which what we usually denote by the concept of "croaking" takes place. Of course, we could not skip it. It turned out that in this old institution you can try more than a thousand (!) beers. But the most unusual of them is a beer called "kwak". That's what we ordered as well. To start a conversation, the bartender asked each of us to take off our right shoe and give it to him. And only after all our shoes were suspended under a high vaulted ceiling, he agreed to take the order. With one condition - the shoe is returned to everyone only after the complete draining of a one and a half liter flask with an incredibly strong "croak" ...

Our task was further complicated by the fact that the huge glass of beer placed in front of each of us seemed to be girdled in the middle by a narrow neck. Out of habit, those most careless of us who wanted to be the first to get their shoes back turned out to be ... the wettest. In the full sense of the word. To be honest, one of my colleagues, who still held out to the end, even needed medical help after a while. Fortunately, everything worked out. But the way we “croaked” in Belgium is still remembered by many.