his story started, uhm, somewhere in the heart of Romania, with two Steemians, a bottle of Jack filled with Palinka and two tickets for SteemFest. It was two days before the official starting date, so we were in a hurry but, we were aiming to get to Krakow cheaply thus, we figured we'd hitchhike, paying our fare with booze and good humor. Mostly, the latter as the booze was running low.

We dared each other to find our first ride and GF, ever the gentleman, came up with a most noble getaway: a polar bear that we were planning to ride to the fest. But, you see, these beasts are hard to control , the only way to do it is by getting them drunk first but, since we barely had a quarter of Palinka left we decided to talk our way through, like any good Steemian would. We attempted to ply the beast with talk of community and how very crucial engagement with the people would be, but the bear was not fooled. It growled at GF - 'You shall bring me what's left of your booze, otherwise no deal, a'right?' and then it turned to the lass, mutely awaiting his command.

_{Photo by Kaiwen Sun on Unsplash}

The bear cleared its throat and said 'And no fooling around this time, otherwise I’ll have to push the red button, and you know what that means'. Frightened as we were, we quickly realize that we can either give him our booze, which was vital for our survival in such extreme weather or, we can play one of our little tricks. We looked at each other, sly words passing between us and without a second thought, GF tore off the scarf from his own neck and threw it at HD, who jumped over the bear. And before the mighty beast could do anything, she tied the scarf around the bear's eyes. 'There,' GF laughed, 'now you can't see the red button and must take us to the fest where the rivers are made out of whiskey and vodka is pouring at public fountains.

But, before we even realized, the bear turned into a unicorn, and proud because we managed to pass his test, he decided to give us a ride. Sadly, he was rather old and tired; he only managed to get us to Budapest but, lucky us, as soon as we stepped off the unicorn we met our fearless friend Eric, who was slowly making his way up to Poland himself. 'Ah my dear friends, what a spark of luck to have met you. You see, I'm quite late to Steemfest, just like you, and the only means of transport I have is this triple bicycle which won't really work without two other people.' Relieved, we waved goodbye to the unicorn (who was already heading off to the nearest bar) and hopped on the bike.

We pedaled and pedaled until our lungs started to fall off our chests; when we decided that it was about time to take a break. We checked out our Steemfest app, only to realize that we’re still miles and miles away from Krakow, and we might never it at this pace. In a moment of desperation, we stumbled upon a genie that had a magic Tequila potion but, he wanted in return an upvote from each of us. It turned out the genie was a Steemian too, relating his genie-adventures, always with a comic twist.

_{Photo by John Fornander on Unsplash}

We did as asked and he gladly handed over the potion. 'Say 'hi' to Ned for me,' the genie said as we each took a swig from the potion. And when we opened our eyes, we found ourselves sitting across from an old Slovakian castle. It felt as we traveled at light’s speed, only to realize that we were actually dreaming because that Tequila was mixed with Palinka from Vampires, a deadly combination. We’ve made some progress but, we were still far away from Krakow, and we only had one day left thus, we decided to do the only adult thing and find more of that Palinka. If we couldn't make our way to Steemfest (and by now, it did seem pretty far-fetched), we'd bring it to us, at least in our heads.

But as we walked through the streets of a little, nameless town, we heard a voice from above. When we looked up, we saw a Santa-like man sitting perched on a flying Lambo in the sky. 'What are you rascals doing here? Don't you know you're supposed to be in Poland?' he yelled. Shocked, we realized we were staring at the father of the blockchain, and protector of private keys, the one, and only Ned. He almost offered us a ride but, there was no place left for us since his flying Lambo was filled with crypto babes. But, luckily for us, it turned out that he was just returning from the inter-galactic Disneyland of Alcohol with a trunk full of premium booze. He had no Palinka to give us since only the Gods know the recipe but, he threw us some Jack Daniels, which GF grumbled about, but in the end drank.

And slowly, with every sip of the bottle, we found ourselves getting closer to Krakow. 'Look, there's Taraz,' Eric noticed joyfully. And there were Roland and Eve and all those other people we'd been so keen on seeing, who weren't really there either. It was all just a slip of imagination, but how very wonderful it was. We rejoiced at having arrived at Steemfest in time and decided to throw a massive opening party at our Kingdom that we rented from a wizard on Airbnb. Everybody was invited, from the little fishes to even the biggest of the whales, with everything in between, especially the Sirens. Because we were short on money, and with no ability to make more since the Korean Gods were temporarily angry at us, we had to drink the party into lavish extremes.

_{Photo by Kristina V on Unsplash}

The more we drank, the fancier it became, chips turning into caviar and so on and so forth. Everyone was having a jolly good time, several were already writing their posts, to show all the other Steemians how great it was and to convince them too to pick up a bottle and join us in our revelries. And as the night drew on, the more people arrived and the happier we became. And everone was partying and laughing and utterly enjoying themselves when we surprisingly realized that it was already morning, and the conferences were about to start in a few hours so, we all decided to go to sleep. Some were already a bit too dazed to fly their dragons back home, so we let them sleep there, in the Kingdom with us, like one big family. We dreamed about thousands of upvotes, bulls, and moons, and what happened afterward, in that week went down in the history books as the craziest and most prominent party and festival that ever took placed in Krakow.