It was all going perfectly fine, no issues whatsoever. Then we went inside that stupid parking lot in Krakow. Shortly after we discovered that there was no empty parking space for the monster of a minivan we had hired. 

‘Should we try the second floor?’, asked Simon. 

There was some objection to that, a mild and insecure ‘Maybe not the best idea’, or something in that fashion, which came from the second of the three rows of the 9-seater,  I believe it was Axel. Whoever it was however, he was one of five otherwise rather silent passengers and he was not enough to change our course. 

We drove slowly down the turn.

‘I think I’ve come in nicely.’

He hit the brake, had to back off a bit. I looked behind to check out what the margins were, between the van and the wall.

‘Shit, there’s another car coming.’

‘Fuck.’

‘How does it look Nirre, do I have lots of space?’

I looked out the window, straight at the wall. This was one of those moments when the situation is so awful that you can only just laugh.

‘Mate, we’re millimetres away. You have zero space.’, I mumbled, chuckling. 

‘Fuck.’

‘You cannot go a bit to the front, no?’, Oskar asked.

‘No man. We’re stuck.’

As he said that, Simon backed some more and then we all heard that traumatising sound of the side of the car and the concrete wall frenchkissing. 

‘KHHHH’

‘STOP!’

‘Fuck.’

Panic. Handbrake on, driver out. He was trying to have a look as to how the fuck we could get out of there when two Polish men came out from the car behind us and started giving him what I imagine they thought was good driving instructions. Everything in fluent Polish of course. The rest of us were stuck inside the van in total silence. 

There goes the fucking deposit for the hiring company, whoever knows how much they’re going to charge for that. And screw that even, how the hell are we going to get out of here? The car is stuck, we’re going to stay here forever. Die of malnutrition between the first and the second floor of a parking lot in Krakow, what a fucking way to go. 

Simon got back in. 

‘Right, it’s already fucked, we might as well just get out of here.’

Then he started backing again but something was off.  

‘The handbrake mate’

‘Simon, the handbrake’

‘The handbrake’

‘SIMON, THE HANDBRAKE’

‘Huh?’

‘You have the handbrake on.’

‘Oh shit.’

Then again, that terrible sound. 

‘KHHHH’

This time with the addition of glass cracking. It was such a moment of panic, that even though I reflected over the possibility of the window beside me shattering, I didn’t move a bit. Totally frozen. 

Then we drove forward again and we were out. 

I went back to that turn later. We were not the first victims it had claimed. 

Not only our fault then.