Hmm .. from the warm look of content on your face I see that you’re reading April’s Krakow Post. Well, that must mean one of two things: either you’ve made it through another winter (and if it was the Polish winter, double brownie points to you) or you’re rereading this article at some future point as a distraction to doing something else – probably cleaning the windows or starting your thesis. Either way, welcome (once again) to the Polish spring, which officially started on Saturday 28th March.
Spring is, for most Poles, the finest season of the year. Autumn’s ok, they say, summer’s too hot and winter is … well … winter. Spring days are simply longer, warmer and brighter. And now the streets and parks are full of people enjoying the return of both sunlight and birdsong.
But it’s not quite summer yet, down here in Central Europe. For no sooner does winter give away to spring than attention is turned to serious matters. For, in the Christian calendar, March means Lent (the traditional 40-day period of abstinence echoing Christ’s ordeals and temptations in the wilderness) and April means Easter and the Resurrection of Christ.
Let’s be honest, most Western Christians’ observance of Church festivals is limited – at best – to Christmas and Easter, and even then more often in a purely secular manner: expensively-bought presents at Christmas, expensively-bought chocolate eggs for Easter. Our experience and knowledge of the church, its yearly rites and festivities is, for many, fading fast. Twice a year we may perhaps pop our heads into the local church, shakes hands nervously with the local vicar (just how do you address him / her?) before curtseying backwards into the Women’s Institute flower display, but that’s about it. Or, at least, that’s how it used to be. For as anyone who either lives in Poland or lives near a community of ex-pat Poles knows very well, there are some churches where the cup runneth over - Polish churchgoers standing and even kneeling in the streets outside.
Huge church attendances were one of the first things to hit me when I came to Poland. And Sunday services repeated several times, with people queuing outside a la Harrods on Boxing Day morning?! You just don’t see it in Britain. And, as an occasional church-goer myself, I love to see it: just the sight of so many cheers the soul. However, removing my rose-tinted spectacles for a moment, I wonder how it was ten or twenty years ago. For many, going to church is merely ‘the done thing’. Where the church was once the source of comfort and an alternative to spiritually empty and morally bankrupt Communism, many Poles no longer seek nor, in fact, need such a solidarity and worship instead at the new churches of Ikea and the Galeria shopping centres. In this, of course, Polish society is merely ‘catching up’ with those in the West.
But Easter, at least, is a time of genuine celebration. And Poles fill every part of Holy Week with meaning and tradition. On Easter Saturday, for example, people take baskets of food into church to be blessed by the priest, and children paint eggs, giving them to members of their family. Another of the many family-related traditions is the all-day breakfast on Easter Sunday, when kitchen tables are laden with all manner of tasty foods, to be enjoyed from dawn to dusk. Traditionally, a moderate intake of alcohol from morning onwards helps ensure a particularly cheery Sunday.
Although the Slavs are great churchgoers, Christianity came late to this part of the world, with paganism only beginning to be replaced in the tenth and eleventh centuries. And pagan customs are much more evident in Poland than in the West. For example, the pagan Pole used to sprinkle water on the fields to awaken the Earth Mother after her long winter sleep. This custom has – with some slight modification, it’s true - survived to this day in the custom of throwing (sometimes sizeable quantities of) cold water over innocent passers-by. It’s called Wet Monday, or Śmigus-dyngus (after two mythical pagan gods), and you’d better be on your guard on Easter Monday when any random citizen – usually a child – decides to cover you in water, balconies of flats being a popular launching-pad. Although tradition dictates that you’re not allowed to be angered by this, you are allowed to retaliate. Sales of water pistols, AK47s and orange plastic rocket-launchers are predicted to rise over the Easter period.
First published in the Krakow Post newspaper 2009
Tuesday 28 April 2009
Krakow Chronicles: May 2009
How time flies (or ‘runs’, in Polish)! No sooner have we finished Easter (painted eggs, baskets of food, interminable hours around the family table) than summer’s just around the corner! With the longer and warmer days, Krakow has become a sensual feast. In winter, the stone kamienica across the street was inhabited only by shadows, who scuttled quickly up staircases. Now, the sun has made them flesh and blood, painted smiles on their faces and you notice details in the stone you’d somehow missed before. Double-windows are thrown open to catch the sun and your attention is pleasantly captured by the strains of an unexpected violin or clarinet, wafting through the net curtains and rolling gently down the street. You realize that even shadows have lives, and colourful ones, in fact. Like flowers, they only need the right conditions. And, closer to home, balconies blossom with bratki (‘brother’) and begonias, carefully tended by babcia owners.
Though far from the Main Square and Mariacki Church, I hear the Hynał (the mournful tune played by the trumpeter on the hour, every hour) drifting along my street. It’s maybe the radio, a practicing musician or perhaps a daydream. Whatever it is, like a friendly, sleepy, dragon, ‘Krakow’ - the thought of it, the feel of it - has awoken from its long slumber and permeates once again the souls of its people.
And not only the souls, but their bodies too. Towards the end of April, I received an SMS from a friend. A short message; innocent enough in its way. Did I want to run the Krakow marathon? Well, yes, the thought did appeal to me. After all, I’m not in bad shape and I’ve always wanted to see more of Krakow. And here was my chance. I should leap at it, gazelle-like. And so I did - metaphorically. Sort of. Almost. That is to say that, for a couple of hours or so, I let the idea run around my head for a while, before reluctantly coming to the conclusion that running a dog up and down the local riverbank two or three times a week hardly qualifies me for the remake of Chariots Of Fire. Not to mention the fact that, fortunately for me and all the serious, well-prepared, runners, I discovered that the invitation had arrived just twentyfour hours too late for me to register and pay good money for that particular kind of self-inflicted madness. Not that that stopped nearly four thousand brave souls from taking part on a hot Sunday morning, the winners coming from as far afield as Ukraine, Kenya and Ethiopia. World-class indeed!
However, I personally prefer my pursuits to be more artistic than athletic. Just as well I live in Krakow then: a city with a fine intellectual and artistic heritage – a heritage the City Government is determined to capitalise upon. I recently interviewed an international marketing executive on the City’s behalf. A man who has set foot in more cities than McDonald’s, he was very impressed by Krakow, telling me it had taken him precisely eighteen minutes to fall in love with the place (not, presumably, including baggage-handling and the taxi ride from Balice). According to him, we Krakowians live in ‘a mini-Florence’ (albeit one with its fair share of concrete blocks). Kind words – and no doubt heartfelt – but, as a lifelong Krakowian had, coincidentally, explained to me only a few days previously, Florence – like many historical cities - is a victim of its own success, left wondering where to go now. In the city centre, its winding medieval streets are snarled up with traffic and its overdependence on tourists inevitably impacts upon the local atmosphere. Apparently, it’s even rare to hear a native-to-native Italian conversation there.
The same colleague then recounted how, ten or fifteen years ago, it was, in contrast, extremely rare to hear any foreign language on Krakow’s streets. And, if we go back a little further, twenty years ago would have seen the Rynek Głowny (Main Square) dark and lifeless at 8pm, even at weekends. Impossible now to imagine that huge and vibrant public space, where everything happens and everyone meets, so devoid of life. How the city has changed in a generation – and how the new generation is changing the city!
Though far from the Main Square and Mariacki Church, I hear the Hynał (the mournful tune played by the trumpeter on the hour, every hour) drifting along my street. It’s maybe the radio, a practicing musician or perhaps a daydream. Whatever it is, like a friendly, sleepy, dragon, ‘Krakow’ - the thought of it, the feel of it - has awoken from its long slumber and permeates once again the souls of its people.
And not only the souls, but their bodies too. Towards the end of April, I received an SMS from a friend. A short message; innocent enough in its way. Did I want to run the Krakow marathon? Well, yes, the thought did appeal to me. After all, I’m not in bad shape and I’ve always wanted to see more of Krakow. And here was my chance. I should leap at it, gazelle-like. And so I did - metaphorically. Sort of. Almost. That is to say that, for a couple of hours or so, I let the idea run around my head for a while, before reluctantly coming to the conclusion that running a dog up and down the local riverbank two or three times a week hardly qualifies me for the remake of Chariots Of Fire. Not to mention the fact that, fortunately for me and all the serious, well-prepared, runners, I discovered that the invitation had arrived just twentyfour hours too late for me to register and pay good money for that particular kind of self-inflicted madness. Not that that stopped nearly four thousand brave souls from taking part on a hot Sunday morning, the winners coming from as far afield as Ukraine, Kenya and Ethiopia. World-class indeed!
However, I personally prefer my pursuits to be more artistic than athletic. Just as well I live in Krakow then: a city with a fine intellectual and artistic heritage – a heritage the City Government is determined to capitalise upon. I recently interviewed an international marketing executive on the City’s behalf. A man who has set foot in more cities than McDonald’s, he was very impressed by Krakow, telling me it had taken him precisely eighteen minutes to fall in love with the place (not, presumably, including baggage-handling and the taxi ride from Balice). According to him, we Krakowians live in ‘a mini-Florence’ (albeit one with its fair share of concrete blocks). Kind words – and no doubt heartfelt – but, as a lifelong Krakowian had, coincidentally, explained to me only a few days previously, Florence – like many historical cities - is a victim of its own success, left wondering where to go now. In the city centre, its winding medieval streets are snarled up with traffic and its overdependence on tourists inevitably impacts upon the local atmosphere. Apparently, it’s even rare to hear a native-to-native Italian conversation there.
The same colleague then recounted how, ten or fifteen years ago, it was, in contrast, extremely rare to hear any foreign language on Krakow’s streets. And, if we go back a little further, twenty years ago would have seen the Rynek Głowny (Main Square) dark and lifeless at 8pm, even at weekends. Impossible now to imagine that huge and vibrant public space, where everything happens and everyone meets, so devoid of life. How the city has changed in a generation – and how the new generation is changing the city!
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