All Saints... Wszystkich Świętych
Halloween is a big deal where I'm from, but in Poland, the real big deal is the next day, All Saints' Day. That's today in case you missed it.Families gather and go to cemeteries, they offer flowers and candles and it all makes for a truly spectacular sight.
This is the cemetary at Jabłonna, where most of M's family ancestors are buried. We spent a while chatting to 'da family' and wandering round the graveyard, something which doesn't come all that naturally to me, but which turned out to be pretty interesting, and beautiful.
This evening we visited the Powąski cemetery in the middle of Warsaw and wow, that was quite a sight.
It was dark, we walked slowly around looking at graves of mostly dead poets and notable writers and candles flickered by graves for as far as the eye could see. What an atmosphere.
Halloween's all well and good but compared to candlelit cemeteries, commercial ghosts and witches have started to strike me as a bit lame.
posted by Becca | 9:30 pm
2 Comments:
We stayed at home yesterday, after the record crowds we encountered last year. It is a beautiful sight, though, I have to admit.
It's my first year in Warsaw so I have to see all the touristy things! I think we missed most of the people by going once the free buses had stopped, but still it's a very popular place on the 1st Nov. Understandably.
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