Sunday
Krakow, Poland
Down the flights of stairs, across the courtyard, through the front building, and we burst out the door onto the busy bustling street. Only it isn’t busy. It’s quiet. There are no trams running, no cars passing, not even any people filling the sidewalk. In unison everyone utters a variation of, “It’s so quiet!” The contrast to every other time we have left our hostel is striking. For the benefit of the children we explain, “Its Sunday. Almost everybody in Poland goes to church on a Sunday morning.”
We amble up to the Rynek, the main market square.
They say it again, “It’s so quiet. It’s almost empty.”
And we repeat, “It’s Sunday, almost everyone is in church. It’ll be busy later.”
There’s no shortage of churches. I wonder if you can stand anywhere in Krakow and NOT see a church. We choose the closest to poke our noses into.
Priest is chanting, congregation replying, both to the deep mellow strains of an organ.
The church is full, there do not appear to be any free seats. And it’s not just grey-haired older folk. A young boy runs up and down the aisle. A baby is jostled on someone’s knee. Young people sit alongside the ancients.
When we were in another church during the week, we noticed it was not just an old lady, who sat fingering her rosary beads. A tall young man, old enough to not be there if he didn’t want to be, entered and took a seat, stared straight ahead, lost in his own thoughts and presumably prayers.
We walk. We pick out churches on every street corner, and more in between. We wonder what possesses a man to become a monk, a lady a nun – there are plenty of them to prompt such thoughts here. More than any other country we’ve been in.
After a couple of hours we return to the Rynek. It’s humming, buzzing, full of people. Church must be over.
The church prevailed against communism.
Will it stand so strong against consumerism?
Already the walls are crumbling. Once upon a time, all shops, restaurants, newspaper kiosks, markets, everything stayed closed all Sunday long. Now some of the shops open at 11 to trade for a few hours.
What does the future hold?
Tags: 2008/09, God, history, postcard: Poland, tradition
rayres
Congrats for being named one of the 10 best travel blogs by Bootsnall, I couldn’t agree more !
Do you ever attend Church in other countries? I’ve not heard you mentioning it although you’ve talked about Churches a lot. We sometimes like to visit, just to see the differences between our own Churches and those in other countries and feel like we are taking part in the everyday life of the locals.