Page 8, 28th July 2006
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Krakow and the sound of paradise
Peter Mullen says that wherever you go in this Polish region you are never more than 50 yards from a spectacular sacred place – from the great church of St Mary, kaleidoscopic in its colours, to the salt chandeliers of the chapel carved deep beneath the earth of Wieliczka
The Polish people have an ethereal, slightly melancholy beauty with their pale eyes under heavy lids. Like dachshunds. Catholic dachshunds. They are also very open-hearted. How, after the ravages of the Nazis and then the Soviets, do they manage to preserve their unmistakeable innocence? Innocence with zeal. The scores of churches in Krakow are full for every Mass. I stumbled like a blundering tourist into a pretty but undistinguished church in the back streets at half past four on a Sunday afternoon and the place was packed with families sitting, kneeling in utter silence before the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.
It dawned on me – the main difference between Britain and Poland: they retain the idea of the holy, of holy places and holy things. You sit in the hot sunshine coddling a beer in the great square and the very air you breathe doesn’t taste at all secular. I could have gone native, dead easy. I could certainly have stayed for far longer than the three-day break I’d planned. It’s not expensive. My wife joked that if we stayed long enough we’d end up making a profit.
Of course there is always the temptation to romanticise the exotic: how gorgeously they manage life in foreign parts! But I noticed one tendency which is practical enough and could certainly be imported over here. Instead of thrusting their way into the sacred buildings, the ubiquitous gangs of tourists and cultural anthropologists receive their guide’s talk outside the church and then enter reverently. They gawp not, neither do they chatter.
Start where you like – with the great church of St Mary, towering Gothic but colourful as a kaleidoscope, not grey and reserved like our English cathedrals. Or the spacious interior of St Peter and St Paul, with its huge statues of the Apostles outside. The joke is that the church was thought too small to house those distinguished figures so they had to be set up by the front gate. Or the Dominican church where Vespers are sung the way they sing them in paradise. Or the Franciscan church. Or the Jesuits’ exquisite basilica. Just go in anywhere, really. You’re never more than 50 yards from a spectacular sacred place.
Above the broad River Vistula is Wawel Hill with the royal castle, the seat of Polish dukes and kings from the 10th century. The royal residence was built in the 16th century by the two brilliant Italian architects, Bartholomeo Berecci and Francis Florentine. This castle is regarded as one of the finest in Europe and the splendid Renaissance arcaded courtyard is as magnificent as any master piece of Florence or Venice – once witness to the spectacular parades and tournaments of knights.
But the supreme miracle is nine miles out of the city. There is good public transport or a taxi costs only £10. This is the little town of Wieliczka and the thousand years-old salt mines there. You take the guided tour hundreds of feet underground along well-lit corridors hewn out of the rock. There are sculpted caverns, working chapels for the miners down the centuries. But the truly astonishing moment comes when you descend 300 feet and suddenly turn a corner and you’re in the Chapel of St Kinga – really a place half the size of a cathedral all that distance underground.
There are Stations of the Cross, Virgin and Child, the Last Supper, the Entry into Jerusalem and grand yet delicate chandeliers – all carved out of salt. This heavenly subterranean place was built and fashioned by three men – two brothers and one other in the 58 years between 1892 and 1960. Clearly the first two men had the same faith and determination as the medieval cathedral builders, knowing they would not live to see their work finished but sure in the conviction that the sacred task would be accomplished.
Since 1978 the salt mine has been on UNESCO’s list of World Cultural and Natural Heritage sites. We didn’t need telling that Pope John Paul the Great was once Archbishop of Krakow, but we were delighted to learn the moving story of how, as Pope, he wanted to visit St Kinga’s Chapel again. But he was in failing health and unable to walk the corridors. So the miners built a wider corridor for him to provide access for his Popemobile.
On the outskirts of Krakow there is what was once a Soviet show town, a sort of Ideal Homes celebrating the dialectic and a famous place for the manufacture of steel – Stalin, “man of steel”.
The Communists told the workers that they would become so prosperous from the steel industry that they would no longer have any need for God. Guess what the workers did? They gathered up spare bits of iron and steel and constructed a huge church out of them. It’s like collecting the 12 baskets of the fragments that remained after the feeding of the 5,000.
There are plenty of homely restaurants in the old town and again the food and wine is cheap. Dumplings, pork, herring and, for the seriously politically incorrect or those who just want to keep their cholesterol level up, the traditional lard recipe – the staple which fortified the miners during their long shifts.
You can book a place on what’s called “The Catholic Tour” and be driven 100 miles round all the notable churches in the environs, including Pope John Paul’s former home. Or take the trip to Czestochowa, to the monastery of Jasna Gora and the miraculous icon of the Black Madonna.
Another full day excursion is to the Dunajec river where you can have a raft trip through the Pieniny Gorge between the towering limestone cliffs of the Polish-Slovakian border – some of the most jagged, spectacular scenery in Europe. Or, in case you need to be reminded that the faith still has work to do, there is Auschwitz...
My most powerful recollection is of weddings. Every church I entered seemed to have a wedding taking place. They make you welcome. Though there is one unnerving aspect: they all seem to employ a video recording man who creeps stealthily among the pews and takes close-ups of all the guests. Silent and vaguely sinister. Everybody brings flowers.
The wedding day customs are different in Krakow too. The bridegroom traditionally goes round in an open coach with two plumed horses to the bride’s house to claim her. The father-ofthe-bride first theatrically pretends to fob him off with the wrong daughter. When this doesn’t work, he tries again, reckoning to offer one of his weighty bearded sons. Usually, this doesn’t work either. Finally the bridegroom produces a bottle of vodka and the father relents and delivers the bride.
But this is only the start of the pantomime ordeal. The happy couple drive to church in the coach, and they are impeded on every corner – by their neighbours, by the police and even by the local fire engine blocking the road. And in every case there is always the same through-pass, the bottle of vodka.
The wedding breakfast typically starts in the late afternoon and continues until six the next morning. Food is produced constantly and every 20 minutes or so there is a fresh toast and everyone downs a not-sosmall tumbler of vodka. I think they’re like their cousins the Irish and quite impervious to strong drink. When dawn breaks they have a little sleep and then begin all over again.
It’s the faith incarnated in the events of the day. Faith, food and wine and the sound of the heavenly Vespers. Miss Mass and there’ll be another one along in a minute. Krakow – I tell you, it’s all glory.
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