Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Polish cemeteries

In Poland, cemeteries are much busier places than in England; graves are tended to on a daily basis.  Every day the local cemetery is full of people polishing headstones and replacing flowers, and there are always people selling flowers and candles from stalls at the entrance.  A walk through a Polish cemetery at night is really a beautiful and peaceful experience, nothing but a sea of candles twinkling in the dark all around you, that said, I still wouldn't like to go alone.  I read that in Poland graves are rented by the church for a maximum of 40 years, then they are dug up and rented to someone else.  I haven't looked at the headstones yet to find out if this seems true, and I have no idea what must happen to the bodies that are dug up but I'll do some (uh hum) digging...

3 comments:

  1. There's a national holiday in Poland, well actually there's a few, I seem to remember there being one pretty much every week.

    Anyway, there's one in either October or November where people go to the graves of their relatives at night, and I don't remember much about it, but there were lots of people there gathered in the graveyards. Do you know anything about it?

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  2. Yes it's All Saints Day on 1st November. I happen to think Poland doesn't have enough national holidays, I still have to work most of the time.

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  3. Um...first I've heard of this. Am not sure!!! Will have to ask the Mrs!

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