Bugle Call from Krakow

For many years I did not think about Poland, for some years I even did not like the country. I felt an Australian even if I still have this funny, some call it charming, Polish accent . I personally do not see much “charming” about my accent but Poland is becoming this way to me. Charming. Also beautiful, sophisticated and sentimental as its people.

Recently I made the second time in my life the choice to live in Australia. I considered that Poland was not my country any more, just the country I was born in. Now I am starting to have doubts, not about living here. Australia is definitely my home. But big part of the space in my heart belongs to Poland and this  I am realising with each day I spent here.

Today, accidentally I changed the radio station and at midday I heard the time signal and Krakow bugle call. This is what I heard as a child and later on, the same sounds the same format.  Something moved in me hearing the sounds I have almost forgotten with time passing.

The Marker Square of Krakow

                                 



Krakow is in my mind the #1 town in Poland. Its XIV century Jagiellonian University, the market Square with its Cloth Hall, monuments, St Mary’s Basilica, doves, horse carriages and many coffee places around the square, the gothic Wawel Castle.... It all makes the town absolutely unique. The sites can be appreciated by Poles and by many visitors from other countries. It is more difficult to appreciate the cultural life of Krakow being a foreigner. In many local cellars there are literary cabarets, jazz concerts, poetry nights. Wonderful, rich, crazy, funny, sad, romantic, sentimental places and people. Krakow is a hermetic place, outsiders are welcome as tourists but not so much welcome into the most important part of the Krakovian life. Any Polish person coming from a place other than Krakow is considered to be an outsider, especially those coming from Warsaw. Those are looked down at, not cultured enough, I suppose.

St Mary's Basilica

                                           

Bugler of current days

The story of the bugle call may be a legend, but it is so much a part of the town history that one doesn’t question it. The St Mary’s Basilica with its two towers always played an important role in the town history. From one of the towers a municipal guardian heralded opening and closing of the city gates. He would also play the bugle in case of a danger. A legend says that in 1240 a bugler played a warning signal seeing Tatars approaching the town. As he played his warning tune an enemy arrow pierced his throat and the tune abruptly stopped. In remembrance of this event the tune is played every hour on the hour towards four directions of the world and interrupted suddenly to commemorate the events from the 1240. 

Bugler of current days

 This is how it sounds
This is a PS written more than one year after the original post but I found out something new about the bugle. Actually not so much about the bugle itself but about Jack Nicholson. He knows the bugle and he can sing it up to its sudden end! Ha! This is surprising. The reason is that he has been for many years a friend of the Polish film director Jerzy Skolimowski. They met in the 60ties when none of them was famous or rich. It was in Cannes and after smoking a few joints on the beach together they became fast friends. I shudder to think what kind of education Jack Nicholson may have received from the Polish larrikin, talented but  crazy and very creative man. And what did they do in Krakow for Jack Nicholson to learn the bugle? I am sure Nicholson knows a few positives about Polish girls.