Sapphire

Yesterday, I headed out with a few friends (including the woman who lost my phone. See last blog.) to a cemetery in Warsaw. Typically, I think visiting cemeteries is a bit weird, but, as everyone hyped up this holiday and told the foreign students at my school we had to go to cemetery I decided to go and arranged for a group of us to go together.

We went to a cemetery near Arkadia and met up with an Italian guy at 19:25. We then headed to the cemetery. The streets, for the most part, were blocked off to road traffic so people could go to the cemetery. We went to the cemetery and along the side walk were several vendors selling candies and candles to passers-by.

It was really quite interesting, though, the Ukranian girl we were with was creeped out. Poles go to the cemeteries and decorate the graves to memoralize and honor the deceased. Most, if not all, tombs had at least one candle or some kind of decoration on the grave. There were a few tombs, at least two that I saw, with several hundred candles burning and with various decorations. I wasn't quite sure who exactly those people were, but they were obivously well loved in Poland.

We listened to a group of people singing at a grave, which was really beautiful.

Anyhow, I just wanted to get these thoughts down now and I'll probably come back to edit this post. If you've never experienced something along the lines of All Saints' Day and you're in Poland on November 1, go to a cemetery.  Actually, that's probably the only thing you can do as 99.9999999999% of all restaurants are closed, as are the stores.