After a few days when Spring appeared to be on its way in, snow again covers Gorzów. The view across the rooftops from my bedroom window is one long stretch of snow, and in the streets the slush is deep enough to make you want to stay indoors. It is meant to be the last major snow of winter, and I am writing about it quickly while it's still there.
Today I finally got the internet connected to my new computer, so for the first time in months my blog is alive again. I find it very hard to believe just how much has changed in the short year and a half since it began. Starting writing again feels very much like opening a time capsule to find a pack of cards, and then sitting down with new friends to play poker. It almost feels like I should leave it hermetically-sealed, rather than continuing it. On the other hand, it's about time that I rejoined the real world, and started filling in the little details which make up my life here.
One such detail was an trip a few days ago with my girlfriend's stepmother to the small village of Przyprostynia on the shores of lake Zbaszynskie in Wielkopolska. This village consisted of one long street with cottages dotted along the edge, not just the picturesque ones in the centre but also the ugly concrete villas which straggle around the edge of any settlement in Poland. For one day a year however, Przyprostynia surprises everyone by managing to stage a festival which hangs somewhere between a carnival and a bizarre pagan rite.
The festival is based on a simple enough principle. There are two main groups of participants, the 'diably' (devils) and the horses. The 'devils' were maybe the most noticable, as they were dressed in a similar way to steriotypical burglars, only with small leather whips with which to whip the passers by on the legs. The 'horses' on the other hand were in white, but with wooden horses attached to their costumes, and (thankfully) no whips. They were joined by gypsies, a chimney-sweep, a bride and groom, a woman dressed as a tree, a bear, and a group of musicians playing something which looked (and this is no word of a lie) like a dead goat with the legs and head sawn off. As the procession moved slowly down the village, it occupied itself with painting the faces of anyone it came across, either with soot, or boot-polish (everywhere), or with lipstick (tiny hearts on both cheeks).
It's hard to work out where the origins of this procession came from, or even if it belongs to the time before there was written history, but some things about the village make you suspect that it is actually significantly old. Most oddly however, for a westerner in West Poland, is that there was no tourism attached to this festival whatsoever. It was an event that seemed solely for the village and a few chance guests. If it wasn't for the family of the sister of my girlfriend's father's second wife (and this is rather a tenuous connection), I would have been sitting in Gorzów, none the wiser, and missing a lovely day out. That, after all, has to be worth having your face painted black...