If you've just arrived in the city, you may have noticed strange assemblies of branches propped against the walls of many houses. On Spzitalna street for example, a number of ex-Christmas trees have been stripped to their slender trunks and placed against the walls, usually with a three or four metre gap between each stump. The branches have a pronounced pagan air about them, and you half expect a band of druids to burst out from one of the portals, grab the staffs, and zoom off onto the Market Square for an apocalyptic sermon.
On many occasions this scribbler has been tempted to seize one of these totems, put on a dodgy Celtic accent and reprimand Cracovians for their sinful ways. He already has the beard so the combination might make an interesting impression. However, the truth is that most Cracovians probably wouldn't even bat an eyelid, as the city has more barmy street entertainers than any other European city. There's the mischievous White Lady who accosts people as they walk past St. Mary's Church, there's the cloaked poet who braves the snow and bewilders drunkards as they lurch across Florianska, there's the guy with the gold face and the black beret who doesn't really do anything at all, but looks pretty striking all the same - the list goes on. You'd have to descend on a fire-breathing dragon dressed as Thor himself to turn heads, but even then you'd probably find that the dragon was deemed a tad unoriginal. The line between fantasy and reality is a fine one in the city of Prince Krak, and the locals are well-accustomed to otherworldly manifestations.
But what of those curious staffs? As it happens, there is a perfectly mundane explanation for these paganesque poles: safety. Up on the roofs there are clods of snow and chunks of ice that are queueing up to splat themselves on the pavements below. Quite often the ice drips form huge stalactites whose tips are as sharp as - well - unnervingly sharp things. Not the kind of trinket that you really want to land on your head then. A mature stalactite resembles the kind of sword that a mythical Arctic warrior might carry (indeed, armed with both the pagan totem pole and the ice sword you would cut quite a dash around town). This is reason enough to forget about those chilly breezes - there's always a creative way to have fun in the snow.
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