Cracow's noisy family of blue trams was joined by a ravishing red number yesterday for a special Valentine's Day adventure. Cocking a snook at the grimy weather outside, the rosy-faced rebel swished through town on the no. 7 route, picking up curious tourists, students and lovebirds of all ages along the way.
The tram was feeling in a quixotic mood, laying on hot cups of coffee for its lovestruck adventurers. However, it had a piece de resistance up its sleeve - a free holiday for two in that heady metropolis of romance, Vienna, city of Mozart, fine chocolates and the infamous Wiener Schnitzel.
The amatory tradition of St. Valentine's Day is a novelty in Poland, and it only started to gather momentum in the 1990's. However, it's been a hit with young teenagers, not to mention Radio DJs, who now have carte blanche to torture their listeners with schmaltzy ballads all day long.
So where did all the madness begin? A perhaps not entirely reliable source claims that St. Valentine himself got the ball rolling back in AD 269.
Valentine was a Roman Christian who refused to renounce his beliefs in the Almighty. He was duly sentenced to a hasty departure from this veil of tears, but in the days leading up to the execution he fell in love with his jailer's daughter.
On the day of reckoning, Valentine left a note to the young lady who had captured his heart, signing it with
the simple words: 'From your Valentine....'
It's a fine story, but perhaps not overflowing with truth. However, the more likely genesis for the romantic tradition of St. Valentine's day can be found in our feathered friends. Indeed, during medieval times, Western Europeans believed that birds went in search of their mates in February:
For this was sent on Seynt Valentine's Day
Whan every foul cometh to choose his mate
Thus wrote the venerable Chaucer, and references such as his were commonplace in the literature of that age. St. Valentine's day spawned a flurry of love-letters between damsels and their knights, and from then on, it was just a question of time before we ended up with Chris de Burgh's 'Lady in Red' pounding out of radios all day long. Such is the way of the world.
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