White and Red Trafalgar Square

As we left a shadow of the National Gallery building, we saw a crowd focused on the large elevated screen. When we entered the square, suddenly everyone around us kneeled. Paradoxically, it felt strange but somehow familiar, ringing old bells of a long forgotten past. As an observer I resisted a conformist call to join the people and bend my knees. We carried on, getting deeper into the increasingly white and red abyss of mourners.

Last Sunday, around three thousand members of Polish community in London gathered by a swiftly erected media altar on which they followed the last way of tragically died President Kaczynski and his wife Maria, transmitted by TV Polonia. In a midst of national dispute the presidential couple was buried in Wawel Castle in Krakow among kings and heroes. The ceremony was full of symbolism, pathos and awkward elements I could not comprehend (e.g. coffins being towed on the pieces of artillery by military police Hammers).