A Country in Mourning

Up at 4.30 am and discovered how busy the M8 is at 6 am. We saw the sun rise and the mist on the fields. Drove from Glasgow to Edinburgh and then a flight to Krakow this morning, arriving in bright sunshine. We then drove for about an hour to Katowice, to meet up with the group joining us from Germany.

Everywhere we went there were flags flying in memory of the President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria and the other 94 members of Polish delegation who died in the plane crash on Saturday. They had been travelling to the memorial service for nearly 22,000 Poles massacred by Stalin's secret police at Katyn during World War II. The flags all had black bands of mourning attached to them.

It wasn't very long before we noticed there were no cattle, sheep etc in any of the fields. When we enquired about this, we discovered all the livestock are kept indoors over the wintertime, and had not yet been put out to graze. Our guests were interested to know that in Scotland, our livestock graze outside all year.

I saw a big difference within an hour or two of arrival since my 1984 visit - much more colour, a lot of new buildings, better roads, shopping areas which include Carrefour and Auchan for example.

We travelled by road for about three hours to Central Poland, and were so warmly welcomed by our hosts. We were treated to a wonderful meal in the evening, sampling various Polish dishes.