Winter holidays and traditions in my country eBook "Spring in my Country" | Page 11

SPRING IN POLAND Marek, Poland Almost every country around the world has four different seasons. Some of these seasons are quite different in spite of the same name, for example in some countries winter is freezing cold, while in other it is quite cool, but not cold. Anyway, there is one season that I think everyone likes or loves. It is our beloved spring. The sun is starting to shine brighter, flowers are beginning to bloom, what else could we ask for from Mother Nature? If someone asked: “How does spring look like in Poland?”, I’d answer, that it is a very beautiful phenomenon. You see, winter in Poland is horrible, everywhere lies snow, it is very cold and it is strangely quiet. Many people are sad and even depressed because of the weather that is occurring outside. Well, in spring everything changes. Snow starts to melt, and everything comes back to life. We can see beautiful, colorful flowers, amazing tree crowns with a lot of green leaves. On the next days of spring birds start to sing and it is overall beautiful. The sunny weather encourages everyone to go outside, meet their friends in a park or even go for a little bike ride. Also there is a specific event in spring. It is very common to hear people saying: “Let’s drown Marzanna!”, and fear not because it is nothing bad! Marzanna is a Slavic goddess of death and winter (of course it is not religion any more, but it is rather something like our tradition). Every city maks straw effigy representing winter, called Marzanna, and they are being drowned in local rivers or burned, to represent the death of winter, and welcome to spring. I personally do love this beautiful season and I wish that it would last for the whole year. As I wrote before, it is and an amazing time of year, when you just want to do something active or something that you didn’t got time for because you had no energy. Trust me, if you’d gone through winter in Poland, you’d understand why I find spring so amazing!