Getting ready for guests
While thousands of Warsaw residents will celebrate the New Year on plac Pilsudskiego and plac Zamkowy with dancing and champagne, a more subdued entry to the millenium will be held nearby.
In the city's Agrykola Park, nearly 70,000 young people from all over Europe will welcome the New Year with silence and prayer.
This more sober celebration will be part of the European Meeting of Young Christians, an event organized by the ecumenical community from Taize in France in a different European location each year. This will mark the first time Warsaw plays host to the event.
To handle the faithful crowds that will descend on the capital, four giant tents have been erected in Agrykola Park. Employees of Record, a Wroclaw company responsible for construction of the tents, worked dutifully last Tuesday to get them up and ready.
"One of the four halls has already been completed. It's at Legia 2 stadium," said Tomasz Krawczyk, a manager with Record. Another two tents will be located on Agrykola's property near Ujazdowski Palace and the largest tent will be at Legia 1 stadium. "All these halls have different dimensions," Krawczyk said. Their total size will be 18,000 square meters, he added.
The European Meeting of Young Christians has been run by the Taize community for more than 20 years. The community, which took its name from Taize, a little village in the Burgundy province in France, was set up in 1940 by Brother Roger. He came to France from Switzerland and chose the poorest village he could find to settle in. Brother Roger's goal was to help Christian groups reconcile with each other, said Brother Marek of Taize.
The Taize community consists of 100 "brothers" who attract thousands of people to visit them in Taize and participate in the European Meeting of Young Christians every December.
The European Meeting of Young Christians welcomes people belonging to different branches of Christianity, such as Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox groups.
"Our roots are the same, and the Gospel as well," Brother Marek said.
This year, the young European Christians will hold their meeting under the tents on Agrykola and Legia stadium from Dec. 28-Jan. 1. "About 4,000 people are already coming to Warsaw on Dec. 26 to welcome the remaining thousands of people two days later," Brother Marek said.
According to Brother Marek, all European nationalities will be represented in Warsaw, including about 3,000 Italians, and 1,500 people each from Croatia and Lithuania.
About 170 parishes in Warsaw's Roman Catholic diocese are expected to help accommodate the event's visitors, which Brother Marek said could number as many as 70,000. Some of them, however, will have to find a place to stay on their own while others will take advantage of lodging arranged by participating parishes.
One of the "bed and breakfastiers" offering a roof to attendees of the event is Agnieszka Lange-Pojawa, a 28-year-old mathematician. To date, she has been to three Taize meetings Wroclaw in 1989, Prague in 1990 and Budapest in 1991. This year, Lange-Pojawa and her husband are hosting four people in their two-room apartment on ulica Hoza.
"I feel such a commitment to host these people," Lange-Pojawa said, recalling warmly her visit to Budapest. "These meetings are very valuable and besides I would like to meet these people."
According to Brother Marek, organizers are still trying to find beds for a few thousands participants, but he said Warsaw and its surrounding inhabitants have been opening up to give attendees a warm welcome.
Warsaw residents also aren't the only ones with a friendly attitude toward the thousands of people who are about to descend upon the city. The City Transportation Management Department (ZTM), for instance, along with Polish State Railways (PKP), will be issuing special passes to the meeting's participants. PKP is also adding 98 trains to its Warsaw schedule, eight international trains and 17 additional trains across the country to handle the increased traffic flow.
The city will also introduce a special line of buses running from the Gdansk Railway Station to Warszawa Centralna, and from there to Torwar, said Kazimierz Kulig, ZTM's director. The prospect of thousands of additional people in Warsaw from Dec. 28-Jan. 1 doesn't scare ZTM.
"I don't predict any problems because of that," Kulig said. "An additional 50,000 people doesn't really matter. I don't think it will paralyze the city's transportation."
