![]() ![]() There are seven regular trumpeters in the small squadron maintained by the city’s Fire Department, plus one reserve player. Not that such an event would stop the song. ![]() “Sometimes I have the notion that someone might get the stupid idea of shooting again at the trumpeter. He played the hejnal long enough to feel the sting of snow and hail in his face in winter, to count all the smokestacks in the nearby industrial suburb of Nowa Huta (there are 51) and to think about the ancient watchman. “But as the years pass, I find it gets higher and higher.” “At the beginning it seemed to me that the tower was not that high,” Skowronek said with a wry smile. ![]() Ludwik Skowronek, 53, whose last name means “skylark” in Polish, is the modern heir of the medieval trumpeter.įor the last 19 years he has gone to work by ducking through a tiny doorway to the side of the church and trudging up the narrow, winding steps-the lower levels on worn stone, the upper ones of rough-hewn wood that, at places, are more like a ladder than a stairway.Ĭlimbing the equivalent of 16 stories up the 266-foot tower, the trumpeter reaches his aerie and its spectacular view of old Krakow-one of the few Polish cities to escape destruction in World War II-and the foothills of the country’s southern mountains. ![]()
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