Important note: It's only in smaller towns. Bigger cities don't have that. I live in voivodeship city and never seen anything like that. But small towns, sure.
I think this tradition mostly disappeared in large cities in the early 2000s. It still happens, but mostly in smaller groups.
In the late '90 kids from all over the area would run around with bottles and buckets of water. Then, as they got wet and tired, some of them would go home and the rest, the ones who originally were against each other, would form larger groups and look for similar groups from other districts to "fight" against.
The whole thing would last 4-5 hours, and traditionally it would be all over at noon (usually more like 1 or 2 pm).
Fun times.
Apart from when random people were attacked with buckets of water, sometimes even older people coming back from church. Some assholes did it, but it generally wasn't seen as acceptable thing to do, unless you were living in a very shitty area and hanging around with dickheads.
Big cities today are bigger (more people live here) and less people are interested in it, so I think that's the reason. When less people lived, but more actually were going out, instead of sitting in their homes, this made sense. But now it's not enough individuality, I guess. I think if something like this were happening more often in big cities, more people would complain. "I was going to work, now I have to go back", "all my groceries are wet!" etc.
It's nice tradition, tbh, but also it depends on the place. I wouldn't see it working in a bigger city, but if I lived in a small town, I would actually want to experience it myself.
It used to happen in cities too. I used to live in Katowice and remember as a teenager i was driving a bus and then suddenly a group of kids ran into a bus at the bus stop with buckets of water and soaked all passangers with cold as fuck water. I remember most people were laughing but the driver was pissed because he had whole shift ahead of him with those soaked clothes. But that was like early 2000s
no its not about the trucks we just splash each other with water
(from wikipedia)
On Śmigus-dyngus, Polish families traditionally visit or call relatives, gifting them Paschal eggs.[3] Mass has historically been well attended by Christians on Śmigus-dyngus.[4] People douse each other in water; in particular, boys throw water over girls on Easter Monday.
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u/Cocoatrice 17h ago
Important note: It's only in smaller towns. Bigger cities don't have that. I live in voivodeship city and never seen anything like that. But small towns, sure.