Thousands of Poles boarded buses, trains and planes for Rome on Tuesday for the funeral of their compatriot Pope John Paul, while many more flocked to the Polish capital for a huge memorial mass.
In the Gdansk shipyard, cradle of the Solidarity movement that the Pope inspired, 100 workers set off on a 30-hour bus journey to the Vatican.
"I want to pay tribute to him for everything he has done," said Waclaw Stankiewicz, who worked at the shipyard for 36 years and took part in the strike in 1980 that led to the birth of Solidarity.
"He said 'Do not be afraid'. In our struggle against communism, this evil, that's what we needed."
Solidarity was the first legal independent political force in the former eastern bloc, and became a catalyst for the collapse of communism across the region.
Hundreds of thousands of Poles are expected to make it to Friday's funeral, which may draw 2 million people from around the globe.
In Warsaw's central railway station, hundreds queued from 5 a.m. to get 4,000 discount tickets for special trains to Rome. Some 10,000 air tickets on offer this week were snapped up within hours.
Some of the Pope's old friends were staying at home, though.
"I am not going to the funeral because I am very ill. For 10 years the Pope has prayed for my health and in the end I am alive and God called him," said Witold Karpinski, John Paul's schoolmate.
Poles are observing six days of national mourning for the Pope, who guided them spiritually for a quarter of a century.
Around 150,000 faithful attended mass on Tuesday in a square in central Warsaw where John Paul said mass during his first trip home in 1979, the year after he became Pope.
PRAYERS
Millions more will attend masses throughout the country on Friday, when all state institutions and major businesses will shut down.
In Krakow, where Karol Wojtyla was archbishop for 14 years, feuding fans of rival soccer teams buried the hatchet as 25,000 of them stood side by side in a stadium to pray.
Reconciliation proved tougher for politicians as a spat erupted over the make-up of Poland's delegation to the funeral -- exposing a rift between those who were once part of the communist establishment and those who opposed it.
Lech Walesa, the Solidarity icon and Poland's first non-communist president, ruled out going to Rome together with his ex-communist successor, Aleksander Kwasniewski.
Kwasniewski told a Polish newspaper he would like to invite Walesa to join him, but Walesa's office said it had never received an invitation.
"President Kwasniewski displayed elementary lack of respect by talking to the media first and so far we haven't received any invitation from the president's office," said Walesa's son Jaroslaw. He said Walesa might fly with Prime Minister Marek Belka.
The Polish Catholic church also got a taste of controversy after its primate, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, failed to rush back from a foreign trip last week to lead his nation's vigil for the dying Pope. He showed up on Monday.
"Why should I regret (the late return)," he told Polish radio. "I think that my return ... would not have helped the Pope at all."
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