Over 50 candidates took part in the recruitment process, including eight women. The first stage ended in what public broadcaster Polish Radio's IAR news agency described as a fiasco.
The women failed to make it through a test in which candidates had to demonstrate their bugle-playing skills, while the male hopefuls failed a fitness test, said Bartłomiej Rosiek, a spokesman for the Kraków fire brigade, which ran the recruitment process.
The fact that women had applied for the job made the news headlines in Poland earlier this year. If they had been selected, it would have meant the end of a tradition of men-only trumpeters in Kraków that stretches back some seven centuries.
A traditional bugle call is played every hour on the hour from the top of the tower of the city’s St Mary’s church.
The tune, in homage to a legend, consists of a simple melody of open chords which is cut short in the middle of the final cadence.
The legend has it that an 11th century trumpeter in Kraków was shot through the throat with an arrow while raising an alarm warning of a Mongol invasion.
The first written accounts of the Kraków bugle call come from 1392.
(pk)
Source: IAR
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