Katowice Trip – All About the Random

I’ve written about the random before, where I think better and more interesting experiences can be had by letting fate decide the destination. And I decided to go on a random tram journey and saw that I was going to end up in Bytom, which I visited a couple of years ago. However, Bytom fascinated me, and so I can’t say that I was disappointed by this.

The tram I boarded, it wasn’t entirely packed. A few people got on throughout the 40 minute journey, but no-one was ever in fear of having to stand.

I bought a day ticket using the new app and that cost me around £2.50. There’s also this new way of scanning a QR code to pay.

Bytom intrigues me as it was German until 1945 and it’s one of the few places that I’ve been to in Poland which seems to be suffering economically. Mateusz Morawiecki, the previous Prime Minister of Poland before the formidable Donald Tusk swept to victory, made an economic speech in Bytom last year and there’s hope that’s it will have some sort of economic recovery. The European Union has poured money into the area and it seems to be having some impact with the public realm looking smarter. There’s a lot of empty buildings still around though, so there seems to be a long way to go.

It was Rozbark, a suburb of Bytom, that I was primarily interested in this time around, or Rossberg when it was part of Germany. This was a prosperous town, but it was in a complicated position as some nearby areas were part of Poland some were part of Germany. After 1945, Poland took over all this land and Rozbark lost its status of being a border town. More on this in my next post as I had a walk down the entire street, it was a little strange seeing the former grand properties along the main street into Rozbark mostly being in a poor state of repair.