Where it all begun
CAMPFIRE STORIES
Adventure Coach Sonia
8/14/2026
Sosnowiec, 1991.
A city in the south of Poland, still looking like a typical large industrial city of the communist era, but already beginning its economic transformation.
Large, grey communist-era buildings, state-owned shops, open-air markets, small commercial pavilions. Not many cars, but plenty of buses and trams.
Following Poland’s first democratic local elections on 27 May 1990, Sosnowiec is now led by its first City Council. The population has reached 259,000. Mines and factories are still central to everyday life. The streets are mostly free of the advertising that will start appearing over the next few years, along with small privately owned shops, independent traders, and the beginnings of the new market economy.
28 April, 6:20 a.m.
Crowds of miners and factory workers are catching buses and trams. Children are waking up, soon to get ready for school. Queues are already forming at the street markets. If you are lucky, you might spot one or two Western cars passing through the city centre.
At Hospital No. 2 on 3 Maja Street, one of the main streets in the city centre, a new resident of the city is being born.
The hospital was originally built as a maternity hospital in the 1930s and, even now, includes maternity and gynaecology wards.
Magda, 28, has just learned that she has given birth to a healthy baby girl.
Her husband, Piotrek, 29, won't hear the happy news for another couple of hours. Visitors aren't allowed inside the hospital, but luckily, his mother is a doctor. She manages to get in touch with the nurses through a landline.