TYSKIE BROVARIUM

 On the Night of Museums I decided to visit Tychy. In case you don’t know there is a Tyskie Browarium, one from list of Industrial Monuments Routs. Opened in 2004, Tyskie Brovarium is a beer tour center which includes the largest exhibition dedicated to brewing in Poland. Since  it was a festival I decided not to book a ticket in advance and visit the museum directly. I would like to mention that Tyskie Browarium has a great and easy online booking system and it could be a good example for other Industrial Monuments Routes and they can follow it.

 The easiest way to get there is to wait on Katowice Aleja Korfantego bus number 1 or 4 and then this bus will directly take you there. Don’t forget to buy a MZK not KZK ticket for this bus. You can buy it in any booth.

 When I got out of the bus, the  first thing that I felt was a smell of beer and fresh bread. Whole surrounding is full of this smell.

 Then I entered the museum and the lady in reception told me that Night of Museum will start in an hour and I could visit museum for free, but unfortunately there won’t be a foreign language tour, so she suggested me to join the group which had already started the tour. I joined them when they moved to Brewery, I just missed the museum part but I visited museum after group tour. The group wasn’t big, I was 10th person. We saw open brewery and also some historic buildings. Our kind and competitive guide explained us everything in English. Frankly speaking all these procedures of fermentation and filtration were not understandable and interesting for me but now I know something new and useful about beer. Now I Know that as fresh beer is as better it is, unlike wine.

 We saw brew house from 1915 where employees could stay. Unfortunately we saw this building’s exterior not interior. In past time there was a Casino and workers were having fun there. For the employees beer is free now, but they cannot drink it during the working hours. This was allowed in Communist time.

 For the main brewer there was a little separated house. This is the only building without stairs and do you know why? The main brewer controlled taste and quality of beer and as this brave person had to taste of many beer barrels.

 In Tyskie Browarium there are two pubs, one for the employees and another one for the visitors where you can taste a glass of fresh beer for free. It’s also part of the tour and it’s included in a ticket price. (PLN 12.00 and for students and pensioners 6.00 PLN) Besides free beer you will get a gift, glass with Tyskie brand logo. We also saw contemporary bottling line in a huge building and in a huge gallery they are bottling different kinds of Tyskie beer. Unfortunately taking pictures wasn’t allowed so you should imagine how this machines bottle 60 000 bottles in an hour.

 In the museum you can see what the beer is made of and also different kind of bottles and cups are exhibited there. Signs were just in Polish and I couldn’t understand. As it was a Museums Night there were people in traditional clothes and they were playing traditional songs and having fun.

 This museum has great facilities for foreigners as well as the local people.  What I missed was a souvenir shop and foreign language signs in the museum but the museum staff told me that they will open shop in one week and signs will be translated for INDUSTRIADA. Industriada(http://www.industriada.pl/) is a festival of Industrial Monuments Route.  It will be on 8th  of June and during this festival there will be a lot of events in these places. In Tyskie Brovarium there will be a course of taster Tyskie Brovarium, new exhibitions, performances  and many other interesting things.