Mikołaj Buzała – ‘Bydgoszcz beyond the frame’. A walk through the lesser-known city

Cities have many faces: the official one, familiar to tourists and described in guidebooks; the one seen only by local residents; and finally, the one known only to those in the know – unexpected, often far from the main thoroughfares, yet full of life.

Off the beaten track

Bydgoszcz has places like these too – places that never made it into the official guidebooks. It has its own films, its own bands, its own clubs and its own legends. These are the stories we will follow.

This will be a walk through Bydgoszcz as seen through film and music – we will visit places where films were shot, concerts were played, bands were formed, parties were organised and the local scene took shape. Along the way, there will be cult addresses as well as places that, to some, are just ordinary streets, but to others form part of the city’s pop-cultural landscape, hiding forgotten stories and strange episodes.

No monuments, no must-see landmarks, no sugar-coating

Instead of a conventional history of the city, this will be a story about what Bydgoszcz looked and sounded like from the perspective of musicians, filmmakers and artists from other fields, all connected by one thing: they were doing their own thing, slightly outside the mainstream.

We will pass through places associated with Bydgoszcz’s music and film scenes. There will be stories about cinema, concerts, clubs, music videos, alternative culture and urban spaces that, over time, have built histories of their own – not always widely known, but always fascinating.

The Bydgoszcz you won’t find in tourist brochures

The walk will be led by Mikołaj Buzała – a Bydgoszcz native, guide and creator of the Nieciekawe project. Rather than showing people what everyone already knows, he looks for stories hidden a little further off the main route. He is interested in a city that is alive, constantly changing and full of stories that cannot be reduced to a handful of dates and names.

His walks often combine the history of places with residents’ memories, anecdotes and less obvious threads. As he himself says, the most interesting stories are often found outside official publications – in people’s memories and in the spaces we pass every day. And this is exactly the city he will reveal during the walk: a Bydgoszcz that is easy to pass by, but much harder to forget.

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Meeting point: Velvet Artcafe, 25 Gdańska Street, Bydgoszcz
Free admission.