Hello and welcome to the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union. Please, call us USMU. We are thrilled to have you as our guest. Did you know you are currently in the largest urban centre in Poland? The population of our 14 officially recognised union member cities is a combined 2.2 million people, however, calculating the entire Upper Silesian Coal Basin the metropolitan area consists of 3.5 million people across 30 neighbouring cities! As a large, loose network of urban development with primarily artificial, sometimes absurd city boundaries, we all came together back in January of 2006 and decided we'd had enough of your-side-of-the-street, my-side-of-the-street disputes. We've had enough of being vaguely defined, under-funded and unappreciated and we're tired of doing the hard, thankless work of this country so the prima donnas in Kraków can sip their expensive drinks with little umbrellas in them. Silesia is the heart of Poland, dammit, and though it may be a heart of coal, if you hold us tight enough what will we become? A diamond! Yes, with that in mind we decided to form a voluntary union of the adjacent cities of Silesia with historic Katowice as its seat. Are you aware that over 9 million people live within 100 kilometres of Stadion Śląski (Silesian Stadium)? Why, this is one of the biggest urban conglomerations in the entire EU and we're gonna get noticed, by gosh! By pooling our resources, USMU strives to create a common infrastructure, more domestic and foreign investment, a competitive international profile and to flex some economic muscle. We hope you will recommend us to your friends and family in the place where you are from and remember with fondness all the amazing things you saw and great times you had here. Enjoy your visit to Upper Silesia!