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Getting around Kaliningrad. A montage of public transport, including Mick Hart on modern tram.

Getting Around Kaliningrad: Public Transport & Travel Guide

How to Use Public Transport and Get Around Kaliningrad Like a Seasoned Expat

1 November 2026 – Getting Around Kaliningrad: Public Transport & Travel Guide

Doddle. That’s what it is. Getting around Kaliningrad. Public transport, comprising as it does of an amalgamation of regular-sized buses, mini-buses, trolleybuses and trams, gets you where you want to go efficiently and, depending upon the level of traffic, in as rapid a time as you could wish for.

Getting Around Kaliningrad: Sections

Mini-buses
Trolleybuses
Trams
Kaliningrad Bus Routes: If in doubt, ask!

Bus Fares and How to Pay

For the foreign traveller, getting around Kaliningrad is made considerably easier by the flat-rate fare. Whichever mode of transport you choose, the cash price is pegged at 44 rubles (40 pence) payable to the driver or conductor. The price of a ride drops even lower should you happen to have in your possession a Volna Baltiki (Volna Baltiky) card and/or a Russian bank card, but as you most likely will not, keep in mind ‘44 rubles’, and with this you might think you cannot go wrong, whereas, in fact, you easily could.

Kaliningrad Public Transport Fare-Paying Options

Buses, trams, mini-buses and trolleybuses, whichever mode of travel you choose, fares are fixed per ride regardless of the distance travelled.

Payment MethodCost Per RideBest ForWhere to Buy / How to Use
💳 Volna Baltiki Card33 RUBFrequent travellers & budget backpackersThe card costs 100 RUB at local ‘Pressa’ kiosks or bus station ticket offices.
📱 Contactless Bank Card38 RUBQuick day tripsTap your material plastic card onto the conductor’s mobile terminal or use a virtual MIR card via the Mir Pay app.
💵 Cash44 RUBConvenience. No unexpected card issues!Pay cash to the conductor or mini-bus driver.

*Note: Luggage that takes up a passenger seat is treated as a passenger and will require an additional ticket, priced at the standard fare determined by your payment method.

Buses in Kaliningrad: What to Watch Out For

As everywhere and in all corners of the world where buses need to be caught, you obviously need to watch out for them. I won’t waste either your or my time expatiating on what a bus is and looks like, because if you don’t know by now, then perhaps you never will.

One thing that you do need to be aware of these days is that on some of Kaliningrad’s standard-size buses, human conductors have been replaced by electronic touch-card devices. There now follows a cautionary tale:

Oblivious to this development, I found myself a few months ago in the unenviable position of being on a bus that didn’t take money, which is something that I did have, but did take cards, which is something that I didn’t have. To avoid embarrassment, which, as you know, is the Englishman’s greatest fear, all I could do, I decided, was to nip sharpishly out of the central doors as soon as the driver opened them, a plan that could possibly not have gone wrong had he done what I thought he would do but, as it happened, didn’t. He only opened the front door so that he could cunningly check each passenger’s ticket as they disembarked. Oh dear, and what a bugger!

Clutching at my rubles whilst attempting to work out how I was going to explain myself in Russian, I nervously joined the queue, but luck for once was on my side. As my turn to present my ticket approached, the driver was distracted, and with a spasm of glee tempered by guilt, I floated past on a sigh of relief safely unnoticed and onto the street. In mitigation of my actions, the unforeseen and awkward circumstances into which I had been thrown were completely of an accidental nature. There was no attempt to fare dodge guvnor – and that’s the honest truth. And yet since that inauspicious ride, I have solemnly failed to determine which of the buses accept cards only, other than learning inadvertently that orange ones certainly do. So, take heed of my mistake, and let that be a lesson to you!

Orange buses take card payments in Kaliningrad. This one is parked, with a passenger enquiring whilst standing outside the door.

Mini-buses (Marshrutkas): The Popular Transit Option

Services across all three bus types – standard buses, mini-buses and trolleybuses – are exceedingly frequent and cater to numerous interconnecting routes. The smaller buses, ‘vans’, run in parallel with their larger counterparts, offering a nippy, if not when laden down with heavy or bulky bags, tricky-to-use alternative.

These small units are extremely popular and, therefore, often overcrowded. On tarmac surfaces, whether you are a seated or standing passenger, they pose no imminent threat, but when they are bouncing at speed across Königsberg’s bygone, cobbled streets, you tend to dance when standing, so that remaining perfectly upright can become a bit of a challenge. Equally challenging, when jam-packed full, is rising from your seat, always assuming, of course, that you have had the good fortune to nab one, as is struggling through the standing passengers to get to the door on time before you miss your stop.

The mini-buses of Kaliningrad are notorious little devils with infamous reputations for tearing along at breakneck speed, making diving on and off something of an art form; as is swinging the heavy door shut as you climb into the bus, an occupational difficulty very much compounded by, when having paid your fare, you reach back to close the door just as the bus is slammed into gear and flies off down the road. The sudden, startling momentum can have you rolling about as daft as if you are drunk when you’re not, and when you are, alas, making you instantly, tragically sober; an awkward and bouncy situation at best, this predicament is made far worse if the road on which the bus is travelling happens to be an ancient one, one built for horses and carts when Kaliningrad was Königsberg.

Mini-Buses (Marshrutkas): For Speed and Flexibility

These fixed-route mini-buses are Kaliningrad’s public-transport equivalent in speed and flexibility to the motorbike courier: they boldly go where big standard-sized buses have difficulty in going, and they do so with a nippy, sassy attitude.

Hail a mini bus like an expat: Marshrutkas can be flagged down by sticking your arm out as you would when hailing a London cab. In central city areas drivers strictly adhere to designated bus stops, but in quieter, residential districts, should they espie you on the pavement with your arm held up aloft, they may in effect pull over. Sometimes they will just flash their lights and go merrily sailing past. This is not an act of condescension; the driver is merely informing you that the bus is already full.

If in doubt, shout!: Now you are on the bus, you will want to get off somewhere. If they, mini-bus drivers, see in their rear-view mirrors nobody making a move to get off and ahead of them an empty bus stop, they may very well go charging by. As you approach your stop, it is just as well, therefore, to adopt the golden rule: If in doubt, call out!

A last and sanguine salutary piece of advice when it comes to travelling by mini-bus. I read recently on more than one travel site and was also told by Arthur Ingram (code name A.I.) that passengers must stump up their fares as they get off these buses. Once true, but not anymore. Now you pay when you get on. That’s the way to do it.

Kaliningrad Trolleybuses: Because They Are Different

Now, these wheeled devices are an interesting collation. I look upon them as a cross between ‘normal’ buses and trams. I like them even more, as they do not exist in the UK and therefore form a novel mode of transport.

Like any other bus, trolleybuses run on pneumatic tyres without the need for tracks. They draw their power from overhead cables using a pair of spring-loaded poles hinged to the top of the roof. The bus is driven like any other, but the driver must ensure that the rods on top of the bus stay in contact with the overhead power source. Some of the older trolleybuses incorporate a battery backup and/or are fitted with an auxiliary diesel motor, both designed to permit them to stray short distances from the contact wires, delivering to mobility and manoeuvrability an extra dimension for pilot control, without which, in whose total absence, they would otherwise be reined in by absolute reliance on the wires’ prescriptive allowance.

Kaliningrad’s newest super-duper trolleybuses have the capability to disconnect from the overhead cobweb of wires and drive wirelessly away for up to a quite astonishing 80 kilometres. This is a handy contingency plan, enabling these souped-up trolleybuses to outmanoeuvre traffic jams and avoid being beached by mechanical mishaps and unforeseen malfunctioning and, when they can and do happen, power supply disruptions. Everything may stop, but the trolleybus keeps on rolling.

There’s no mistaking the new, sleek, Sinara-6254 trolleybuses. They look impressively modern, because they are. Come rain, hail, snow or shine, the Sinara’s built-in climate control takes over. USB ports come as standard, and next-stop announcements are fully automated.

Paired down to a core set of lines, nevertheless, Lines 1, 2, and 7, cater marvellously for tourists, locals, and expats alike by interlinking major tourist hubs with residential satellites.

Lines 1 and 2 are a tourist’s dream. They criss-cross the city’s central squares, take in the historic gates and are conveniently accessible from the major northern transport rings.

What I like about the older trolleybuses is that they generally have a holding rail that runs along the inside ledge at the very rear of the bus, which a standing passenger can effectively use to steady oneself whilst gawping, as one invariably does, and whilst gawping to one’s heart’s content, out of the large rear window. I cannot begin to tell you whether the modern versions are similarly equipped, because, surprisingly enough, I am yet to travel on one of them.

Trolleybuses are truly lovely things, but they are not so plentiful in Kaliningrad as their standard bus or mini equivalents, so I do not get to journey on them as often as I would like. But in the general scheme of the city’s transport system, their contribution to getting around is no less valuable a transit resource than any of its partner vehicles.

A sleek, modern, green trolleybus on a wide Kaliningrad street with mid-rise buildings in the background,

Kaliningrad Trams: Scenic and Historic Routes

When I first came to Kaliningrad, which is now more than a quarter of a century ago, much of the old Königsberg tram network was still functioning, albeit after a fashion. The classic red-and-white-coloured trams, the ‘biscuit tins’ as I affectionately call them, whose history dates to the 1970s, would rattle along quite famously, as indeed today many still do. Nothing about them has changed that much, except perhaps for here and there the urban curse graffiti and for here and there again vandalistic etchings trending on victimised window panes, although looking back at the turn of the century there were a lot more trams in operation and many more tracks on which to operate.

Like a lot of things, its got smaller over time, meaning the Kaliningrad tram network, but riding the tram remains the best option for romancing the past, as it gently weaves its way across the city’s historic landscape.

My consciousness

In those days, now lost forever, when life was a lot more raw and real, children would make their own entertainment by hitching an illegal ride on the coupling link of the tram’s last carriage, hopping on and off at will. Some people never grow up, and I remember regarding these antics with more than a twinge of envy. In these health- and safety-conscious, robustly regulated and X-Box times, such daring-do is outlawed, and though much of the 1970s’ tram stock continues to rattle and roll, they are at any rate gradually being replaced by gleaming, swish, updated models, with significantly higher comfort specs, which do not include, as I recall, a child seat at the rear.

The traditional tram, comparatively speaking, already appears bone-shakingly basic and ambivalently dated, and whilst those with poetry in their hearts might be tempted to say all the more quaint for the fact, anything that holds back time is a feather in my romantic cap, the practical story inside is one of cold, hard, metal, lack-of-comfort pan-shaped seats, hardly supporting the folklore prejudice that because things in the past were simpler, particularly public-transport seats, simpler equals better. It is the sovereign right of pampered rumps to rail against the sacrifice that anachronisms such as this condone, but if you are owned by one of these, there’s always the option of standing.

Kaliningrad’s Vintage and Modern Trams

Venerable Vintage: Kaliningrad’s classic bright-red and cream trams are Soviet-era Czech-built Tatra cars. They have been roving around Kaliningrad for decades, and as with first come, first served, first seen, first loved. Given the choice, me being me, these are the trams I like riding best.

Current ‘Corsairs’: Sleek, air-conditioned, roomy, cushioned, with large viewing windows, low-floored access, smooth, silent acceleration and even USB charging ports, the modern ‘Corsair’ (Korsar) trams are a different beast altogether than their classic Tatra forbears. Payment options include touch terminals used in conjunction with Russian bank MIR cards and Kaliningrad’s dedicated transit card, the Volna Baltiki, (the cheapest fare option); or paying cash to the onboard conductor.

Green and white modern Corsair tram, showing the sleek, braod windowed front on an autumnal street in Kaliningrad, illustrating ways of getting around Kaliningrad.
Mick Hart, expat Englishman, getting around Kaliningrad on a modern tram with a contactless card machine, centre.

The past was certainly a time when ‘Commonsense ruled, OK! ’ – a time when self-preservation deferred to this and little else and on which its application solely depended, not, as it does today, on written laws and regulations. I cannot imagine, for example, witnessing now as I did then, at a busy intersection, the driver of the tram clambering out of his cab and with a long metal pole in his hand using it to lever the points to alter the tram’s direction. Does it still happen? I ask. But not availed of the answer, content myself with the supposition that this might be what is meant today when people say that he or she is very much a ‘hands-on’ person. It’s not conclusive in itself, but the explanation could hold water, and sometimes an iron pole, and after all it is less risqué.

Over the past 26 years, an interval in which Kaliningrad became the second home it is to me, large sections of its tramline system have suffered ignominiously the ravages of neglect (it’s not my fault) and have fallen, as a result, haphazardly, into a right old state of decline, as evidenced today by the long, broad, roadside stretches which, terminally abandoned, have been taken up and requisitioned as convenient car-parking spaces.

A long, green, tree-lined avenue, centred between a dual carriageway showing an abandoned tram line in the historic German district of Maraunenhof, Kaliningrad

Abandonned tram avenue in the historic German district of Maraunenhof, Kaliningrad

Until about a year ago, or perhaps by dint of accuracy it could be slightly more – time has a habit of slipping away unnoticed, don’t you know – the only tram line functioning was tram route Number 5, but Number 5 has been recently augmented by the newly restored route Number 3.

Together, these two tram lines service the city’s key central routes and, since they retrace in part sections of the tram map original to Königsberg, offer to their passengers a distinctly historical, often scenic and trundlesome alternative to getting around Kaliningrad. Seeing and stopping off at the sights in whatever proportion takes your fancy, you pays your money and you takes your choice, and you takes your choice and pays your money: getting around Kaliningrad is choice-replete and inexpensive.

Tram Line Number 5: Scenic and Nostalgic

Tram line Number 5 potters along through some of Kaliningrad’s finest urban memories.

In autumn, when Kaliningrad is a sea of russet browns, auburns and gold, you can expect to delight in leafy vista journeys retracing the transport pathways of old Prussian Königsberg. On the way, you will meet with the red-brick fortifications housing the Amber Museum, you will circle and swoop by the soaring gothic spires of Königsberg Cathedral on Kant Island and wend your way through the half-timbered Fishing Village, its eclectic array of hotels, boutique shops and cafes embroidered by the Pregolya River.

Unlike Kaliningrad’s buses, big or small, that shoot along at a frantic pace, Kaliningrad’s trams offer the tourist a more sedate travel experience, allowing that smartphone camera of yours to earn its pocket- and bag-bulky keep whenever an ancient or Soviet landmark yearn to become your keepsake.

A classic Kaliningrad Soviet-era tram, red and white, on a Kaliningrad street in autumn, illustrative of getting around Kaliningrad on public transport.

Identifying Kaliningrad Bus Routes: If in doubt, ask!

The one consideration, and it is a relevant one, that a lot of travel guides forget to mention, or suggest you tackle with ‘handy learnt phrases’ is the language barrier. A short course in Russian specifically tailored to bus-type questions could be in order, but are you going to? And will you? Really?

Whilst there is no shortage of public transport to get you where you want to go, strangely enough, apart from the Arabic numbering system, all destinations are written in Cyrillic. You could, of course, ask someone waiting for a bus, except that most of Kaliningrad’s city bus stops are fairly, if not, frantically busy, so there is little time to get out your phrase book or resort to your translation app. With the latter, however, you can at least stop and and ask someone what you want to know before you reach the bus stop; a precaution simple enough, but one I have found that works rather well. Alternatively, see below: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

What You Want to SayRussian (Cyrillic)Pronunciation GuideWhen to Use It
“At the stop, please.”На остановке, пожалуйста.Na os-ta-nov-ke, po-zhal-uy-staCall this out to a mini-bus (marshrutka) driver when you want to get off.
“Do you accept cards?”Можно картой?Mozh-no kar-toy?Ask the bus conductor if you want to pay with a contactless bank card.
“One ticket, please.”Один билет, пожалуйста.O-deen bee-lyet, po-zhal-uy-staUse this when buying a single ticket with cash from a conductor or driver.
“Does this go to…?”Этот идет до…?E-tot ee-dyot do…?Show a landmark name on your phone to double-check if you are on the right vehicle.
“Are you getting off at the next one?”Вы выходите на следующей?Vy vy-kho-dee-tye na slye-doo-yush-chey?Say this politely if someone is blocking the exit on a crowded bus.

Getting around Kaliningrad: The Last Word … or more

Kaliningrad’s internal transport system is like a perfectly handcrafted toupée: it works, is convincing and you can’t see the joins. If anything will be daunting to the city’s first-time visitor, it will not be for want of ways to travel but the many ways of travelling and the umpteen routes to travel on. Navigating the hybrid options provided by the transport system may take some getting used to, but, once you’ve passed your logistics exams, getting around Kaliningrad is, as I should have made clear at the outset, really a bit of a doddle.

Associated posts

How to Get to Kaliningrad from the UK
Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open?
Russia Kaliningrad Visa Information
From Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk

Copyright © 2018-2026 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

1940s' living room. A seated child asks mother. "Why is Britain's future all used up?"

UK Pledges Billions to Stop the Boats and Britain Freezing

Roy Orbison sang ‘In Dreams’

29 October 2026 – UK pledges billions to Stop the Boats and Britain Freezing

There’s not much to laugh about in the UK today, unless it is the kind of laugh that shrieks and echoes hysterically through the tortured corridors of the insane asylum, but stop me if you have heard this one before: The Labour government is proud to announce that it is giving £10bn to Ukraine and has pledged to stand with Ukraine until the earth freezes over or until we get nuked, whichever comes first. It’s a pity it cannot stand by its legacy citizens, who are already freezing over from exorbitant utility bills – we can hardly afford to switch the heating on – and stand by national security and law and order by stopping the full-scale migrant invasion.

Ha! Ha! But you have to laugh, don’t you? How does it go? ‘If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry!’

UK Pledges Billions

Taking into account the parlous state of Britain today, giving away money to Ukraine hand over fist could be considered to be an act of criminal negligence, unless you have a bank account in a foreign country, then it might be thought of as a blessed munificence.

Meanwhile in the UK, everything, especially under Labour, is spiralling insanely out of control. Cost of living through the roof; quality of life in the opposite direction.

The UK Pledges Billions

Look at that screenshot.

“Mummy?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Who is that Twat with the red briefcase?”

“Oh, he’s an overpaid lefty nincompoop. His red briefcase symbolises Britain in the red, financially and morally bankrupt. The UK is giving billions of pounds to a country that it pretends to support in order to save its sovereignty when really it is desperately clinging onto the globalist dream to stave off the emergence of a multipolar world. It’s nothing to do with security and all to do with maintaining the so-called world order, which is, of course, an order imposed by and for the exclusive benefit of the Western globalist cartel.”

“Is he real?!”

“No, not really. That’s a man who believes that Brits will vote Labour if he gives all our money away to support a conflict which we stoked and then raises taxes to pay for the deficit. He is, as you quite rightly defined earlier, something of a twat.”

UK pledges billions to Stop the Boats and Britain Freezing. A retro advert featuring a 1940s sitting room, containing a mother and child, the mother knitting and the daughter looking beseechingly at her from the stool she is sitting on. The slogan is 'Is Your Tomorrow Spoken For?'.

“But I thought America was trying to broker a peace deal?”

“Well, yes, that nice Mr Trump is, but, by the looks of it, Britain doesn’t want one?”

“Why not, Mummy?”

“Globalists and hegemony, dear.”

“Mummy, can we have the heating on?”

“No, darling, we cannot afford it. Labour need to tax us more so that more money might find its way into private bank accounts in a certain foreign country.”

“But what of Britain and your children’s future?”

As Marliene Dietrich incisively put it, “Your future’s all used up!”

UK Pledges Billions ... A symbolic image of the Titanic striking the iceberg. The iceberg captioned 'UK's Future'

Copyright © 2018-2026 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

All aboard!

Britain Goes Balaclava: a black balaclava

Britain Goes Balaclava As The Boats Keep Rolling In

Life in the UK - It's all so peculiar. The map of the UK on its head.

Life in the UK: It’s All So Peculiar!

Immigrant invasion of the UK sparks riots

UK Anti-Immigration Riots Herald New Dystopian Era

Hot water bottle with UK flag. The only way to combat the UK Utility Bills Fiasco

UK Utility Bills Fiasco: What a Gas Freezing is

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are not necessarily those of the writer, anyone in the Labour Party or mothers and children in the 1940s.

King of Manchester pants. A red pair of trunks, featuring a crown, with 'Manchester' below the image

Astonishing ‘King of Manchester’ Pants Found in No. 10

Even king for a day would be too much!

17 October 2026 – Astonishing ‘King of Manchester’ Pants Found in No. 10

Having apprised you in a former post about the existence of President Putin T-shirts, in this, the follow-up episode of ‘You Can’t Have Enough Stuff’, but you can have enough migrants, more than enough in fact, and would like considerably less of them and a lot less of the Labour Party, I aim to thrill the pants off you with a personal peep into private political drawers, exposing the exclusive collection of the ‘King of Manchester’s’ underpants

‘King of Manchester’ Pants

These liberal-lefty panties, with the PM’s (Prime Migrant-supporter’s) photo on the inside captioned ‘Bumem’s full-scale invasion’, and outside across the back of the cheeks a self-explanatory dinghy loaded with cheeky migrants chanting, ‘Old Ma Mood’s made an arse of herself, who needs a silly resettlement plan when we can romp unchallenged across the Channel!’ are by no stretch of the imagination, or elasticated waistband, a limited edition.

King of Manchester pants. Red trunks with a crown and 'Manchester' on the front and a dinghy full of migrants on the back.

‘King of Manchester’ Pants

Indeed, these once on, one-off pants – pants in which to be seen and indiscriminately taxed in, all of which have been signed by some of the country’s wealthiest people who, since Labour came to abusive power, are sensibly quitting the UK at a reported rate of one in three – will, like the migrant hoards who even now are queuing to quit their countries to come over here and take over ours, be distributed in their millions, unless Reform steps in and saves beleaguered Britain before it completely hits the skids as caused by migrants and marked in underpants – by which I mean the sale of. Help yourself by helping Reform oust the migrant-adoring Labour Party, before it is too late. Vote to save your country in the forthcoming General Election, which is widely anticipated to be staged in May of 2027.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to know how it feels to be the ‘King of Manchester’, place a cardboard crown upon your head, put your arse in a pair of these pants and perch yourself on a fly-blown dung heap. Even Manchester’s glad he’s gone; now’s your chance to feel glad too. Get him and his lefty cronies out. Get out there and Vote Reform!

Note: The views expressed in the following video are not necessarily those of this unbiased blog’s proprietor. Nor does he remotely endorse any claims arising from it made by beings manly-haired and possibly gender-compromised that are daft enough to put on record silly, corny, and embarrassing things intended for justification of and to shamelessly promote government-authored and approved, but largely suspect, encomiums on never-wanted, never-asked-for, forced-upon-us diversity. For the other side of the mantra coin, watch it yourself and see.

Manchester then; Manchester now …

Copyright © 2018-2026 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

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A black on white President Putin T-shirt from 2001, captioned 'Walking Together', from MIck Hart's collection

Rare 25-Year-Old President Putin T-Shirts Surface in the UK

Three President Putin T-shirts from across the decades

11 October 2026 – Rare 25-Year-Old President Putin T-Shirts Surface in the UK

I have no difficulty in remembering when I first became intrigued by hunting out and collecting things, which is rather odd in two respects: the one is reserved for aliens, who, terminally smitten by bland modernity, deduce no value in anything else; the other is because in noting when the compulsion first took impetuous hold of me, which it did unceremoniously and without provision of explanation, I was not much more than four years old.

Looking back, I was fortunate, or, depending on your point of view, not so very fortunate, to find myself born into a family who, for reasons unbeknown to me, yet nevertheless passed on to me without the benefit of enlightenment, unquestionably conceived that throwing things away posed a dangerous risk to sentiment, an inveteracy, moreover, that extended beyond my mother and father to encompass nearly the full contingent of the two families so conjoined.

My gran’s house, the cupboards within it and its collection of garden sheds, all of which resided but a short distance from our family abode, presented itself to my youthful inquisitiveness as off-limits treasure troves and thus seemingly intended for illicit investigation by little and curious prying eyes.

The magic here to be found was superseded only by the home in which I lived, which, for an 18th-century thatched cottage, appeared to be endowed with a content-holding capacity whose pretensions were truly Tardisial, though even it, as commodious as it seemed, couldn’t compete with the several surrounding outhouses, one of which was a large stone barn, and all of which were rammed with stuff, on whose being, and also in being there, where they had been for years, my father would often, presumably wryly, declare it was because the stuff was ‘wuth a bit’. He was constantly upbraiding me for indulging in a lawless habit to which he referred as ‘furraging’, although certain lapses in his vocabulary, such as mispronouncing ‘architect’ as ‘artitecht’ and his calling a ‘pizza’ a ‘piza’, indicated, perhaps, that the word for which he was foraging was that which now has just obliged me.

Given then my illustrious background in the art and science of foraging, it is hardly a matter of great surprise that on travelling to Russia for the first time, a trip that took place in the year 2000, I – as the old song goes – ‘packed up my foraging in my old kit bag’ and, together with my toothbrush, took it along for the ride.

Three President Putin T-shirts from across the decades

If someone were, therefore, to ask me, “Where did you forage and find that particular Putin T-shirt?” the one that forms the basis of the feature photograph for this post, sincerity would reply that my possession of it required no effort on my part, as the T-shirt in question was gifted to me.

I have mentioned the precise circumstances by which it was donated in an earlier post entitled 9th May Victory Day, but I don’t suppose it will hurt any to remark on it again. It was during my first attendance at a 9th of May celebration, which, as I am sure you all will know, is one of the most important national holidays on the Russian calendar, commemorating the Soviet Union’s Second World War victory (WWII in Russia is known as the Great Patriotic War) over Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.

In the Year of our Lord 2001, Kaliningrad’s 9th of May assembly, which takes place annually at the aptly named Victory Park, was graced by the presence of – you are anticipating the ‘presence of me’, but ego defers to a greater significance – a formidable string of trestle tables, forming a long continuous line that stretched across the furthermost point of the park. As I drew near to these tables, I beheld with constrained amazement, arranged upon their surfaces in neat rows and clusters, a prodigious quantity of plastic beakers, each ready and waiting, so I was informed, for the disbursement of a generous measure of vodka.

My second surprise was on hearing the news that the vodka was free of charge; my third then followed quickly on the heels of downing the first. Serving, on the opposite side of this magnificent row of tables, was a quantity of volunteers, young, busy, bustling, some of whom were clad in T-shirts identical to the one with which you are now familiar. No sooner had I exclaimed, “I really like your T-shirt,” than immediately, without a second thought but whilst decanting my second vodka – admiring T-shirts is thirsty work – the chap who was administering to me divested himself of the aforementioned article and, passing it over the table, said, “Here you are; it’s my present to you!”

You can’t have enough stuff!

I collect experiences even more avidly than I do material objects, but when the one fosters a link that is embryonic with the other and both combined collaborate in marking with precision a specific date, time and place, which at some point in their remembered past will enter the annals of social history, then this becomes the motivation and, as time elapses, the end result.

Front and back view of a black & white President Putin T-shirt captioned, 'Walking together', with a line drawing of Putin's face on the front

Therefore, of the three presidential T-shirts that I personally own, this then is my favourite. I recognise, of course, that the full-colour design and the heightened production standards involved in meeting that objective raise and place the others within a category above it, recommended by virtue of their more prepossessing aesthetic, but nevertheless my money, which on this occasion I had no need to part with, would yet, if it had been required by choice, have unequivocally been reserved for the simple black and white job.

The facial silhouette and distinct black-on-white lettering get the message across with maximum efficiency and minimalistic effort. And should your knowledge of Cyrillic be having one of its off days, which mine invariably does, the slogans on the shirt read, first on the front, ‘All is OK’, and then on the back, ‘Walking Together’. According to the translator, whom we have no reason to doubt, the caption beneath the portrait is a play on words from Putin’s name, with ‘Put’ in Russian becoming ‘this is the road, the pathway’.

Three President Putin T-shirts from across the decades

The T-shirt in the photo that follows, unless I am mistaken, and so what if I am, who would be any the wiser, was purchased from one of those small shopping kiosks, those standalone metal units that so effectively but intrusively augment Kaliningrad’s retail offering and which make such a world of difference in any active comparison of its city centre and urban districts with towns and cities in the UK.

I wouldn’t want to bet my Black-and-white Putin T-shirt on it, but recollection, though hazy, suggests that the acquisition of this second shirt probably occurred in the latter half of the 2010s or in 2010 itself. Knowing, as I do, that you need no help with the Russian translation, and, it goes without saying, neither do I, thus purely for the record, and for us to rejoice in our mutual aptitude, the caption on it reads, ‘The most courteous person in the world’. Well, I’m not about to argue with him, but I thought that person was me.

Putin T-shirt from Mick Hart's collection, Putin head and shoulders' image wearing a tiinted pair of aviator glasses. Very gung-ho, with the caption 'The most courteous person in the world'.

My third T-shirt rolls back the years to the middle of the second decade of the 21st century. This one was bought from a clothing kiosk at Kaliningrad’s central market. I recollect the occasion well, as I wore it shortly afterwards on a tour of the city’s retro market, which, once in a time now distant, was located on a nearby street in the centre of the shopping hub. Having deduced that I was English, Kaliningrad’s market traders seemed thrilled at the sight of me wearing it. One of them actually asked, “Are you really going to wear that T-shirt when you return to Great Britain?” Was I? And, indeed, did I?

And here I am, larger than life, sporting that very same shirt, now with it on in an English setting. You, whose keen sense of observation I have always firmly admired, will not, I am sure, fail to notice a rather younger me than I am at present and, standing to my right, a corresponding youthfulness in the portrait of President Putin. And could that be, in my right hand, a Russian bottle of vodka? The slogan here is, “We’ll get through!” I’m sure I got through the vodka.

Mick Hart wearing a Putin T-shirt, with his thumb up and winking imitation of Putin's expression as it appears in the T-shirt's picture. Mick holds a bottle of vodka in his right hand, and, on the wall behind him, there is an official portrait photo of Putin, when he was young.

This T-shirt, the one you see here, arranged around my seriously manly chest, which, when the image went viral, had modelling agencies ringing my number constantly day and night, and it put the fear up Beckham, was produced at a time when the UK’s media was ramping up yet another example of its ideological witch hunts, blaming Russia for almost everything, from cyber failure to the price of bog rolls, from raising mountains to making mole hills (has there ever been a single time in European history when the UK media hasn’t refrained from prodding the Russian bear?). Do you recall the satirical memes that were doing the rounds at that time? My favourite was the image of a puppy, a lovely little thing, that, having torn up a mass of newspapers and made a terrible mess, was depicted looking sheepishly into the lens of the camera, which represented its owner’s eyes, meekly in search of absolution. The caption mimicked the rallying cry of the sabre-rattling UK media: ‘The Russians dun it!’ It boomed.

Among my souvenirs

Together, these T-shirts span a distinct historical period. Once they hung on the walls of a socio-cultural corridor that led from wonder and curiosity down a long and planned agenda. In a small room at the end of this walk, the West constructed an image that it could, it believed, strategically, at a propitious time of its own choosing, having lifted it onto a public balcony, publicly demolish it.

Today, these T-shirts hang in an exhibition of personal memory, charting a passage of time that, for me, commenced some 25 years ago in the Russian city of Kaliningrad. They act as markers on a rare-chance journey replete with human experience and the wonders of cultural discovery.

I am a few T-shirts short of the full quarter century of that I am aware, but, like a woman’s work that’s never done until the fat lady sings – and then it is far too late – the collector’s quest knows no end. Perhaps that’s what being a content creator is really all about: people who are content with houses laden down with content, the content of which brings them contentment.

Michael, it’s time to refold your T-shirts and put them back safely into the drawer.

Copyright © 2018-2026 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Check this post out and see the other side of the story from Russia’s RT News

RT Breaking News: Why Don’t They Want You to See It?

Residence of Kings Kaliningrad: a gothic-broque fantasy functioning as a multi-complex restaurant and entertainment complex

The Kings Residence Kaliningrad: it’s a big one alright!

Seven restaurants under one roof, and that’s not all at the Kings Residence, Kaliningrad.

30 September 2026 -The Kings Residence Kaliningrad: it’s a big one alright!

When I first clapped eyes on it – I believe it was in the summer of 2015 – I thought, “My, what a big one!” Almost immediately, and certainly instinctively, a refrain from the 1970s began to ring in my ears, and I found myself singing, “I’ve never seen one as big as that before!” Which is understandable because at that time, even before the term became a Western media buzzword, I had become a disinformation victim due to someone wrongly informing me that the aptly named Kings Residence (Residence of Kings is the literal Russian translation) was a, as in ‘one’, bar and restaurant, when in actual fact it is a massive entertainment complex, a multi-purpose hybrid centre endowed with several restaurants, an elaborate children’s play area and a tavern built in the image of a traditional German beer cellar equipped with its own onsite brewery.

Map of the Kings Residence, a multi-format restuarant and entertainment centre in Kaliningrad, Russia
‘You are here!’ – the Kings Residence

From a distance, I was astounded. It wasn’t quite Disney World, but it was certainly Dizzy World. Architecturally, I attempted to assess it as I would if I was confronted by an exotic piece of antique furniture, highly carved and intricate in the various parts of its construction, by breaking down its components visually, step by step, by isolating the different elements of its structural composition and weighing up its aesthetic principles, a method I have discovered is as good a way as any of making the most of anything, including human nature, which at first sight blindsides through complication of detail, as in the cases cited here, referring to art philosophy and to human psychology, and which, by defying immediate sense, fly from mere mortal grasp into the clouds of the great beyond until all at last is perplexed and obscured.

Simultaneously thinking that the last time I experienced a confectionary of this calibre, I was visiting Bletchley Park, no sooner had I thought it than I amended the comparison. Whereas Bletchley Park, it is true, has icing touches on its architectural cake, it nowhere comes near as close to this palace of pastiche into whose mixed and confusing character several styles of historic note have been baked together.

I have heard discussions about its form describing the structure with words like ‘sprawling’, which is somewhat similar to the course of my life, but be this as it may, it sprawls with the very best of them, bringing together, as it does, albeit bizarre and haphazardly, substantial Baroque and Gothic elements, which it plays out in the manner of theatre like an adaptation of Camelot or as scenes extracted from coloured plates in a book that draws from myth and fairytale as illustration for its ancient lore.

Inevitably, as a thoroughly commercial enterprise, there are some among the architectural fraternity who have derided the building’s appearance as being completely over the top, and we will not attempt to defend it on that score, but as OTT as it is, it fails to give the impression of being completely out of place (OOP) by striking back with a palatial grandeur that does what it is supposed to do: stimulate your curiosity and get you over the threshold.

Residence of Kings Kaliniingrad: a seven-restaurant entertainment complex constructed in the red-brick Gothic style

If first impressions count, then the second adds to the first: the one does not disappoint the other. If anything, the inside of this latter-day palace appears so bold, so huge, so sprawling that whatever overtures to magnificence may legitimately be ascribed to the grandness of its brash exterior, the grandiosity of its interior matches it card by card.

The Kings Residence Kaliningrad: it’s a big one alright!

So lavish and sumptuous does it appear that I thought myself fortuitous that prior to leaving home I had seized on the occasion to garb myself in smart attire, which would not have been even half that it was, or should I say it seemed to be, had I omitted from the ensemble my Regency cravat, to which, with the aid of afterthought, a further dash was cut with the timely installation of a three-point pocket handkerchief. By these material subterfuges to whom I imagined I was or could be, I saw myself as one who was confluent with surroundings that deserved no less from each of us, and in the mirror whilst strolling past – I think I might have paused – saw none no better in close proximity, as all were dressed in jeans and trainers. Thus, in me, I saw, if plausibly no one else did, a reason for proclaiming that the King was in his counting house – the Mick Hart flag flew not at half mast, which is more than could be rightfully said for his far-too-hitched-up trousers. This obsequiousness to extollation and the ego that went with it was soon, however, remediated when I almost, but accidentally, having handed my coat to the ‘hat’ check lady, discovered myself in the ladies’ bog. It is a hazard common enough when living in a foreign country, for which even a nice pocket handkerchief is insufficient to make amends.

Half-circular tower inside Kings Residence Kaliningrad with ornate church-style gothic windows, with tracery and stained glass encased within white painted pretige stonework bands connected by pillars.

Whilst always an advisable prelude is to book one’s table in advance before descending on any restaurant, at the Residence of Kings, where half-a-dozen eateries jostle for attention, booking is essential if you want to configure your choice of table with your choice of cuisine and entertainment or to repose in an environment that complements your cravat.

Dropping in on the off chance is not an illegal act, but should you incline to this risky purpose, it is best that you prepare yourself to play the part of intrepid explorer. However, losing yourself completely, the feeling is forever, should not be the problem you think it could be, given the size of the place, as the Kings’ staff have a vigilant eye. They are trained to spot lost sheep at thirty paces, and they are always conveniently there on hand to shepherd you to the nearest table if, and unless, they are not all taken, for although the complex is big, it often attracts big groups and not infrequently bigger parties, who gobble up the seating space quicker than sheep can graze a pasture. As I have said, it’s best to book.

There are seven restaurants at the Kings Residence Kaliningrad

Cafe La Russe (Russian: traditional Russian dishes)

Veranda (European: grill restaurant)

Giuseppe (Italian: trattoria)

Shafran (Oriental/Eastern: selected dishes)

Khinkalnaya (Georgian: khinkali is its speciality)

Korolevskiy Dvorik (Banquet hall, concert venue and courtyard restaurant)

Bretsel (German brew bar)

As in most Kaliningrad drinking establishments, the norm regarding receipt of alcoholic beverages is that they are ferried to your table by the waiter or waitress with whom you placed your order, but the Kings Residence does have a bar, where drinks can be bought and at which you can sit, and this bar conveniently lies directly in your line of vision as soon as you make your entrance.

The bar is a standalone job, which cannot be overlooked, which cannot be mistaken for anything other than a bar, as it stands out twice as much as it stands alone, similar, in this respect, to the console in Dr Who’s TARDIS when, over the course of the later series, it grew in size and proportion, and then, by some terrible quirk of woke, the Dr turned first female and then, unfortunately for the viewing ratings, no sooner had he grown a pair than he turned a funny colour. Poor old William Hartnell, bless him!.

Let’s go no further down that passage.

The highly ornate standalone bar, which looks like a giant cathedral organ, at the Residence of Kings

It’s got seven restaurants!

The Kings Residence boasts seven restaurants in all, each individually stylised, but mutual in voluptuousness. Each room or banqueting area has in its possession a sumptuous, mediaeval grandeur played out effectively in a distinctive and an eclectic range of decors fit, you might be tempted to say, for a king, every one of which is purposed to invoke innate and latent desires to be the one that wears the crown or at least to pamper personal fantasies of living it up like a lord.

Selection is nigh impossible: choose from the interior terrace that isn’t really a terrace, which sits below an arcaded veranda, which isn’t a real veranda, and from antique chairs which are not antique but whose arms scroll down so deeply that you could be persuaded to accept that they are no less antique than need be; or, if a real terrace is what you are after, where you can dine and look over the royal gardens, wishes at Kings can come true; for groups there are refectory tables stolen away in their own private booths with velveteen seats of a rich ruby red; or a vastly spacious vestibule appropriating time with the help of a galleried half-timber building, which looks as though in a previous life it could have belonged to a film set; or for privacy in a small group, traditional facing cubicled tables hived off snob-screen fashion, with button-backed seats in a deep blue leather, which you wouldn’t know is not the real thing but probably, if you did, would not be pleased not to know, if, like me, you are vegetarian: “I’ll have the button-backed faux leather seats, please, with a side-serving of cauliflower and a portion of sautéed potatoes.”

Its medaieval time at Kaliningrad's Kings Residence. The walls of this restaurant precinct are made to look like a portrait-festooned half-timber galleried building

The cuisine at the Kings Residence is food that is fit for a … er, what shall we say? – how about ‘fit for a king’? Indeed, for the palates of many kings and all with different tastes. Inside this gastronomical ecosystem, one can dine not only on Russian dishes but also on recipes sourced from other parts of the world – Georgian, Italian, European and oriental nosh, all are on the eclectic menu. And just to ensure that the chefs aren’t cheating and taking it out of a tin, you can watch the culinary masters rustle up your grub through windows in the grand hall that beckon you visually into the kitchen.

A long, rectangular internal restaurant window in a red brick facade looking into a kitchen where staff are working. A restaurant complex in Kaliningrad.

Meanwhile, downstairs, and now you can be sure that I am about to reveal my favourite location, is Bretsel, a beer bar styled on authentic German legend. This inviting cellar bar, which isn’t really a cellar, as it actually lies at ground level with the entrance to the complex sitting above it on the first floor, but it seems in order to get to it because you have to go downstairs that you are descending into the castle’s dungeon, is where the beer is brewed. Yes, you heard me correctly: Beer is brewed right here on the premises: five delicious varieties of their exclusive Müller brand.

The Kings Residence Kaliningrad: it’s a big one alright!

As with every room beneath the giant roof of the Kings Residence, the space occupied by the beer bar is the opposite to mean; it is a sizeable retreat, but with cosy nooks and crannies. It is mood-lit and time-honoured with benches in dark wood, and its walls are hung with detailed frescoes that echo the legends of kings and pirates in homage to the dark ages. It also has in its principality an area put aside for those unable to help themselves but shimmer around the floor whenever music is piped to their ears, a species of spontaneity that is leveraged not inconsiderably by the magical influence of beer on the brain. And here it is helpful to know, if beer is your elixir, that the copious fermentation tanks finished in copper but shining like gold as though the precious nectar within radiates from out – mark that haloed luminosity! – that guests can observe the brewing process as they lovingly down the end result.

Stairs leading down to the Bretsel German beer bar in Kaliningrad
That’s all you get until I write about it later …

Lest we should forget, which hardly could be possible whilst one is on the premises because the sound of it reverberates around the many interconnecting halls, the Kings Residence, or as Russians say, ‘Residence of Kings’ (Rezidentsiya Koroley), is billed as an entertainment centre as well as a restaurant complex.

Musical entertainment, both vibrant vocal live-performances and their recorded equivalents, takes place at different times and on different nights across the multi-format halls and restaurants. The principal restaurants, such as Veranda, offer live music cabaret-style, mainly on Friday and Saturday evenings, with the starting times of gigs being typically 7pm. Guest acts by distinguished artists are complemented by the resident band, which has built a solid reputation for singing legendary cover hits.

Night-lifers, those with an irrepressible need to strut their stuff into the wee small hours, flock at weekends to Berry, which is the Kings’ karaoke and dance bar, where they give it all that they’ve got, and some might say far too freely, never mind too much.

The Kings Residence Kaliningrad: it’s a big one alright!

The big one, both in the sense of dining and in the luxury entertainment stakes, is the as-grand-as-it-sounds Royal Court, not to be confused with the ‘Royals caught in the act!’, which is something that Britain’s daily tabloids are constantly on the lookout for. The Royal Court (Russian: Korolevskiy Dvorik) is where one goes to banquet as distinct from commonly eat, and where the same ones eschew karaoke for more in-tune entertainment provided by touring artists who they like to think as they like to think of themselves, are considered a cut above. Such events are ticketed, and the Kings Residence hosts them regularly. You must wear a cravat to these!

A seat in front of urban planters containing foliage. The seat is modelled as a giant piano keyboard, Residence of Kings, Kaliningrad
I don’t think Elton John played this one …

Meanwhile, back in the German-style beer bar (where else would I be?), the option exists to hire the room and stage your own entertainment, as Bretsel is one of the Kings Residences’ more seclusive areas and therefore lends itself most admirably to parties of the private kind.

If music be the food of love, play on, but not everyone is into a raucous orgy where jumping around to a thumping beat and committing murder by karaoke dominates. The Kings have done well to recognise this, for it also caters for the serious drinker, we wont go so far as to say for the serious sober drinker, who likes nothing better than acquiring knowledge and then relating that knowledge at length in all its detail to all in sundry, whether they want to hear it or not, about craft beers and their brewing techniques. With these people in mind, the Residence of Kings thoughtfully provides instructive and enjoyable tours of its brewing facilities and tasters of its range of beers, and by the way, it doesn’t discriminate if you happen to love your karaoke as much as you love your beer. Stranger things, I have heard it said, are likely to happen at sea.

The Residence of Kings: The Brewery and its Beers
The brewery-restaurant complex brews five varieties of its own-brand Müller beer.
The beer is served in all of the Kings’ seven restaurants and also in its German-style pub, called Bretsel.

The five varieties of beer are:

Müller Light (Светлое): A classic, filtered lager with a crisp character

Muller Dark (Темное): A smooth dark ale with a strong malt taste rewarded with hints of caramel

Muller Wheat (Пшеничное): An unfiltered German-style Weissbier, the notes of which combine distinctive fruit and clove elements

Muller Velvet (Бархатное): A smooth, unfiltered beer with a dark complexion, slightly sweet taste and a velvet smooth texture

Seasonal Brews: These special-recipe beers tend to vary, depending on the season

It is said that in addition to learning the brewer’s code, also on these tours the participants get to hear about certain ‘mysterious legends’, surely not me in the ladies’ toilet, get to sample all Müller beers and are provided with a ‘beer lunch’, a buffet consisting of snacks that go down well with beer (this is an art in itself), and rounding off this unique excursion, they are invited to take part in a programme of entertainment in which contests are staged and presents awarded. For more information about these tours and reservation bookings, the number to ring is as follows: +7 (4012) 300 360.

A bronze patinated figure of a tankard-bearing swashbuckling piratanical figure leaning against a table in the Kings Residence Kaliningrad.
He often pops in for one at the Kings Residence

This brings me to a feature in the Residence of Kings’ portfolio about which I have little or no detailed knowledge, having not been a child for quite some time – childish, yes, child, no – and who continues to associate children’s entertainment with a day out at Wicksteed Park, riding the swings and the slides.

From the looks of it, however, things have moved on since then. Young visitors to the Residence of Kings have the golden opportunity to wave goodbye to mundanity and migrate (not like migrants on rubber dinghies on a one-way ticket to Britain) to the exotic and charm-filled Faraway Kingdom – whose only relevance to the United Kingdom are the words ‘kingdom’ and ‘far away’.

Situated on the building’s third floor, the Kingdom functions as a multi-recreational centre, containing a superabundance of game machines, stimulating creative workshops and tailored entertainment programmes, and, pay attention to this, every Saturday is a free theme-party day.

And if this doesn’t keep the little darlings amused, there’s always the

*Inflatable jungle park
*Rope town
*Lego town
*The dolphinarium
*The electric car park
*The wind tunnel

I think I’ll stick with the Bretsel bar.

To say that the Residence of Kings is a unique venue and to use words like ‘large’, ‘imposing’, ‘impressive’, ‘multi-functional’, ‘diverse’ and to describe it as an all-round restaurant, bar and entertainment complex presented under one big roof, or, for the sake of accuracy, a compendium of different roofs, is hardly an act of necessity, as I think that I may have touched upon some of these points already.

As an architectural fantasy, the Residence of Kings is an undisputed dream piece, an awesome tribute to the Gothic legacy which is part and parcel of Kaliningrad’s Königsberg past. In bringing its lingering presence back, the Residence of Kings takes it to another level driven by emulation and defined by 21st-century excess. On the outside it’s a curious palace; on the inside it’s palatial. On the outside it’s a modern monument; on the inside it’s monumentally modern, albeit with a retro twist. One thing that could be said of it and stated with impunity is you could visit it every day of the week, make that twice on Sundays, and, whilst eating your way around the world, never leave the novelty loop. Who says size doesn’t matter!

Open-plan restaurant in Residence of Kings, Kaliningrad, with zig-zag ceiling, a rectangular brick pillar, fairy lights, comfortablle cushioned bench seating and chairs

The Kings Residence (Residence of Kings)
Ulitsa Aleksandra Nevskogo, 10, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, 236041

Tel: +7 (4012) 300-360 (Alternative delivery/booking number: +7 (4012) 30-83-08)

Website: http://landing.rk-rk.ru/en/

Opening hours (Main complex and restaurants)
Sunday to Thursday: 12pm to12 Midnight
Friday to Saturday: 12pm to 2am

Note: Certain venues inside the complex operate under different closing times, for example the Berry karaoke bar and the children’s entertainment centre. For up-to-date information, contact the Kings Residence administration.

You might like to sample these

🍴Georgian Restaurant Kaliningrad the Magic of Kavkaz

🍴The Uniform Museum Restaurant

🍴The Art Depot Restaurant

🍴Pivovar Restaurant Brewery

Copyright © 2018-2026 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Racists in the UK! WokForkers pub in London, where the staff monitor everyone for racist comments - if you are white! AI-generated image

Racists in the UK! Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job

A racist-themed evening down at the local

29 July 2026 – Racists in the UK! Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job

The images in this post have been generated using artificial intelligence and are intended for illustrative purposes only. None of the visuals imply any real-world endorsement, affiliation, or association with any specific product, brand, or entity. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), places, or events is purely coincidental.

[Posted in category Mick Hart’s Diary 2026]

In case you haven’t noticed or are a liberal lefty in lefty denial, there is, in the UK today, a severe and palpable sense of racially aggravated unease among the rightful heirs of our British heritage. Failed socially engineered multiculturalism, the daily arrival of ‘boat people’ flooding with open government arms into blighted Britain, high-profile racially motivated vicious crimes where the victim is almost exclusively white, a tension that is tangible and alleged two-tier policing are polarising the political spectrum into those who crave more woke and migrants and those who never asked for either and feel they could do quite well without.

Our esteemed former prime minister, the man who everybody likes to dislike, even by those of his own kind, who, in spite of loss of support, including from those in his own party, refused to take the glaring hint and would not pack his bags and go until he was given the royal arse-boot, was too busy during his time in office posing for cheesy, smarmy photos with Ukraine’s converted comedian, the ubiquitous Mr Zelensky, rather than do what Britons demand and ultimately deserve, which is to tackle the immigrant crisis.

Any hope that the new Labour hopeful, Andrew ‘call me Andy’ Burnham, and his newly elected cabinet (bye-bye, Mr Lammy) will apply themselves to this existential problem is not a hope that we should cling to. As long as the old two past-it parties continue to be voted in by the stuck-in-their-ways, heads-up-their-arses, gormless British electorate, the streets of Britain will grow more dangerous, and our towns and cities will become, as many are already, the unrecognizably menacing places that the prophet Enoch Powell predicted all those years ago.

Meanwhile, as Andy Burnham and his Labour cohorts celebrate accession into the breach, a little-known chain of public houses, once celebrated for common sense, seem bent on repositioning themselves as number one in the woke parade.

Racists in the UK! Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job

A few weeks ago, I ventured out for a pint at my friend’s local WokeForkers. It was that evening on the day of the week when I expected the pub to be quiet, which, indeed, it initially was, little knowing, however, that the latest roster of bar staff (these pubs seem to change their bar staff faster than I can change my underpants – old proverb, every gusset has a suspect lining) had just emerged from company training, from which, and I kid you not, not one of the dunces or dullards had mastered the art of anything, least of all, I warrant, the essential public relations skills which, for as long as hospitality has existed, have always been first and foremost for running a pub successfully.

This, however, was not the least among their greatest disadvantages, although the one begets the other, for they were also of that dismal generation, which, duly processed, packed and prepared by the corporate liberal sausage factory, the British education system, programmes the poor unfortunate wretches for a life of second-class citizenship, making them fat between the ears, ready for the country’s future, which many pundits see as comparable to a slaughterhouse.

I have no idea, do you, where some pubs get their staff from? They seem, by their dour expressions, surly, disinterested ways and chip-on-the-shoulder attitudes, as if, like Zelensky’s army, they have been dragged off from the streets. Whatever it is they teach them at Pub Mismanagement School, devotion to duty isn’t it, neither are the principal tenets required of the hospitality trade, such as amiability, affability, congeniality and conviviality, and above all and most importantly, the indisputable golden rule that customers should at all times be treated with respect – as the customers are those very people who, by putting their money over the bar, pay the barmaids’ wages.

Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that most of the staff are female, and those who aren’t are not much different, for even those whose gender poses difficult questions look and act as though every moment is a hormonal crisis. It only goes to show that in any mismanaged democracy, you need to be extremely careful who you give the vote to, let alone give them leave to stand mardy and daft behind the bar as if the menopause arriving early has turned off the smile along with the taps and all they are waiting to do is call ‘last orders’. Now, don’t call me sexist! Like the WokeForker’s staff who earole everyone, I am merely repeating what I heard someone say at a table whose conversation was personal, private and had nothing to do with me whatsoever. {The opinions in this post are not necessarily those of the person you might think I am.}

On the drinking night in question, the night I had anticipated would be pleasantly quiet, the one thing I had not bargained for was a themed evening revolving around “You can’t say that; it’s racist?”

Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job

Now this particular pub in Wellsford Garden City stands at a junction with Ethnic Street. And one of the reasons I like to drink there is that by sitting next to the windows, you can watch the world, such as it is or as it has sadly become, go by, whilst wishing it would go away. How much nicer it would be to gaze through those same windows and see on the other side of them Britain as it used to be before the migrant invasion (a cluster of wistful, heartfelt sighs!).

“You’re not supposed to say that!”

“I know. It’s a bugger, isn’t it.”

Psychologist, psychiatrist, anthropologist, social historian, time traveller, circus trainer, zookeeper, most emphatically zookeeper, but anyone, in fact, who is seeking a snapshot of UK life can get it from one of these window seats, and once you are over the shock of it  – to do this takes two or three visits – the spectacle unfolding is almost as freakishly entertaining as it is distressing. We’ll say no more of that. Ungird your loins, as most of them do, and go and see for yourselves.

On the evening when my account took place, we had not long taken temporary residence in these very seats, which look out onto the madness at which I have hinted, when, flying around the corner on two wheels, like something out of an ancient Sweeney episode or a cartoon from the 1960s, came a cop car at full tilt.

Something serious must have occurred, but what? Had someone been making mean tweets on his phone? Had an act of terrorism taken place that urgently needed to be hushed up in the interests of ‘race relations’? Was the High Street under siege by a terrifying far-right rally attended by two old grannies; a woman who dared to call herself that; and a moved-from-Rochdale (quickly) choirboy who, whilst not yet supporting Labour, might be trained to do so when he’s given the vote at the age of 13? (Roll up! Roll up! Here exclusively in the UK, Labour’s young performing poodles!) But no, we were wrong on every count. Whatever it was that had kicked off, it was here, among us, at WokeForkers, whose highly intelligent bar staff had gone and called the old bill.

The marauding cop car screamed to a halt, as they so dramatically do in 1940s black-and-white films (careful what you say there!), and seconds later in they marched – two of Britain’s finest: one with a head that was really quite bald and the other wearing his colleague’s toupee, which, dislodged when the driver hit the brakes, had landed on his chin, lending him the appearance of the Wild Man from Borneo, which I suppose must mean he lives in Luton.

Racists in the UK! Police in UK WokeForkers pub march in: one is bald, the other is wearing his colleague's toupee on his chin. AI-generated image
AI-generated image

As we were sitting miles away from the bar (it’s a prudent thing to do, out of earshot of the WokeForkers’ Stasi), we couldn’t at all make out what was going on, but we knew that it must be serious, for why else would the police have been called?

After a full ten minutes in which nothing happened at all, a tall gent, foreign-looking, wearing what looked like a Chinese face and carrying a populist tote bag (it had a Union Jack on its side) marched defiantly, with no police escort, as though he were guilty of nowt, apart from the tartan kilt he was wearing, across the space of the room and disappeared onto the street.

You would have thought that being let off by our more than lenient British policemen (well, I said that he was foreign-looking, or he would have been arrested), the accursed fiend would have counted his blessings and made himself particularly scarce, but this he did not do. No sooner had he exited than he was spotted by one of our party eating apples near the pub’s back door. Eating apples! Near the pub’s back door!!!! His unacceptable presence must have been detected by one of WokeForkers’ ever-vigilant CCTV installations (for if ever a street was in need of a camera, then Ethnic Street is it), as moments later, the dynamic duo – Baldy booby and Beardy bobby – were out there on the street giving the culprit a piece of their minds, which he, the ungrateful recipient, looked as though he neither wanted nor knew what use he could put them to.

At this point in time, we had not the faintest idea what it was that had gone down, so naturally we were all of a mind, “Well done, those boys in blue; it’s best you move him on!” The truth of the matter is, however, that this extremely dangerous man, for what else could he be, tried himself three or four times to move by his own volition, but whenever he made to walk away, the coppers were on him again.

Just as they, as a group, drew level with our viewing window, a female member of the establishment’s bar staff came to collect some empty glasses. Someone in our party asked her what the problem was. I think we were all expecting to hear a sorry tale of attempted murder –  after all, it’s fast becoming a national pastime in Britain – but what we got instead was a sorry something else.

“Oh dear!” went the girl, her attitude and countenance struggling to contain the dreadful trauma she had just experienced. “He [the Chinese man in a kilt] was making racist remarks at the bar … saying things about !*!*… When I argued with him, he brought up the subject of !*!*and {here was the real big hit!} He mentioned Tommy Robinson!” At the uttering of Tommy Robinson’s name, she literally, physically shuddered, and I thought for a moment she would fade away like a latter-day Gothic heroine or crumple into insignificance like tomorrow’s and the next day’s and every edition before and after of that mamby-pamby left-wing pamphlet, now on the web, the Guardinistan.

“But he’s not a white bloke, is he?” one of our party asked, presuming by prescription that no one could be accused of racism unless they were unconditionally white.

We all peered out of the window to test the validity of this assertion: it was hard to tell just what the man was, standing there in his Chinese face, looking all Jock-like in his kilt and feverishly eating apples, but what he expressly wasn’t, or had no reason to look like, was a man that was guilty of anything more than not having chosen his pub too carefully.

“Oh yes, he is a white man,” returned the wilting maiden, in an emphatic tone of voice and a horridly fraught expression that clearly suggested he could be no other.

“But you have to admit that his eyes aren’t British and his complexion is …”

She peeped through the window alongside me: “I suppose he must have a suntan.”

What a lucky chap, I thought; he must have been somewhere nice, somewhere other than WokeForkers, as there certainly was a definite dearth of any sunshine here, or anywhere, for that matter, where sunshine is employed symbolically to reflect a happy cultural climate, the likes of which we no longer have in the Disunited Migrant Kingdom.

If the barmaid had expected a commiserative response from us, she would have been sorely disappointed, since we were all too busy trying to fathom why a racist comment, if indeed there had actually been one, and a verbal reference to Tommy Robinson (I always get his name mixed up with a certain lefty actor) justified the deployed resources and exceedingly precious time of not one but a brace of coppers – and they were not even hobby bobbies! – whose only contribution, from what we were able to discern, was a forty-minute ideological lecture.

At length, and quite a long length at that, the taken-to-task white imposter, for so he seemed to us, made his third or fourth attempt to quietly walk away, only to have himself recalled by yet another officer. Had someone mentioned Tommy again? They had brought in reinforcements!

Racists in the UK!

At this juncture, the harangued man was literally at a junction; he was standing on a traffic island in the middle of the road, and as he reserved his legal right not to return to the beckoning copper, Mr Plod-come-lately, who was rather of that group which included PCs Baldy and Beardy, the most pugnacious of the three, marched across the road to him, where the poor man duly received yet another remonstration.

This peculiar – and rational people might say – preposterous police procedural episode persisted for yet another twenty pointless finger-wagging minutes, with the man, who was no doubt ardently wishing he had gone anywhere else in the world but WokeForkers, standing, in every respect, head and shoulders above his inquisitors and responding to their pontifications in a cool, calm, and collected manner, giving, from what we could see, a lot better than what he was getting, as people do when knowing that by being in the right they have natural testimony on their side, finally, having had enough of it and not having lost his temper, as I suppose this is what the coppers wanted, waved his hands in tired conclusion and strode away in his riding-up kilt, his single man’s sack – full of apples – swinging in the breeze, like a man who had clearly won his argument and was off to a decent pub.

Racists in the UK! A man in a kilt, holding a bag of apples is told off by three police officers.
AI-generated image

The irony of the situation, as irony tends to lurk, don’t you think, around virtually every corner in life, like racist men in kilts armed with bags of apples, was that it wasn’t more than ten minutes after this extraordinary piece of theatre, which, according to our collective opinion, was a complete and utter waste of time, that I trekked off to the bar to replenish our party’s glasses.

The young barmaid behind the bar, who was entirely where you’d expect her to be, with a must-have ring thrust through her snout and her hair all dyed in a laughable colour, asked me what I wanted to drink. So far, so good, so proper, but I couldn’t quite make up my mind. WokeForkers sell mighty fine ales, unmatched, unfortunately, by their bar staff, and often one is spoiled for choice, which is sadly and far too commonly not the case with their bar staff.

It just so happened by a quirk of Time that a middle-aged chap had arrived at the bar contiguous with my own arrival, and with me being in full dither, he was given the option to order his beer ahead of me, but he, like me but for different reasons, was also finding the simple task of placing his order difficult due to the row from the TV set, which was showing a BBC broadcast of a gaggle of noisy migrants celebrating the short bus ride from the shores of Dover to a 5-star hotel.

He apologised to the barmaid for not being able to make himself heard: “I’m sorry,” he said, politely, “but some illegal migrants on the telly are talking rather loud.”

The barmaid immediately froze; her jaw shot down several metres like Frank Zappa’s Billy the Mountain’s; her ridiculous blue hair bristled; her face underwent a monstrous change, which wasn’t exactly a bad thing because it wasn’t particularly pleasant even in its ‘normal’ state, but now it appeared all bent and twisted as though savagely infected by a virulent dose of that plague exclusive to the liberal left called ‘outrage’ or was cast in a mask of tormented virtue like Hope not Hate’s at its most hypocritical.

“What did you say?!” she demanded.

I tried to prevent the middle-aged man from reiterating his previous utterance, for, being an expert on leftist ire, the motivation behind the question was all too plain to see: the harridan behind the bar was gunning for confrontation. But the inoffensive middle-aged chap, believing no ill in what he had said, merely repeated what he had said.

Those of you familiar with Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist will have no difficulty, I am sure, in recalling the manner in which Mr Bumble reacted when Oliver asked for more, and had our rancid barmaid been auditioning for Bumble’s part in the soap-operatic drama that she had taken upon herself to direct, I would recommend her before you could say, ‘Does she not know how to smile?’ but I wouldn’t employ her behind a bar for all the inflatable dinghies in France or all the beer at WokeForkers (OK, well even I can make concessions!)

With her hackles raised, which made her hair look dafter, and inconsolably rigid with outrage, she could hardly muster utterance, but when she retrieved her articulation, she suddenly cried out, “Racist! What you’ve said is racist!” and straightaway she was on it, like a chronic dose of the shits, calling loudly along the bar, “We’ve got a racist here!”

Immediately, in response to her wailing, a beanpole excuse for a man sporting a bun on his head, without an arse in his trousers and masquerading as something that was worth the space he occupied, lickety-splitted fast-like from the opposite end of the bar, where no doubt he had been lying in wait to pounce on the first errant customer (who, for public consumption, had to be white) for making racist remarks.

The female Mr Bumble reported her findings to him, and immediately he went from looking absolutely and totally gormless to adopting a posture of high alert, as if he needed his nappies changing and the only one he could trust with this task was wonderless woman the manager – well, lefties are known for their kinks. Not to dwell on that too much, a second racist in one evening had been unmasked at the WokeForkers’ bar! [Dramatic chords of music!]

The manager, female I think, but then I could be wrong, was on the scene like a butcher’s dog, but the amiable white middle-aged man, who was clearly racist because of this fact if not for any other, knowing what they were at, waved his hand contemptuously and with a rewarding complacent smile casually walked away, leaving his three would-be antagonists, all of whom he had made quite clear he wouldn’t touch with yours, which is to say, your resentment and anger, looking perfectly stupid. And one has to raise the question, could they look anything else?

AI-generated image. Female bar staff at WokeForkers pub shocked by racist remarks"
AI-generated image

Left standing alone as I was, the dangling-in-the-wind manager had no one else, only me, to turn to, so rounding on me, it said, as if I really wanted to know, “Like every responsible pub, we adhere to a zero-tolerance policy.” Should I have been impressed? It sounded lame and weary.

I wanted to say it was a pity that we didn’t have a similar policy to stop the boats from flooding in as well as one to prevent the left from ethnically cleansing the white population and its sovereign culture, but I contented myself by thinking these things and tried to suppress a smirk as I said, with remarkable cheerfulness, “And what an effective policy it is to be sure (crikey, I was close to sounding Irish!), but as all I am trying to do is order a pint of beer, perhaps someone would be so kind as to take my order and serve me.” I almost had to shout to be heard as the illegal migrants on the telly were having such a raucous time here in dear old England that it sent a shiver of pride from the nape of my neck to my balls, er of my feet, and elsewhere throughout my body, or something of that persuasion, to acknowledge that I belonged to such a recklessly tolerant nation.

The immediate panic over, and the alarmist barmaid having returned from wherever she had scuttled off to fortify her troubled self with intakes of air and smelling salts, I promptly ordered my pint.

As she pushed the glass against the tap, it was then that she took her Marxist role just a little too far.

“I suppose you’re racist too?” she rasped.

Woke Watch PC UK!

Woke Watch UK!

Now call me old school or even old-fashioned, but in my long and illustrious career of supporting the British pub, I have had the belief instilled in me that barmaids are there to pull your pint, not to pull your chain.

The answer that I was ready to give was manifold, such as “Has your girlfriend left you? Is it the wrong time of the month? Or don’t you know what gender you are?” But I knew that she was goading me, so the compliant answer given was, “Yes, of course I am; I’m a white English male; how could I be anything else but racist? ” But then I went on to correct her, saying that I am not a racist; I am a realist, and that, whilst the words have a similar ring to them, there’s a world of difference between the two, and it is only the left who confuse them because it suits their divisive agenda.

Having failed to elicit the response that she was so keenly after and not knowing what further to do to advance her cunning plan, from then on she shut her trap and did what she was paid to do – poured the pint and took the money.

Racists in the UK! Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job

Now, you may be thinking, and rightly so, that all that I have related is a silly storm in a teacup, and in this you would be right; in itself, it is. But when you collate these issues — a ‘zero tolerance policy’, which works like a one-way street; an almost hysterical urge by giddy-headed girly staff to adopt the role of brain police rather than confine themselves to what they are paid to do, ie take your order and pull your pint; the praises sung of ethnic enrichment, in tones of a drugged-up parrot, when nothing could be further and more nauseatingly far from the truth; and the programmed decrying of racism aimed at native Britons living quietly in their own country, because it is their country and because it is their heritage, and they would like to keep it that way – when all these factors are added together, rollocks! A piece of general advice would be that people that work in pubs should do the job they are paid to do and never stick their oar in. Comprehendi lefties?

Should, dear reader, in spite of the evidence that I have laid before you, an element of doubt yet persist, then ask yourself the following: Did an alleged racist comment by a man in a kilt with a bag of apples standing at WokeForkers’ bar warrant the intervention of not one, not two but three police officers? Did the chap who stood at the bar and wryly referred to the noisy migrants deserve the reaction he received from the neurotically troubled barmaid? And wasn’t it, don’t you think, just a little bit on the impudent side, not to mention provocative, when the lowly underpaid serving wench overstepped her mark by calling me out as racist (not that he gives a f*ck, shouts an inconsiderate heckler) when all I had said and done was order a pint of beer?

A week or so in the aftermath of that evening of entertainment, how dire the weather was for June inserted itself, as weather does in English conversations, during a chat between yours truly and a stranger in a pub, which was not, I hasten to add, WokeForkers’, for you have to be careful, very careful what you say in there!

“Considering how vile the weather has been of late,” said I, “the UK has to be the last country on earth where you’d want to be faced with extortionate fees for gas and electric heating.”

Quickly the man addressed replied that these are not the only things that are wrong with this country today, and discovering from that moment forward that we were mutual travellers not only in kind but also in destination, off we went down the bumpy road on route to collapsing Britain, stopping off on the way at the cultural climate of fear engendered by accusations of racism and what it did for a man called Nowak; the knife-wielding migrant butcher prowling the streets of Belfast; the ethnic-obsessed two-tier cop shop; tragic Southport; indefensible Rochdale; and the saddo younger generation, whom our pied piper politicians are leading up the garden path and tossing over Culture Loss Cliff. We also took a detour to reflect upon the situation of an authoritarian incumbent PM, whom, no matter how many want him out, simply won’t F Off!* Naturally, when we had gotten to where we knew our journey would take us, which was around and around and around in circles, I apprised my fellow traveller about the ‘spot the racist night’, hosted by Wellford’s WokeForkers.

“Civil war,” is coming, he said, solemnly shaking his head. “Everyone you talk to is thinking and saying the same.”

One cannot deny the uneasy feeling that the hands on the doomsday clock identified by Elon Musk are moving inexorably closer to that retributive midnight hour.

Close the curtains, bolt the doors and turn the television on for a counter-intuitive narrative, if that’s the only defence you have against what is lurking out there on the streets, but confront, do not avoid, those disturbing images of the migrant boats as they keep flooding in, and if anyone calls you racist when you speak your mind, remember what terrors silence will bring and wear your antagonists’ failed agenda as you would wear a badge of honour.

How will it all end, you ask? “Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”

* He’s gone, and the panacea replacing him is ‘Nice to see me being nice’, good old Andy Burnham. What are you going to do about violence on the streets, Andy, the steamrolling immigration problem, and the boats flooding into Dover? Are we ever going to get a PM who is brave enough to grow a pair and save us from extinction, or are our PMs and our much-maligned country forever doomed to be controlled by pseudo-liberal globalists?

PS: If you are planning on getting stabbed in the not-too-distant future, you could do a lot worse and be a lot more stupid by doing it in Manchester, since ‘news just in’ informs us that in selected parts of the city, wall-mounted ‘bleed kits’ are being installed. How reassuring is that! Who needs law and order when you’ve got a political plaster?

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, knocking at the moonlit door’

‘No!’ was the answer from Number 10. At least no one here who will or dares to give you the answer you’re looking for.

🎶🎶Things aint what they used to be 🎶🎶

Vote Green for Migrant Detention Centres Near You! – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Life in the UK – it’s all so peculiar – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Copyright © 2018-2026 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Mick Hart with Victor Ryabinin Artist on Otradnoye beach in the Kaliningrad region, January 2005.

Victor Ryabinin Artist: a man who continues to inspire

A scene from Otradnoye beach, January 2005

18 July 2026 – Victor Ryabinin Artist: a man who continues to inspire

This post’s feature photograph rates as one of my favourites from the album devoted to Victor Ryabinin, a friend and Kaliningrad artist who died on the 18th of July 2019.

It holds a special place in my memory, for in a brief snapshot, a split second in time, it captures one of Victor’s most endearing character traits, that admirable part of his personality which demonstrates his ability to play down adversity and take everything in his stride.

Victor Ryabinin Artist: a man who continues to inspire

Staying with my recent focus on the small, Baltic coastal resort of Otradnoye, the aforementioned photograph was taken on Otradnoye Beach in January 2005, following an unseasonably wet November and December.

The high earthen banks skirting Otradnoye beach had, after two months of nigh-incessant rain, sunk sponge-like into themselves, and the underlying soil erosion, together with high winds, had, by the dual action of undermining and invisible climatic battering, caused the banks to slip and the trees to break and splinter. In the worst scenario, entire trees had been brought out by their roots, and those not already strewn across the beach were stumbling like a drunken orgy to join the ones that had.

Victor Ryabinin Artist: a man who continues to inspire

Somehow, our gallant little group, consisting of Victor, Olga, Olga’s son Daniel, myself and an English friend called Barry, had descended to the beach by way of the crumbling banks. Our walk from Svetlogorsk had been a dicey one, rain-soaked and windswept, alleviated only by a planned excursion to Brachert House Museum. Now, standing on the beach, ready to take that iconic picture, although the wind had dropped a little, the rain was with us again.

Whilst I huddled up in my totally inappropriate London city overcoat, which, being made of pure new wool, would, by the end of the day, thanks to the teeming rain, be twice as heavy as when I had taken it from the wardrobe, Victor, demonstrating typical nonchalance, lowered his umbrella. And that’s the spirit in which I knew him and also how I remember him. For all I know, he may have been privately carrying all the cares in the world on his shoulders, but if such had been the case, he certainly never showed it.

It is true his symbolist art betrayed a tormented sensibility. It had been with him since his childhood and was the driving force behind his work. Victor sometimes hinted that he was locked within an eternal struggle, with haunting apparitions of the ruins in which he had been born and the echo of the city’s suffering ringing in his ears. Growing up in this traumatised environment, his gentle disposition and vulnerable romanticism experienced at first-hand the slow, grinding metamorphosis from scarred and bombed-out shell to modern-thriving urban centre, but the world beyond which shaped his city never left his heart.

I sometimes felt this pain and made it mine, but for me it was but a fleeting impression, not something forged across a lifetime. I could drop the catch, whilst he could not, or give it back whenever I chose, or so I erroneously told myself, whereas for him his only escape, albeit one which spiralled inwards, was through consultation with his muse and by working daily through his recollections on the level of social history. However, if this had been his mortal lot, he rarely ever showed it. To us, he was always and forever a pennies-from-heaven man, holding aloft his open umbrella, a twinkle in his philosophical eye and a smile upon his kindly face, skipping over the Kaliningrad potholes and singing in the rain.

There is music in his memory, and I am privileged that it comes back to me almost every single day.

Victor Ryabinin: 17 December 1946-18 July 2019

^Why is that man carrying that dog? That’s a good question. Because he was convinced that it was a stray. So, he carried it for a mile or more along a narrow and winding seawall, and when he put it down, the ‘rescued’ dog trotted calmly away up and over the bank and presumably went home.

Copyright © 2018-2026 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

A grid-based rectangular picture collage of flowers, gardenfoliage, a boat and Olg Hart with arms outstretched celebrating Kaliningrad weather in summer. There's also there cat, Ginger, peeping from behind a vased flower on the table.

Kaliningrad Weather? – A What You Need to Know Post!

Summery Scenes in Kaliningrad and its region 2024-2025

26 June 2026 – Kaliningrad weather? – A What You Need to Know Post!

Brr, that’s all I can say. That was a quick post, wasn’t it? My allusion, as distinct from illusion – that’s one of those that everyone who voted for Starmer has since become acquainted with and will no doubt once again with the installation of Andy Burnham; oh, how fools are easily fooled – is to my last post (It’s sounding over Britain!), the one in which I appear to ratify the collective delusion (delusion this time) that it always snows in Russia, which it most certainly does in a good many Frederick Forsyth and Len Deighton novels and in most mainstream spy films based upon their books. It even snowed in the pop video used to promote Elton John’s Nikita. I almost said Akido, but I’ve practised that enough (ooh, my aching joints!), and very nearly Akita, but that’s my brother’s dog, neither of which, as I recall, are remotely connected to snow. Do you remember Peter Snow and his infamous ‘swingometer’, replaced today by Sky News’ military analyst Michael Clarke, who is a hybrid of Peter Snow and a friend of mine called Greg? Sorry, it’s all getting so confusing. That’s flux for you.

In order to demonstrate, therefore, that it always snows in Russia, but it doesn’t, well, not here in Kaliningrad at any rate, I’ve whipped out the old photo album and borrowed from myself some lovely, summery, sunny pictures that rather prove my point.

Kaliningrad Weather? – A What You Need to Know Post!

My previous post was built around snowy scenes in Polessk, so I thought it only fair in order to dispel notions that it always snows in Polessk that I contrast those images with their summer counterparts. These photographs show the Deyma River and Polessk Canal, together with the landmark Eagle Bridge. The sun is shining, the snow has gone, the ice has melted, and the boats are out.

Here am I, sitting outside Königsberg’s Rossgarten Gate, outside the Rossgarten Gate restaurant. It’s not that they wouldn’t let me in, but the restaurant’s name, Solnechny Kamen, which, as you students of Russian know full well, translates to ‘Sun Stone’, subliminally inspired me to capture the first rays of summer, which were breaking prematurely over the city in the last month of May 2024. Incidentally, I’ve not gone mardy and am not refusing to eat my food because, instead of a pint, I’ve been given a cup of coffee; I’m just thawing out after a long, hard winter.

Summer in Kaliningrad and its region is not all about beer and sun lounging – more’s the pity. On the contrary, it’s a time to get things done! Do those knee pads suit me? I’m doing a real conquistador job on upcycling that old open-arm bench, and our good friend, artist and conservationist, and, quite frequently, Immanuel Kant, is treating our historic Soviet statue to a summer makeover.

When the sun’s out, you want to be outside with it, but as my friend’s father, Mr Wilcox, used to bawl at me whenever I was ‘holidaying’ at his farm in my youth, “We’re fighting a war against human nature, Hart!! There’s work to do!!” And you couldn’t say fairer than that, because you daren’t. As his ghostly voice echoes across the decades, I assuage his wrath by turning my hand to a little shabby chicing in the country house hallway. Alright, alright, I admit most of the ideas were Olga’s.

And when the work is done … (most of these ideas are mine.)

Celebrating summer’s divine attributes.

Am I responding to the dulcet tones of my authoritarian guardian Mr Wilcox, or is it just excellent weather to be doing it? All my own work? Leave it out!

And when the work is done … it’s time for a libation with the neighbours.

Table near a doorway with two lit lanterns, a vase of red and orange roses, a ceramic owl mug, and a glass of tea on a wooden table; garden in the background.

Going German bunkers on a hot day in Kaliningrad. Meanwhile, Ginger teaches himself how to hide behind a flower before venturing out onto the terrace to assess how invisible he has become.

Late summer: the last rays of sunlight falter over the Curonian Lagoon.

Olga Hart is sitting on a multipatterned boho cushion in the garden on the lawn with plates of food in front of her on a green tablecloth and a bucket of bright-coloured flowers. to her right.

Copyright © 2018-2026 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Olga Hart in a coat standing on a rock on the ice-covered Caronian Lagoon at sunset c. March 2026.

Polessk in Winter is Rather More Than a Frosty Atmosphere

And you can’t argue with that, can you!

18 June 2026 – Polessk in Winter is Rather More Than a Frosty Atmosphere

Do you know there’s a rather rude English expression that goes, ‘I don’t want to piss on your fireworks’, wryly meaning ‘I don’t want to spoil it for you’, which, being a gentleman, I would never use, particularly as the opening line for a blog post, in the same way that I would never say, in the first month of summer, that in ‘less than six months’ time it will be Christmas’; for who, after a long, drawn-out, bitterly cold and exhausting winter, such as the one Nature treated us to in Kaliningrad this year, would want to be reminded at this escapist juncture of the unravelling seasons of the cold, ice and snow, from which it seems we have only just emerged, when we are yearning, body, mind and soul, for sun, warmth and pretty women wearing summer dresses?

You might well consider it perverse, therefore, that in the midst of my understanding almost all I profess to understand, I go ahead willy-nilly in the contradictory manner of a British politician doing exactly the opposite of what he promised before he was elected, but, as it is with politicians, memory rarely recognises the virtue of fidelity, so that being unfaithful to one season whilst embracing quite another suggests an equal portion of love for those devoutly courted in the past and for those with whom contentment brightens life at present, permitting you to pick and choose as and when and how you choose with self-proclaimed impunity.

Thus it is, without further, if any, considered apology, unless to make allowances for the damp condition in which you find your fireworks, that a perverse pleasure falls to me to introduce to you an unseasonal series of photographs that recollect a winter’s day in and around Polessk, a Kaliningrad regional town, which, long ago in German times, was known by the name of Labiau, with one or two appended photos taken somewhere else but on that same petrified day and not so dreadfully far away as to make my inclusion of them beyond the remit of my title.

Polessk and thereabouts

On the Polessk Canal Road to Matrosovo
WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement Polessk Kaliningrad
Restoring the Polessk Brewery in the Kaliningrad Region
The Natural Beauty of the Baltic Coast Kaliningrad
Support the Restoration of Zalivinio Lighthouse Kaliningrad

Polessk in Winter

Polessk, ice-bound river and canal (4 March 2026)

Russian gent in a brown coat walking on the frozen surface of the Deyma River carrying two bags.
Russian chap ice-fishing seated on the intersection between the Deyma River and Polessk Canal with
a row of colourful boat houses along the shore in the background.
Frozen Deyma River in Polessk, Russia, with tire tracks on the ice, reeds along the banks, clear blue sky, distant people sitting on the ice far ahead.

Eagle Bridge

Mick Hart in a black jacket and knit hat leaning on the red railing of Eagle Bridge, Polessk, beside a heavily frozen river.

Curonian Lagoon, Frozen

Olga Hart in a red hat stands on large rocks along a snow-covered and frozen Curonian Lagoon at sunset.
Is it Batman? No, It’s Olga Hart standing on a bolder in the frozen Curonian Lagoon silhouetted against a huge surreal twilight sun.

On your bike! It’s the Phantom Cyclist!

Life-size scarecrow figure with a pale mask and red helmet, holding a bicycle wheel, standing in a yard by a metal fence in Zalivino, Russia.

The Ponart Brewery Beer Shop

Entrance to Polessk Ponart Beer shop. A black sign in white lettering above a glass display window and white door; tiled steps and metal railings.
Shop sign with large white stylised lettering on a black background above a glass door. The sign includes the word 'Ponarth' and a year '2015' on the left. It is the Polessk Ponart beer shop.
Corner store on a grey, three-storey building with a blue awning, along a brick sidewalk and quiet street. Two satellite dishes are mounted on the side of the building.

👉👉👉👉👉👉👉Ponart Brewery in the Strange Case of Creation

Mick Hart in a black jacket and knit hat stands at a bar, holding a bottle of drink, his nuts in front of him; chalkboard menus glow in the background.

Copyright © 2018-2026 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Otradoye, Georgenswalde, Water Tower, red-brick Gothic

Water Tower Otradnoye (Georgenswalde) is outstanding

A water tower cast in the image of a Gothic castle

11 June 2026 – Water Tower Otradnoye (Georgenswalde) is outstanding

Among the Kaliningrad region’s many examples of red-brick Gothic architecture, water towers are an interesting group. Towers in a broader architectural context are one of Gothic’s principal aesthetics. It is these that best achieve the soaring vertical and steep perpendicularity by which structures in this genre, be they standalone or an integral part of more complex compositions, are canonically determined.

The Kaliningrad region’s water towers, whilst sharing design characteristics of a fundamental nature, are, when considered on a one-to-one basis, by no means indistinct.

Each tower is engendered with structural and stylistic traits that lift them out of rigid conformity.

Water Tower Otradnoye (Georgenswalde): a functional folly

K. Fischer’s Otradnoye (formerly Georgenswalde) tower is of a standard rectangular tapering build, with a four-section, snow-arresting flanged-metal triangular roof. Elevated to a height of approximately 147 feet, the mediaeval replica exhibits typical red-brick Gothic elements but with distinct and personalised variants, such as, in its mid-section, lancet-inspired indentations which, although they are tall and narrow, are capped with rounded ends and used to produce a sunken frame in which to display conforming windows arranged in a vertical sequence. Other arrangements of note include a recessed crenellated frieze, a triangular pediment with matching corner buttresses, cement-rendered horizontal bands which divide the building into vertical sections, blind niches of different dimensions, and deep, stepped-back door alcoves typically arched but wide in form.

As with many civic buildings of this type and of this period, the overall exotic impression borrows for its impact from romanticised notions of picturesque castles, bold and grand in stature, whilst concealing behind its fortified mask a utilitarian purpose which, at the time of its inauguration, was rarely excelled in practicality and, in contradiction to its appearance, more modern and useful in application.

K. Fischer’s Georgenswalde tower is a prominent local landmark in the Soviet-renamed coastal town Otradnoye. Its historical and architectural value is reflected in its official status as a protected cultural heritage monument.

👉👉👉👉 Villa Gretchen in Otradnoye
👉👉👉👉 Otradnoye, Kaliningrad: a little gem on the Baltic Coast

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