Published: 3 July 2022 ~ Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions
With Lithuania threatening to blockade Kaliningrad by restricting transit of goods from mainland Russia by train, the Latvian Interior Minister gleefully announcing that this proved that the West was poised to ‘take Kaliningrad away from Russia’1 and the Prime Minister of Poland making so much noise that it is difficult to tell whether it is his sabre rattling, his teeth chattering or something else knocking together, it looked as though once again the storm clouds had begun to gather over the former region of the Teutonic Order.
I cannot say with any semblance of sincerity that, as the shadow slowly dispersed, the Kaliningrad populace breathed a sigh of relief for, quite frankly, and with no flippancy intended but wanting as always to tell it how it is, nobody ~ at least nobody that I am acquainted with ~ seemed to give a fig.
You can put it down to whatever you like: the Russian penchant for c’est la vie, faith in themselves and their country, a growing immunity to the West’s mouth and trousers or perhaps the absence of a corporate media that makes its fortune by pedalling fear. But whatever you ascribe it to, if the residents of Kaliningrad were supposed to feel afraid, it didn’t happen.
Perhaps it was because we were all too busy laughing at Boris Johnson’s jokes, the ones about the situation in Ukraine never occurring had Vladimir Putin been a woman, which, Boris woked, was “the perfect example of toxic masculinity’ (By the way, what is the definition of non-toxic masculinity? Is it where you rove around without your pants on having painted your gonads rainbow colours? Or when go into hiding like President Turdeau whenever you hear a trucker’s horn?) and his suggestion at the G7 Summit that the leaders of the ‘free’ world (free with every packet of neoliberal dictatorship) should take off their clothes to equal the manliness of Vladimir Putin, to which Mr Putin replied, and I think this is something we can all agree on, “I don’t know how they wanted to undress, waist-high or not, but I think it would be a disgusting sight either way.”2 Er, I assume that Boris was joking ~ wasn’t he? ~ and joking on both accounts?
Alack-a-day if he wasn’t, they just might be some of the most stupid things he has ever said. That’s a close call, because occasionally, but very seldomly and most likely accidentally, Boris can say things that make some sense, not much and not often, but it does happen, which is more than can be said for anyone in the Labour party ~ or about any and all of their supporters. But you must admit, Boris, that the things you are blurting out of late do have a rather silly public schoolboy wheeze about them. Were you the President of the United States at least you could plead senility or, failing that, insanity. But beware! Keep on behaving like this and you’ll make yourself the perfect candidate for filling Biden’s boots when Biden’s booted out.
I suppose we should all just take a step backwards and feel thankful that in the pre-bender-gender days of Winston Churchill, the great man himself was endowed with more than his fair share of so-called ‘toxic masculinity’, had he not been, we’d all be speaking German now. Mein Gott!
We don’t. And the storm over Kaliningrad and the storm in a teacup, the G7 Summit, both failed in their endeavours.
Actually, I have been rather parsimonious with the truth, I mean about the storm in Kaliningrad. It did break and when it did, it surprised everyone. After a glorious week of sun, sand and sea weather, Kaliningrad and its region were suddenly plunged into the most frightful and persistent series of electric storms that I have ever experienced.
For three days and nights, the firmament’s guts growled, sheets of livid light flashed across the sky, and lying there in bed listening to it, as we didn’t have much choice, it was easy to imagine that the entire world was forked ~ forked with lightning!
Olga was in a right old tizz. To her it was a celestial sign, a sign that her tarot-card readers and crystal-ball gazers, whose predictions she believes implicitly and to whom she refers collectively as the esoterics, and whom I call snake-oil salesmen, had got it right: change was in the air, tumultuous change. This was the start, the new beginning, the tip of the dawn of a different world. As strange as it may seem, Gin-Ginsky our cat did not appear to have any opinion on it at all, or, if he did, he was saying nothing. He is a very diplomatic cat. He might also be a very crafty cat.
Considering him to be a little less slim than he used to be, Olga recently changed his food to a product branded ‘Food for Fat Cats’. This and the use of the word ‘light’ on the packet obviously implying dietary benefit. Our cat Ginger loves it. He scoffs it twice as fast as his usual food and in ever-increasing quantities. Every now and again he will look up from his bowl between mouth fulls and fix you with his ginger eyes as if to say, “I’ll show you!” Perhaps, the ‘Food for Fat Cats’ tag line is meant to read ‘Food to make cats fatter’? I must remember to warn him, if he ever attends a G7 Summit, not to take his shirt off!
Those of you who in the West, especially those of you who changed your avatars and are now ashamed you did so (but will never admit to it!), are dying to hear, I know, how badly the sanctions are biting here in Kaliningrad. That’s why I mentioned the cat: he’s biting his grub. But I would be Boris Johnson should I say that the price of cat’s grub has not gone up. But what other things have gone up (ooerr Mrs!), or are we all eating cheaper brands of cat food?
I know that an interest in this exists because lately a lot of people have been tuning into my post Panic Buying Shelves Empty. I can only presume that this is down to Brits kerb-crawling the net in search of hopeful signs that western sanctions are starting to bite. In a couple of instances, we, like our cat, are biting into different brand-named foods than those we used to sink our gnashers into, the reason being, I suppose, because the brands that we used to buy belong to manufacturers who have been forced into playing Biden’s spite-your-nose game: Exodus & Lose Your Money. Also, in some food categories, price increases have been noted. Pheew, what a relief. If these concessions did not exist then the whole sanctions escapade would be more embarrassing than it already is for leaders of western countries who are ruining their own economies by having introduced them.
Were we talking about beer? Well, we are now. Some beer brands are absent, although the earlier gaps in shelves have since been filled with different brands from different companies and from different parts of the world. Those that are not the victims of sanctimonies, which is to say those that still remain, do reflect a hike in price, but as prices fluctuate wildly here at the best of times it is simply a matter of shopping around as usual.
So, there you have it. Not from the bought and paid for UK corporate media and their agenda-led moguls but from a sanctioned Englishman living in Kaliningrad, Russia, who is willing to swear on a stack of real-ale casks, honestly, one hand on heart and the other on his beer glass, that life in Kaliningrad under threat and sanctions has changed so little as to be negligibly different to life as it was in the days of pre-sanctioned Kaliningrad.
If I have disappointed your expectations, I’m sorry.
Note: Many thanks to Mr … er, I think his name was Mr Sober, who wrote to inform me that the bottle photographs originally included in this post bore no connection whatsoever to the beer that I was writing about. What better recommendation for Lidskae Staryi Zamak beer could you ask for!
Needing an excuse to drink beer is not an affliction from which I personally suffer, but with all these articles in the UK media obsessing on the possibility of WWIII and nuclear strikes, I thought it would be prudent of me to take cover in my local shop and dodging incoming sanctions come out with a bottle of beer, or two.
Leonard Cohen named his valedictory album, You want it darker. But I didn’t. I was looking for a light beer, which is to say a light-in-colour beer. The strength was of no importance, but I did want something with taste.
Having enjoyed the Belarus-brewed beer Lidskae Aksamitnae, I opted to try the light version, Lidskae Staryi Zamak. If I had wanted a strong beer, I would not have been disappointed, as Staryi Zamak weighs in at an impressive 6.2%, which is higher in alcohol content than its ‘black as the ace of spades’ brother.
They tell me that this is a bottom fermenting beer, which could mean different things to different people, but for beer afficionados and brewing types, this information has important implications, which neither you nor I will dwell on because we are far too busy taking off the bottle top and smelling.
“Hello, is that Nose?”
“Hello, Nose here.”
“Tell me Nose, what do you detect?”
“Beer!”
“Yes, well, that’s a good start. Anything else?”
“It’s pungent …”
“Still talking about the beer?”
“Yes. No, wait a minute, it’s grainy; yes, definitely grainy. No, hold hard, its … it’s fragrant, a teeny-weeny bit fragrant … Oh, what a to do! It’s so hard to smell anything with the wokist stench of fear rising from Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter …”
“What’s that, Nose. You’re cracking up. Did you say musky or melon?”
“Bottom fermenting …”
“We’ve done that one. I know, what about all three?”
“Ay?”
“Pungent, grainy and fragrant?”
“If you like. But he’s still a transphobe!”
Hmm, must be a liberal-left nose.
We won’t ask liberal-left tongue about taste. It will be far too busy in the coming weeks now that Elon Musk is taking over Twatter.
Lidskae Staryi Zamak Beer
To recap: here we have a 6.2% pale-straw coloured, bottom-fermenting lager, with a pungent, grainy, fragrant liberal-left nose.
Moving on to taste, all these things are present (except the liberal left, thank heavens). Lidskae Staryi Zamak is an interesting blend of flavours, sweet and bitter at one and the same time but rhapsodically blended with no ragged edges. The finish is light and hoppy, although the aftertaste becomes, owing no doubt to the strength, substantial, not heavy exactly but mature and rounded ~ shaped largely like most women after they’ve gone through the menopause.
Corsets nice to drink with food, but have you noticed how irritating some beer reviewers can be in this respect? It’s all very well to say that this beer or that beer goes well with whole roasted peacock, stuffed venison and absent McDonald’s but unless you are Henry the Eighth such lightweight delicacies may not be at hand (which is especially true of McDonald’s). I’ll settle for saying that you won’t go far wrong with a big bag of nuts, a packet of flavoured crisps and a bowl of olives.
Lidskae Staryi Zamak, not to be confused with You Big Hairy Wassock, which is a beer that is drunk in the North of England whilst wearing a pigeon and fancying flat caps (latterly scarves more likely), is a good strong and full-bodied beer but not so overpowering that it does not possess the potential to bring out the best in good-flavoured foods and selected piquant snacks.
Lidskae Staryi Zamak Beer
I like this beer as much if not more than I liked its black sister (or was that it’s black brother?), Lidskae Aksamitnae. I enjoyed it. It clung to the glass, as I did, and after a couple of bottles I also clung to the stair rail.
I was head over heels, with delight that is, which is a big improvement, I’m sure you’ll agree, on the alternative arse over head. And the overheads are by no means bad at 197 a bottle (we are talking payment in roubles, of course!).
😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS Name of Beer: Lidskae Staryi Zamak Brewer: Leedska piva Where it is brewed: Lida, Belarus Bottle capacity: 1.5 litre Strength: 6.2% Price: It cost me about 197 roubles (2.20 pence) [at time of writing!] Appearance: Pale Aroma: Subtle mix of grain and herbs Taste: Full bodied, rounded Fizz amplitude: 3/10 Label/Marketing: Traditional Would you buy it again? I am quite sure I will Marks out of 10: 8
*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.
Western Snactions turn McDonald’s in Russia into Vkusno i tochka
Published: 22 June 2022 ~ McDonald’s restaurants in Russia reopen under new name
Whilst the UK media hovers indecisively over what to replace its run of good fortune with, as interest in and editorial enthusiasm wanes for Ukraine ~ in the past two weeks there has been a flitting back and forth from woke stories about schools no longer allowing boys to wear skirts (have I got that wrong?) and hopes that a new strain of coronavirus may see the swift return of lockdowns, masks and vaccinations ~ Russia has been celebrating the replacement of the McDonald’s chain of restaurants with the inauguration of its home-grown version.
🍔McDonald’s, which had been selling burgers in Russia for more than 30 years, switched off its friers and suspended its business shortly after the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine before griddling off into the sunset. For some, the loss of McDonald’s in Russia was palpable.
Speaking entirely for myself, McDonald’s, or rather the fanfare that surrounds McDonald’s, has always been a mystery to me. In my day, old McDonald had a farm, not a burger bar. Or was that McDonald’s father?🍔🍔You probably won’t believe this but until the launch of Russia’s McDonald’s and the publicity it has generated, I had no idea what a powerhouse of Americanism McDonald’s was. To me it was up there, or down there, depending upon your point of view, with Wimpy, KFC, Little Chef, Burger King and the rest, all lumped together under the ‘frie’s’ umbrella, poor colonial-cousin substitutes for good old English chips and the good old English chip shops via which they are purveyed. Give me a portion of proper, thick-cut, chunky English chips any day than those itty-bitty American fries, that was my motto! In fact, it was the word ‘fries’ that actually did it for me in the sense of not doing it for me at all. Nothing in the world of fried foods, especially chips, has ever been the same since my brother rebranded chips and by extension British cafes with the decidedly unflattering nom de guerre ‘fatty fries’. However, as a patriot, resolutely opposed to continental affectations in all walks of English life, especially the realm of grub, words in fancy dress such as the now ubiquitous ‘French fries’ are pure anathema to me.
Another reason for avoiding McDiddles was possibly my conversion at a relatively early age to vegetarianism and a delicate constitution in the guts department. Given these two influential factors you can probably understand how blown-up images of Big Macs and Triple Cheeseburgers with an extra portion of fries on the side and a generous helping of onion rings had me longing for a lettuce leaf and reaching for the Gaviscon.
My apologies to die-hard McDonald’s fans:
*From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were—I have not seen As others saw—I could not bring My passions from a common spring—
*Edgar Allan Poe’s Alone (How much more Alone would he have felt had McDonald’s existed in his time and then like life itself ceased to be?)
With McDonald’s exit stage west, you would have thought that here was the perfect opportunity for Russia to turn off Americanisation and surge ahead with a nationwide chain of resturants selling wholesome, healthy, traditional Russian nosh. Obviously, there is no such thing in Russia as McDonald’s-phobia.
Conversely, a Russian equivalent of McDonald’s working in the West would have been tarred and feathered by now, which rather proves the point that there really is no Russian analogue to the West’s anti-Russian hysteria.
McDonald’s restaurants in Russia reopen under new name
In the absence of a McDonald’s phobia and facetiousness aside, I do understand both the historical and symbolic significance to Russia of the McDonald’s take-over.
When the first McDonald’s restaurant opened in Moscow on 31 January 1990, for some it must have seemed like the ultimate stamp of the American invasion but to others, to a new, western-enthused generation, it must have embodied the hopes if not of a brand-new beginning, then at least of a new Brand-named beginning.
What I did not know was that the first McDonald’s restaurant which opened in Pushkinskaya Square (Bolshaya Bronnaya Street, 29) Moscow in early 1990 lays claim to being the most frequented McDonald’s restaurant in the world. It is said that in its 30 years of existence it catered literally for more than 140 million patrons1.
Whilst the McDonald’s empire is a hegemonic feat of fast-foot globalism, the ability to fill its big Yankee boots in a few short weeks is a success story in its own right. It is little short of amazing that they, a consortium consisting of the Moscow government, federal authorities and the business community1, managed to take on the abandoned McDonald’s empire, rebrand, refit, restructure and rescue it in the time it would take for me to say, could I have a veggie burger please?
The 850 former McDonald’s outlets spanning 62 regions of Russia will open at a pace of 50~80 restaurants a week under the new Russian name of Vkusno i tochka (‘Tasty and that’s it’ or ‘Delicious full stop’), says the new owner, Alexander Govor2. A timely intevention that will not only re-establish the fast-food market in Russia and navigate its new course but also secure employment for thousands of people across the country.
When you take into consideration that the special military operation in Ukraine commenced a few weeks ago, on 24 February 2022, during which period the West has subjected Russia to economic warfare on an unprecedented scale, the transformation of a moribund McDonald’s into the rebranded Vkusno i tochka stands in testimony to the resourcefulness, resilience and ability to endure, which Russia as a nation has adroitely exhibited throughout its challenging history.
In stark contrast, I think it will be a long time if possibly not an eternity before I can procure equivalent success in the UK with Mick Hart’s McBorschkee’s chain of restaurants. Until then, its back to peeling spuds and heating lard for the chip van.
Published: 16 June 2022 ~ What makes Kaliningrad Flea Market a Junk Buyers paradise?
In 2000, the first time I set foot on Kaliningrad soil ~ a giant step for a man who had never been to Russia before ~ one of the major attractions very quickly became the city’s flea market or junk market, as we like to call it.
The junk market was located at the side of Kaliningrad’s central market, a monolithic and cavernous complex consisting of all kinds of exciting combinations of traditional stalls, units and multi-layered shops, selling everything from fruit and veg to jewellery.
In those days, to get to the market we would cut around the back of Lenin’s statute, which occupied the place where the Orthodox cathedral stands today (irony), and making our way along a make-shift pavement of boards raised on pallets, often treacherously slippery as winter approached, we’d pass amidst the wagon train of covered craft-sellers’ stalls, trek across the city’s bus park and on the last leg of the journey sidle off down a long, wide alley with rattling tin on one side and a towering building on the other. I have no idea why, as I was often in Kaliningrad during the sunny seasons, but my abiding memory of walking along that alley was that it sucked wind down it like the last gasp of breath and was always wet and raining.
Another ‘in those days’ was that the junk market extended along the side of the road which is now a pedestrianised space between buildings ancient and modern and the latest super monolithic shopping centre. Dealers could be found in an old yard opposite, plying their trade from a shanty town of stalls, all higgledy-piggledy and cobbled together, whilst public sellers set up shop on a narrow sloping scar of land, a grass verge worn down by years of junk-seller hopefuls.
In our militaria dealing and 1940s’ re-enactment hey days, we bought twenty pairs of sapagee (high leather and canvas military boots) from a bloke stalled out on this piece of ground over several consecutive days. We also bought Soviet military belts from him, the ones that he was wearing. On the last day of purchasing, we would have had his belt again had he more to sell, but all he had left by the time we were through was a piece of knotted string to keep his trousers up.
When we left Russia at the end of a month’s visit, this was in 2004, the border personnel searched our vehicle, and on finding twenty pairs of old Soviet boots, rolled up, tied down with string and stashed in bin liners, sniggered to themselves. But we had the last laugh. We hadn’t sneaked off with an icon, but boots at one quid a pair that could be sold in the UK to re-enactors and members of living history groups at £35 or more a pop was lubbly jubbly. Whilst we wouldn’t get rich on the proceeds, it would certainly offset the cost of our trip. It shames me to recall, comrade, what a despicable capitalist I once was.
When I first came to Kaliningrad (2000) I was buying stuff mainly for myself but as I turned dealer, as most collectors are obliged to do to reclaim the space they live in, I did what all collectors do when the fear of decluttering wakes them from their slumbers in a cold sweat, I went out looking for more things to clutter with, the justification being that I was no longer buying it for myself but selling it on for profit. Believe you me, sooner or later (usually later) every junk hoarder reaches this critical stage of consciousness, when they finally have to admit that buying old stuff is more than a compulsion it is in fact a disease. After confession, however, comes absolution and, like all professional sinners, hoarders quickly learn that regular confession and regular sin go hand-in-hand together.Thus, wherever we travelled the story was always the same ~ be it Lithuania, Latvia, Poland or Ukraine ~ junk markets and antique shops loomed large upon the itinerary.
What makes Kaliningrad Flea Market a Junk Buyers’ paradise?
Be it ever so difficult for the likes of us to understand, but old stuff is not everybody’s cup of tea, and the first victims of the development and progressive gentrification of Kaliningrad’s market area were the junk sellers. Speaking euphemistically, they were ‘politely asked to move on’.
I must admit (there you go, I am at it again, confessing!) that when I discovered they had gone, I was truly mortified: new shops, block-paved and tree-inset pedestrian-only streets and a face lift that no amount of Botox or plastic surgery could replicate is all very nice, but oh, what had become of the junk!?
As it happened there was no cause for alarm. All I needed to do was go around the bend, something that I am known to be good at, and there it was, as plain as the specs (the vintage specs) on your nose.
The precise location of the junk market was ~ I use the term ‘was’ because rumour has it that the purveyors of indispensable high-quality items and second-hand recyclables may be moved on again to make way for more civic tarting ~ parallel to the road at the side of the fort opposite the central market, thereupon extending at a right angle along a tree-settled and sometimes muddy embankment that follows the remnant of Königsberg’s moat.
The better-quality items ~ militaria and Königsberg relics ~ are generally to be found on the stalls that line both sides of the pavement. Here you can discover gems, although not necessarily or even regularly at prices to suit your pocket.
The pavement-side sellers are mainly traders, people ‘in the know’, who are hoping to get at least market rate for their wares or substantially more, if they can wangle it.
Experience has taught me that in dealing with these chaps movement on prices is not unachievable, but don’t expect the sort of discounts that are possible to negotiate at UK vintage and boot fairs. Sellers in Kaliningrad are skilled in the art of bargaining ~ seemingly absolute in their conviction that if you don’t want it at the quoted price some German tourist will.
A busy Saturday at Kaliningrad Flea Market
If you are after military items, especially those that relate to WWII and Königsberg’s German past, then it is along this stretch of pavement where you will most likely encounter them. Badges, military dog-tags and Third Reich medals are quite prolific, as is cutlery, ceramics and fragments of ceramics backstamped with the symbols and insignia of the time.
Although, given Kaliningrad’s German heritage and the fierce battles fought here during WWII, you would reasonably expect to find a preponderance of genuine military relics, as anyone who collects Third Reich memorabilia and/or deals in this field will tell you, counterfeit and reproductions abound. Memorabilia, both military and civilian, bearing ideological runes attained collectable status almost before WWII ended, and a thriving market in good quality reproduction items to service this growing interest emerged as early as the late 1940s.
Party badges, military decorations, particularly of the higher orders and those associated with the SS, are difficult to distinguish from the real McCoy since many were struck from the same dies or moulds used to create the originals.
The rule of thumb when hunting out Third Reich bargains from dealers’ stock is that you are less likely to get a bargain than to experience a hard bargain, as the pieces that dealers have acquired will almost certainly have been exhaustively studied and meticulously researched but, if you are tempted to buy, pay attention to the item’s appearance. Remember that genuine military items dating to the Second World War are now in their dotage ~ 70-years-plus ~ and, just like ‘mature’ people, will generally exhibit signs of age-related wear and tear and sundry other defects from natural use and handling.
The other thing to watch out for is a proliferation of similar items at any one time. When in the UK I was a regular attendee at the Bedford Arms Fair, then held in the now demolished Bunyan Sports Centre, you could guarantee that each year there would be a ‘bumper crop’ of one category of Third Reich memorabilia or another. What an alarm bell that is! For example, one year almost every other dealer had German army dress daggers, all sharing the same mint condition; another year it was flags, which looked and smelt the part ~old ~ but whose labels did neither. Caveat emptor!
When I buy German items these days I do so mainly for nostalgic reasons, not to sell on, and because it is the historic not monetary value that attracts me, I am content to purchase military decorations, party badges and so on that have been dug up. Naturally, the condition of such items range from considerably less than pristine to battered, biffed, corroded and poor, but as such they are more likely to be the genuine articles than their ‘remarkably well-preserved’ counterparts and, moreover, you can get them at a price that will not break your brother’s piggy bank (is that another confession?).
It should come up nicely with a light polish …
The same can be said for architectural pieces such as enamel and metal signs that are Königsberg in origin. Enamel signs, advertising, military, street plaques, whatever, are a personal favourite of mine, since they make excellent and historically evocative wall-mounted additions to any thoughtful home design. In purchasing these, the same rule applies: signs of any type and description will in most cases have been used; they will have hung on walls in both internal and external situations, and wherever they were and whatever they are they will demonstrate commensurable signs of age.
In the past four decades, as original signs, especially enamel ones, have grown in popularity and correspondingly price, various retro companies have been successfully plugging the gap in an escalating market and meeting demand with repro goods. Some of these shout repro at you from a telescopic distance, but as techniques in ageing have evolved it can often be hard at first glance, and even several glances or more and even if you study them, to separate the wheat from the chaff, particularly when your impulsiveness has knocked caution quite unconscious. And it is not only signs that have been skillfully ‘got at’. I recall a ‘19th century’ ship’s wheel turning up at our local auction house in Bedford that was so well aged and distressed that had it not been so convincing you could easily have talked yourself into believing that it was the genuine article.
This is what to look out for: Signs that are ‘uniformly’ aged or show wear and tear in the places where you would most expect to find them but not to the extent that it dissuades you from making a purchase are to be put on the suspect list. The last thing you want, after years of gazing lovingly at the antique sign in your home, thinking to yourself this was once on a shop front in Königsberg, long imagining how eyes like yours lost in time and to memory alighted on it as yours do now, is to learn that your treasured piece of history was made in China a week before you purchased it.
Original German/Königsberg signs(photo taken Victor Ryabin Studio, c.2010)
Anything to be had forming a direct link to Königsberg can only be irresistible, not just signs but home appliances, kitchen ware, tea sets, ornaments, furniture, garden tools, anything in fact, especially when that anything bears irrefutable provenance in the form of a maker’s mark. Metalware and ceramics embossed or printed with commercial references, ie references to specific brands or retail outlets, are desirable collectors’ pieces. Old ashtrays, which come in all sorts of inventive shapes and sizes, are top whack in this category. Many are chipped and cracked, but even so still command high prices, and as for the best examples, which are usually in the hands of dealers, after you have exclaimed “How much!” in those same hands they may well remain.
For a less expensive and in-profusion alternative, you could do far worse than plump for bottles. Bottle bygones are dug up in their hundreds, possibly thousands, in Kaliningrad and across the region, but as there are as many different shapes, sizes and hues as there is quantity, it is not unreasonable to discover rare, curious and even exquisite bottles rubbing shoulders with the more mundane.
In the UK, old bottles from the end of the 19th century to the 1960s are as cheap as chips (used to be, before the West sanctioned itself), but Kaliningrad is not the UK, so don’t expect to get bargains on a par. The trade here adjusts the market price according to the needs and instincts of German visitors, many of whom are easily swayed to part with more money than they seem to have sense for a fragment of their forbears’ past. But “Ahh,” I hear you say, ‘what price, philistine, can you put on nostalgia?’ Must I confess again?
I have been known to part with as much as ten quid for an interesting and unusual bottle when it has caught my fancy, but this kind of impetuosity acts in defiance of common sense. If you haven’t got the bottle to part with that much, and you shouldn’t have (Frank Zappa: ‘How could I be such a fool!’), when visiting Kaliningrad’s ‘flea market’, turn 90 degrees from the pavement and head off along the well-worn and sometimes muddy embankment, where you will find bottles and a vast range of all sorts, spread out on blankets, perched on top of little tables and even hanging in the trees from mainly domestic sellers.
I have bought all sorts of things from this part of the market that I never knew I did not need, not to mention clothes that I have not worn and would never wear. For example, I was once obliged to buy an old tin bucket, and I would not dream of wearing it. It’s far too nice a bucket to use as a bucket should be used; so, it sits at home in our dacha full of things that one day I may go looking for but will never think of looking for them there. It’s the sort of bucket that dealers like I typically find in house clearances ~ a bucket of flotsam and jetsam left behind by the owner when he up and decided to die; a bucket of odds and ends destined to take up valuable space; the accidental contents of which having no value at all, I would never be able to give away let alone turn a penny on. I sometimes wonder if this is not the only reason why people fill their houses and barns with junk, viz to make more work for those poor sods whose job it is to clear them after they, the owners, kick the bucket. And what a lovely bucket, my bucket is!
Now, where was I? Ahh, yes wandering around on the bank mesmerised by matter.
As I said at the outset of this post, Kaliningrad’s ‘collectors’ market’ is on the move again. Don’t quote me on this! As Elvis Costello said, it could be ‘just a rumour that was spread around town’, but its veracity is tied to the echo that the strip of wooded embankment roaming along by the side of the Königsberg fort may soon be hosting its last tin bucket. There is a whisper of reincarnation and the rustle of leaves in a public park.
Likewise, I am not 100% certain where this cornucopia of memories, the junk market, is bound, although the wind in my tin bucket tells me that it may be somewhere not too far removed from the city’s botanical gardens.
To be perfectly honest with you (another confession may soon be required), I really harbour no desire to know the next location of Kaliningrad’s junk market ~ what the eye doesn’t see the heart won’t pine after. Thus, the next time that I wake up there handing over my roubles, I won’t be able to blame myself for going there deliberately and for buying things on purpose. Take a leaf out of my well-thumbed book: never leave chance to anything else but intention ~ you can always confess in the fulness of time.
Updated: 22 March 2023| First Published: 12 April 2022 ~ Eastward Expansion of the West the Real Reasons? {Regularly updated}
Introduction
A daily brief, updated whenever I feel like it, providing links to news that you won’t see much of, if anything, in the UK about the US-UK confederacy and what it is up to and why on Russia’s borders.
Here you will find links to Russian news sources, commentators’ comments, snippets, video links, embeds and random musings updated on a daily basis but mostly not always.
Please feel free to share the links, embeds etc that appear in this post with your friends and colleagues as an antidote to excessive amounts of suspect UK downstream media. Like the vaccine, I suggest that you come back regularly for a series of boosters as long as your arm.
Keep the Faith and remember the maxim: The Truth Will Out in the End!! ~ Mr History
Quote> “The diplomat [Polish Ambassador to France Jan Emeryk Rosciszewski] is convinced that the Ukrainian crisis is a battle for the basic values and culture of the West, which is why “it is so important to win.” Comment> The inverse thus naturally follows that the Ukrainian crisis is a battle for the basic values and culture of Russia, which is why “it is so important to win.”https://ria.ru/20230319/polsha-1858972477.html?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop
Quote> “Twitter users criticized the head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, who said earlier that the European Union will make every effort to reduce the military potential of Russia.” Quote> “Help EU states to become prosperous again instead of spending our money on Ukraine and fomenting conflict,” wrote a Twitter user. Ursula von der Leyen criticized for saying about Russia’s military capabilities – MK
Quote> “There was no response from the Western ‘peacekeepers’ to Putin’s accusations against the West that the supply of weapons to Ukraine is inflaming the conflict, turning it from local to global, they preferred to remain silent.” https://regnum.ru/news/polit/3782811.html
The reason for the special operation in Ukraine was not the imperial ambitions of Vladimir Putin, but the attempts of Western countries to drive Russia into a corner by expanding NATO, political scientist John Mearsheimer said in an interview with the American magazine, The New Yorker. In the US, the main myth about Putin was dispelled – RIA Novosti, 20.11.2022
Comment [Mortimer, RT News article] > The world seems to be at an inflection point, like when a curve changes direction. So many formerly rock solid countries seem to be fragile and on the verge of collapse. The USA, most of the EU, and Israel – always fragile, is looking shaky as well. This feels like just before the fall of the Soviet Union, but this time it is the west’s turn. https://www.rt.com/news/564839-medvedev-warning-israel-ukraine-weapons/
Quote (Vladimir Putin)> “The West is ready to cross every line to preserve the neo-colonial system which allows it to live off the world, to plunder it thanks to the domination of the dollar and technology, to collect an actual tribute from humanity, to extract its primary source of unearned prosperity, the rent paid to the hegemon. The preservation of this annuity is their main, real and absolutely self-serving motivation. This is why total de-sovereignisation is in their interest. This explains their aggression towards independent states, traditional values and authentic cultures, their attempts to undermine international and integration processes, new global currencies and technological development centres they cannot control. It is critically important for them to force all countries to surrender their sovereignty to the United States.” https://www.rt.com/russia/563827-putin-speech-colonial-west/
Headine> Russia has dismissed any Nord Stream leak accusations against them as ‘stupid’
Quote> Accusations have flown across Europe and the world following the leaks, with Ukraine arguing Russia is to blame. Moscow dismissed the accusation on Wednesday.
“It’s quite predictable and also predictably stupid to give voice to these kinds of narratives — predictably stupid and absurd,” Peskov said. “This is a big problem for us because, firstly, both lines of Nord Stream 2 are filled with gas — the entire system is ready to pump gas and the gas is very expensive … Now the gas is flying off into the air. Are we interested in that? No, we are not, we have lost a route for gas supplies to Europe,”
Biden’s neoliberal administration is bringing the world closer than it has ever been to nuclear conflict. Tucker Carlson of Fox News nails the West’s insanity, noting that the United States could, if it wanted to, bring the conflict in Ukraine to a peaceful resolutionalmost overnight, but …
Quote> ‘Should the Donbass regions declare themselves as part of the territory of Russia, attacks upon them by Ukraine (as has been the case since 2014) would then be classed as attacks upon Russia. That carries far more serious repercussions in terms of the Russian constitutional statements about its ability to protect itself.’ Quote> ‘The implications are extremely serious. Russia has written into its constitution that the use of heavy and potentially nuclear weaponry is permissible should it need to defend itself. That will become clear should the Donbass regions declare independence and decide to align with Russia rather than Ukraine. At this point the opinion of the West ceases to matter. Ukraine attacks, especially those supported by Western provided military will be seen as acts of war which then permit the use of weapons of mass destruction.’ https://www.russia-briefing.com/news/russia-on-the-brink-of-war.html/
Comment in RT article by reader ‘Shivermetimbers’ “The west is again at it mincing and spinning Russia’s nuclear doctrine. Russia has repeatedly stated that they’ll use any means to their disposal if and only if she is under threat of losing it’s identity as a state under pressure from western forces. Meaning they’ll not put their hands up in case US/NATO seem poised to win a conventional war against it and violate Russian territory or place Russian troops under pressure.”
Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer
Comment> Looks like Daily Mail readers are a few jumps ahead of their liberal counterparts in their assessment of what people want from their politicians, ie putting their country and their people first! Elementary my dear Truss
Medvedev quote re Truss > “She will quarrel with everyone, fail everything and leave in disgrace, like her predecessor, shaggy Boriska. Well, in Britain, famous for its traditions, it seems that another one is appearing,” Medvedev concluded.” 🤣
‘According to Medvedev, the “new prime minister” Truss is an incompetent and mediocre Russophobe who has no elementary ideas about politics, but wants to defeat Russia in everything. In addition, according to the deputy chairman of the Security Council, the new head of government “mows” under Margaret Thatcher- the first woman to hold this post in the UK – but does not have her abilities, and also intends to overcome the energy crisis and food inflation, which became the consequences of her own “delusional sanctions exercises”. < https://lenta-ru.translate.goog/news/2022/09/07/feminitiv/?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
Oh dear, the inevitable has happened, the UK has been Trussed!
Headline> What’s wrong with politicians in the West?
Quote> Professor Chossudovsky notes that Western politicians are quite capable of taking a fatal step for the planet, because [their ignorance and stupidity are] controlled by money.
As an example of a politician of a narrow-mind, the author of the article cites the head of the British Foreign Office, Liz Truss , who said that, if she becomes prime minister, she would not hesitate to give the order to use nuclear weapons .
Claims that Russia has been sanctioned by the world appear to be 85% short of the truth, with only the ‘world’ as defined by the neoliberal globalist collective participating.
RAND advises the US and its allies about the explosive situation on Russia’s borders and its need to proceed with caution and diplomacy. Quote> “RAND risk analysts note that Russia today has more than enough reasons to think of NATO as an aggressor. In response to this, the West will receive preventive strikes from the Russian Federation – and to say that this will be unjustified Russian aggression will no longer work.” https://military-pravda-ru.translate.goog/news/1731238-rand/?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
Headline> Candidate for British Prime Minister, Tugendhat, offered to expel Russians from the country
Quote> Tugendhat (Is that his real name? Check his passport!) said: “People who pose a threat and undermine the security of the kingdom will not find shelter.”
Comment> Does something tell you, as it tells me, that this is probably not the best time in history for Boris Johnson to be replaced by anyone of a sabre-rattling disposition with ex-military connections and delusions of imperialist grandeur. In spite of its political tragedy, I’m quite fond of that little bit of land in northwestern Europe. Aren’t you?
Bottom-pinching country at rock bottom (Gay Pride is obviously not just for June!)
Comment> People in high places pinching other people of the same sex’s lower places, the NHS unable to cope because of over-population and the migration fiasco, the government mired in sleaze, ministers losing jobs faster than underwear descending during Gay Pride Month and no money left because its all been spent on exacerbating Russophobia. This, then, is the UK.
Quote> Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman: ““London threw all its forces into countering Russia and participating in hostilities in Ukraine. Huge financial costs, British mercenaries, instructors and key forces of the special services – everything is mobilized for Russophobia.”
Comment> … and now the PM has resigned. Fingers crossed …
Little Miss Bossy Boots, Liz Truss (aka “Look mum, I’m the foreign secretary!”), appears to be groping about for a way of mitigating the British government’s freezing of Russian assets (which could be described as daylight robbery) by transforming Number 10 and herself into a merry band of Robin Hoods, or should that be Robin Hoodies (innit!), who rob from the rich to give to the poor. Except in this case, it has nothing to do with the poor and needy and all to do with a needlessly poor excuse.
There’s nothing toxically masculine or even vaguely masculine about Johnson and his western cohorts
Thought of the day> When the British Prime Minister has nothing left in his arsenal (I think I’ve spelt that right) except the cringe-worthy lingo of liberal-lefty woke and feels impelled to resort to terms like ‘toxic masculinity’, you know the bell has sounded for the final miserable act in the comedy of transexualised errors which Britain has become. Boris, you have been fatefully cast: the UK is badly in need of restoring and conserving. A strong traditionalising Conservative leader is needed, not a neoliberal-pandering appeasing soggy cream poof! [Audience (Labour) clapping: “You’ve got to hand it to him, as gender-neutral cream poofs go he certainly looks and sounds the part!”]
Headline> ‘Reuters: Western politicians were surprised by the Russian salad on the menu at the NATO summit’
Comment> The symbolic significance of Russian salad on the NATO summit ‘Smart Food & Drinks’ menu says it all ~ isolating Russia is not an option! Apparently, the dish was so popular that it sold out in the first two hours!
Comment> Ukraine has provided the UK with the perfect opportunity to spend the sort of lolly on beefing up its military that the liberal-lefty lobby at last feels helpless to oppose. But who’s going to pay for it? Can we really afford it? And, more to the point, is it all a waste of tax-payers’ money? Quote> “Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in May that Moscow does not want war in Europe and that it is the West that ‘constantly insists that …Russia must be defeated.’ The end of the military operation in Ukraine, he said, would stop Western attempts to undermine international law and promote a unipolar world.” https://www-rbc-ru.translate.goog/politics/28/06/2022/62babf329a7947852ccbffe2?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
Are you spinning like a top? If Western media spins anymore it will bradawl itself up its own … Headline from RT > Western media celebrates ‘Russian default’
Comments at end of article > tchort says: “The main stream media should worry more about losing their subscribers, than Russia’s default. Western media is now nothing but a comedians’ theater trying to validate its ridiculous narrative, and where investigative journalism has all but disappeared from the nation’s commercial airwaves.”
TANK says: “This stupid western game is like me going to the bank with the money, during normal opening hours, and they just won’t let me into the bank so I can give them the money. And then they blame ME for it. What a bunch of dimwits.”
Quote> German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, ““Putin appears to be afraid that the spark of democracy might jump to Russia …” Quote> The representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, commented on the words of Scholz, noting that “German sparks” spread to Russia a couple of times. “We won’t allow any more fires,” she assured. Comment>The problem with the leap-frogging ‘spark of [liberal] democracy’ is that other rather unwanted things tend to jump about with it, such as social engineering, anti-social behaviour, rampant street crime, state-backed terrorism, BLM riots, loss of cohesive culture and identity, historical revisionism, degradation of sovereignty and patriotism, political correctness, woke and so much digitalisation and transsexualization that before you know where you are or who’s behind you, you are well and truly up Queer Street and on your way to a famous creek with no paddle ~ although the boats to Dover can do without as they’ve got the Royal Navy. Whatever spark it is that German Scholz is talking about, it’s not the spark of truth or decency. https://www-rbc-ru.translate.goog/politics/20/06/2022/62b0a6bb9a7947606308e96a?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
‘”The European Union has completely lost its political sovereignty, and its bureaucratic elites are dancing to someone else’s tune, accepting whatever they are told from above, causing harm to their own population and their own economy,” Putin said.‘
‘“Such a detachment from reality, from the demands of society, will inevitably lead to a surge of populism and the growth of radical movements, to serious social and economic changes, to degradation, and in the near future, to a change of elites,”’
Now see (below) Neil Oliver’s videoed summation of the State of play in the UK today: ‘The State is no longer working to serve us and to protect our shared heritage‘
“The first act of violence in [Ukraine] was actually the Western-backed mob putsch which overthrew Ukraine’s lawful government in 2014” ~ Peter Hitchens, UK Journalist, Twitter, 22 May 2022
Quote> The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which unites the most developed economies in the world, called the UK the main victim of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine. https://lenta.ru/news/2022/06/08/loser/?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop Letter>Dear Mr Johnson, has the UK government taken complete leave of its senses …?
Comment>Who is Bishop Richard Williamson? Well, if you do a Google search for him you discover that he is a renegade, a ‘Holocaust denier’, an extremist, an ‘inciter of hatred’ etc, etc, etc. That alone should tell you that he is a branded enemy of the neoliberal one-world state. The Pope doesn’t appear to like him because he has openly condemned the Roman Catholic Church for selling out to liberal secularism. The western globalist cabal don’t care much for him, possibly because when he refers to the leaders of western governments he does not use sugar-coated terms like humanitarian, tolerant, democratic or free-world loving philanthropists but criminals.
When I first saw the, let’s face it, badly edited video embedded below, my initial reaction was, is this something from Monty Pythons, but there is no mistaking the sincerity and clarity of Williamson’s take on our liberal masters and what they are up to in Ukraine ~ and everywhere else for that matter. There are other illuminating videos out there in which Williamson describes and lambasts western society’s planned and steady moral decline. His accent on traditionalism as an essential pillar for social stability and his unfashionable view that respect for authority is an essential prerequisite of that stability is tantamount to heresy in the ‘progressive’ world of Woke, and I do not suppose for a moment that his rational beliefs that women attempting to adopt the roll of men or to become men is tragic and that it is parents who should rule their children not children rule their parents wins him any plaudits among the usual suspects.
In the video that follows, Bishop Richard Williamson states that Russia is the last obstacle to the One-World Order. Note, you will see that whoever made the video has captioned it, “You won’t believe your ears!” In fact, not everyone’s ears, eyes and minds are intimately connected to their television licence.
Comment> There is not much that western governments are good at. Telling the truth is particularly hard. But where they do excel is in their attempts to cancel culture. I should know, I’m English and we have hardly any culture left. That’s probably one of the reasons I like living in Russia. Quote> [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov] ‘“The West has declared a total war on us, the entire Russian world. Now no one hides this, it reaches the point of absurdity, to the very culture of the abolition of Russia and everything connected with our country. Under the ban of the classics: Tchaikovsky, Dostoevsky , Tolstoy, Pushkin. Figures of national culture and art, who today represent our culture, are also being persecuted … healthy patriotic forces have consolidated [in Russia, and President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy is based on] … broad national consensus”’ https://www-vedomosti-ru.translate.goog/politics/news/2022/05/27/923932-lavrov-zapad?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
Why does the UK media treat the British public as if they are stupid? Is it because they have insurmountable faith in their own duplicity?
Comment> Wonders will never cease, but considered journalist Peter Hitchens may have rocked the neoliberal globalist boat with this one. The last thing the UK wants to be accused of is that it has within its midst journalists of integrity and independent thought. Time for the UK masses to disappear quickly back under the bedclothes, behind the biased safety of their learnt-by-rote media mantras or (where they seem to dwell perpetually) up their own …
Quotes from Mr Hitchens’ article in Mail Online> “Not since the wild frenzy after the death of Princess Diana have I ever met such a wave of ignorant sentiment. Nobody knows anything about Ukraine. Everyone has ferocious opinions about it.”
“Look, I respect those who take Ukraine’s side in this war. They have a valid point of view which I happen not to share. But what I object to is the wholly one-sided nature of public opinion here. It is so bad that it is a positive disadvantage to know anything about the subject.”
“The UK media coverage of this event strove mightily not to mention the neo-Nazis and to avoid using the word ‘surrender’.”
Comment> America is projecting itself as an exceptional power and an indispensable force for good in the world, but Russia intends to save itself from this ‘goodness’. It is not the first time in history that we have saved ourselves from totalitarian ideologies – Nazi Germany, the Napoleonic Wars, the Tatar invasion. And it does not matter that Russians are routinely disparaged by Western Europeans as savages and barbarians. We want to protect our beliefs and values, which are based on Christianity, no matter how outdated and how outvalued such ethics are held by the West. We mean to and will save ourselves from the threat of the West’s satanic globalism, from its mass consumerist self-absorption and twisted posthuman delusions. And so it is with my head held high in the midst of Western Russophobia that I am glad and proud to say that “I am Russian.” (Thank you Yorshik for your contribution to my blog. MH)
The Eurovision Wrong Contest It’s come to a pretty pass when all you’ve got left in your ammunition chest is the Eurovision Song Contest. Should it be renamed the Eurovision Pong Contest, because something certainly stinks. It smells a bit like ‘past its sell by date’, but at least it shows that the world (the western world that is) of entertainment is singing from the same song sheet as UK/US western media. Obviously, Sandy Shaw got it right when she won the Euro-must-be-daft-to-watch it Song Compost in 1967 with the aptly and prophetically named ‘Puppet on a String’.
‘Make It Up as You Go Along’ Western Media The most unsurprising of eventualities regarding Russia’s 9th May Victory Day was that contrary to the West’s media predictions that Vladimir Putin would announce mass mobilisation to facilitate total war in Ukraine, it didn’t happen. Nevertheless, this did not stop my brother from advising me by email that I should get a sick note from mum, as I used to do when I was at school, explaining to Mr Putin that I was very sorry, but I couldn’t possibly march in army boots with a bad leg like mine. As this expedient turned out to be unnecessary, I was able to reflect more fully on what it was that the West could learn from the sincere and heartfelt devotion of the Russian people to the sacrifices made by former generations of their countrymen during WWII in the interests of preserving their country’s sovereignty and for Russia’s right to continue to live without interference and threat from the West. This exercise in cogitation brought forth the simple but inevitable conclusion that it was not so much what the West could learn as what it should remember, not only about the facts pertaining to WWII but to any and every period enshrined in the past. The greatest and unforgivable crime against the inalienability of history is the immoral attempt to rewrite it, however futile such an attempt unavoidably proves to be.
Headline >The Guardian: Britain is using Ukraine for a disgusting game Johnson using Ukraine as a diversionary tactic to refocus the public’s attention away from his failings as Prime Minister and the Conservative party’s internal conflict for change of leadership. That’s a take on the role that Britain has assigned to itself with regard to Ukraine that we can all relate to. You cannot blame the British public for their willing participation in this game. It is not often that they get the chance to rattle the sabre and wave the flag. Patriotism and white flight are outward bound third class, making way for boat loads to Dover and the pathetic and steady accretion of woke. Link>https://www-pravda-ru.translate.goog/world/1703851-konservatory/?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
Quote: ‘US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Washington would “keep moving heaven and earth so that we can meet” the military needs of the Ukrainian government, while urging other countries to also contribute to the cause.’
Comment: That’s very altruistic of the US. Let’s hope that it does not eventually lead to Earth being raised to Heaven ~ or at least in that direction …
Desperately trying to be more zany than each other is the sort of thing that gets alternative media sources a bad name. You might conclude that if they cannot take themselves seriously who is going to take them seriously (snigger). However, once you’ve cut through the silly voices, pop-video props and comic-strip presentation, nuggets of interest and sometimes rich seams of mind matter seldom mined by western masses are there to be had and processed. Forget how he says it, but listen and reflect upon what this chap has to say (see video below): https://rumble.com/vw8q9n-ukraine-and-russia-what-the-media-wants-you-to-think.html
Now here’s a chap from America who claims that the conflict in Ukraine didn’t start recently but is in it’s eighth year (see video below). I wonder what the BBC and fact checkers make of that! 😉
“Sanctions are a tax on independence.” ~ Sergey Lavrov
There is something so solid, reliable and dependable about Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov, Foreign Minister of Russia. It’s such a treat when you contrast his cool, sometimes blunt but always level-headed presentation with, for example, the comic braggadocio of our Boris, the shop-window plasticity of US politicians and the smug narcissism of oily Turdeau clones. My wife tells me that Lavrov is also fond of cigars. You cannot fault a man who supports the noble art of cigar smoking!
At the end of this panel there is an article link featuring an interview with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, conducted by TV channels RT, NBC News, ABC News, ITN, France 24 and the PRC Media Corporation, which took place on 3 March 2022, regarding the situation in Ukraine.
Four quotes by Lavrov from that interview:
“Each country has the right to choose alliances. However, no country can strengthen its security at the expense of the security of any other country. No organisation can claim dominance in the Euro-Atlantic space, which is exactly what NATO is doing now.”
“I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the thought of nuclear war is constantly running through the minds of Western politicians but not the minds of Russians.”
“No one has listened to us for 30 years. The West is perfectly aware of our concerns. Endlessly ignoring them with such arrogance has not worked and will not work. Only naive people could have thought otherwise.”
“I assure you that we will deal with whatever problems the West creates for us out of its determination (I emphasise once again – not to ensure their own security, this isn’t about the security of the West at all) to use Ukraine as a tool and a pretext to prevent Russia from pursuing an independent policy. There are few countries left on Earth that can afford such a luxury. Sanctions are a tax on independence, if you like.”
If you only ever read one article published in Russian about the situation in Ukraine, then make it this one!
“There are only a handful of Western journalists on the ground in Donbass, while the Western mainstream press is rubber-stamping fake news about the Ukrainian crisis using the same templates it previously exploited in Iraq, Libya and Syria, says Dutch independent journalist Sonja van den Ende.”
Since Russia launched its special operation in Ukraine to protect the republics in the Donbas region of Ukraine and its own country by negating the potential for NATO to use Ukraine as a base from which to attack Russia, Russian media as well as Russian posts and comments on social media relevant to the Ukrainian situation have been banned in the UK, presumably for the purpose of concealing the West’s involvement in the events that led to the conflict and to present a one-sided version of that conflict in order to influence public opinion and to promote and maximise mass hysteria. All that we are seeing now is a continuation of the West’s policy to subjugate and marginalise Russia, everything else is just a means to an end. ~ comment from reader of my blog expatkaliningrad.com
Eastward Expansion of the West the Real Reasons?
Katie Hopkins, political commentator, proving once again that she has the balls to say “what other people think but are too scared to say”:
Published: 10 June 2022 ~ Victor Ryabinin Pushes Boat Out with Bronze Aged Fisherman
At last, on Saturday 4th June 2022, the memorial plaque that we commissioned in 2021 linking Victor Ryabinin, friend and Königsberg artist, to our physical representation of his famous painting ‘Boat with Flowers’, which occupies pride of place next to the Soviet fisherman statue, was given a home. The reason it never got attached last year was that we could not make up our minds where the plaque should go. The original plan was to include it within the boat and statue ensemble, possibly secured to a large flat-surfaced rock, screwed to the side of the boat or mounted on some plinth or other. I was easy with any of these three options, but Olga opined that the plaque would be hidden, which would rather defeat the object.
Thus, the location of the plaque was put to the vote, resulting in the unanimous decision to secure it to the side of the house, beside the garden gate. Our friend with the drill and bolts, Mr Chilikin, performed his side of the operation, whilst I, having just returned from the shop with two bottles of beer, provided inestimable assistance by holding the plaque in place.
Victor Ryabinin
When you lose someone as dear and as vital as Victor, time has a perplexing way of flying and standing still at the same time. This July will see the third anniversary of Victor’s death. It seems like only yesterday, ten thousand days or more.
I am not ashamed to say that once the plaque had been placed, I did shed a few tears, but being a real Englishman, not a cheap British counterfeit, in order to maintain the myth of the stiff upper lip, I managed this in private.
Of course, once the plaque had been ‘unveiled’ a toast ensued involving vodka, after which an intuitive silence fell on those of us present, the shared but unspoken thought being that had Death not exercised its non negotiable right to inopportune subtraction, doubtlessly Victor would have been with us today, and no plaque would have been necessary, just another glass. Life goes on, as they say, though never quite in the same old way.
This year our boat is not looking anywhere near as well-stocked and verdant as the one in Victor’s painting, so project two is to rectify that discrepancy as soon as humanly possible.
Before getting down to the serious task of celebrating what was without argument the most glorious summer day this year, Mr Chilikin also made good his promise to turn our fisherman bronze. You may remember that last year’s restorative work on Captain Codpiece, our statue, had garnered criticism from a certain outspoken babushka, to wit that his new coat of paint appeared to be designed to make the feeble minded do something remarkably silly, like go down on one knee. Hence, there was nothing for it: either we had to delete one letter in the ‘Codpiece’ name and add two more in its place or pursue the original plan, which was to make him bronze.
The latter option being the best in good taste all round, though the former was chucklingly good, Mr Chilikin got to woke, I mean work, and with the catalysing infusion of a couple of homemade vodkas gave Codpiece a new look that would make any alchemist jealous.
In the 1960s, the fisherman had been silvered, but that was long ago. The Soviet era passed, the silver wore away and the fisherman’s concrete superstructure began seriously deteriorating. We repaired him, coated the concrete in a special sealant and weather-proof solution and painted him in a dark matte ground with hints and highlights of bronze. Finally, succumbing to the criticism that he was as dark as a midnight mushroom, we turned up the bronze, although some might say that relative to the new beginning he is fullfilling an act of destiny and turning into gold.
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” ― Oscar Wilde
Published: 6 June 2022 ~ Word War III the Latest Media Plandemic
So, do you do it and, if the answer is yes, do you do a lot of it? I do ~ musing, I mean.
And isn’t there just so much to muse on?
Let’s take Ukraine, for example. When I say take, I don’t mean as in takeaway ~ which, someone suggested, is what the Poles want to do ~ I use the term figuratively, as in example1.
I am sure you will agree that it is an excellent example, as it is virtually impossible these days whenever the need for musing arises not to have a muse or two about what it is the West is up to out there in Ukraine.
The one place where you won’t find that out is in the British media, because Britland’s media is far too busy making (you could say ‘manufacturing’) news than reporting it. They did it to you with Brexit; they did it through the Plandemic; and now they are doing it to you again with Ukraine. Why does the British government and its media lackies want to scare you shitless?
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The simple answer, but not the whole story, is to get you to buy newspapers and to click on their websites, thereby enabling them to fleece gullible advertisers. Terror sells ~ but there is more to it than that.
It is ironic don’t you think (well, do you think?) that UK media is obsessed with speculation as to whether the crisis in Ukraine will result in World War III (it has certainly resulted in Word War III), which, incidentally, should it happen would make it hard to find the UK on the global map (not trying to frighten you, or anything), but continues to support UK government policy to pump shipment after shipment of arms to Ukraine, thus bringing the threat of Armageddon closer. Such irresponsible profligacy costs the British taxpayer dearly for something that to all accounts gets itself blown up soon after it arrives on foreign soil2.
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If the Labour Party was not so riddled with woke, someone ~ someone who is not scared to be called misogynist ~ could come right out with it and tell the foreign secretary ‘Liz don’t Trusst her’ that she is not fit for purpose and that perhaps it would be better for everyone if she just went home where she could try to do something useful like whip up a batch of scones. That something from the Labour party could then add that the money the UK is throwing away on its latest imperialist misadventure could be put to better use, such as donated to its favourite political hobby-horse the NHS, if only to finance the extra burden that will soon devolve to this commendable institution from the influx of merry migrants that keep grinning their way on boats to Dover. The logic is elementary but fundamental: more people in an over-populated country means less NHS to go round.
8
I know that there are an awful lot of Brits musing on the immigration fiasco, most of whom will never go beyond musing as they are afraid to voice their opinions, and I fully understand why. It is all so tiresome, is it not, having to prefix every honest syllable you utter with, “I’m not racist, but …” And after all, why should you bother? It is obvious that Britain’s political elite don’t or else the little overcrowded boats would not keep bobbing in. But then the difference between Britain’s political elites and you is that when the sh!t hits the fan, which it will (look at Sweden!) the elite will be going the other way and you’ll be left in the line of fire.
This tragedy is no longer one which is waiting to happen. It is already underway. But let’s not muse on that. Our current muse turns on the question: Is the British establishment placing the lives of every citizen in the UK at risk by openly suppling weapons to Ukraine, by its bellicosity towards Russia and by playing lapdog to the United States?
7
When nuclear war was first mentioned, which, in case you didn’t know was by the West and by the Brits, Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, had this to say:
“I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the thought of nuclear war is constantly running through the minds of Western politicians but not the minds of Russians.”3
Since then, however, the unthinkable, which also used to be the unspeakable, makes guest appearances on a regular basis throughout the UK media, so much so that if it wasn’t for Britain’s endemic violence and the UK’s cops losing the fight against street crime, the possibility of nuclear war would even eclipse these subjects.
Given the extent of the media-led psychosis and the paranoia it has imbued, it is hardly surprising that there are people in the Russian Federation who have begun to respond in kind4.
6
Time, do you think (well, do you think?) for British people to stand up for themselves, to instruct their ‘democratically elected government’ and its malignant media that enough is really enough.
There are, however, other ‘atomic bombs’ that haven’t gone off as planned, for example sanctions.
I sometimes get the impression that I am the only one that the West has sanctioned! Recently, someone sent me some money from the UK, and it arrived in Russia worth half as much as it was before the liberal globalists set out to cripple Russia’s economy! Am I missing something here ~ apart from half my cash? Did the West unleash sanctions deliberately to make the rouble stronger? Last month, the pounds weakness in relation to the rouble meant that I could only buy half the amount of beer that I would normally buy? Now, that is serious! Meanwhile, according to my family and friends in Britland, the cost of living is soaring and the standard of living collapsing. Ahh, but I hear you say, there is madness in our government’s method.
5
We all know by now, or should know, that the sanctions have been successful, at least in punishing every Tom, Uncle Tom, Dick and Leroy in the US and UK, but not, it would appear, in Russia. The civil unrest hoped for and orchestrated with the assistance of a certain ‘philanthropic billionaire’ has not materialised, and Russia’s special military operation appears to be going as planned. Political analysts opine that whilst the West may delay Russia’s progress in Ukraine, it will not stop it from achieving its goals5.
The extent of the West’s frustration is encapsulated in the ever-self-explosive rhetoric embarrassingly evacuating from the oratory orifice of the Polish prime minister, who appears to have ordained himself as the Archbishop of Anti-Russian Hysteria. Notwithstanding his ‘personal shame’ ~ ‘the personal shame of the Polish Prime Minister’6 ~ at least he looks good with his 1960s’ hairstyle and specs, but even those have not proved sufficient to dissuade neither US nor British governments from continuing to spend billions on military equipment bound for Ukraine, where off it goes to get blown up. Someone commenting on a media site waggishly asked, wouldn’t it just be a lot less trouble and considerably less expensive to blow these shipments up before they leave the US and the UK, thus saving the price of the postage?
4
Every crisis known to man {LGBTs, Its and Others} ~ or should that be ever manufactured by man? ~ has been a godsend for profiteering of one kind or another.
Evidence suggests that the UK establishment is profiting from the conflict in Ukraine by using it as a cover for the miss-management of its economy7: terror and hysteria make superb attention conductors. The strategy is not new. It’s merely a resuscitation of the old Theresa May ploy, “It’s ‘highly likely’ the Russians have done it!” Move along, please, nothing to see (or believe in) here.
But even exploitation, or so it would seem, is not what it used to be. I must say I am rather surprised that someone in high office has not yet implemented Plan A as a means of reassuring Brits that should the UK government over play its hand in Ukraine, thus sparking a global disaster, surviving a nuclear holocaust may yet be possible providing that mandatory lockdowns, mask-wearing, compulsory vaccinations ~ and WHO knows what ~ are rigorously adhered to.
3
I am convinced, however, that the endless stream of third-world migrants pouring into Dover is a crucial component of the UK’s defence strategy, guaranteed, I imagine, if not to act as a shield against incoming missiles to effectively deter any kind of invasion other than the migrant one, which the UK establishment appears to support. For surely nobody in their right mind would want to take possession of a country ravaged by migrant unrest and migrant-related violence, plagued by woke, cancel culture and, buggered if I know what else, ahh that reminds me, gay parades.
2
I’m not suggesting that lockdowns, mask-wearing and mandatory vaccinations would be any less effective than they have proved to be for anything else, but better the devil you know than the ones that make work for idle minds.
Published: 29 May 2022 ~ How to make a film based in Königsberg
Lead actress, Elena Borovzova – a lady in red – in Yury Grozmani’s Last Tango in Königsberg
THE LAST DAY OF FILMING as far as we were concerned for Yury Grozmani’s Last Tango in Königsberg (a film made with the support of the Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives)took place today on 26 May at Ivan Zverev’s atmospheric museum in Nizovie.
I was fighting a private battle with a decaying wisdom tooth. “You’re such a hero,” my good lady wife never said, “for ignoring your pain and going ahead with the film.”
How to make a film based in Königsberg
Arthur Eagle, the film’s production enforcer, promised that the filming wouldn’t take long. If I remember rightly, I believe he said ten minutes. Of course, he was rather economical with the truth, and we were there all day, sometimes in the sun, sometimes in the rain but mostly in the wind and cold. It was one of those days that managed to fit all four seasons into one afternoon.
Mick Hart playing a role in Yury Grozmani’s film at Nizovie Museum, Kaliningrad, Russia
My scene came first. It was done in a couple of takes; that’s professional for you! But thereafter came lots of hanging about. My wife, Olga, had agreed to take a part in the production, and unbeknown to us the scene in which she had been cast would not take place until a good while later.
Aleksandr Kostenko, commandant, with Olga Hart and Inara Eagle in Yury Grozmani’sLast Tango in Königsberg
As stated in my previous post, famous and even not so famous actors performing for the large or not so large screen are no strangers to hanging around. After a short induction it quickly becomes something of a skill, kicking your heels whilst each scene is repeated umpteen times; first filmed this way, then filmed that way, a camera angle from here, a camera angle from there, a close up followed by a closer close up; and all this without including numerous takes and retakes and the repetition of parts of scenes for homing in on and improving sound quality.
Cameraman at work on Yury Grozmani’s WWII film. Location: NIzovie Museum, Russia
I was not too perturbed about playing the waiting game as Nizovie museum is my kind of place: an old building, imaginatively restored and with the additional bonus of being extremely full of antique and obsolete items ~ including my wisdom tooth (“And the rest!” ~ who said that?).
Mick Hart with actor & Hanomag owner Michail GvozdenkoOlga Hart with Hanomag on the film set of Yury Grozmanl’s Last Tango in Königsberg
Another plus of waiting was that later in the day the last scene to be shot outside would feature the 1927 Cadillac, a Soviet Gaz-67 and also the Hanomag, the car that had a starring role in the film noir, Agnes, recently shown at Waldau Castle.
Gaz-67 and Hanomag
As the weather travelled through its yearly cycle in under six hours, Olga and I took refuge in the Hanomag, where we were able to furnish ourselves with some rather nice photographs of a vintage car so thoroughly German that I could almost feel the Gestapo breathing down my neck. In fact, it was Yury Grozmani, the writer and producer of the film, urging me to take part in a scene for which I had not been scheduled. And so it came to pass.
Coaching for this scene took place behind Mr Zverev’s car. It occurred to me that there was every possibility that this was the first time that I had stood behind a 1927 Cadillac wearing a 1940s’ trilby with a Russian gent waiting to cue me for a film sequence. Before going on he said to me, “Try to look tragic.” What else, I thought.
Mick Hart with Ivan Zverev’s 1927 Cadillac
The last scene of the day was filmed outside on the forecourt and upon the steps leading to the museum. A gale force wind had blown in from somewhere with a rather nasty edge to it, but it was worth getting your wisdom tooth cold for just to see the combination of all three vehicles in close proximity and in the conjoining presence of uniformed Soviet actors.
There are still quite a few scenes left to be shot before the film is in the can, but my bit is complete. My next act, which will take considerably more skill to master, is trying to look brave at the dentists!
*The film is made with the support of the Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives
Waldau Castle and film noir go so well together, as actor Michail Gvozdenko demonstrates, that not being seen dead there would probably never occur to you.
Published: 24 May 2022 ~ Waldau Castle and film noir make a perfect partnership
On our last visit to Waldau Castle we had the pleasure of watching a 30-minute film noir, Agnes, set in 1940s’ Königsberg. Shot in the grounds of Königsberg Cathedral, in the East Prussian countryside and at Waldau castle, whilst the mood of the film and its retrospective authenticity owes a lot to the imaginative screenplay and the cinematographic convention of producing it in black and white, good casting throughout ensures that this silent intertitle movie delivers impact and holds one’s attention from the opening scenes to the end credits.
The plot goes something like this: Whilst walking, a young woman, Agnes, (actress Ekaterina Zuravleva) accidently drops a postcard informing her friend that she is content living with her rich aunt. A young chap picks the card up and reads it. Realising that the young woman comes from a rich family he returns the card to her, flirts and hands her his business card. He visits the castle several times where Agnes lives, but her austere aunt sees through the deception; she realises that the man’s intentions are not honourable; he is not in love but is after their money. Agnes, however, refuses to heed her aunt’s advice to stay away from the man. Driven to breaking point by her aunt’s controlling nature, a violent altercation occurs following which Agnes kills her aunt, takes her money and her jewellery and flees from the castle in the company of the man about whose perfidy she has been warned. On the way to the ‘promised land,’ the man kills her. He gives her a long red scarf to wear, which flows from the open car window and wraps itself around one of the wheels (an allusion to the death of Isadora Duncan, the 1920s’ American dancer). He places her body on the side of the road, is met by a female accomplice and they drive off together gloating over their ill-gotten gains. As they do so, they appear to be planning another hoax, which may be why there is talk of a possible sequel.
Waldau Castle and film noir make a perfect partnership
Not unlike the male lead, the scheming opportunist who wheedles his way into the life of the young woman, I, seeing an opportunity to have my photograph taken with Michail Gvozdenko, the lead male actor, was happy to pose with him next to a film publicity poster. You might infer that I would have been a lot happier had I been standing next to the actresses in real life, but if horses were wishes beggars would ride. As it was, I was pleased to ‘get in on the act’: any man who can wear a trilby in such a way that he would pass unnoticed on a 1940s’ street is someone whom we should all stand next to, at least once in our modern and sadly less elegant lives.
Michail Gvozdenko did an excellent job of convincing us, in or out of trilby, that have Hanomag will seduce. Whether this is true or not you will have to ask the actor, as the Hanomag car that features in the film, which, incidentally, has original Königsberg credentials, is owned by the actor himself. Of course, it does help if you are smooth, suave and sophisticated and always carry a business card!
Some of the costumes and props used in the film are on display at Waldau Castle, together with the medieval-style wall bed in which the deluded and cheated Agnes bumps off her aunt before being heartlessly despatched herself. That’s no way to treat an antique wall bed even less so an ailing aunt, regardless of her readily purloinable fortune. As for the death of Agnes (sigh!), as Leonard Cohen would say, “I came so far for beauty, I left so much behind”.
Published: 20 May 2022 ~ Waldau Castle Revisited and the Case of Asparagus Soup
The grass verges on either side of the drive leading to the entrance of Waldau Castle were awash with cars and on the other side of the striped checkpoint-style gate, the type much-loved in spy thrillers, twenty or thirty more people across a broad age spectrum were swarming about the grounds busy digging, sweeping, carrying and wheeling things. The place was a hive of activity.
Looking down from an air balloon or, if you prefer, a magic carpet, you might conceive that you had inadvertently dropped something and, in the process, disturbed an ant’s nest, but back on terra firma disturbance played no part. Waldau Castle has a way, a mystical way, of gently absorbing everything, even a milling crowd, into the matrix of its historical presence and making it indistinguishable from the permeating status quo.
A day of impressions at Waldau Castle
I looked up at the castle windows, at the old and the new. Since we were last here, Mr Sorokin had been busy replacing, renovating and making good the neglect of years. The windows looked down back at me, the protective polythene sheets where glazing was waiting to be installed moving slowly back and forth in the breeze, emitting little sighs, not of impatience but studied contentment.
Later, over a large cup of delicious asparagus soup and a plate of hot potatoes, Arthur Eagle would say, as he observed the Waldau edifice thoughtfully, that there was enough work to do here to keep the Sorokin family occupied for the rest of their natural lives. He paused, before adding quietly, “And beyond …”
Although I had only been inside Waldau Castle once before, the act of returning was like embracing an old friend. Inside the hall and main room (I gather that there once would have been a dividing wall to the left.), I had a feeling ~ not the admission to a museum feeling, but the warmth of being genuinely welcomed into someone’s home.
Perhaps the answer to the phenomenon lies in the 1972 Christmas ghost story The Stone Tape, which explores the theory that hard objects, such as stones and rocks, are capable of storing sensory information that can be intuitively retrieved and played back by those who are predisposed mentally and emotionally to metaphysical energies, except that in the case of Waldau Castle the reciprocity is resoundingly positive.
Waldau Castle has been around for 750 years and in the duration of its existence the castle’s physical structure has undergone changes too multitudinous and too far-reaching for precise computation, but stand alone in any one of its atmospheric rooms, its long concealed back corridor or upon the steps of its well-trodden and foot-worn staircase and place your hand upon the gnarled but solid brickwork and, should you be that way inclined, you will feel the lives of the people that dwelt within these walls and those like us who have passed this way.
On our previous visit, we were limited to the three main rooms that form the order of the front of the castle, but today we could stray without let or hinderance through and under the carved wooden screen into the long, wide, servants corridor that runs the length of the building and which would at one time presumably have contained interconnecting doors to each of the three main chambers.
Extremely spacious in all dimensions and with windows looking out upon, over and across the meadows that fall away at the back of the castle, windows that replicate those at the front, their deep horizontal V-shaped openings cut into sturdy walls two metres or more in depth, this secluded, secreted once functional passage had in its resting life become an avenue of thought.
Against its back walls stood two ancient window frames, pitched Gothic with pierced tracery, thoroughly weathered and eaten away in places by wood parasites and mould spores, but for all that in remarkable shape and solid for their age.
Besides them, nearby, a modern facsimile of these venerable frames, craftsman carved and assembled to form a replica so exact that only age could tell the difference, invoked the question was this the flexible and tailored handiwork of Mr Sorokin, the head of the resident household of Waldau Castle’s curators and conserverationists? I also wondered if it had been his hand to which the refectory table on the second floor owed its incarnation.
The intricately woven mediaeval tapestries that hang within the corridor as they do in the castle’s front-facing rooms have not been sewn together by Mr Sorokin, they are bought in; but they are made to order to Sorokin specifications, made in the 21st century until they enter Waldau Castle whereupon they assume a sense of belonging as old and as accommodating as the fabric of the building itself.
These exquisitely fashioned and illustrated tapestries complement the suits of armour, heraldic devices, Baroque cabinets, heavy Renaissance revivalist furniture and stylised bass-relief plaques, regaling one’s senses with impressions of the past and resurrecting an exotic world lost to us in time in which people of wealth and influence lived out their privileged lives in envied baronial splendour. A lot of imaginative thought lends itself to cultivation when standing almost solitarily inside the walls of a castle’s passageway.
Waldau Castle Revisited and the Case of Asparagus Soup
It is from this passageway that access to the castle’s second floor presents itself. The staircase is enclosed behind a set of double doors, but these were open today revealing what in bygone times would undoubtedly have been a stairway and stairwell of most imposing character.
You rang m’lud, or is that Bela Lugosi?
The broad steps worn and contorted by the mechanics of innumerable shoes and the feet of those no longer with us require some contemplation; they are potent symbols left behind by the people of the past who will never walk these stairs again, at least in mortal form, and are reminders to us all, all who are able to see them, of the immortality each of us lack. Is this vanishing so unutterably sad or a continual source of wonder?
The first landing, before the stairs turns back upon itself, sits on a level some 30 feet or more below the ceiling. There is no stair rail, just a solid wall of brick, capped, where it has survived, with a coping stone of triangular profile. The second-floor landing, which is effectively part of the upper passageway retracing the one below, provides a better impression of the commodious dimensions and the roomy spaciousness which they bestow. It also gives visual ease to consideration of the gothic window inset high above the stairs, along whose base lies a small yet not unremarkable fragment of intricate relief work.
Somebody asked me if I thought that the cannon, strategically placed to the left at the top of the stairs, was an original, working implement of war. Let’s just say that on no account would I rush to put it to the test by attempting to fire a projectile from it!
The room at the end of the second-floor corridor, which is capaciousness enough to hold 40 people, or thereabouts, has, from the ceiling pendants to the dark wooden tables, been perfectly baronialised. This room would appear to function as a gathering place for groups in which to hold discussions, listen to talks or even watch a film, which is what we did today.
The 30-minute programme was the first part of a historic drama set in 1930s’ Königsberg, some scenes of which were filmed at Waldau Castle (more about this in the following post). As you will see from my photograph, with the lights down and candles lit, the room in question assumes an atmospheric quintessence. It is the sort of place where folk less cautious than myself might well be tempted to hold a séance. What an inducive but uneasy thought!
Waldau Castle Revisited and the Case of Asparagus Soup
It is now time to take a break from architectural pleasures and musings of a preternatural kind and reveal the link between Waldau Castle and the not so strange case of asparagus.
To us there was no abstruseness, in fact the connection was as clear as soup ~ asparagus soup to be precise ~ along with a plate of pizza and boiled potatoes. You see, as well as being the physical and spiritual saviours of Waldau Castle, the Sorokin family also do a nice line in home-grown asparagus, which was on the menu today free in the form of soup for the legion of willing helpers and to visitors such as ourselves. It was also on sale in the wholesome character of natural, freshly picked produce.
With the piping hot asparagus soup reaching the parts today that the sun, though bright and beautiful, had neglected, we were confluently treated to a demonstration of traditional Prussian dancing by a troupe of ladies dressed in Prussian costume.
Under this spell and the promise of the makings of a nutritional meal, once the soup and dancing was over, we filed one by one into the Sorokin house to purchase some of this lovely grub to take home with us.
As we walked back to the Volga, me with the sprig of asparagus in my hand, I thought I caught a glimpse of something, a shadow perhaps, or otherwise, momentarily flicker across the dusty kitchen windows of the ever-watchful Waldau Castle, but when I looked again there was no one and nothing there. This may have been cause for concern had not the sun at that deliberate moment deigned to appear from behind a cloud. Like a spotlight it shone on my garden vegetables, and it was this, I later reasoned, that accounted for the warmth in my heart with which I had come away. Farewell goodly Waldau Castle, until we meet again!
A carved plaque dedicated to, or even a coat of arms representing, Waldau Castle and the Sorokin family
Food for thought: It is food for thought to note that whilst Europe is busy plunging itself into the dark ages of genocidal witch hunts against Russian nationals everywhere, here in the Kaliningrad region no such prejudice and hatred proliferates. In humbling contrast to the devastation and destruction of monuments, bullying, intimidation, acts of violence to Russian citizens, expulsion of the creative and the cultured and the march to rewrite history to suit the figments of the West, Russians are going about their business, quietly and with exemplary composure, restoring, renovating and honouring Kaliningrad’s German and East Prussian past. Something for the West to watch and hopefully to learn from.
Furniture at Waldau Castle
Once a dealer in vintage and antiques, never more less so, which is beyond a reasonable doubt why wherever I go a-visiting, old stuff, including furniture, always catches my eye.
Not surprisingly, as Kaliningrad was once Königsberg, the capital city of East Prussia, real antique furniture and its reproduction equivalent reveals a regional market trend predominantly focused on German Baroque and Renaissance revival items. So, if you like your furniture heavy, dark and Gothic, with lots of rich carving, intricate mouldings, bold armorial and heraldic symbols then you will like what you will find.
You will also discover examples of original 1930s’ continental Art Deco, such as this buffet/tallboy or kitchen servery with its tell-tale Lucite handles.
