Illustrations of classical architecture attempting to convey the innate quality and time-honoured grandeur that we associate with ancient Rome, together with heraldic symbols are not necessarily the certified hallmark of either a good or barely drinkable beer that we might be beguiled into thinking it is. And thus, we have a case in point: Hemeukoe Pils.
The packaging of Hemeukoe (Nemetskoe) Pils reminds me of a house I know in Northamptonshire made singularly unmissable by a pair of concrete horse’s heads squatting on its gate posts. Are such embellishments an admission of, or indeed an admission to, the aristocracy of quality? No, and they never have been. But from their ostentatiousness you do get a whiff of something else.
That whiff, once the top has been removed from the Hemeukoe Pils’ bottle, reminds me of a lot of things, none of which belongs to beer. I am not going to tell you what it is exactly, because exactly doesn’t come into it, but try to imagine something pungent strained through a pair of unwashed gym shorts.
Urban gentlemen of the road, those who doss down on the forecourts of London’s mainline stations, could feasibly conclude that the smell is not unlike that damp sheet of cardboard they rescued from Asda’s bin last month and on which they have slept every night since.
The smell improves in the glass but doesn’t become a bouquet of roses. It is rather like opening the window of a sleep-in-late hormonal teenager’s bedroom. And that’s as good as it gets.
Hemeukoe Beer in Kaliningrad
It does say ‘Pils’ on the bottle, but very soon I got to thinking that perhaps they spelt it wrong, when what they intended to print was not exactly ‘Pils’ but ‘Really Peculiar’.
Ambiguity in the smell was repeated in the colour. At arms length, it looked yellow and slightly hazy in the glass, but on closer inspection neither here nor there nor even anywhere. It was as it was and what that was, was strictly not what I thought it would be: Pils.
The colour was like nothing I had ever seen; the taste like nothing I have ever tasted, wished I hadn’t and would never want to again. In both respects, it even excelled the Baltika 3 taste problem. And that ~ as The Velvelettes once warbled ~ is ‘really saying something’!
Sweet and buttery with a chemical twist, the latter usurping the former and occupying the aftertaste like 1940s’ Germans in Paris, this was my first taste of Hemeukoe Pils; was it trying to tell me something?
For a moment I thought that this something had something to do with identity and was something to do with Kvas, but before I could completely trash the dynastic reputation of a soft drink which in Russia is regarded as a national institution, the taste had turned to strong, rank tea, heavy on the tannin.
Hemeukoe Beer in Kaliningrad
Whatever you may say about its taste, there is a lot going on in Hemeukoe. It is just not going on in a very complementary or remotely satisfactory way.
There is an ascending scale of sourness in the aftertaste, which in its unexceptional way hangs on the back of your throat and leaves you wondering, anxiously, whether come the morrow, you will still be on good terms with your digestive system and bowels.
It was late at night when I was drinking Hemeukoe. It was the only beer that I had in the house, so even had I spotted the clue secreted in its name ~ Hemeukoe ~ the anagram would not have, could not have, saved me from indulging in what was without exaggeration quite simply the most appalling brew I have ever had the misfortune to sabotage my vitals with, and one which I ardently hope I will never experience again.
I am tempted to say that you could do worse if offered a glass of this than to politely refuse and remain an onlooker. Never mind the prejudiced cliché that innocent bystanders always get hurt, refusing to drink Hemeukoe Pils might well just prove to be the exception to the rule.
A friend of mine who considers himself to be something of an expert where beer is concerned disputes the taxonomy of Hemeukoe Pils, claiming that HP is not so much a beer as an alcoholic infusion, and it is this that makes it taste like nothing on Earth and more like something imported from the planets Heavy and Oily.
Even without empirical evidence I might be inclined to agree, but I was busy jotting the name of the beer onto a piece of paper and committing it to memory in order to ensure that even if my life depended on it, I would never make the mistake of buying Hemeukoe Pils again.
TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS Name of Beer: Hemeukoe Pils (Nemetskoe ot Bochkarev (German from Bochkarev) Brewer: Heineken Where it is brewed: Saint Petersburg Bottle capacity: 1.35 litre Strength: 4.7% Price: It cost me about 137 roubles (£1.54) [at time of writing!] Appearance: A washy brown colour Aroma: It doesn’t smell like beer Taste: It doesn’t taste like beer Fizz amplitude: 4/10 Label/Marketing: Bold to the point of misleading Would you buy it again? Read the review! Marks out of 10: 2
*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.
Published: 5 February 2023 ~ Zalivino Lighthouse Restoration Reaches New Heights
Returning to Zalivino lighthouse last month, it was remarkable to see what progress had been made since we first explored the site in 2021. Let’s start with the cosmetic improvements first and then proceed in order of importance:
3. A new addition is the weather vane, with the intricately designed rotating ornament and stained-glass inclusions
4. The compound has been enclosed with a new fence and a gate at either end, the effect is both cosmetic and security oriented
5. The boardwalks laid down last year from the sandy cove to the compound perimeter have been extended into and across the site
6. The outlying buildings have been reroofed
7. The outlying buildings have been given new wooden doors; good solid stock, with a vintage chevron and diamond-pattern finish
8. Three solid-state buildings constructed from red brick have been added to the site. They consist of a utilities building, ticket office and the now completed tearoom, which on our last visit was at a functional stage minus proper windows.
Zalivino Lighthouse Restoration: the lighthouse keeper’s cottage
The most significant development is the structural renovation and the complete interior restoration of the former lighthouse keeper’s cottage.
The first photograph below denotes the condition of the cottage in 2021; the photograph beneath it, how the cottage appears today.
BEFORE
AFTER
The following account of our latest visit to Zalivino lighthouse is an extract from my personal diary:
Zalivino Lighthouse Restoration
At last, numb and red nosed, we reached the perimeter, by way of the coastal route, of Zalivino Lighthouse. Outside the lighthouse grounds, the old German buildings lining the water’s edge facing out across the Curonian Lagoon appear to have been given the once over, either that or I missed this fact on my previous visit. The brickwork looks cleaner, and the lovely wooden doors and window shutters strike me as being recent installations along with the terracotta-modelled roof.
Inside the compound, everything looked immediately more presentable. To the left and right are single storey buildings, red brick with Georgian-style roofs. One, I imagine, is the toilet block; the other the ticket office and, next to that, the completed tea and loitering room, which on my previous visit had thick translucent polythene sheeting where windows were wanting but wanting no more.
Olga Hart in proud receipt of her ticket from the ticket office
The former lighthouse keeper’s cottage, which had been nothing more than a shell, ravaged by time and cannibalised by thieves when the site fell derelict after perestroika, has been renovated to such a high standard that had I not witnessed the dereliction with my own eyes and taken photos to prove it, I would have scarcely believed it was the same building.
Although the museum it would like to become has a long way to go, for those interested in marine life, the old keeper’s cottage contains an interesting display of marine paraphernalia and artefacts associated with lighthouse history.
The two rooms of the cottage also contain some rather fetching reproduction antique furniture and other curios. For example, a not-for-the-squeamish stuffed and mounted seabird and a round-shaped Deco-style early plastic radio that may or may not be original but is endowed with vintage appeal. There is also a Vienna-style wall clock, two hefty wagon wheels and, in the centre of the room, a polished wooden dining table and corresponding chairs.
I think it is safe to say that this level of homeliness is not the one that the lighthouse keeper would have been accustomed to, and yet the warmth transcending the basic need for warmth on a bitterly cold winter’s day would have probably been no stranger to him.
What also affected me was the solidity of the building which, considering its exposed location, was reassuring indeed, since no amount of huffing and puffing was about to blow this house in. Strong, solid, durable and intuitively enriched, the lighthouse keeper’s cottage could hardly have been more welcoming.
Zalivino Lighthouse tower
A visit to Zalivino Lighthouse without climbing the tower would be like going to the pub and ordering an empty glass. Thus, even on this coldest of days, off and up we went.
At the time of our ascent, or rather a few minutes before, Zalivino suffered a power outage, so we had to climb the tower without the aid of electric lamps. The first few steps were enveloped in darkness, but the windows in the tower walls, as small as they are, are sufficient to light the way and as you reach the base of the lamp room the light pours in from the dome above.
The elevated view from the lighthouse window reveals the extent to which the outlying buildings and the site in which they stand have been improved and whilst up there in the Gods, we got to gaze across and enjoy the scene of the winter landscape complete with icicle-petrified coastline.
As stimulating as these prospects were, there were two impressions from the top of the tower whose tenacity cannot be equalled. The first was the sound of the wind, rushing across the lagoon, curling around the lamp room like the giant tentacles of a phantom sea squid.
The second was that of Olga daring to step outside onto the wind-swept lighthouse’s viewing platform so that I could take a photo of her. Of course, I was champing at the bit to get out on the ledge myself, make no mistake about that! But someone had to cower inside in order to take the photo.
The renovation and refurbishment of Zalivino lighthouse has come on in proverbial leaps and bounds in a relatively short space of time. If you are not personally acquainted with the near demolition site that it was in 2020 at the outset of the project, the photographic collage within the keeper’s cottage will give you a good idea of just how bleak the damage was, as will the photographs used in my earlier post.
You will also find in the keeper’s cottage a framed composition of images depicting where the restorationists want to be with the project by 2024. Unfortunately, the photograph that I took of the wall-mounted display is not good, as my hands were in need of a warm cup of tea and the light from the window reflected badly into the lens of the camera.
Comparison of the photographic evidence of the condition of the lighthouse, its ancillary buildings and site as they appeared in 2020 with the photos taken this year (2023) demonstrate the achievements to date, making the 2024 target a less ambitious objective than might otherwise be supposed.
Without a shadow of a doubt, a lot of work, care and attention has been invested in the project, not to mention wonga. The results so far are superlative, returning the lighthouse to its historical origins and turning it, metaphorically speaking, into a restoration beacon for other projects across the region to follow.
Support the project
Raising funds for the restoration of the lighthouse is an ongoing process, and any donation that you would care to make would be greatly appreciated. Your generosity will help to preserve an important element of marine cultural heritage and if that’s not reward enough, your part in the preservation will be forever a part of the lighthouse’s history.
Published: 25 January 2023 ~ Kaliningrad and things that go clank in the night
From the same wonderful chap who brought you Kaliningrad’s midnight leaf suckers (that wonderful chap is me, by the way, just in case you failed to recognise me by the accuracy of the description), we have something at 2am …?
I was just off into slumberland, lulled into this blissful state, which is an exotic and privileged condition for a confirmed and inveterate insomniac, by a series of smiles set in motion by a composition of novel remarks discovered in the perusal of a news report on Yandex.
In this report*, the Press Secretary of the President of Russia, Dmitry Peskov, was responding to the head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky (you know him, he’s the man with whiskers who perpetually wears a green T-shirt) who said, when addressing the World Economic Forum (you know them, the Davos cartel, a super-rich globalist gang obsessed with resetting the world for their benefit at everyone else’s expense), that he doubted the existence of Vladimir Putin. Peskov replied: “It is clear that purely psychologically, Mr Zelensky would prefer that neither Russia nor Putin exist, but the sooner [that] he realizes ~ the sooner the Ukrainian regime realizes ~ that Russia and Putin are and will be, the better for … Ukraine.”
As a roll-call of ghastly phantom-like images, including Tony Blair, Bill Gates, George Soros and other nightmare villains, such as might have been applicably cast in the 1970s’ pot-boiling series the Hammer House of Horror, slipped mercifully from my mind, I was suddenly dragged, hauled out as it were, from the luxury of impending sleep into a yet to be expunged existence, where the Davos set still are but hopefully soon will not be, by disturbing sounds in the street of an incomprehensible nature.
Kaliningrad and things that go clank in the night
It is a selfish but incontrovertible fact that people in my age group can afford to entertain, with less regret than the young, sounds that could be mistaken for a global nuclear incident, but the sounds outside my window seeming rather less than might be imagined for an event on such a scale, had more to do with engines running, metal wotnots clanging together and men calling out to each other in a distinctly blokey and workman-like fashion.
Whatever was occurring it could not be truthfully said to be keeping me awake, as I had mislaid the art and science of sleeping many years ago. No, it was the presence of these perplexing sounds at this fairy-tale-time of the morning that had me all agog.
It was not very long before fantasy overtook me ~ you know how it is in the early hours ~ suggesting I believe that in response to my recent post on pavements some receptive spark in authority acting on the hint had decided to ship the requisite materials needed for renovation, and that even as we slept ~ and even whilst some of us didn’t ~ shipments of hardcore and other materials ferried in by moonlight were being deposited on the grassy knoll in the centre of the street.
This theory had a near-firm basis in a previous early-morning chorus of indefinable noises, the source of which it transpired was a working party busily engaged in the not unreasonable occupation of vacuum-cleaning the grass gone midnight.
The fallen leaves of autumn having been whisked away, it was a small step for an imagination accustomed to leaps of fancy to envision the wartime bunker lurking below the knoll earmarked for refurbishment, contingent on the unlikely event that should the sirens go off all would never hear them, because someone up our street delights in keeping a witless dog that hardly ever stops barking.
Unable to contain myself, and my curiosity, any longer, I slid out from my bed and made my way to the window. I had it in my hand, my camera, and you’ll never give me credit for it, but with it, it was I that took this unreasonably awful photo, which ~ and you’ll have to take my word for this~ shows two or several men mingling with the morning shadows at a time when every abnormal person, those without guilty consciences, are snoring and farting deep in their sleep; they were busy, were these men, busy thrusting big thick pipes down drainholes, sucking stuff out with gusto as if their very jobs depended on it. Yes, there they were, I am tempted to say, waking up the entire street, but that would be a fallacy, as often there is that shitty dog (with an owner whose name must be Mutton Jeff) that barks and barks and barks and barks. And if you can sleep through that, then presumably you’ll sleep through anything: “Did you hear that siren?” Woof! “Did you hear that burglar?” Woof! Did you hear that …? What? Woof! … Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof! What did you say? I said “Woof”!
I consider it fortunate that I’m an insomniac, or I could have trouble falling asleep.
Pleased to look out the window and see things going on which in my youth, that is my very young youth, would fill me with fascination ~ drain suckers, dustbin men, bucket men, tarmac gangs ~ oh, and Robert Brothers’ Circus’ lorries cavalcading for winter quarters ~ I crawled back into the pit, thinking now that I know what it is they are up to should I block out those naughty men’s sounds by recourse to soothing ‘White Noise’ (and just how racist is that!), but before you could say ‘you’re a strange bugger’ and before I could ‘take a knee’, I had bucked the insomnia trend. I was slipping faster than soap on ice into a hallelujah dream fest, a film noir, They Worked by Night! starring noises of a nocturnal nature, hundreds of Königsberg manhole* covers and the gangs of men who go around in the dark lifting those covers up when we are fast asleep or, when we are not, we should be. What more can we say at the end of the day than bring on the ZZZ…
**Manhole: This is one of those words that we need to be particularly careful of when sycophantically brown-nosing woke in an absurd aberration for gender inclusiveness.
Zelenogradsk ~ streets ahead with imaginative decorations
Published: 10 January 2023 ~ Zelenogradsk Christmas Decorations Win First Prize
In the UK, the festive season is well and truly over. Unless you had a better time than most, the last remnants of the New Year’s Eve hangover will have sailed way into the ether, along with the memories you cannot remember and those you wish to forget. But here, in Russia, the festive holidays do not peter out until the morn of the 15th of January. This is because the Russian Orthodox Church follows the old Julian Calendar and not the Gregorian one, so, although some religious denominations still celebrate Christmas day on the 25th December and the big festive night for Russians is the same as that for the Scotties, New Year’s Eve, Russians also celebrate Orthodox Christmas on the 7th January and Orthodox New Year’s Eve on the 14th January. That’s an awful lot of celebrations in one month, but it does mean that the municipal decorations remain intact until the middle of January.
Zelenogradsk Christmas Decorations Win First Prize
Bearing this in mind, I took a trip to the Baltic seaside resort of Zelenogradsk on the 9th of January to shiver in front of the sea and say hello to what are without question the most inspiring display of Christmas decorations this side of the Russian border.
I have no idea whether Kaliningrad holds a Best Decorated Christmas Street in the Region competition, but if it did, the main street of Zelenogradsk would win hands down. Words like magical and enchanting easily spring to mind, along with novel, imaginative and even bizarre!
This year I took my camera along with me and, although the snaps that I have taken do not do the panoply near enough justice, they do manage to give an idea of the thought and effort that each shop, café, bar, restaurant, etc put into producing the best expression of Christmas joy. They certainly make my Christmas baubles look pathetic in comparison, even when lit with flashing lights.
Which of the Christmas ensembles along Zelenogradsk High Street would I nominate for first prize? That’s a tough ‘un’. I’ll leave it to you to decide.
Published: 31 December 2022 ~ F*ck New Year Calendars and How do They Work?
Every year, on the 31st of December, most of us, not all but most, celebrate the arrival of a New Year. Some celebrate it quietly, others party like it’s going out of fashion, hopping, whooping, shouting, working themselves up into a right old frenzy as the hours, minutes and seconds count down to midnight. By the time midnight arrives, sobriety has left, and everyone screams ‘Happy New Year’, and then we get more drunk.
As a consequence of this mandatory ritual, typically and ironically for most of us the New Year starts on a none too auspicious note: We fall into bed at 5am and wake up half-way through the day with a bucket for a head, a mouth that tastes like the cat slept in and a guts ~ Well, let’s not draw a picture.
As the last minutes of the last 365 days of our life tick away, you can guarantee that almost everyone around you will breathe a sigh of relief, chorusing “I’m glad to see the back of 1065,” for example, “1066 can’t be any worse!” I think it was Harold who said that.
So it is with philosophical solemnity, that I present to you today, on this last day of the Year of Our Lord 2022, this photograph of a rather rude calendar, which a ferret and I discovered whilst roving the bars of Kaliningrad.
Now we have no way of knowing, and cannot say for certain, if those who hung this calendar on the wall, presumably in January of 2022, were in receipt of psychic information. Did they have a direct line to the Universe’s Control Centre? Was it just a self-fulfilling prophesy? Or is it the work of a ‘double agent’, ie I will denounce 2022 but secretly I support it. In other words, how does this calendar work?
Presumably, like any other, you pin it on the wall on the first day of the New Year to which the calendar applies. Well, OK, making allowances for hangovers, most likely on the second day. But how do you know? How do you predict how the year will pan out for you? What gives you the right and credibility to hang a calendar on your wall that says F!ck 2022, 2024 or 2020-anything?
Does the advocate of this type of calendar have a sixth sense ~ some might argue that they must have a sick sense? Before hanging such a prophetic calendar on his wall, does he consult the tarot cards, examine his crystal balls, believe in horoscopes, resort to numerological mysticism in which 2+2= 6 (which just means his maths are awful) or does he sign up to the endless twaddle that spews out of YouTube videos from self-appointed, self-proclaimed, creepy homespun spiritualists? The mind ~ that is, the mind that is still in control ~ boggles, and shudders, to think.
F*ck New Year Calendars and How do They Work?
Those of you that cling to the adage that pessimism breeds pessimism, ie what goes around comes around, and that bad-joke calendars like this manifest reality, will no doubt recoil in horror at such presumptuous negativity and may even have a calendar on your wall to set the record straight, a calendar, for example, on which it could be written ‘Welcome 2022’, the bold, pink words surrounded by little elves that dance, fairies that flutter, butterflies that bob and rabbits that bunny and bunnies that rabbit, all afrolick together among the softening rays of a sunburst yellow bathed like a halo on the blue-sky background, and they sigh, they sigh with such sighs of optimism that they carry you back like a tune to your childhood and you know instinctively and have no doubt that this, at last, is Your Year!
Looked at objectively and objectionably, It’s hard to decide which of the two calendars surrenders itself more completely to the irony of fate: the bar’s F*uck You calendar or the optimist’s New Era dream, ‘Hoorah! 2023 is going to be the year for me’. (Some woman on YouTube told me so!) Ah, hem …
I don’t wish to be a killjoy, especially on New Year’s Eve, but it must be plain to the most myopic that calendars that purport to predict the essence of the coming year, both the good and the bad, are best to be avoided, or, if the temptation is just too much, try keeping them off your wall, at least until their year is out and the next year safely in.
Let hindsight be your witness and you will minimise the chance of Irony passing judgement on you!
Published: 30 December 2022 ~ 4 Great Kaliningrad Bars Mick Hart’s Pub Crawl
Tradition has it in the UK that after spending a long Christmas Day incarcerated at home, on the day after, the theatre of overindulgence is shifted to the pub. Boxing Day might well commence with a brisk walk or some good old-fashioned fox hunting, but such exertions are principally symbolic, diplomatic token gestures intended purely for the amelioration of one’s restless, poisoned conscience for over doing it the day before, mere curtain raisers to the main event, the much-needed trip to the pub.
As a firm believer in the doctrine that the preservation of tradition is an essential prerequisite for any culture’s survival, I applaud the actions of legacy Britons whose interpretation of Boxing Day is to switch off that infernal box, which, if you have not already done so, you should really not pay a licence for, and hotfoot it down to the pub for a pint or six with your mates, where you can safely slag of the country’s turncoats, those you elected to run the UK but who are running it into the ground, without fear of detection by PC Plods who constantly monitor the Net (No wonder they call it The Net!).
Practising what you preach is not only to lead by example, but also good for the soul: Why not, I thought, why not indeed! And it was in this proactive spirit, lashed together with seasonal goodwill and the assistance of my compatriots, that we put together a British-style pub crawl coincidental with Boxing Day but adopted for Kaliningrad.
4 Great Kaliningrad Bars
From the plan’s genesis I had venues in mind, old bar favourites that you could slip back into like a comfortable pair of slippers, but a friend who had expressed an interest in joining us proffered the suggestion that I start the crawl with somewhere new, a bar that had recently opened. Game for anything, at least where pubs and bars are concerned, I couldn’t fault the logic, and this is how and why we met up in a bar which for me was virginal territory on Boxing Day at 3pm.
We would, by the time our mission had been satisfactorily completed, which concluded at 12am, sample the delights of four establishments, which I will mention briefly in this post and then cover each individually at a later date and in more detail.
Whilst we never intended the crawl to be leitmotif driven, fate, it would seem, had other ideas, and these were partially revealed to me on the occasion of the third bar which, like the previous two, had been designed around the popular concept of industrial-look interiors.
The first bar on our itinerary, where Olga and I would rendezvous with our collaborators Inara and Vladimir, was divulged to me as Morrisons. It struck me that this was an unfortunate name for a bar and try as I might to think otherwise whilst bowling along in the taxi, I could not help but cogitate on what the price of baked beans might be and, in the process, distress myself with visions of jostling trolleys and moody faces at checkout tills. Rest assured, however, that the Morrison Bar has nothing to do with supermarkets. It is, in fact, eponymous with, and pays tribute to, the one and only Jim Morrison, who was never accused, as far as I know, for including among his many addictions an inveterate baked bean habit but who left his mark on the world as the impetuous, bold, ill-fated lead vocalist of the 1960s’ rock band Doors. Yes, but why and why now in Kaliningrad? You might just as well ask, why not?
4 Great Kaliningrad Bars
Morrisons (There I go again!), correction Morrison, is a basement bar, the interior of which closely follows the popular trend for artistic degentrification.
The crux of this design concept is Victorian iron and rivets in both execution and effect. Out with the suspended ceiling, the boxed and cased in beams and pipes, the trunking that hides the wires. The bones and sinews are there to be celebrated not covered up and occluded. Nuts, bolts, wires, vents, pipes, warts and all are left exposed to the naked eye. Rooms are effectively skeletised, even to the extent of eschewing plaster and panelling. Neglect, decay and degeneration replace conventional virtues of maintenance; revitalisation is quashed and in every aspect and every facet the old becomes the new.
Towards this end Morrison has got everything going for it, from shattered ceiling to paint-pealing walls, but, as the chrome-glistening Harley Davidson in the entrance hall denotes, everything that is distressed in Morrison’s shines with the lustre of a bright new pin, which is hardly unexpected as it is one of Kaliningrad’s most recent contenders on a bar circuit already unique, and the polish and varnish is not yet dry.
Mick Hart in the entrance hall to Morrison Bar, Kaliningrad
Morrison, which is a café, bar and music venue combo, has some nice touches to it, which I will reveal at a later date, and since no one had cause to complain about the food and as I enjoyed my ‘pint’ of Maisel’s Weisse and as the seats were comfortable and the place had atmosphere, the newly incorporated Morrison Bar receives the Mick Hart Seal of Approval.
From Morrison we set off for? Where would it be? The Sir Francis Drake, which was not a million miles away, was suggested first, but as we had been there recently, we decided to detour to a bar which when my younger brother visited me in the summer of 2019 became an absolute favourite of his; and that bar is the Yeltsin. No prizes, I’m afraid, for guessing the namesake of this establishment.
Boxing Day night was a filthy night, a term which I appreciate will have different connotations for different kinds of people but which I shall disappoint you now by saying that in this particular context means that the evening was wet and cold.
Huddled beneath our umbrellas, we hurried across the railway bridge to a bar which cannot so much be called industrial by design as designed in a previous lifetime for industrial purpose. It occupies the tail end of a behemoth of a building, which gives every indication of having once been emphatically industrial and which today still houses, as far as I can tell, a jamboree of workshops and small commercial units.
Walkers to the Yeltsin should take note that the pavement rises at the front of the Yeltsin building as the lie of the land and the road atop ascends to the height of the railway bridge.
This geographical tilt requires all prospective patrons to stray from the straight and narrow using the concrete steps provided. The Yeltsin, therefore, is not strictly speaking a basement bar as such, but one whose entrance is to be found located at lower ground level. (Talk about nit-picking!)
The first thing noticeable about the Yeltsin’s interior is that it is not a shabby chic makeover; it is genuinely shabby and basic and has ceilings as high as a kite. There has been no need, or should I say no apparent need, to create atmosphere in the Yeltsin, as whatever it was before it became what it is today (which is sublime) it was already infused with atmosphere and when whatever it was went away that atmosphere forgot to go with it.
Mick Hart propping up the bar in Bar Yeltsin, Kaliningrad
My brother liked the Yeltsin for its fantastic range of beers, and what dyed-in-the-wool beer drinker wouldn’t? But I am also attracted to it by the way that its easy down-at-heel character brings back affectionate memories of student union bars, two bars in particular: one, the London College of Printing as it was in the 1980s and, two, Southbank University bar, which back in my drinking-studying days were conveniently placed in staggering distance.
(If I was to say ‘corrugated metal sheets’ and ‘Pizza, beans and chips’ and you were to recall these bars respectively, then you must have been around in the days when I was frequenting these drinking holes.)
There is certainly a lot more that can be written about the Yeltsin, and I will try to get round to that, but, for the time being, let me just say for the record that on this auspicious Boxing Day visit, it was my privilege to enjoy an exceedingly nice ‘pint’ of Fruit Beer there, the OG of which weighed in at an impressive 6.3% and which cost somewhere in the vicinity of 350 roubles.
The unifying quality of good beer and a positive drinking atmosphere prevailed on me to stay, but the first law of pub crawling is that you must get off your arse and walk. Fortunately ~ fortunately that is for the integrity of the crawl ~ we were enticed to do just that, following a recommendation from one of the bar staff. No, not the one ‘get out you’re barred’, but from his giving us the name of and the directions to a bar that was so near that had it been any nearer the need to leave the Yeltsin would have been superfluous. Apprised of this piece of news, we were up on our feet and away!
In the drinking interlude that we had spent within the Yeltsin, the weather had grown more foul, and so it was with great relief that we discovered that, true to the barman’s word, the next port of call was upon us before we had time to button our coats.
This third place on our adventurous itinerary is called Forma in Russian, which in English translates into ‘Form’. (Cuh, there’s nothing to learning the Russian language, is there!)
Across the outside drinking and smoking area to the front door of Forma Bar, Kaliningrad
It was Form that alerted me to the second theme of our evening, namely that all three bars we had visited were either subterranean or housed at lower ground level. Like Yeltsin, to get into Form we had first to cross a small enclosed and hard-surfaced forecourt, just the ticket for good-weather drinking and the perfect place to corral the once glamorous, now social pariahs, who, flying in the face of every public health warning going, still refuse to kick the tobacco habit.
Who would have believed but a few short years ago at a time when every bar in the world, between the ceiling and the floor, was hung with a film of blue-grey tobacco smoke that in order to pursue your vice you would one day be expelled, forced to huddle in the cold and rain just to drag on a fag? I shudder to think of a future in which bottles of beer bristle with health warnings and drinkers are forced to drink in closets and legally made to drink alone so as not to subject tea-totallers to the risks of passive drinking! Oh Brave New World that has such restrictions innit!
As the only good weather this evening was whether we could get in out of the rain quicker than Liz Truss left Number 10, we did not stop to answer the question from those not there to ask it: “Have you got a light?” Sanctimoniously: “No!” But hurried from the shadows into the sanctuary of the bar.
Form was the third venue to receive us this evening, and the third bar to give more than a passing nod to the conceptualised industrial look. Without going into too much detail in this post, I will merely mention plain concrete floor, a screen made from hollow section con blocks, rudimentary wood panelling and the sort of serving area that looked as though whoever made it had DIY skills in common with mine, except here I mean to be complementary, which for honesty’s sake I certainly could not be had it really been my hand working the carpenter’s tools.
4 Great Kaliningrad Bars
Whilst Morrison occupies the high end, the aesthetic end, of the industrial look, and Yeltsin is baptised by an effortless urban chic, Form possessed a distinctly vintage feel. Indeed, if you were to situate in the centre of the room four or five rails of clothing, unusually small and occasionally mothed ~ bingo! You would think you were in the right place to get yourself a pair of those as-scarce-as-rocking-horse-sh*t men’s trousers, the high-arsed ones which have braces buttons on the outside waistband. Guess whose got two pairs of those!
It is a well known fact, well known amongst the drinking fraternity, that both beer and pub-crawling can make you hungry (sounds suspiciously like a public health warning). In the Yeltsin we had addressed that problem by indulging in corn chips and cheesy strings. Now, it was the turn of a large dish of olives, easily and eagerly washed down with a delicious white wheat beer.
As with the Yeltsin, the range of beers on offer left nothing to the imagination. Frank Sinatra could have danced all night, and I could have drunk at Form all night and ‘still have begged for more’, but duty has a way of calling and, before the night was over, we had one more stop to make.
The bar, which was to become the last bar on our picaresque adventure, was divorced from the other two and required first that we tackle the appalling weather and second that we hop on board one of Kaliningrad’s new trams. What a treat! There’s a first time for everything and this was a first for me!
Fortunately, the walk from the tram stop to our final bar this evening was relatively amenable, which was fortuitous because I would not want to ask the way to a bar that goes by the long-tail, provocative name of Your Horizon is Littered. I joke ye not. Let’s play that again in Russian: ‘У вас горизонт завален’. Does that make it any easier for you?
Gentle illumination in the Kaliningrad bar ‘Your Horizons are Littered’
Having already littered my horizon with empty beer glasses, I decided to do it one more time (It’s strange how ‘once’ can sometimes multiply into ‘twice’ without awareness informing you that the multiplication is taking place.)
The name of the bar may have come as a surprise to me, but that it was a basement bar did not. As I said earlier, all of our haunts this evening had a subterranean theme. However, that’s where the similarity ends. Your Horizons are Littered was not littered with even the slightest allusion to industrial chic. It is, in comparison to the three bars visited earlier, easily the smallest of the three and has a low-lit, cosy, comfortable, laid-back feel to it, qualities which, at the end of a long drinking day, are exactly what you want and when you want it most.
Horizons (let’s abbreviate it a little) does not serve tap-dispensing beer, so I had to make do with bottled, which was no hardship since they do stock Maisel’s Weisse. On the scale of one to 10, Horizon effortlessly scores maximum points on the snug and relaxation chart, an attribute attested to by Inara and I staying on, after the others had thrown in the beer towel, just for a nightcap ~ or two. That two could easily have turned into a nightcap and three had we not been so mature and with it wise and sensible and besides we had run out of time. Unbeknown to us, lulled into a sense of false security by the combination of good beer and a complementary atmosphere, closing time (thank you Tom Waits) had slipped behind the bar and quietly switched the barman off. No ‘Last Orders!’ here.
There was nothing for it now than to litter our horizons with the cold, the rain and the hope of a taxi. But, like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca who consoled himself with the thought that they would ‘always have Paris’, we would always have Kaliningrad (apologies to the Czechs) and the memory of our Boxing Day crawl.
As Bogart never said, but would have done had he been with us today, ‘Play it again, Sam’ ~ soon!
Published: 25 December 2022 ~ Kaliningrad Retro Car Club in a Festive Mood
A big thank you to Inara and Arthur for inviting me to the Kaliningrad Retro Car Club end-of-year party last night and to the members of the club for making me feel so welcome and for creating a night to remember. It was especially fortuitous for me that the party coincided with the 24th December, Christmas Eve in the UK.
Apprehension at the outset that the venue for the party, the old Luftwaffe spare-parts building, would be brass-monkey cold was largely unfounded. Improvised heating using one of those gas-fired space appliances worked far better than I anticipated, and as for the cold it could not compete with, this encouraged those who like and want to dance to do just that; their jumping and jiving around proving to be an excellent way of generating the auxiliary heat that we needed.
Kaliningrad Retro Car Club party
The car club’s chef had prepared various nourishing dishes, the warm ones claiming a decisive victory for mission Keep the Cold at Bay, and generous proportions of vodka, cognac and cognac liqueurs, toasts galore and the warmth of the company present ~ particularly the latter ~ all did their sterling bit to stave off the winter temperatures.
It was heartening and appropriate that Father Frost (Father Christmas) should drop by to assist in the festivities and to doll out seasonal presents, and I was especially pleased with the car quiz that proved to me once and for all that when it comes to taking part in quizzes I could do much worse than not take part.
It did occur to me, too late, of course, that to show my appreciation for an excellent evening, I could have volunteered to help clean up the venue the following day, a sort of Christmas Day treat for my conscience, but as the idea refused to catch up with me until the time for action had passed, I will have to think of something else.
One positive thing that I could do is to reiterate my offer to the president of the club, which is to donate a rather fine door to the Luftwaffe building that we have secreted in our garage. I think that it would look very nice and would attest to its functionality hanging on two or three hinges where the hole in the wall to the toilet is. I am nothing if not inventive.
Above: Kaliningrad Retro Car Club members
Above:First Aid for anyone who complains about the cold ~ Vaccine Vodka. And the Retro Car Club’s resident nurse. She has a heart of gold and a lovely bedside manner
Above:Father Frost drops by
Above:Mick Hart with a pint in his hand and Lenin looking over his shoulder
Above:Olga Hart with a kind and friendly fairy behind her
Above: What is it … don’t be rude?! I’m talking about the object I am holding! It is, in fact, a napkin holder made out of vilkee and lorshkee ~ that’s forks and spoons to you!
Above: Us with a Christmas tree made by children out of coloured cloth and sponge
Above:The entertainment. A class act, an unusual feature of which was the levelling of the guitar on JImi Hendrix’s head
Above:A highly detailed model display of theRoad of Life, the Siege of Leningrad, WWII
Published: 15 December 2022 ~ Kaliningrad Pavements Pave the Way for the Better
Tratooraree, said Mick in his bestest Russian. Nobody quite understood him, but that’s the story of his life, so he pressed on regardless, translating the word into English, “Pavements!” he said, triumphantly, and everyone went back to sleep.
No one talks pavements in the UK, after all pavements, and the conditions of them, are one of the reasons why we pay our council tax. They are lumped together with such essential but taken-for-granted services as emptying our bins, clearing litter from the streets (although the council rarely get round to this) and policing by consent (ie you and the police agree that when you are mugged or have your house burgled the police will give you a crime number and that anything that you say, meaning ‘mean tweets’ on Twatter, will be taken down, twisted round and used in evidence against you). Council tax, the get-out-clause for Maggie Thatcher’s controversial poll tax, has risen so high in Britain in recent years that it represents a second mortgage, so Brits expect to see as much done as is civically possible in return for the confiscation of their hard-earned cash, and that, amongst other things, takes care of pavements.
In Kaliningrad pavements are, or can be, a controversial subject* and one that has persistently percolated to the top of the restoration agenda since the dissolution of the USSR.
When does our street get its much needed and long overdue pavement renovation? ~ is not something that residents of Kaliningrad discuss on a daily basis, but it does come up in conversation, occasionally, from time to time.
When I say, ‘our street’, I use the term to imply a general anxiety and impatience amongst those residents who live in certain areas where pavement reform sits at the top of their collective bucket list as distinct from the pavement up ‘our street’, meaning the street in which we specifically live. And yet, to coin a phrase, if ‘the cap fits …’.
My wife asked someone about the situation regarding ‘our’ pavement and was told that it was not likely to happen this year, but maybe next year. Her inquiry was made in 2021, when next year was 2022 (It would be funny if it was 2023, wouldn’t it?) but next year has almost gone. I know this because when I first began to write this post snow was falling but not in sufficient quantities to entirely exorcise the pavement problem, but snow is now falling snow on snow and ‘what the eye don’t see, the heart don’t grieve about’.
For people like me, who have the ability and choreographic instincts of Fred Astaire (Mum, who’s he talking about?), the pavement problem, though not in itself altogether inconsequential, has me reach out sympathetically to others who are more affected by the inconvenience and its negative impact.
From my window, which I look out from, from time to time ~ they are good for that, aren’t they? ~ I watch the world go by, and in the process typically think to myself, how on earth is that young couple going to pilot that pram of theirs across the assault course which now confronts them? Wheels are good but tank tracks would be better. And then there’s the senior citizens, of which I count myself one, many of whom avoid the path and take to the cobbles instead. Königsberg’s road cobbles may also not be an easy terrain, but at least to trip is a trip into history.
Kaliningrad pavements
Whilst the pavement can be treacherous, especially on the way back from the bar late at night, and especially where lack of light adds to the problem, I have got round this one, partially by memorising the pavement on both sides of the street. I am not going to go so far as to say that ‘I know this pavement like the back of my hand’, because the last time I heard that expression it was back in 1983 on a dark and dank November evening when fate was in a playful mood.
At the time, we were flying along the country roads at 80 miles an hour in my Ford Cortina when, replying to an admonition from me, my brother, who was driving, said: “Ahh, you worry so much. I know this road like the back of my hand!”
It would seem, however that his hand did not have a sharp bend at the bottom of a hill and a tight grass verge on either side, which, when clipped at the speed we were doing, sent us spinning backwards through the hedge, left us hanging momentarily, headlights pointing towards the sky, and then brought us down like a spinning top bluntly to rest in a wet ploughed field.
Whilst there’s little fear of a similar thing happening as I traverse Kaliningrad’s pavements at considerably less speed in my Wrangler boots, I have been known to work up a good head of steam when steering a course to the local shop to replenish my beer supplies.
To be fair, the pavement on the left side of our street is not that unnegotiable until, that is, you reach the point where it meets the junction. Here there is an interesting piece that looks lunar in its construction, or do I mean destruction? By the way that’s lunar, with the stress on ‘ar’ in Russian. ‘We interrupt this discussion on pavements to bring you a surreptitious lesson on stress in the Russian language’. No stress and no sweat with this moon, however, because I know this patch of the lunar landscape well, yet woe betide you if you don’t, because it is precisely at this spot that in the absence of adequate street lighting the dark side of the moon begins.
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for children.”
I remember (Oh lord, there he goes, reminiscing again!), when we returned to Kaliningrad in the winter of 2018. At that time, we were renting a flat in the Kaliningrad district close to the radio mast. Believe you me, the radio mast is something you cannot miss; a welcome beacon on a stormy night to guide you safely home after one to many in the Francis Drake.
We were walking back one evening, the radio mast towering above us in all its multicoloured splendour, my wife grumbling about the state of the pavement, the deep pits and iced-over puddles, when Victor Ryabinin, whose company we were in, showed us, with characteristic insouciance, how literally one can get round this problem. “Like this!” he said, with a giggle. And he hopped and skipped and jumped, still laughing, first around the one obstacle and then around or over the next, treating them all as lightly as if they were nothing more than mirages.
With his usual gift for doing so, Victor had taken an everyday problem and made a moral out of it, namely that there’s more in life to worry about than pavements or more to life than pavements to worry about or, as Leonard Cohen put it, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in …” {Leonard Cohen’s Anthem: let’s dedicate it to Victor’s pofik!}
Kaliningrad Pavements
The pavement in our street on the opposite side of the road earns itself the reputation of being an obstacle course of sorts and, therefore, compared with its parallel relation, demanding of greater navigation skills and sense of co-ordination. Once again, for some unknown reason, the most challenging aspect of it lies at the end of the street closer to the junction. Some way from this, it is mainly earthen, then tarmacadam before becoming, albeit briefly, spanking new and modern.
Incongruously, but only in looks not reason, this updated portion of pavement made from very nice decorative blocks has been laid down privately, and at personal expense, by the owner of a large house ~ impressively designed as a mediaeval fortress ~ for the express purpose of aiding both the ingress and egress of his personal vehicles and also, and understandably, as an improvement to the appearance of the frontage of his property.
Whenever I arrive at this particular section of pavement, the thought that I am about to walk across it christens me with guilt. I feel intuitively that I ought to change my boots for my carpet slippers or, at the very least, pay a toll for the privilege of crossing. Now then, now then, don’t go putting ideas into certain people’s heads!
Unfortunately, however, after this magic carpet ride, it’s downhill all the way. The configuration of a worn and rutted entrance to a private commercial carpark, not much more than hardcore in construction, pocked with serious cavities and craters on either side, which in the rainy season fill with water, makes for a treacherous path indeed. But force of habit and the challenge that it presents has, over a period of time, deluded me into thinking that I can almost walk on water, using the stepping-stone techniques learnt when we were children for crossing fords and streams.
Knowledge is king, as they say (who does?) and as with everything in life the difference between a safe passage and one you should not have attempted (there’s a lot of those in Brixton) is knowing where to put your foot without putting your foot inadvertently in it (innit, man!).
Where’s Sir Walter Ralegh with his cloak when you need him?
As a not-too-young person, whenever I return from the shop with five pints of beer and a tomato, I pick and mix my pavements ~ sometimes hopping on this one, sometimes skipping on that, sometimes weaving around that section, sometimes straddling this, just as Victor taught me or rather like the tightrope walker at Robert Brothers’ Circus that I almost but never eventually became.
I go to these lengths because (a) it tests my memory (which is important as you get older, for you would not want to run the risk of forgetting what you went to the shop for: “Sorry, dear, I forgot the tomato.”); and (c) (having problems remembering the alphabet), it helps in honing the essential skills of balance and agility.
You might think that the topic of this post is right up my street, and you’d be right, but there’s a good chance that if you live in Kaliningrad, you are streets ahead of me, for this city has some wonderful streets, many with wonderful pavements, and with pavements that as each year passes are clearly on the mend.
In step with everything …
But if the pavements on your street are still waiting on the waiting list, console yourself with the image of how things used to be! Those of you who are old enough should be able to cast your mind back to earlier times, when the mean streets of Kaliningrad were very mean indeed!.
Way back when, in the formative years of the 21st century, a pastime that I quickly cultivated whenever I visited Kaliningrad was to watch the women as they walked by. For purely scientific purposes naturally, I observed the tall, leggy women in short skirts and six-inch stilettos teetering precariously ~ but never tripping, mind! ~ strut their stuff as confidently as any model on the catwalk could across the pits, crevices and uneven ground where, prior to perestroika, Kaliningrad’s pavements once would have been but sadly were no more.
It may come as a surprise to you, but I never tired of watching these ladies; I suppose because they were so adept.
But times, as they say, have changed: the skirts are not so short, the heels are not so high and the pavements, though not as exciting, have attained for the greater part an air of respectability and those that haven’t are getting there! Sigh, progress can be a lot like love: it depends on the beholder.
Former posts What I like about Kaliningrad Our friend, the late Victor Ryabinin, used to refer to Kaliningrad and its surrounding territory as ‘this special place’, and I am with him on that. Whether it is because I see Kaliningrad through his eyes and feel it through his heart, I cannot rightly say. Certainly, his outlook and philosophy on life influenced me and my intuition bears his signature, but I rather imagine that he perceived in me from the earliest time of our friendship something of a kindred spirit, someone who shared his sensibility for the fascination of this ‘special place’.
Why I left the UK and moved to Kaliningrad I did not decide to leave the UK and give up the country where I was born and everything I had ever known simply because it would furnish me with a first-class opportunity to laugh at the way the UK media brainwashes people.
Published: 8 December 2022 ~ Badger Club Kaliningrad a Bohemian Night on the Tiles
My wife, Olga, went to a concert recently (see the photos below). I know exactly how my eloquent and highbrow musician friend in the UK will respond when he attempts to equate ‘concert’ with the images from that evening: “WTF?! Let’s go there!”
Now I am not the world’s most mainstream guy, but I have to admit when I saw the photos and heard an account of the evening, which did not happen until the following day because my wife rolled back at some ungodly hour in the morning, they made me feel positively ~ as the American author Henry James might say ~ ‘Ground into the mill of the conventional’.
It is not clear from the photographs whether the establishment is cavernous, but it certainly looks covenous ~ all that dim lighting, candles, hanging masks, dolls, natural-wood sculptures, enchanting (and possibly enchanted, Gothicised cabinets), and, moreover, wild and whacky costumery! Right up my surrealist street!
The top hat and tailed gentleman, the owner of the club, Aleksandr Smirnov, is obviously a ‘quick-change’ expert ~ one minute impresario, the next an updated rock-star figure from the minds of the Brothers Grimm. He, I am told, is a chimney sweep, only he isn’t, he is an accomplished and original artist who produces highly detailed bronzed relief plaques (apologies if I am slightly less than accurate, but I am having to base my opinion on mobile phone snaps) and, as you will see from the photographs, is also a bit of a wizard in the costume creation department. That’s him in the photo with his chopper in his hand. I’ve never seen one as big as that before; and me having been active in the antiques and militaria trade!
Choppers aside, this particular evening was dedicated to accomplished musicians and good music: There was a soulful and original indie art-folk band, Sfeno, first-rate singer guitarist and a young lady violinist, a virtuoso of her craft, who was on the fiddle a lot that evening. Vodka was not rationed, people got up and jived and my wife, much to her great surprise, if not unalloyed delight, was both chatted up and propositioned, which is always good for the ego (I’ve lost count of the number of times that the same has happened to me (you wish!)). The location, in fact the whole evening, was so spellbinding that it reduced Harry Potter to as much comparative magic as a meeting of the Women’s Institute at the local village-hall on a wet afternoon in the 1930s.
Never one to moralise, even when occasion justifies, whilst all this frivolity was going on in Kaliningrad’s answer to Alice’s Wonderland, I was at home with the cat, genning up on Königsberg and the history of East Prussia by reading (both the cat and I) that excellent publication Legends of the Amber Land, by Andrey Kropotkin.
Although I must say, with my wife rolling in at some unseemly hour of the morning ~ we won’t say when! ~ I would have been quite within my conjugal rights had I demanded of her, “And what time do you call this then!?” or have cast myself in the role of the heavy-handed Victorian husband, with “Why, you dirty stop-out.” But I contented myself with the elevating thought that if I have learnt one thing and one thing only in my brief visit to this muddled world, it is reflected in my born-again status as a stay-at-home Captain Sensible. Stout fellow that I assuredly am: resisting the lure of the bright lights nightlife in order to set the perfect example of how people of a certain age are expected to, and should, behave.
Thus, by the time my wife had sneaked in from her evening of ‘reasonable refreshments’ ~ making it difficult to imagine that she had been brought up in the social climate of anti-decadent Soviet-Russia! ~ I had read my book, patted the cat, drunk my cup of cocoa and with teddy tucked snugly under my arm had taken myself to bed: zzzzzzzzz.
Have you ever had the feeling that you are missing out on something?🤔
Aleksandr Smirnov introduces singer guitarist Andrey BerenevOlga Hart withAleksandr SmirnovOlga Hart in the Badger clubBand Sfeno performingAndrey BerenevOlga Hart surrounded by the esotericOlga Hart with vintage oil lamp and fantasy fairy tale furniture made by ‘Chimney Sweep’ Aleksandr SmirnovInara looking hornyConfronted with a large chopper
Aleksandr Smirnov By all accounts*, Aleksandr (Chimney Sweep) Smirnov is an artist, costume designer and consummate wizard at conjuring up interior design of a distinctly unusual and exotic nature.
Able to work with all kinds of material, including wood and metal, much of what you see in the photographs in terms of fixtures and fittings are said to have been made by his hand, the same hand that has orchestrated the natural, historical and decorative elements that set apart the club’s interior from any other you may have encountered. The syncopated fairy tale feel that you get from all of this is no coincidence. A little fairy tells me that he writes fairy tales as well. *Дом трубочиста или выходные в сказке (turbopages.org)
The Badger club, Kaliningrad The Badger club has a dedicated clientele who value not only the décor and entertainment but speak with great warmth and affection about the club’s welcoming ethos and its friendly, inviting atmosphere. Why not go and see for yourself? You may just become a regular in the process?!
Links to bars, restaurants to visit in Kaliningrad
A kind, charming, thought-provoking and sentimental animation
Published: 2 December 2022 ~ Hedgehog in the Fog seen in Kaliningrad
Before setting off to London/Bedford England last month, we were walking back from a coffee in the café gardens (Soul Garden) by the Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, when we were thrilled to discover that some artistic person or other had painted the perfect impression of the star (Yorshik) from the famous 1970s’ animation, Hedgehog in the Fog. Normally, or abnormally, depending upon your personal prejudice, I am unable to accept painted or spray-canned text or images plastered on public or private property as anything else but what it truly is ~ a brazen example of vandalism. But, as with most things in life, exceptions to the rule exist, and this, I have to admit, is as true of graffiti as it is of anything else, providing that you want it to be.
Hedgehog in the Fog is a highly acclaimed Soviet-Russian multiple award-winning animated film. It was written by Sergei Grigoryevich Kozlov [Серге́й Григо́рьевич Козло́в] and animated and directed by Yuri Norstein [Ю́рий Норште́йн]. It is both an animation and intellectual masterpiece, capable of myriad interpretations, but whose ultimate message is as simple as it is sublime as is it sentimental: that we all need someone in this world with whom we can count the stars.
Once seen never forgotten, the majority of Russians would recognise Yorshik’s likeness instantly, certainly as unmistakeably as they would the stars of such classic Soviet films as Irony of Fate and Office Romance.
The portrait was also discovered and recognised by Kaliningrad’s administration department, and before we left for England, I caught sight of a media report in which the administration was asking the public to cast their vote ~ with the proviso that the paint used was harmless to the tree ~ on whether the image should be removed or be allowed to remain.
Since I have not walked that part of Kaliningrad recently, I have no idea what the fate of Yorshik might be, although I for one would hope that when the votes were counted, they favoured Yorshik’s continued presence.
Not only does the composition capture Yorshik’s appearance perfectly, but the artist has also located him within a beautiful blue graduated background, where he shares space romantically with twinkling stars and fairies.
Whether Yorshik has survived or not, if the artist would like to contact me, I have a canvas, an interior wall, which is just crying out for this work of art to be replicated!
Hedgehog in the Fog (Yorshik) painted on a tree in Kaliningrad
Hedgehog in the Fog is a Soviet-Russian animated film about a hedgehog (Yorshik) who sets off on foot to visit his friend, a bear cub (Meeshka), and finds himself lost in the fog. As in folklore, fairy tales and fantasy and in Gothic and psychological suspense genres, fog as a literary/cinematographic device is typically employed in the film to deviate objective reality, turning the world as we know it ~ or think we do! ~ into a claustrophobic and distorted realm where the heightened possibility of supernatural occurrences amplifies the vicissitudes encountered in everyday life.
In this state of altered consciousness, Yorshik’s imagination supersedes logic, creating a new and unnerving reality in which, for example, an owl and white horse ~ one commonplace the other rare but possible ~ take on puzzling and sinister shades of meaning.
When Yorshik stumbles into the river he assumes that he will drown, but carried along by the current he relaxes into his situation, resigning himself to the journey wherever it may take him.
His ordeal culminates when a mysterious submersible benefactor, a ‘Someone’ as the subtitles tells us, lifts him onto his back and conveys him safely to the water’s edge.
Once on dry land, Yorshik hears his friend, Meeshka, calling out to him through the fog and by following the direction of his friend’s cries the two are at last united.
Hedgehog in the Fog is a simple story, but one which arguably manages to achieve what no other comparable animation has in its simultaneous creation of an atmosphere of dread tempered by quiescence. The kinetic tempo has a lot to do with this, as does the steady, hushed and neutral tone of the omniscient narrator, but the fundamental appeal of the film and the extent to which it engages us lies in its ‘seen through the eyes of a child’s perspective’, its lilting dream-like quality and its effortless ability to invoke and mirror the childhood world which we all once inhabited, with its troublesome symbols and shadows, its half-open doors to what, where and who, its many unanswered questions and its never completely understood what may lie within and beyond.
In following the classic tradition of all that is best in fantasy motion pictures ~ The Haunting (original version), Night of the Hunter and, with one or two exceptions, the complete canon of Hitchcock’s works ~ the key to Hedgehog in the Fog’s allure is that just below the surface of fairy tale enchantment it taps profoundly and incisively into our childhood psyche.
It calls upon the fog and the river for their habitual literary symbolism: the first for its incarnation of a supernatural milieu where anything is possible, the second for its depiction of life as a predetermined current against whose superior will we are powerless to resist, and it besets the journey with downstream dangers, credible menace, innate fears and the almost tangible presence of death. All the things that we learn about living as we are hurried along by the current of life.
The still frames from Hedgehog in the Fog are every bit as resoundingly emotive as the narrative in flux. Single static images such as the looming face of the owl, the white horse, apparition-like and luminescent, the bewildered expression on Yorshik’s face and, most memorable of all, the concluding frames of the film where the re-united Yorshik and Meeshka sit on the log together, with their jam, tea and samovar and the scent from the burning juniper twigs, counting the stars in the heavens, are each and every one blissfully indelible.
Hedgehog in the Fog works, even for we adults, not only because the artwork, the cinematography, pace and timbre are as spot on as they can be, but because the overarching feel of the film is unashamedly affectionate and applaudably sentimental.
However unnerving the fog may be, the narrator takes us by the hand and, like the dreamy river of life upon which the hapless Yorshik floats, albeit with philosophical tranquility, he leads us reassuringly from opening credits to heartfelt conclusion.
If you have the samovar, the juniper twigs and the raspberry jam, all you need to count the stars ~ as the stars are always above you ~ is the log on which to sit and that special someone next to you for whom those stars shine as brightly and mean the same to them as they do for you.
