Restored breweries should brew and purvey craft beers. Polessk Brewery does.
7 July 2026 – Polessk Brewery: Revisited in the autumn of 2025
POLESSK BREWERY, formerly the Albert Blankenstein Brewery, founded in 1840, is no small building, so, not surprisingly, the renovation project on which I expatiated in a post entitled Restoring the Polessk Brewery (2021) is still ongoing. During autumn past, I took time out to revisit this splendid neo-Gothic monolith, whose social and economic significance and, more to the point, the nature of the products that it historically purveys – and here we are talking beer – conjoined with its architectural style, have everything going for them that appreciation could desire.
Prior encounters, of which I believe there were three, were either undertaken in summer, the height of the tourist season, or coincided with special events, so it felt rather odd but no less fascinating to venture to this exotic place in an out-of-season capacity when other mortals were busy elsewhere, doing what, I have no idea, when they could, like me, have been up to something not without validity, such as supporting their local brewery by toasting its venerable history with beer once again brewed on its premises.
The feature image shows the Albert Blankenstein Brewery reproduced in postcard format during its turn-of-the-20th-century heyday. Comparisons of this view taken from the front of the brewery can be made with the photographs taken by us of the restorative process as it appeared in 2021: see Restoring the Polessk Brewery.
It did not bother me a jot, on completing the flight of stairs and making an entrance into what is effectively the brewery’s main reception hall, that apart from Olga and me, the only other evident person was the young chap behind the bar. Ye who are acquainted with my predilections and lifelong habits will not need me to tell you that the motive for this reprisal, I am not ashamed to say, was to ascertain if the worthy project had remained true to its stated trajectory and was now, as in days of old, brewing and selling beer again, in which regard I am pleased to disclose I could not have been more delighted.
Albeit a little early in the day for a wise and sensible man like me to initiate imbibing, as there was no one else to do it for me, it would have been rude, as the saying goes, had I deferred for the sake of propriety an act that seemed unconditionally proper in contrast to the alternative, which would have been to observe misguidedly a churlish point of temperance. Besides, the day it was rather cold, so what could be more appropriate than warming it up with a chilled glass of beer?
Barrels and what have you. What could be more natural?
Mick Hart, enjoying history at the Polessk Brewery.
Mick Hart reflects on good beer at Polessk Brewery.
Just one of many rooms in this capacious brewery!
They’ve spelled “beer” incorrectly, but we know what it is.
Wholesome and natural, that’s beer for you.
If it was for sale, I would have bought it.
Highly decorated traditional German beer bottles.
Girders and traditional wooden beer casks – a fine sight indeed!
Polessk Brewery: Revisited in the autumn of 2025
As there was no one to compete with, which meant that we had the unbridled run of the place, there was ample space and opportunity for getting reacquainted with this fine old building’s history, aided and abetted to no unexceptional extent by its superb exhibition graphics and many excellent didactic panels, and all the while enjoying in their various appointed places scattered memorabilia of assorted brewing shapes and kinds, all of which, in their obsolescence, were glorious and engaging. The fact that this educational as well as recreational tour can be undertaken, as it should, whilst indulging in the very product on which the 19th-century brewing plant had built its reputation enhances and consolidates the overall experience
Indeed, whilst indulging in absorption, I was so absorbed by industrial history that I bought two litre bottles of the end result to take away for further contemplation, as there was little doubt in my mind to instigate the contrary that I would not give them my best attention later that evening at home. And on this score, I could hardly have been more accurate than if history yearned to prove to me that it does indeed repeat itself, as we are frequently led to believe it does by those who know better than you and I. An exotic doctrine, to be sure! But perfectly acceptable if the space or place prescribed by history to which we must return is one we are ready to vouch for and one that is worth revisiting, and here we need to introduce that unequivocal asseveration that the Polessk Brewery has worked so hard for and which, therefore, it so richly deserves. Praise where praise is due: Raise your glasses, ladies and gentlemen; let’s drink to the brewery’s continued success!
Revised 30 June 2026 | First published 16 November 2024 ~Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?
Update: Since first writing this post and revising it, I have passed through the Poland-Kaliningrad borders a number of times. Much has remained the same, except on the last occasion I travelled, the Polish were no longer hopping on the bus and taking photographs of each and every person with a hand-held camera. However, it is still necessary to have your mugshot scanned when you produce your documents at border control.
The other change, again at the Polish border, is that both travelling into and out of Kaliningrad, we were made to cart our luggage into the border control office and have that scanned, too. This is a new one, as border security used to check the baggage randomly by peeping into the hold underneath the bus.
Having your baggage scanned is no great shakes, as long as you haven’t got a bootlegging and tobacco-import fetish, as the Polish are hot on the alcohol and fags trail. However, the building into which you have to traipse to have your credentials and yourself gawped at is up a short, but rather steep, flight of steps, so stand by to struggle and curse as you drag your heavy luggage, like the Grand Old Duke of York, up to the scanner and down again. There are some who say that borders border on insanity and others who would reply, “Where would we be without them!” I’m saying nothing; just my rank and serial number.
The answer to the question is ‘yes’. Yes, it is possible to access Kaliningrad via the Polish-Kaliningrad border and vice versa. The only caveat is that before you go, stock up on patience.
In the not-too-distant past, the bus from Kaliningrad going to Gdansk was held up at the Polish border for as long as it took to miss a flight at Gdansk – seven hours, in fact. Whilst this particular case may be the exception to the rule, lengthy delays are not, and in response to this and other inconveniences generally assumed unnecessary, and some infer deliberately obstructive, a petition has been launched, which you, dear reader, can access here. Against the intolerable conditions on the Russian-Polish border (Kaliningrad)! {Note: to read this in English, you will need to click on ‘Translate’ and change the language from German.}
Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?
Not all border crossings are as bad as the last one you experienced, but some can sometimes be worse, and some can be worse but interesting. For example, take a crossing I made in 2024.
We cleared the formalities at the Russian border without let or hindrance and trundled off with great expectations, fifteen of us in all, onto Polish territory.
There were no other vehicles in transit, only our bus, and the usual procedures went smoothly enough. We were gawped at, our credentials were examined, we had our mugshots taken (again!) and, after 30 minutes, we were back on the bus.
We took our seats, brum, brum (that’s the sound of the bus starting up), and off we merrily went.
Traditionally, it is at this point of the journey when, with the inquisition over, the invisible stays shared by all release themselves collectively, letting relaxation spill palpably out in a sigh-giving rush of relief. The advent of this liberation is customarily celebrated by proper professional travellers in possession of proper professional travelling cases with a dignified mass unzipping, whilst those of us who own neither dignified travelling cases nor commendable travelling standards have to be content with rustling through our carrier bags. The end result is the same, however. Having given stress the elbow, it’s time for comfort eating.
Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open?
I had just begun to tuck into my penultimate hummus and tomato sandwich when, ay up, mother! What’s going on? Instead of hitting the open road, our bus was being syphoned off into a fenced and gated compound.
“Ay up?” I thought again. Well, you would think that, wouldn’t you.
I cannot say for certain whether it was my fault or not. Perhaps I want to believe it was for the sake of an impudent ego. But the question kept repeating itself: were we locked inside this compound, sitting motionless inside our bus in front of this big, this bland, this ominous, this nondescript and bureaucratic building because of something I had said?
When the clam-faced female within the Polish border office had fired the question at me, “Cigarettes and alcohol?”, my facetious reply had been, “Yes please?” And then when she did not get the joke (what joke exactly would that be?) and barked the question again, I had waved it away with an Englishness, simpering yet polite, which Leslie Phillips would have been proud of, but possibly she was not.
Cigarettes? Alcohol? Never touch the stuff!!
Whoever was or was not to blame, there we sat on the bus, and we sat there for a bad 10 minutes, us and this dull, brick, windowless building, facing each other down, one with complete contempt, the other suggesting complete containment.
Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?
There was something about our situation and the building that confronted us that nudged my idling imagination into the realms of the deep mischievous. That sign at the compound’s entrance, did it really say ‘Work sets you free’? I am glad to say it didn’t. But what exactly did it mean, this reference to a ‘Revision Centre’?
The bland building was giving nothing away. Indeed, there is not much more to say about its external aspect, except that high upon the roof it had a prominent funnel-shaped air vent.
I could not see anything clearly, as the sun was in my eyes, but I am almost willing to swear on anything other than a stack of beer bottles that for one second I saw, or bore the conviction that I saw, poised at the mouth of the air vent, the shadows of two men. They were crouching down at the sides of the vent, leaning in towards it, and each had something in their hands, something that looked like canisters. I had just begun to focus on the containers’ labels when a shard of light leaping out of the sun temporarily blinded me. Through the eclipsing halo that ensued, and with the bus now moving in reverse and distorting my perspective, the words on the label were reduced to a blur, and all that I could make of them was a capital ‘Z’ at one end and a capital ‘B’ at the other.
Our bus had not entered the building by the floor-to-apex roller door in front of which we had initially parked. It had taxied around to the back of the building, where it slowly disappeared through a similar portal at that end. Creeping at a snail’s pace, it inched its way gradually in, permitting me to regard at will the character of the chamber into which we were being swallowed. We were saying goodbye to the outside world, but one hoped it was temporarily.
We were passing into an alley, just the right width for the size of the bus. To the left of us was a platform, solid, broad and deep, not unlike one you would loiter upon whilst waiting for a train. It was not the height of the vehicle’s windows but fell just a little below it.
At the back of this platform at regular intervals were two or three large doors. They were big doors, metal doors, with handles of such prodigious proportions that the only way to open them would surely be to enlist the brawn of two thick Polish men with arms that did not fit. In a corner close by the doors stood a bag that seemed familiar. It looked like one I had seen before on the lorry of KG Smith & Son, Northamptonshire’s premiere coal merchants.
Until now the bus had been trickling forward, but it suddenly drew to a shuddering halt. The driver got up from his seat, made an announcement I did not catch and opened the doors of the vehicle. Before you could say Polish sausage, especially before you could say it in Polish, a man in paramilitary uniform had bounded up the steps and, standing at the front of the bus, all officious-like ~ did I hear someone say ‘full of piss and importance’? ~ was presumably ordering us all to get off. Simultaneously, a larger man armed with a big black dog had stationed himself strategically next to the door at the side of the bus, from which the young and old, singles and couples, some with children, some without, two or three middle-aged gents and a peculiar sort of Englishman with a grey and straggly beard were struggling to alight, laden down as they uncomfortably were with their assortment of bags and chattels.
The platform to which this innocuous group had descended was considerably narrower than that on the opposite side. Folk were bumping into each other as, ‘Roust! Roust! Schnell! Schnell!’, they were ordered to take their travelling bags from the hold beneath the bus.
Nobody seemed quite to know what it was that was expected of them. A big, as in overweight, man, looking not unlike Hermann Göring – perhaps it was his time-travelled brother – had already started rummaging through one of the passenger’s bags. He had the bag perched on a table placed at the side of the wall and was going through the contents as if he was pulling the entrails out of a late-for-Christmas turkey. He looked much more like a TV villain or an officer from the Guesswho than a man who ought to be showing respect to the public he was frisking.
Hermann’s brother had a very loud voice, which he used to good effect. Stopping in mid-rummage, with his hands inside some lady’s lingerie, he bellowed, “Form a queue!” at the meek, the innocent and the inoffensive, over whom he lauded ultimate power and whose only crime today was that they wanted to get from A to B. Obediently, one by one, they fell silently into line.
During this demonstration of ‘I’m a man in a uniform, so you’d better do as I say!’, two other guards had joined the jamboree: a flint-eyed woman in a boiler suit spoilt only by its insignia and one of those strutting cockerel types: ‘I’ve got tattoos on my neck, and I’ve come to throw my weight about’.
And now the carnival commenced in earnest: The man who had the sniffer dog was sniffing; the cockerel was in and out of the bus as if someone had knocked him off his perch. The flint-eyed thing was glaring. ‘Look at those eyes! Those eyes! Those eyes!’; and the mountain man with a skinhead haircut who went by the name of Hermann’s Brother was rifling through one’s personals as if he were mixing cement.
His brawny arms were in there, his paddle hands a-swirling. He had obviously learnt his cultured trade from washing his pants in a tub.
Fortunately for me, no such ignominy would besmirch my person. I was, as they say, travelling light. I only had a carrier bag, in which I had placed my laptop and the sad remains of a pack-up meal prepared for me by my wife.
Most of what had been packed for me, I had already scoffed. All that remained was a lonely sandwich, lolling half in and half out of one of those flimsy, thin plastic boxes routinely used in supermarkets for the display and sale of cakes.
Although I was not in the least bit hungry, having eaten just minutes before, the thought of the Polish strangler rinsing his mitts about my sandwich spurred me into action. Better to eat the sandwich now than have it used like a paper towel hanging next to the gents’ urinals. The problem was that Fatty Arms was getting through those bags like Joe Stink from the Secret Service, and the combination of hummus and bread not being the easiest thing to masticate resulted in a situation of alarming prematurity, an unfortunate occurrence whenever it chooses to strike and one not entirely limited to such incidental matters as love, proposals, life and death but also, or so it would seem, during the crucial business of crossing borders.
Thus, when the big you-know-what turned to me and barked, “Cigarettes? Alcohol?”, it was an effort of no small magnitude for me to reply, “Yes please.”
He glared at me contemptuously – well, can you blame him, really? – and pulling his girt big shoulders back in a show of manly authority (he had done the same with the 80-year-old standing frail and tired in front of me), said slowly and precisely, “We will wait until you have stopped eating, then you and I will talk!”
“Oh, really, what about?” I spluttered, choking on my sandwich. “The weather? Football? Religion? Politics? ~ Er, no, anything but politics.”
The sandwich safely swallowed, he sang the refrain again: “Cigarettes?” and “Alcohol?”
Do you know what I think? I think that he was asking me whether I had the aforenamed items concealed about my person or stashed inside my laptop. When I answered in the negative, first he looked suspicious, then profoundly disappointed.
I took a swig of mineral water. He probably thought the alcohol was hidden in that bottle ~ as if! ~ and that I had hurriedly eaten the illicit cigarettes between two slices of bread. Whatever it was he didn’t know, and I think it was a lot, he was not a happy man, which is hardly surprising really, looking and acting the way he did. But he wasn’t finished yet.
Furtively, he glanced down, looking at my little one – at the little bag that I was carrying – and a tiny ray of hope shone briefly through his cold pork pies, though it was tinged with disbelief by the answer he anticipated but did not want to hear.
“No big baggage?” he asked.
I could, of course, have just said ‘no’, thus putting him out of his misery, but Bernard Manning answered for me, “Just the wife,” said Bernard, “and she’s at home at present.”
Hermann Rummage pursed his lips, shuffled, scowled and then dismissed me. The interrogation over, I climbed back onto the bus.
Ten minutes after my ascension and with no contraband having been found, we were out on the open road again, steaming towards Gdansk: the young and the old, singles and couples – some with children, some without – two or three middle-aged gents and a peculiar sort of Englishman with a grey and straggly beard.
Those lovely chaps at the Polish border, I mused, stood a greater chance of finding a rational thought in a liberal’s head than illicit fags and booze on the God-fearing lot inside this bus, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it. Who of us can say with any degree of certainty what goes on in the cranky minds of liberals?
Yet the trees were green, the sky was blue, and every cloud has a silver lining: after all, we hadn’t been gassed, just inconvenienced and harassed.
It was just another sourpuss day at Checkpoint Proper Charlie.
Otradnoye is one of those places you cannot have enough of
31 May 2025: Otradnoye Kaliningrad – a little gem on the Baltic Coast
In my previous post, I wrote about an evening spent in the Villa Gretchin, a guest house of which I cannot speak highly enough; its interior, accented with East Prussian Baroque influences, makes it a thoroughly immersive base for exploring Otradnoye’s history and enjoying its beautiful beach.
Otradnoye, which before the end of the Second World War was known as Georgenswolde, is a small coastal settlement founded east of Svetlogorsk on the Sambia Peninsula.
Svetlogorsk, the larger of the two resorts and therefore the more popular, developed and commercialised, is serviced by umpteen bars and restaurants and by stalls and shops specialising in the sale of one of the region’s most precious commodities, amber. It is also home to a futuristic multifunctional cultural centre, the Amber Hall Variety Theatre, otherwise known as Yantar Hall, and is currently undergoing a major mixed-use, residential, pier-side construction programme which runs 1.5 kilometres along the length of its Baltic seafront.
In comparison, Otradnoye has a café, a handful of hotels/guesthouses and a small hut overlooking the beach selling beer and light refreshments. Although this difference is a striking one, obviously making Otradnoye the smaller of the two resorts, it doesn’t necessarily follow that Otradnoye is steeped in solitude. On the contrary, an unpretentious swathe of white sandy beach, set against, on one side, steep forested banks and, on the other, the foaming blue Baltic, acts as a seductive magnet to folk addicted to sun, sea and sand. Come late autumn, however, and throughout the winter months, visitors naturally fall away, turning the less-developed Otradnoye into the much-prefered destination for those whose tastes excel in out-of-season beach resorts.
^^ The winter of 2004/05 was extremely wet, and the banks along Otradoyne on the Baltic Coast were landsliding chaotically beachward. That’s Olga Hart with her umbrella and handbag and Victor Ryabinin with an umbrella and briefcase. The photo is by me, unseen here with my umbrella and bowler hat. We were all well-prepared for the weather and terrain.
Indeed, my own, personal introduction to this atmospheric seaside village took place in the winter months. It was January 2005. Under the knowledgeable instruction of our late, lamented friend, Victor Ryabinin, an expert on Kaliningrad history, including that of its region, and a well-known local artist, we paused for a while at Otradnoye. We were en route to somewhere else, whose destination I cannot recall and which we never reached – but that’s another story. However, I do clearly remember rendezvousing before we set off to Otradnoye in a café somewhere on Svetlogorsk’s outskirts: Victor with his map of the local area, and I with Olga and a friend called Barry.
It was during this first visit that I made the acquaintance of the German sculptor Brachert and toured his former house and gardens, now the Brachert Museum. It was also on this occasion that I learnt firsthand (or should that be foot?) that the woodland descent to Otradnoye beach was unforgivingly precipitous and that the return journey by the concrete road laid in Soviet times was, far from being less precipitous, if anything considerably more arduous.
^^ The Hermann Brachert House Museum in Otradnoye
Nowadays, walking from the beach to the upper reaches of Otradnoye is a marginally less daunting prospect, thanks to a series of well-planned paths that zig-zag their way across and through the tree-dense, sloping land and which have at various stages seats on which to park yourself should a labouring constitution importune an advisable rest.
At beach level, there is lots of sea and sand, but what conspicuously isn’t there are swish hotels, swanky restaurants, specialist boutique shops or any other tourist bolt-ons – at least not for the present!
^^ Otradnoye Beach, c. September 2022
A single hut presides, raised on a small grassed promontory, fronted by a seating area of simple appearance and modest proportions, yet availing patrons of the myriad sights and delights typically associated with summer beach activity and maintaining a year-on-year monopoly as the only outlet for snacks and drinks other than those which the thrifty and, simultaneously, practical may have prepared and carried with them inside their bags or rucksacks.
Svetlogorsk, being not that far away, indeed right there on one’s visual doorstep, throws down a provocative gauntlet, suggesting a leisurely beachside walk, but before the challenge is taken up, one would do well to remember that sand is no immediate friend to the calves or upper legs, neither of which may thank you later for any decision made in haste. So before giving in to that little, that shrill, that insistent voice, which is so insouciantly urging you to throw caution to the wind, “Go on!” it is goading. “A walk on the sand will do you good!” You might want to pause for a moment, long enough for a second thought to give credence to the consequences.
The other way to flit on foot between the two resorts is to take the woodland route, using the proper hard-surface paths which in recent years have been laid for this purpose. This option is a rewarding one, as not only does it combine the health-promoting qualities that walking is said to bestow with an appreciation of the natural habitat, but by passing around the perimeter of a former Soviet Young Pioneer camp, long ago abandoned and now in a state of overgrown memory, for people lured by social history, of which, I confess, I am one, if you forgot to bring that flask and sandwiches, there could yet be sustenance in food for thought.
^^ Remains of a Soviet Young Pioneer camp between Otradnoye and Svetlogorsk
For those among you whose footwork is strictly limited to the sensible practice of getting on and off buses, it won’t, I am certain, hurt you to know that public transport visits both Otradnoye and its alter-ego Svetlogorsk frequently and in both directions.
The road that these buses tootle along is a reasonably busy throughfare and is pictured in my mind, which may or may not be accurate, as a band that dissects Otradnoye village into two distinct and separate parts.
The area that lies immediately above the seafront descent, the location of the Brachert Museum, contains very little by way of amenities, ordinary or otherwise; almost nothing, to be exact, should one somehow commit the grave injustice of overlooking the Georgenswalde, a tall and stately hotel with a likeness in its character reminiscent of Art Nouveau. My impression when I stayed there, possibly now a little more than four years ago, was that in general appearance and overall style of service it rang a Soviet bell; particularly, I recall, its breakfast-room experience, which, me being typically me, I typically enjoyed without regret or reservation, rather more than not, I would say, had it been anything different.
^^ The Georgeswalde overlooking the Brachert House Museum in Otradnoye (c. 2022)
Up the hill aways, a short but not entirely effortless stroll from where the Georgenswalde is situated, a walk which takes in magnificent villas, ancient and modern, gentle and loud, there stands on the right-hand side a large but unassuming guesthouse appropriately entitled Vysokij Bereg (English translation: High Bank), ‘appropriately’ entitled because the bank on which it stands is indeed a very high one, providing its owners, guests and customers with a commanding view of the Baltic Sea, which could only be more commanding if the bank from which it claims its title were not so liberally fringed with trees. Vysokij Bereg’s café welcomes resident guests and non-guests alike and is held in high regard by some within our exclusive circle for the excellent pizzas it purveys as part of its wider meal selections.
The entrance to the café occurs at the back of the guesthouse, where a hard-surface terrace is just the job for dining outside and peeping through the trees at the Baltic’s expanse beyond. This particular view is no less properly available should the weather and/or the time of year nudge you gently or propel you keenly towards the café’s sheltered interior, but on clement and sunny days, the option to sit at a patio table or lounge in a canopy swing out on the grass, whilst the smaller ones among you enjoy the children’s playground, is for those of us who believe we are normal a choice too logical to just pass up.
^^ Mick Hart doing something different for a change at High Bank guesthouse in Otradnoye
On Otradnoye’s opposite side, the one across ‘the road’, the intrepid explorer is guaranteed to stumble upon a gathering of other cafés and restaurants, including in the mix, one or two shops of a specialist nature and an assortment of handy convenience stores, good for all sorts of groceries, including snacks and drinks for picnics.
^^ German villa in Otradnoye awaiting restoration
Both sides of Otradnoye are united architecturally, each one offering commentary and teasingly tempting glimpses into the region’s pre-war history. If you like your domestic buildings large and gothically asymmetrical with lots of interesting, imaginative features both in wood and masonry, inspirational houses which take on a fairytale essence when tucked away in woodland glades or built surprisingly yet sympathetically into the pine and silver birch landscape, then the sights Otradnoye lays before you will either have you wishing that you could live in a house like this or whisper to you that perhaps you once did.
Whilst many of these abodes have over time regained their individual, one-family, exclusive villa status, and some rub broader shoulders with overpowering contemporary mansions, others, those which in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War were hurriedly converted into three- or four-family homes or communal family units when the Soviet population replaced the region’s German populace, are hived off to this day but in the manner of flats.
In this respect, Otradnoye is no different from almost anywhere else in the Kaliningrad region; the sight of early-twentieth-century grandeur sharing relative space with the conspicuously lavish, sitting next door to a Soviet conversion and, next door to that, a more recent block of flats becomes less and less incongruous the more that it is witnessed, and the same can be said for those wonderful homes and gardens, again within the mix, which are as rustic as rustic can be. The build variations on any one street can be really quite astonishing, and though you may take a liking to one particular type, you cannot help but like the other also and experience a certain fondness for something much the same as you do, comparatively speaking, when it is something just the opposite.
^^ Rusticity meets character in Otradnoye
Among the various interesting buildings asserting architectural and historic merit dotted around Otradnoye, I recommend you take time out to hunt down the former railway station. Dilapidated currently and waiting on conservation, it is yet impressive for what it once was, for what it is now, for what imagination working on its behalf lends aspiration to what it may be, and for what, if correctly restored, it may in time amount to.
^^ Ye olde railway station in Otradnoye
Another intriguing landmark deserving a trip to Otradnoye, with or without a packed lunch, is architect K. Fischer’s red-brick Gothic water tower. The Kaliningrad region contains a number of such towers, each conforming in its own right to the Gothic revivalist style but equally invested with its own distinguishing characteristics, of which Mr Fischer’s is no exception.
Six tiers and square in formation, Fischer’s Tower towers at an approximate height of 147.6 feet. It is proudly endowed with distinctive attributes conformational to its undisputed place in Gothic architecture. When built, it was also equipped with hot and cold water tanks and a bath room at ground level. I am not sure whether the bathroom has withstood the test of time, but just in case it is still in situ, don’t forget to include in your travelling pack a bar of soap and your favourite loofah.
To find this emblematic structure, asking the way won’t come amiss, for, as far as I can remember, and as tall as the tower is, we were granted access to it via someone’s garden, from which we could see its triangular roof thrusting up out of the trees. The natural seclusion in which the tower quietly reposes makes the first approach to it all the more novel and fascinating.
^^Old re-roofed German house in Otradnoye, with Fischer’s water tower peeping over the treeline
Of the two seaside towns mentioned in this brief essay, Svetlogorsk is the place to go if what it is you are after is an historically attractive coastal resort whose town has been brought up to spec with every conceivable modern convenience. Otradnoye, on the other hand, is the destination of choice for those who hold with the maxim that as ‘less is often more’, those who seek will surely find. Beachside, during the height of the season, Svetlogorsk becomes a bustling hub for Russia’s domestic tourist trade, while down the beach a little, Otradnoye bristles with Kaliningrad locals, but whether on the seafront or away from it, if what you want is quieter, less is more in Otradnoye.
^^ Mick Hart sitting on ‘rock armour’, Otradnoye beach, winter 2025
Getting to and from Otradnoye from Kaliningrad by bus
Bus No. 116 departs from Kaliningrad Central Bus Station 6 to 8 times daily and, likewise, from the Otradnoye bus stop. The journey takes about 1.5 hours, and the fare is 70–120 roubles, as determined by route and departure point.
Buses No. 118 and No. 125 run more frequently, about every 20 minutes, between Kaliningrad and Svetlogorsk. Walk, take a taxi or catch a bus from the Oytradnoye stop into Svetlogorsk and use connecting services there. The fare from Kaliningrad to Svetlogorsk and vice versa costs between 155 and 180 roubles depending on the route taken and place of embarkation.
The official Kaliningrad Bus Terminal portal for regional travel is avl39.ru
What I didn’t know I soon did, and I liked it very much
20 May 2026 – Villa Gretchen in Otradnoye – what you need to know
We arrived in the small seaside town of Otradnoye (formerly Georgenswalde) in an area with which I am not acquainted. It was one of those hotch-potchers, consisting of large, two-storey Soviet concrete buildings, most likely houses of culture or sanatoriums; post-Soviet residential flat complexes; and small, by comparison, and dotted here and there, detached family dwellings, once the abodes of native East Prussians.
The guest house, Villa Gretchen, which was our destination, had been donated for the evening to Mr Chileekin and his party by Mr Chileekin’s friend, who was, in fact, the owner of the property.
Villa Gretchen in Otradnoye – what you need to know
From the outside, the front of the guest house looked little different from any other ordinary pan-tiled classic German house, but from the side street into which we and our vehicle had pulled, it was plain to see by the modern but architecturally in-keeping porch, the nearby brick-built grill cabin – let’s go Scandinavian and call it a ‘grillkota’, and the smart and well-kept service buildings that, if you had missed the guest house sign as I had successfully done, you might go all Miss Marple, deducing not incorrectly that there is more to this place than meets the eye, as the visual introduction was less than it appeared to be.
Once across the threshold, the impression changed immediately, and what an impression it made!
“It’s your sort of place,” Olga remarked, observing my observation.
She hadn’t got that wrong. The entire building had been restored; convincingly decked out in a successful attempt to capture the Gothic-Baroque German style that at one time had reigned supreme in this former Prussian territory. The impact was surprising and instantaneous.
There was nothing on the outside to prepare one for this change of scenery. The porch through which we had passed had led to a dark and heavy door with an inset, bulbous, smoked-glass window. On the other side of this door, the entrance hall was small but large in first impressions. On one wall hung a sizeable mirror in an elaborately carved and moulded frame, and on the other, small and neat, a dark wood hat and coat rack belonging to a distant era, together with two framed sepia photographs of couples in their middle age, who, had they been alive today, would be getting ready to celebrate their 156th birthdays.
As the door to the adjoining room was open, or possibly just an open aperture, the centrepiece of the house, as seen from where I stood, could easily be identified as the two-tier, ceramic-tiled, traditional German stove, but whilst this indeed was a strong contender, it was the staircase in its mid-blue livery artfully distressed by hand, which, striding up behind us and turning sharply through ninety degrees, stole the stove’s immediate thunder.
Stairway to Heaven
The staircase was constructed of good, solid planks of wood. It had shaped apron embellishments and panels lining the stairwell walls, patterned with scrolling mouldings. The ‘worn’ cobalt blue colour encompassed rails, steps and panelling, creating a simple yet effective visual and atmospheric bridge to a highly credible living past. This masterpiece of time engineering was assisted in its effect by archivolt inclusions and by the stylised manner of the wooden framework, which, extending from floor to ceiling where the steps led down to the basement, blended complementary elements of rustic, fairytale and Art Nouveau.
Simplicity and intricacy were happily co-existent, sometimes restrained and sober and at other times quite flamboyant. For example, the bold, organic cutaway shape of the wooden ceiling spandrel formed a quaint freehand feature at the juncture where the third flight of steps, those leading to the attic, disappeared from view. This third level of steps, continuing the theme of cobalt blue, rises above and away from the landing, concluding at its summit in a series of supporting spindles surmounted by a handrail. From the first step in the hall to the last step into the roof, design and decor continuity contribute to the time inflection as the 21st century falls away and a sovereign past takes over.
Standing on the landing, just beneath the attic stairs, a graduated stack of archaic leather travelling cases seemed to say, ‘Hello. Remember me? ”. In type and in arrangement they reminded me of their useful ubiquity when requisitioned as props for stage and TV period dramas and in real life for the part they play in adding nostalgic credibility to photographic backdrops, especially when the photoshoot, be it for personal or professional reasons, chooses as its venue quaint Victorian railway stations, often well-preserved thanks to the efforts of steam enthusiasts. Graduated travelling cases form a tried and trusted staple in the creation of the obsolescence we freely equate with the past and of which we are particularly fond when used with a certain exactitude in living history dioramas at England’s 1940s’ events.
Sharing space on the same landing as the Villa Gretchen’s travelling cases was a small, polished rectangular table playing host to an old-fashioned telephone. It was a phone quite different to the obsession we have today – that nasty little rectangular thing that hitches a ride in our bag and pocket like an insistent, chattering parasite to which we are habituated to honour and obey.
The telephone on the small, rectangular table was big and bold and bulky, deliberately made not to be mobile, made of metal with a Bakelite handset and delightfully surmounted by two brassy conical gongs. Whilst its consummate authenticity demanded the kind of closer attention I was not prepared to indulge in today – it was already long past beer time – the switchboard of poetic licence connected me to the reflective thought that no matter what its actual age, it and its suitcase mates did what they were supposed to be doing, and doing it rather well.
From the landing, sharing the phone and suitcases, a corridor ensued, giving access right and left and, at its farthermost end, to a total of four guest bedrooms.
Olga immediately seized on one containing an imposing double wardrobe and a broad, open swathe of shelves that had been imaginatively positioned beneath beams of some antiquity, cleverly recessed into the folds of the building’s natural contours, and which ran the entire length of one wall. For a moment it seemed as if we had arrived and we were settled, but indecision being what it is – I suppose you could say it is indecisive – temptingly raised its not-untypical head when, on opening the door of a second room, which, though nominally smaller than the first, was even more atmospheric. So enchantingly struck we both were by the enticing old-world beauty of a bed whose head- and footboards were richly and lavishly carved and opposite by a wardrobe in sumptious high-flown, full-blown Baroque that we felt obliged to run, two or three times at least, back and forth between the two rooms in order to get the flavour of each. Needless to say, the final decision of which of the rooms we should take was delayed for a good ten minutes or more by the tedious repetition of “Take a photo of me!” – the compromise to which became “Take a photo of me as well”. I imagine you need no introduction to that adage for all ages: ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ‘em!’
Villa Gretchen’s owners had spared no small deliberation and, with it, I would say, expense, pursuant to their quest to reconstruct, as far as they were able, an atmospheric and convincing facsimile of how a German residence may have looked in the early years of the 20th century. Even the crest rail on the bedstead’s headboard and the adjacent linen press pediment conformed in style to one another. I couldn’t have felt more at home than if I had landed here by TARDIS.
Meanwhile, downstairs, for that’s where we would eventually be when we had ceased singing songs of praise, it had not been possible to pass insouciantly from the decade-deeming entrance hall into the wooden-beamed and leather-chaired lounge without pausing en route to admire the scene-stealing presence bestowed by that chunky, German stove, to which I alluded earlier, or, as it is called in German, a Kachelöfen.
These glossy or matte-tiled monoliths are unlike anything ordinarily found in any 19th-century or early 20th-century English residence, but in Königsberg and its provinces and throughout traditional German homes, their functionality at that time would have been considered as indispensable as they are highly prized today, and just as their look and composition attracted attention then, they are equally, if not more so by dint of age and curiosity, desirable objects to have and to own in one’s home today.
It needs to be remarked upon that way back when in the days of yore, those Germans had a certain knack; they knew a thing or two, as the construction and effectiveness, not forgetting visual appeal, of the Kachelöfen bears witness to. They might, to the novice, incite trepidation, but all it takes to operate this particular brand of dinosaur is a small but intense wood fire, hot enough to propel a steady stream of heat into a complex network of brick cavities, saturating the internal masonry beneath the Kachelöfen’s heavy tiles, and the whole caboodle is thus transformed from a showcase ceramic stack into a giant storage radiator, capable of releasing constant and uniform warmth for, depending on the size of the stove and its consequent built-in efficiency, a time of no-mean duration, extending from 12 to 24 hours, long after, in most cases, the fire itself has turned to dust. I think we can safely say, especially with regard to Britain, a country in which we cannot afford either gas or electric heating, where we are sitting on tonnes of coal but not allowed to mine it, that every home should have one; the only problem is that we cannot afford to burn wood either. Now, where on earth did I put them? Those low-cost handy hot water bottles?
Villa Gretchen in Otradnoye – what you need to know
Had I not been rushing to get into the social hub of things and open a bottle of beer, I might have tarried long enough to take photographs of the magnificent stove, but, as noted on the landing page, this blog is not intended to be anything like a typical travelogue, so until I do acquire photographs I shall leave the latter to germinate in the well-manured soil of your fertile visual imaginations.
From the comfortable lounge I haven’t described in detail, in spite of it containing a nice settee and chairs in leather and disporting on the wall the most remarkable mural depicting the city of Königsberg, we sallied through the kitchen, emerging thereunto to take our place inside a sizeable room fashioned for all intents and purposes like a mediaeval banqueting hall, although you could just as well describe it as a congregational chapel. This public hospitality space lent itself most admirably to gatherings such as ours, which, as previously not divulged, was Mr Chileekin’s birthday bash.
In addition to infusions of an intoxicating nature, there was a lot to absorb in here, such as the long refectory table, bygone furniture from various periods, a marvellous oversized red-brick fireplace and many other choicely curated bits and bobs and curios intended, as they did, to divert, distract and delight.
Potential enjoyment might also be gained from the maestro tinkling of a parlour piano, an instrument much loved and, for my liking, too often attended by the wilful fingers of enthusing children, which hammered away relentlessly on the ebony and ivory keys, greatly to the detriment of unamused adult ears, not to mention their delicate dispositions; and over there, behind me, covering one entire wall, was another source of enjoyment, but one which would never jangle one’s nerves. It was the most elaborate painted mural, which I think you can just about see peeping out from over my shoulder in the photograph below. You know, I really think it is high time I got myself a photographer!
Our sojourn at Villa Gretchen took place in the deep midwinter, which is to say, it was cold. But this did not deter us from wandering out at midnight and making use of the brick gazebo.
It was dark, and my eyes were bleary – I have no idea why – but they still retained sufficient sense to discern in the feeble lamplight the astounding extent to which the patrons of this fine building had enclosed a fireplace within a wall whose red-brick arches and bowed crenellation would not have looked out of place had they once occupied a great hall belonging to Königsberg Castle.
The open sides of this wine-and-dine palace were protected by polythene sheets of the heavy-duty variety, which are perfect for making walls which don’t object to the light coming in. It also contained a barbecue fire, which helped stave off a modicum of the crisp December air on the eve of our patronisation. A construction such as this must be a boon in summer, with the plastic sides rolled all the way up and the sun granted full permission to join the throng inside.
Throng or no throng this evening, I eventually reached a stage when I knew it would be wrong of me to succumb to another drink, so I only had one more, a quick snifter, so to speak, and then, like Captain Sensible (almost), made my autopilot way to where I could hear my baroque bed calling. I even remembered where this bed was; oh, there to lie in Gothic style and there to dream of Camelot (I think I’ve got that right?), with its winsome damsels in distress, which is where, on this cognac- and beer-full night, I decided I would leave them – bold Good Knight, this night, good night.
Useful Information
Villa Gretchen, Sanatornaya Ulitsa 4, Otradnoye, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, 238563
Farage’s enrichment gift to the Greens: “You get what you vote for!”
10 May 2026 – Vote Green for Migrant Detention Centres Near You!
First off, congratulations to Nigel Farage and Reform UK for his and his party’s ground-shifting performance in the May 7th local elections. I’m not sure that I can agree with him that it is the end of the traditional division between politics on the left and right, but it is certainly the beginning of the end for the liberal left. The Labour party, along with the woke it sponsors, has taken a dramatic not-before-time tumble since the ‘new kid on the block’ arrived on Britain’s political scene, riding in triumphantly like George on his bold white charger come to slay the leftist dragon.
Better even than these glad tidings, the thrashing that Reform gave to Labour at the polls, was the spirit-inspiring news that the pro-migrant, ghastly greens had bet their all on the wrong horses, with ‘Open Borders’ a non-starter and ‘Fill the Country with Migrant Hordes’ falling at the first post. Now, hopefully, the ‘Polish Pretender’ and his grubby band of Greens will be thrown swiftly where they belong onto the compost heap of history.
Despite the best efforts of the leftist media to talk up the electoral wins of the Greens, the ‘Green Wave’ that Polanski predicted (you know, he really should have stuck to making fictional vampire films rather than trying to suck the lifeblood out of our ailing country) when given full analysis resembles more of a trickle and looks less like the sickly green wave predicted to ruin Rule Britannia than something pale the colour of straw wrongly directed when standing downwind.
Vote Green for Migrant Detention Centres Near You!
It may not be entirely coincidental that the Greens turned decidedly stale shortly after it was announced that Mr Farage had a novel plan to counteract the Green’s chief cucumber threatening to swamp our nation, already mired with migrants, with millions more of the crusty blighters in the hope, I should imagine, that one day they’ll all vote Green, by which time our sinking country (I said ‘sinking’, incidentally) will have turned a nasty muddy brown, as such is the nature of swamps.
Does Mr Polanski, I hear you ask, have shares in rubber dinghies? Or is he merely as green as his crazy concepts are cabbage-looking? Someone ought to point out to him that the UK’s beautiful garden is choked enough already with weeds without turning it into a bra patch. Oops, sorry Mr Polanski. I was mesmerised there for a moment; I meant, of course, to say ‘briar patch’.
^All Green constituencies to be honoured with migrant detention centres – and large hypnotic breasts^
In contrast to Mr Polanski’s greenwash, Nigel’s recent announcement that those who vote for migrants will get the migrants they voted for is both logical and fair. Well done, Mr Farage, and, furthermore, well-timed.
“A Reform government will not put any migrant detention centres in any constituency with a Reform MP. We will not put them where Reform controls the council. We will prioritise Green parliamentary constituencies and Green-controlled councils to put those migrant detention centres.” – Reform’s UK Home Affairs Spokesman Zia Yusuf
What could be fairer than that? Those who want migrants get them, and those who don’t don’t. The fact that this suggestion sent the predominantly leftist UK media into a hand-wringing, bedwetting meltdown clearly demonstrates two positions: either you put your money where your mouth is or keep your trap firmly shut. It also helps to underscore just how mealy-mouthed the left can be when it comes to leading by example.
Vote Green for Migrant Influx Like Never Before!
I, personally, know (although I’m ashamed to admit it) a number of ‘progressives’ who constantly and still, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, parrot the Blairite mantra that we have never had it so good since he endorsed the migrant invasion. And yet none of these migrant advocates appear to live, to my knowledge, in the flyblown black holes of Calcutta, those changed-beyond-recognition sinks wherein Britain’s poor towns and cities enrichment is so keenly felt and so visibly deplorable.
By the same token that the left conveniently confuses and conflates realist with racist, these lush-living liberal lefties tend to be found – we’re all right, Jack – in expensive, salubrious, middle-class neighbourhoods, which, would you Adam and Eve it, are almost always exclusively white.
Leaving them there to stew in the comfort of their discomforting hypocrisy, we will now take a brief pause to reflect upon another hypocrisy (though both spew indistinguishably from the same polluted source): the hypocrisy that so terribly blights Britain’s garden of truth when tended by the green, but exceptionally poisonous, fingers of a forever sensationalist-seeking, not-fit-for-purpose media.
Though competition was rife, of all the sensationalist headlines ignited by Reform’s beneficence to gift-wrap migrant detention centres and give them to the Greens, the award for shooting oneself in the foot goes resoundingly to the Daily Mirror. That old socialist dinosaur really pushed the boat out rather than inviting them in, when making reference to ‘Nigel Farage’s… detention centres plan’ it failed to use the left’s migrant-related word of choice, ‘enriched’, the gold standard of woke duplicity – or should that be the Green standard? – and with a dissimulation greater than the ‘chilling’ mystery that surrounds Robert Maxwell’s demise, chose to call Farage’s gift a ‘chilling’ detention centres plan. Now what in the world is so ‘chilling’ about thousands of lovely third-world migrants parked in your back garden? If it is so terribly ‘chilling’, then surely the Greens would never propose green-lighting them as they do, and Green voters should think it an honour to have their constituencies filled with them.
“Nigel Farage’s Chilling Detention Centres Plan as Reform ‘sinks to new low’” – Daily Mirror.
There’s nothing ‘low’ about it; in fact Farage’s response is highly amusing and, more than that, highly appropriate.
You want migrants, you get migrants. What could be fairer than that?
^The Express airs an article that warns rather than celebrates. It states that the “Green migrant plan would add millions to UK population”, but it doesn’t specifically say millions of what!
I, personally, am of the opinion that Mr Farage’s dispersion plan did not go far enough.
All those in favour of mass migration should be forced to accommodate at least one migrant, taking them gladly into their homes, while those with larger houses, ie the lush-living liberal lefties, should expect to share their homes with, at the very least, one migrant family.
And if this enrichment is not enough, when the migrant family’s extended family washes up on Britain’s shores, ie their grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, half-brothers – in multiples thereof – and old Uncle Tom Ali and all, then these, too, should be taken in by those who voted for them, for, pay attention Greens, where were you taught that charity doth begin? It begins at home – correct!
And as for those who vote Reform, the Best of British to us!
The following two remarks are quoted from the ‘comments’ section of the Daily Mirror’s ‘Chilling’ article:
scar84: The only vile ghastly politicians are the radical left. The biggest danger to Britain is a far-left coalition of Labour, the Greens, the SNP and the Lib Dems propping them up. Thankfully, on current polling, they won’t win enough seats between them to form anything.
[Comment: If such a nightmarish coalition did come to pass, then sedgley58’s predictions (see below) will need to be brought forward by 95 years!]
sedgley58: In about 100 years’ time, Dover will be full of young Brits trying to cross the channel in dinghies to get to mainland Europe.
[Comment: I think sedgley58 is only wrong in his choice of timespan. With a Farage victory at the next general election, the course of history for the UK may well be shunted back on track, but without this redeeming triumph, those ‘young Brits’ to which he refers will be queuing on Dover’s beaches before the next decade is out – even sooner if the nightmare envisaged by scar84 was to take material shape. Mercifully, however, everything would seem to indicate that the left are on their way out. Hooray!]
If you like thinking, Kant’s tomb is a good place to do it
26 March 2026 – Kant’s Tomb at Königsberg Cathedral in Kaliningrad
A visit to Königsberg’s Cathedral and/or the Kant Museum, which it contains, would hardly be complete without stopping off to pause philosophically next to Kant’s tomb, which, as every trip-advising website will tell you, is located at the cathedral’s northeast corner. If, like me, however, you haven’t got a compass either in your head or in your shoe, such directional information may not be a whole lot of use to you, so we’ll say that the tomb is located at the back of the cathedral opposite the river. It is easy to navigate from Honey Bridge. Cross that and turn immediately right. Conversely, if you are approaching the cathedral from the front, walk around the back.
Kant’s Tomb at Königsberg Cathedral in Kaliningrad
Initially, Kant was interred inside the cathedral, but his remains were exhumed in 1880 and reinterred beneath a neo-Gothic chapel, which stood on the site of the present-day mausoleum.
Prominent German architect Friedrich Lahrs designed the replacement to the dilapidated Gothic structure in a neoclassical ‘monumental’ style, constructed in 1924 as an open-hall, colonnaded chapel. The design is simplistic but effective, and I am quite convinced that Kant would not have disapproved.
The sepulchre contains a stone sarcophagus, beneath which the philosopher’s remains are buried.
It is particularly atmospheric on a dark night, when the tomb’s illumination, reflecting from its red granite surface, bathes the whole in a warm glow, casting angled shadows in stark relief across the imposing Gothic structure to which it is appended.
I know, it’s not red and warm as it sometimes is; it’s turquoise. Either way, it’s illuminating.
The tomb is accessible to visitors all year round and is an integral part of the cathedral’s tours, which take in the cathedral, the Kant Museum, Kant’s grave, Kneiphof (Kant Island) and the history of Königsberg.
Visitors Information
Location of Kant’s tomb: Kanta Street, 1, Kaliningrad, Russia 236039
19 March 2026 – Königsberg Cathedral Organ pulls out all the stops!
Konigsberg Cathedral, reconstructed from the ashes of the Second World War, is a culturally nostalgic landmark, all that remains of Kneiphof Island, and a fascinating historic and architectural monument of the first order. It is also a centre of musical excellence, a legacy that stretches back even before the cathedral had been completed in 1380, thanks to the use of a portable organ.
In 1380, with the last cathedral stone in place, the art of organ transportation gave way to a large stationary version, which, over a period of years, underwent enlargement and improvement in sound quality.
A new organ, based on the lines of the original, which superseded the latter in 1567, was endowed with no less than 10 bellows and 60 voices.
Towards the close of the 16th century, ornate carving, sumptuous painting and gold-plated adornments added a striking visual dimension to the organ’s musical talent, which by this time had become the largest organ in Prussia.
Not satisfied with this achievement, which was already spectacular of its kind, a new organ was commissioned in the first quarter of the 18th century, the work to be undertaken by craftsman Johann Mosengel. Completed in 1721, both the organ and its sound met with high acclaim.
It was also celebrated for having been finished in a grand baroque style, beautified with angel figurines, artisan carving and magnificent gilding, and later would be made famous for helping the writer ETA Hoffmann to master the basics of music.
By the time this organ was up and playing, the cathedral could boast of its own orchestra, which added greatly to its musical repertoire and induced a greater attraction.
The cathedral’s high-humidity environment, which was also subject to erratic temperature fluctuations, required the organ to undergo frequent repair and maintenance, and by the onset of the 20th century, major restoration was rendered unavoidable along with the need for musical tuning.
Königsberg Cathedral Organ pulls out all the stops!
In 1928, Königsberg Cathedral was blessed with a new organ. The Hannover firm that built and supplied it meticulously observed the baroque influences that inspired its decoration, making it all the more tragic when, on the evenings of the 28th and 29th of August, 1944, a bombing raid by the RAF, which gutted the cathedral, added the beautiful organ to its list of fatal casualties.
Today’s Königsberg Cathedral is equipped with two fibre-optic-connected organs, making it the largest piped organ complex in Russia and one of the largest in Europe. The two instruments, the grand three-storey organ and the smaller choir organ, were installed by Alexander Schuke Potsdam Orgelbau, Germany.
Combined, the organs are served by more than 8,500 pipes (6,301 in the larger organ, 2,224 in the choir) and 122 registers. One organist can play both organs from one or the other console, or the organs can be played separately.
As with the cathedral’s earlier organs, stylistically the baroque format has been faithfully followed, the gilded façade featuring impressive carvings, including the Virgin Mary and putti that move with the music. The Phoenix carving is said to symbolise the rebirth of the cathedral.
The cathedral hosts organ concerts on a regular basis. The smaller ‘mini concerts’, as they are called, are augmented by visiting musicians of world fame. These larger performances incorporate the best in orchestras and choral groups. More information, ticket prices and booking are available from https://sobor39.ru/en/events/concerts/.
Meet Kant and shake hands with the history of Königsberg
14 March 2026 – Kant Museum Kaliningrad – all you need to know
Those who have a passion for everythingKant could not do better than direct themselves towards one of Kaliningrad’s most multifunctional cultural centres, the major surviving landmark of the former city of Königsberg, Königsberg Cathedral.
The museum is located in the cathedral’s towers. It occupies three floors, accessible by a series of steep and challenging staircases, the first being stone and spiral.
The museum, as the name suggests, is principally dedicated to the celebrated 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant but also embraces the concomitant history of the cathedral, Kneiphof Island, as Kant Island was formerly called, Königsberg itself, and the Albertina University, which, before the arrival of the RAF in 1944, was so conveniently situated at the cathedral’s eastern side that the adoption of the latter as the university’s church could not have been more fortuitous.
Kant Museum Kaliningrad – all you need to know
The three floors that constitute the museum have distinct areas of interest: the first is a historical tribute to Kneiphof (Kant Island); the second contains an authentic reconstruction of the Wallenrodt Library; and the third is a shrine to Kant.
The Kniephof exhibition is a must-see for anyone interested in the juxtaposition of prewar Königsberg with its Soviet and modern-day successors. Kant, who lived and worked in Königsberg all of his life, knew Kneiphof in the 18th century as one of the city’s four central districts. Over time, Kneiphof Island became overbuilt, assuming the character of a highly concentrated urban environment. The wartime visit by the RAF abruptly changed all that, laying waste to Kneiphof as it did to the best part of Königsberg. In more recent years, this lamentable space has evolved with some careful landscape coaxing into a gentle, relaxing retreat, thoughtfully planted with shrubs and trees and intersected throughout with meandering hard-surface walkways.
Exhibits in the Kant Museum at Königsberg Cathedral in Kaliningrad include historic artefacts and images relevant to the Albertina University.
The Kniephof exhibition contains a number of maps, images and artefacts, illuminating the island’s history, including vintage items and ephemera connected with the Albertina University. But the jewel in its crown is undoubtedly the detailed scale model of Königsberg, which clearly shows not only Kneiphof in its 1930s heyday but also the layout of the city of which it was comprised, which seven years from the time depicted would abruptly cease to exist.
The Wallenrodt Library on the museum’s second floor is named after its founder, the Prussian Chancellor Martin von Wallenrodt, whose private collection of ancient books and manuscripts became the first secular public library to be hosted by a religious establishment. The library was donated to the cathedral in 1650 by Wallenrodt’s son, and its contents increased year on year until, just before the cathedral was bombed in 1944, some 10,000 written works had been sedulously amassed and carefully curated for the edification of the general public.
Fortunately, both before the war and during the time it raged, much of the library’s invaluable contents were transferred elsewhere for safety, but for those volumes that did remain, fate showed a less lenient face than the one that had partly smiled upon the cathedral’s tenuous destiny, for the library and its remaining contents suffered to be obliterated.
The library’s reincarnation is largely acknowledged to be a faithful replica of its former self in all its relative dimensions and an accurate aesthetic and atmospheric facsimile of its 17th-century origin. The Baroque appearance and scholarly ambience echo throughout the sumptuous mahogany woodwork, particularly in the carved detail that overlays the library shelves. If ever a place was intended by God for learned study and quiet reflection, then here, I feel, is a better place than most – allowing, of course, for its constant stream of visitors.
Kant Museum Kaliningrad – all you need to know
The third floor of the cathedral’s museum is a paean to philosopher Kant, where personal artefacts, sketches, portraits, busts and documents of various kinds consort with digital technology to introduce the visitor to the life of the man and philosopher, locating him in the history of the world in which he lived and worked.
Hello, Mr Kant!
An adjoining room demonstrates Kant’s adherence to the dining etiquette advocated by Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, whose considered opinion was that dinner parties should never consist of fewer than three persons and never more than nine, this number including the host. Exemplifying rigid rituals typically Kant in nature and, indeed, no less in practice, this prescription was one which the philosopher, so it is said, adopted in order to equalise his solitary existence with structured social interaction sufficient enough to divert and enjoy whilst informing his lifelong pursuit of the moral and intellectual stimulants his calling held so necessary.
In reflecting this sense of order, the room is symbolically staged according to the principles Kant accepted and of which he approved; the table and chairs are laid out as prescribed to accommodate guests conforming to the strict limits of a propitious number, the host, of course, included, and are presented then to visitors against a dynamic, colourful tapestry, the lively content of which depicts a typical evening at home with Kant. Who would have thought that a man so widely considered to be intractably pedantic could demonstrate his critique of reason through such perfect hospitality!
In contrast to this merry scene, but quite in keeping with life itself, this room also contains two Kantian exhibits which some of a sensitive disposition might consider macabre. The first, staring blindly from the cushioned base of the glass case in which it resides, is a copy of the philosopher’s death mask, about which it is probably true to say he fails to look his best; the second is a framed painting hanging on the wall, which captures the haunting moment of the exhumation of Kant’s body, in which one man is depicted standing inside the open grave, passing Kant’s skull to a colleague, whilst the rest of the congregation look on with expressions of awe and wonder, morbid fascination or an irresistible inclination to surrender to all three.
Kant’s remains were removed from where his body had been buried inside the cathedral’s walls and reinterred in a mausoleum constructed in his honour annexed to the cathedral, which is where they are today, though no longer in the original bespoke structure, whose character had been Gothic, but in a remodelled modernist setting designed in the 1920s by the German architect Friedrich Lahrs, about which, no doubt, we will have something to say in a later post at a later date.
You might very well find this useful …
The Kant Museum is located in Königsberg Cathedral: Ulitsa Kanta, 1, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, 236039
On recounting some of my experiences of working in the publishing industry, some wag asked, back in the 90s, “So, what are you going to do when you leave school?”
1 March 2026 – Mick Hart’s Diary One Day in Travel Trade Publishing
The following diary extract is taken from my time as managing editor at a now-defunct travel-trade publishing house, which we shall here refer to as Shackelton Press.
Shackelton Press for me represented the last post in a long line of desperately bizarre, tumultuously chaotic, and unbelievably high-octane-stressed advertising-based publishing houses, each one stocked with larger-than-life, weird and wonderful characters.
Let’s do a bit of time travelling:
Preface
These little insights, or snippets of madness, are taken from my 1996 diary. The setting is London. The names of both the publishing house and the actors in it have been changed to protect the reputations of the not-so-innocent. If you know who you are, God bless you. I trust that you all came through the experience mentally and emotionally unscathed. They were, as John Lennon lyricised, “Strange days, indeed!”
Cast of Characters: Editorial Director: Byron Quill (Quilly)
Managing Editor: Mick Hart (or, ‘managing badly’, as Sebastian used to say, or ‘managing just’, as Mr Ormolu was wont to quip)
Production Department Staff Sebastian Forrester (subeditor/researcher/writer – part-time actor)
Margaret Clark: (researcher/subeditor)
Matt Ormolu: (editor)
Grant: (graphic design and page layout)
Arthur: (freelance editor – South African) nickname ‘Slice’
Suit & Tie: (researcher/subeditor) – female
Publishing house: Shackleton Press
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Introduction
Is it the same today? In my days, people were always leaving publishing house editorial/production departments, either because they couldn’t stand the pace any longer and wanted to get their life back or were, or so they said, moving on to richer pastures. Such is the land we occupy, known as Wishful Thinking.
On this day, Friday 15 May 1996, someone – yet another someone – was about to make the great escape. She was a northern lass, who we will refer to here as Margaret Clark.
In connection with this event, I had been directed by my director (after all, that’s what directors are for, directing) to sally forth, in my own time, of course, or manage someone else to do the same (that’s what managing is all about, delegating) in the interests of procuring for the aforesaid Margaret a communal card and leaving present.
To avoid the boredom of it, I delegated the role to the one chap in our department whom I knew would turn a routine task into something more diverting. No one was better suited to this task, I thought, than Sebastian Forrester, the irascible budding actor, whose aspirations of high culture and whose self-regard for sophistication presented numerous opportunities whilst preparing for the lunchtime trip to, how do we say it, ‘take the piss’.
Friday 15 May 1996 – as it happened
Sebastian, who was extremely excited by the responsibility conferred on him, entertained, with my help, the whole department. He set up his affectatious cultural airs as if they were skittles and my debasing of them the balls that would knock them down.
Margaret Clark, the girl who was leaving today, reminded me of a stick of rock; she had ‘Northern Girl’ stamped right through her. As such, she would most likely have been happy with a pair of clogs, a flat hat and a bowl of mushy peas, heavy on the mint sauce, for a leaving present, but Sebastian, true to form, had his mind set on something she would like because it was something he would like. He seriously had no idea if she had any interest in, or appreciation of, art, and neither did I. But once Sebastian had latched onto something, it was like a dog’s teeth in arse. (This analogy has some baring, sorry, bearing, on the eventual choice of gift, or, of course, I would not have employed it.)
So, we were off to Covent Garden to buy Margaret, who was leaving, a book on art that she might not want, would not like and would never read. It sounded to me like the perfect present for a person quitting a job that she did not want, did not like and was pleased to close the covers on.
Sebastian, just before we left the office, was commenting vociferously on the remarks of one of his colleagues, whose projected view on everything he considered rather crass: “Oh yes, Michael, there’s old Ormolu, his usual helpful and refined self, ‘I think some novelty items are in order, Sebastian,’ he said. Novelty items, indeed. And we all know what he means by that!”
What Sebastian did not know was that Matt Ormolu and I had already discussed the type of present that we were going to buy dear Margaret, and novelty items were top of the list.
“Oh no, Michael!” protested Sebastian, his nose curling and sensibilities clearly offended. “I’m not under any circumstances going into Nutz Novelty shop!”
“Sebastian I barked (Sebastian was the son of an army officer, and sons of army officers, I have found, respond instinctively to the old sergeant major treatment). “Sebastian!”
“Yes, Michael!”
“We are going in!”
“Right, Michael!”
“Oh my God!” That was Sebastian, genuinely shocked by the risqué greeting cards greeting him in Nutz Novelty.
Naturally, being a thespian by aspiration, buying anything of such a crass, crude nature was theatrically beneath him.
Officially, we only had our lunch hour in which to buy a present, and the clock was ticking. In Nutz Novelty, the hands and the pendulum bore an intended resemblance to male genitalia.
“Pity we can’t afford that,” I thought.
Sebastian’s dithering was impinging upon our schedule, so I had to make a managerial decision. So, much to his dismay, I grabbed the nearest greeting card. On its cover was a naked man, who was looking rather gay. Then, before Sebastian could faint, I added to my basket a jumping clockwork bum and a packet of luminous condoms.They were always experiencing power cuts up North, so Margaret should find some practical use for them.
Sebastian was so appalled that, in the interests of balance and resuscitation, I accepted his need to restore the culture he’d lost by looking for it in Dillons bookshop.
In Dillons, we haggle over two potential publications: Works of Art of the Past Century or 100 Years of Playboy. I’ll leave you to decide which one of us advocated which book.
To placate Sebastian, Works of Art of the Past Century it is. A good manager always manages to make concessions when they are faced with a member of staff who looks as though he’s about to stage a tantrum.
With the esteemed book in his mitt, Sebastian proceeds to checkout, putting the book on one side of the counter and resting the Nutz Novelty nude-man card on the other.
The shop assistant rings up the book and then, glancing at the gay card, with its picture of a compromised nude man on the front, asks Sebastian, “Is this yours?”
Sebastian panicking, “Good heavens, no! He bought it from Nutz Novelty!”
But ‘he’, meaning me, was nowhere to be found. I had expeditiously removed myself and was studiously and demonstratively preoccupied with Post-modernist Works of Art.
“We sell them here,” the assistant said, referring to the card.
Mick Hart’s Diary One Day in Travel Trade Publishing
We were already late back from lunch, two hours late to be exact.
“It wil be a ground-to-air arse-seeking boot for us, Mr Hart!” was Sebastian’s prediction.
We were rattling along on the tube, with Sebastian imitating what he expected Director Quill to say about our lengthy expedition,” Huh! Did it take two of you!”
“To which the reply will be, Sebastian: ‘Yes, one to go into the arty-farty shop and one to buy the bouncing bum.’”
Mr Quilly never commented on our combined late return, but he did say, “I can’t have my managing editor buying condoms, bouncing bums and false breasts in Nutz Novelty Shop.”
Leaving his office, I thought, “Where did he get the false breasts from?”
As I approached the editorial department, I could hear actor Sebastian hamming it up in no uncertain terms: “… and whilst I was in Dillons looking for a decent present, there’s old Mick,” I could hear him sneering, “dithering about in Nutz Novelty shop, undecided about whether he should buy the fart spray or the masturbatory glove?”
“False breasts? Masturbatory glove?” Perhaps Quill and Sebastian were more frequent visitors to Nutz Novelty than we gave them credit for. Perhaps they are given credit? Perhaps they had a joint account!
When I entered the department, I was greeted with: “We thought you were never going to come back. It’s 5pm!”
“Sebastian’s fault,” I replied. “He’s such an old woman when it comes to buying presents.”
No fear of reprisals for that comparison. The one thing I never did was employ feminists.
Mick Hart’s Diary One Day in Travel Trade Publishing
We were late back, so late that we barely had time to wrap the presents and get the card with the bare gay man on the front signed.
South African Arthur, regarding the nude picture on the front of the card, asked: “Why is there a picture of Quilly on the front? More to the point, who took it?”
Grant, from the production department, asked, referring to the photo, “Is this a still out of Sebastian’s latest film?”
After everyone in the production department had signed the card, I ferried it, with half the department behind me, to Mr Quilly’s office. Through the window in the door, we can see him smiling as he signs the card.
Matt Ormolu: “Quilly’s smiling. Perhaps people should leave more often.”
Even Mr Quilly himself had a comment to make: “I’ll have to be more careful about who photographs me as I’m scrubbing my right knee!”
It was almost time to leave for the leaving party, which was taking place at a venue in the Angel. There was an air of school days’ excitement in the office. We were going to be really naughty and leave fifteen minutes early. Even old Suit and Tie, one of the female editorial staff, was coming with us tonight. She usually went straight home to darn her socks or something.
Outside on the street, most of those people accompanying me waited patiently for a cab; all, that is, but Sebastian.
“Typical Harty situation,” he scoffed, referring to me, and then directed at me: “Haven’t you heard of that simple and convenient mode of transport known as the tube?”
“Indeed I have, Sebastian, but you being an actor and all, I wouldn’t dream of casting you in the role of a commoner. Besides, on the tube you’d most likely be deprived of a speaking part, whereas in the cab your oratory will be rewarded with a standing ovation.”
“You’d have a job standing …” but his derision was cut short by our chariot arriving.
The cab got us to where we wanted to be, door to door, in half the time it would have taken by tube.
“I know, Sebastian, there is no need to congratulate me. We are here much quicker than if we had taken the tube; that’s why I’m the manager, here to manage.”
Sebastian’s book, A 100 Years of Art, came in handy. Margaret used it as a platform for the jumping bum, and everyone, except for Sebastian, was enraptured by it. “Good choice, Sebastian,” Ormolu glowed – and so did the condoms.
Whilst Ormolu and the condoms glowed, Sebastian glowered; he was leaning in close – too close, I thought – to two of the female editors for which he had a lascivious liking, chastising me for all he was worth: “You should have seen him, old Hart, standing there in Nutz Novelty, unable to make up his mind whether to buy the fart spray or the masturbatory glove!”
I steered clear of this conversation but wondered how Sebastian would deal with certain questions the female staff now were putting to him regarding the glove to which he had alluded, of which, like Quilly’s female breasts, I had not the slightest knowledge.
All things considered, the party went well, which was something of a letdown by publishing standards. Nobody got paralytic and disgraced themselves by fondling bottoms, except for the clockwork one, or by slagging off the production director to his face; nobody threw up, got into a fight or bonked one another in the gentlemen’s lavs and the stench of Ganja was conspicuously absent. It all could have been so very different, if I had only invited the sales staff.
24 February 2026 – Winter in Kaliningrad can be both harsh and beautiful
No sooner had I posted Snow in Kaliningrad than the first signs of a thaw occurred. At 4.30am on the morning of the 22nd February 2026, my long-term insomnia allowed me to listen with immeasurable clarity to the roar of glaciers leaving our rooftop and the commensurable and sporadic sounds of smaller pieces of ice, mimicking handfuls of gravel, sliding and rattling stridently off terracotta and metal surfaces as they literally lost their grip.
Fate’s forceful intervention, either betraying the promise of a snowbound world or working with Nature to release water from frozen petrification, are interpretations only to be mediated by your personal understanding of the benign and malignant forces that constitute our natural/unnatural world. Are postulations of a beautiful Nature all that they are cracked up to be, or is Nature merely an aberration, a mistake, which, including us, is nothing more than a virus more invasive to planet Earth than a dinghy full of migrants powered by liberal-leftism on its way to England? In the stillness of 4:30, it all seems so peculiar.
Winter in Kaliningrad can be both harsh and beautiful
Snow may have brought the Old West quick draw to Kaliningradians armed with shovels and across its frozen tundra made otherwise manly men mince, but the flip side to the challenge is, or has been, many a pretty and picturesque scene, with white landscapes, crystalline trees, a wonderland playground for children, including for those that have never grown up, and, once you’ve contended with frozen toes and mastered the art of your balancing act, an all-pervading magical atmosphere.
Herewith is a handful of images from the cards that winter has so far dealt us. The cards for March are yet to be played; thus, all bets for a no-snow spring are off for a few days more.
It looks cold, and it is!
If you haven’t the foggiest where the following photos were taken, then you evidently haven’t read my post on Königsberg Cathedral. The down-to-earth views are photographed on a very cold, snowy evening from the side of Honey Moon Bridge, which is the bridge that connects Kneiphof (Königsberg) with Kant Island (Kaliningrad) to the Fishing Village. The other snapshots offer a grandstand view out and over the sublime expanse of the cathedral’s rooftop, with its distinctive decorative cupola-shaped knop and skyline-commanding mast.
The streets of Kaliningrad
Self-explanatory really: street scenes of snowbound Kaliningrad. If you’ve never clapped eyes before on a photo-posing historic fire hydrant, you have now. If it could operate a smartphone, I’m sure it would take a selfie – or perhaps it has too much pride.
Youth Park snowed under
Kaliningrad’s Youth Park is usually teeming with life, but a few days ago, when these photos were taken, it was a snow-inhabited ghost town. Apart from snow-shovelling men, nothing else was working. The indoor skating rink was open. A great place to be on a cold and icy day!
Sledging (or should that be doughnutting) in Central Park, Kaliningrad
Just before the big thaw set in, we set off to Kaliningrad’s Central Park, which at first sight may appear flat, but at the furthermost end, that’s the one where you don’t come in through the main gate, is characterised by a pronounced declivity – let’s say ‘slope’.
The Marilyn Monroe of curves, the landscape’s flattering figure makes it the perfect place to position yourself and slide off into the stream below – if, of course, you are not too careful. We were.
I stationed myself at the base of the sledge-run and arrested the first descent in such a way that it almost took my arm off. This taught me that the best method of halting the sledge was to stoop down with hands outstretched as if I were a wicket keeper, which I rarely was, because second to football, I hated cricket; yet, had I been more compliant, I might have been correctly informed that a decrease in speed could be best effected by the pilot of the speeding snowcraft using their heels as brakes. These modern doughnut-shaped things are mighty fast on snow, albeit a little less dignified than their more conventional counterparts.
Winter in Kaliningrad can be both harsh and beautiful
In winter, much of Central Park, like the trees that occupy it, lies dormant. But after a game of snowballs and lying in the snow, you really need something to pep you up. I have generally found that in winter at least one of Central Park’s refreshment kiosks debunks shutdown and that snacks, teas, coffees and even ice creams are still available for the cold and brave.
Catering for those whose resuscitation requirements are rather more sophisticated, I was pleased to learn that on the day in question – the question being, whatever was I doing standing around in the snow? – The winter-friendly kiosk was adult enough to provide mulled wine.
At four quid a pop, you don’t get pop, but you do get a very tasty, very warming and satisfactorily large helping of a put-colour-back-in-your-cheeks beverage. Just the job for a man with frozen feet and his doughnut-stopping, beer-raising arm having narrowly escaped dislocation.
Essential survival garments for cold weather in Kaliningrad
