С большой грустью сообщаю, что наш дорогой друг Стас (Станислав Коновалов) скончался от послеоперационных осложнений во время лечения в больнице. Мы с женой Ольгой познакомились со Стасом в январе 2019 года. Нас познакомил с ним наш общий друг, художник Виктор Рябинин. Позже Стас рассказывал мне, что Виктор сказал ему: «В Калининград переезжает англичанин. Тебе следует с ним встретиться. Он интересный человек, и я думаю, вы найдете общий язык ». Я не совсем уверен, что заслуживаю быть названным «интересный», но мы нашли общий язык в нашей любви к истории в целом и в частности к истории Кенигсберга- Калининграда и его окрестностей. Важным элементом нашего общего языка было вдохновение, которое мы оба получили от нашего друга и наставника Виктора Рябинина. Вскоре после смерти Виктора Рябинина в июле 2019 года я сказал Стасу, что нашел две картины Виктора среди своих вещей в Англии. Он ответил с присущей ему скромностью, что, хотя у него нет картин Виктора Рябинина с его автографами, ему достаточно того, что у него есть «тайная гордость», заключающаяся в том, что он был «близок к этому великому человеку». «Я был его учеником много лет, – сказал он. Когда я рискнул предположить, что Виктор был его другом, Стас ответил, опять с присущей ему скромностью: «Виктор знал очень многих людей, но он, вероятно, не считал их всех своими друзьями. . Могу сказать, что я был его учеником, что я восхищался им и был счастлив в его обществе… »Затем он сделал паузу, прежде чем сказать:« Но я хотел бы думать, что он считал меня своим другом ». Стас был скромным человеком. Он скромно относился ко всем своим достижениям, даже тогда когда было совершенно очевидно, что у него было столько же, если не больше, прав их превозносить. В знак признания его достижений, я попросил Стаса написать краткий биографический отчет о его работе и жизни, в том числе о его отношениях с Виктором Рябининым, и поместил его очерк, вместе со ссылками на его практику экскурсовода на страницах своего постоянного блога под рубрикой “Виктор Рябинин Кенигсберг”. “Стас Калининград Кенигсберг Путеводитель”https://expatkaliningrad.com/personal-tour-guide-kaliningrad/ Стас очень много работал над своими проектами гида, оттачивая и совершенствуя их, снимая несколько видеороликов на YouTube и всегда спрашивая: «Что ты думаешь об этом аспекте?» “Все в порядке?” «Есть ли в сценарии видеоролика что-нибудь, что, по твоему мнению, требует пояснения?». Как и смерть Виктора Рябинина до него, смерть Стаса лишила Кенигсберг-Калининград еще одного его великого посла. Но нас его смерть лишила гораздо большего. Стас был человеком прямолинейным, открытым, искренним. Он был добрым человеком, всегда готовым помочь, он был сердцем хорошей компании. Вместе, мы делили общий язык прошлого, а я через него – общий, но очень важный язык – человеческий. В общем, Стас был самым ценным арсеналом – он был незаменимым другом, которого мы не могли себе позволить потерять.
It is with great sadness that I report that our dear friend Stas (Stanislav Konovalov) passed away recently from post-operative complications whilst undergoing hospital treatment.
My wife, Olga, and I met Stas in January 2019. We were introduced to him by a mutual friend, Victor Ryabinin the artist. Stas told me later that Victor had said to him, “There is an Englishman moving to Kaliningrad. You should meet him. He is an interesting man, and I think you will find a common language.”
I am not altogether certain that I deserve the appellation ‘interesting’, but we did find a common language in our love of history generally and specifically for Königsberg-Kaliningrad and the surrounding region.
An important element in that common language was the inspiration we both received from our friend and mentor Victor Ryabinin.
A short while after Victor Ryabinin’s death in July 2019, I told Stas that I had found two paintings by Victor among my possessions in England. He replied, with characteristic modesty, that whilst he did not have a signed painting by Victor Ryabinin the artist, it was enough that he had a “secret pride”, which was that he had been “close to this great man”. “I was his student for many years,” he said.
When I ventured to suggest that Victor had also been his friend, he replied, once again with characteristic modesty, “Victor knew a great many people and associated with a great many people, but he probably would not have considered them all to be his friends. I can say that I was his student, that I admired him and enjoyed his company …” He then paused, before saying, “But I would like to think that he thought of me as his friend.”
Stas was a modest man. He was modest about all of his achievements, when it was quite obvious that he had as much right, if not more, to blow his own trumpet with the ‘best’ of them.
Stas worked extremely hard on his tour guide projects, honing and perfecting them, making several YouTube videos and always asking, “What did you think of this aspect?” “Was that alright?” “Is there anything in my tour guide script that you think needs clarification?”.
Like Victor Ryabinin before him, Stas’ death has robbed Königsberg -Kaliningrad of yet another great ambassador.
It has robbed us of so much more.
Stas was a straight-talking, open, sincere individual. He was a kind man, always ready to help and good company.
Together, we shared the common language of the past, and I, through him, the common but all-important language of humanity.
In summation, Stas was that most precious of all commodities ~ he was the indispensable friend that we could ill afford to lose.
A sunny afternoon with Stas Konovalov, ‘Stas’, [right of picture] Kaliningrad Königsberg Guide
Revised 19 January 2025 | First published: 16 June 2022 ~ What makes Kaliningrad Flea Market a Junk Buyers paradise?
NOTE>: Kaliningrad flea market has moved! Follow the link to the new location here. Use this article to gain an insight and overview of what the market has to offer. The address of the new location can also be found at the end of this post.
In 2000, the first time I set foot on Kaliningrad soil ~ a giant step for a man who had never been to Russia before ~ one of the major attractions very quickly became the city’s flea market or junk market, as we like to call it.
In those days, the junk market was located at the side of Kaliningrad’s central market, a monolithic and cavernous complex consisting of all kinds of exciting combinations of traditional stalls, purpose-built units and multi-layered shops, selling everything from fruit and veg to jewellery.
To get to the market we would cut around the back of Lenin’s statute, which occupied the place where the Orthodox cathedral stands today (irony), and making our way along a make-shift pavement of boards raised on pallets, often treacherously slippy as winter approached, we’d pass amidst the wagon train of covered craft-sellers’ stalls, trek across the city’s bus park and, on the last leg of the journey, sidle off down a long, wide alley, which had rattling tin on one side and a towering building on the other. I have no idea why, as I was often in Kaliningrad during the sunny seasons, but my abiding memory of that alley was that it sucked wind down it like the last gasp of breath and was never anything other than cold, wet and raining.
Another ‘in those days’ was that the junk market extended along the side of the road, which is now a pedestrianised space between buildings ancient and modern and the latest super monolithic shopping centre.
Dealers could be found in an old yard opposite, plying their trade from a shanty town of stalls, all higgledy-piggledy, thrown and cobbled together, whilst public sellers set up shop on a narrow sloping scar of land, a grass verge at the side of a pavement worn down over the years by the restless itinerance of junk-seller hopefuls.
In our militaria dealing and 1940s’ re-enactment hey days, we bought twenty pairs of sapagee (high leather and canvas military boots) from a bloke stalled out on this piece of ground over several consecutive days. We also bought his Soviet military belts, the ones that he was wearing. On the last day of purchasing, we would have had his belt again had he more to sell, but all that he had left by the time we were through with buying was a piece of knotted string, which he needed to keep his trousers up.
When we left Russia at the end of a month’s visit, this was in 2004, border security couldn’t help sniggering when they found inside our vehicle twenty pairs of old Soviet boots, rolled up tightly, lashed down with string and packed away in bin liners. But he who laughs last, laughs longest. We hadn’t sneaked off with an icon or two or anything of any great value, but boots bought for a quid a pair that we could sell on in the UK at £35 or more a pop to WWII re-enactors and members of living history groups was unarguably lubbly jubbly. Whilst we wouldn’t get rich on the proceeds, it would certainly help to offset the cost of our trip to Kaliningrad. Dear, dear comrades, it shames me to admit what a despicable capitalist I once was.
When I first came to Kaliningrad (2000), I was buying stuff mainly for myself, but as I turned dealer, as most collectors are obliged to do to reclaim the space they live in, I did what all collectors must when the fear of decluttering wakes them in a cold sweat from their slumbers: I went out looking for more clutter, the justification being that I was no longer buying it for myself but selling it on for profit.
Believe you me, sooner or later (usually later), every junk hoarder arrives at a critical stage of consciousness, when they finally have to admit to themselves that buying old stuff is not just a compulsion, it is in fact a disease. After confession, however, absolution swiftly follows and, like all professional sinners, hoarders quickly learn that regular sin and regular confession go productively hand-in-hand. Thus, wherever it was we travelled to ~ be it Lithuania, Latvia, Poland or Odessa in Ukraine ~ the story was always the same: junk markets and antique shops loomed large on the itinerary.
What makes Kaliningrad Flea Market a Junk Buyers’ paradise?
Be it ever so difficult, if not impossible, for the likes of us to understand, but accumulating old stuff is not everyone’s cup of tea. Thus, the first victims of the development and progressive gentrification of Kaliningrad’s market area were the junk sellers. Speaking euphemistically, they were ‘politely asked to move on’.
I must admit (there you go, I am at it again, confessing!) that when I discovered their absence, I was truly mortified: new shops, block-paved walkways, tree-inset pedestrian-only streets ~ to be sure an incredible face lift, which no amount of Botox or timely plastic surgery could hope to emulate. All, I suppose, applaudable. But oh! Wherefore thou goest junk?!
As it happened there was no cause for alarm. All I needed to do was go around the bend, something that I am known to be good at, and there it was, as plain as the specs (the vintage specs) on your nose.
The precise location of the junk market was ~ I use the term ‘was’ because rumour has it that the purveyors of indispensable high-quality items and second-hand recyclables may be made to move on again to make way for further civic tarting ~ parallel to the road at the back of Der Wrangel tower, thereupon extending at a right angle, along a sometimes dusty, sometimes muddy, tree-shaded stretch of embankment, skirting a remnant of Königsberg’s moat.
The better-quality items ~ such as militaria and Königsberg relics ~ are generally to be found on the stalls lining either side of the pavement. Here you can discover gems, although not necessarily, or regularly for that matter, at prices to suit your pocket.
The pavement-side sellers are mainly traders, people ‘in the know’, who are hoping to get at least market rate for their wares or substantially more, if they can wangle it.
Experience has taught me that in dealing with these chaps movement on prices is not unachievable, but don’t expect the sort of discounts that are possible to negotiate at UK vintage and boot fairs. Sellers in Kaliningrad are skilled in the art of bargaining and are seemingly absolute in their conviction that if you don’t want it at the quoted price some German tourist will.
A busy Saturday at Kaliningrad Flea Market
If you are after military items, especially those relating to WWII and to Königsberg’s German past, then it is here, along this stretch of pavement, where most likely you will find them. Badges, military dog-tags, Third Reich medals and weapon relics are often quite prolific in this quarter, as is cutlery, ceramics and ceramic fragments, many backstamped with political symbols and the insignia of Germany’s military services.
A word of warning, however. For although Kaliningrad’s German heritage and the fierce battles fought there during WWII would reasonably lead you to expect a preponderance of genuine military relics, as anyone who collects Third Reich memorabilia and/or deals in this specialised field will tell you, counterfeit and reproductions abound. German WWII relics, both military and civilian, bearing ideological runes attained collectable status almost before WWII had ended, and a thriving market in quality replicas to service this growing interest emerged as early as the late 1940s.
Party badges, military decorations, particularly of the higher orders and those associated with the German SS, have been faked and faked extensively, and faked with such credibility that it is difficult to distinguish, sometimes almost impossible, the later versions from the real McCoy, particularly since many were struck from the same dies and moulds that were used to create the originals.
The rule of thumb when hunting out Third Reich bargains from dealers’ stock is that you are less likely to get a bargain than to experience a hard bargain, as the pieces acquired by dealers will almost certainly have been exhaustively studied and meticulously researched. However, if you are tempted to buy, pay attention to the item’s appearance. Remember that genuine military items dating to the Second World War are now well into their dotage ~ 80-years-plus ~ and just like ‘mature’ people will generally exhibit significant signs of age, age-related wear and tear and sundry other defects from natural use and handling.
The other thing to watch out for is a proliferation of similar items at any one time. When in the UK, I was a regular attendee at the Bedford Arms Fair, then held in the now demolished Bunyan Centre, you could guarantee each year that a ‘bumper crop’ of something or other would mysteriously materialise. What an alarm bell that is! For example, one year it was German army dress daggers. Every other dealer seemed to have some and all in mint condition; the next it was German flags. These looked and smelt the part ~old ~ with the exception of their labels, which did neither. So, beware! Before you part with your cash or touch your card on the handset, remember these two wise words: Caveat emptor!
When I buy German these days I do so not to sell on but mainly for nostalgic reasons, and because I am attracted by the historic value only, I am content to purchase military pieces, decorations, party badges and anything else that appeals to me that have been dug up out of the ground. Naturally, condition ranges from considerably less than pristine to battered, biffed, corroded and poor, but an item in this condition is more likely to be the genuine article than one that might be described as ‘remarkably well-preserved’. Moreover, you can usually buy such items at a price that won’t break your brother’s piggy bank (is that another confession?).
The same can be said for architectural pieces such as enamel and metal signs that are Königsberg in origin. Signs ~ advertising, military, street plaques ~ whatever they might be, are personal favourites of mine, since they make historically interesting additions to any thoughtful home design. In purchasing relics of this nature, the same rule applies as the guiding one proposed for determining whether militaria is genuine or not. Signs, whatever their type and whatever material they are made of will, in the main, have been used, thus commensurable indications of use and age should be apparent.
In the past four decades, as original signs, especially enamel ones, have grown in popularity and correspondingly price, various retro companies have been successfully plugging the gap in an escalating market, meeting demand with repro goods. Some of these shout repro at you from a telescopic distance, but as techniques in ageing evolve, it often can be hard at first glance, even after several glances and even after a detailed study, to separate the wheat from the chaff, particularly when impulsiveness knocks caution quite unconscious. And signs are not the only things that are being skilfully ‘got at’. I recall a ‘19th century ship’s wheel turning up at our local auction house. It was so well aged and distressed that were it not for the fact that it was so thoroughly convincing, you could easily have talked yourself Into disbelieving that it was anything other than the genuine article.
This is what to look out for: Signs that are ‘uniformly’ aged or show wear and tear in places where you would most expect to find wear and tear but not to the extent that it dissuades you from going ahead with a purchase are to be placed at the top of the suspect list. The last thing you want to discover, after years of gazing lovingly at the antique sign in your home, romancing on the fancy that this was once on a Königsberg shop front, long imagining how eyes like yours lost in time and to memory alighted on it as yours do now, is to learn that your treasured piece of history was in fact knocked out in China less than a week before you bought it.
Original German/Königsberg signs(photo taken Victor Ryabin Studio, c.2010)
Once authenticity has been established, anything to be had forming a direct link to Königsberg can only be irresistible, not just signs but home appliances, kitchen ware, tea sets, ornaments, furniture, garden tools, anything in fact, especially when that anything bears irrefutable provenance in the form of a maker’s mark. Metalware and ceramics embossed or printed with commercial references, ie references to memorable brands or specific retail outlets, are desirable collectors’ pieces. Old ashtrays, many of which are inventive in shape and size, are top whack in this category. Even if chipped and cracked, they still command high prices, and as for the best examples, which are usually in the hands of dealers, after you have exclaimed with astonishment, “How much!” in those same hands they may well remain.
For a less expensive and in-profusion alternative, you could do far worse than plump for bottles. Bottle bygones are dug up in their hundreds, possibly thousands, in Kaliningrad and across the region, but as there are as many different shapes, sizes and hues as there is quantity, it is not unreasonable to discover rare, curious and even exquisite bottles rubbing shoulders with the more mundane.
In the UK, old bottles from the end of the 19th century to the 1960s are as cheap as chips (used to be, before the West sanctioned itself), but Kaliningrad is not the UK, so don’t expect to get bargains on a par. The trade here adjusts the market price according to the needs and instincts of German visitors, many of whom are easily swayed to part with more money than they seem to have sense for a fragment of their forbears’ past. But “Ahh,” I hear you say, “what price, philistine, can anyone put on nostalgia?” Must I confess again?
I have been known to part with as much as ten quid for an interesting and unusual bottle when it has caught my fancy, but this kind of impetuosity acts in defiance of common sense. If you haven’t got the bottle to part with that much, and you shouldn’t have (Frank Zappa: ‘How could I be such a fool!’), when visiting Kaliningrad’s ‘flea market’, turn 90 degrees from the pavement, head along the well-worn and sometimes muddy embankment, and there you will find bottles and a vast range of all sorts, spread out on the ground on blankets, perched on top of little tables, hanging even in the branches of trees, for this is the market’s bargain basement, home to mainly domestic sellers.
I have bought all sorts of things from this part of the market that I never knew I did not need, not to mention clothes that I have never worn and never will wear. For example, I was once obliged to buy an old tin bucket, and I would not dream of wearing it. It’s far too nice a bucket to use as a bucket should be used; so, there it sits in our dacha full of things that one day I possibly may go looking for but will never dream of looking for in that old tin bucket. It’s the sort of bucket that dealers such as I typically find in house clearances ~ a bucket of flotsam and jetsam left behind by the owner when he up and decided to die; a bucket of odds and ends destined to take up valuable space; the accidental contents of which having absolutely no value at all, I would never be able to give away let alone turn as much as a penny on. I sometimes wonder if this is not the only logical reason why people fill their houses and barns with junk, viz to make more work for those poor sods whose job it is to clear them after they, the owners, kick the bucket. And what a lovely bucket, my bucket is!
Now, where was I? Ahh, yes wandering around on the bank mesmerised by matter.
As I said at the outset of this post, Kaliningrad’s ‘collectors’ market’ is on the move again. Please don’t quote me on this! As Elvis Costello said, it could be ‘just a rumour that was spread around town’, but its veracity is tied to the echo that the strip of wooded embankment roaming along by the side of the Königsberg fort may soon be hosting its last tin bucket. There is a whisper in the air of landscape reincarnation and the rustle of leaves in a public park.
Likewise, I am not entirely certain where this cornucopia of memories, this junk market par excellence, is now officially bound, although the wind in my tin bucket tells me that it may be somewhere not far removed from the city’s botanical gardens.
To be perfectly honest with you (another confession may soon be required), I really harbour no desire to know the new location ~ what the eye doesn’t see the heart won’t pine after. Thus, the next time that I wake up at the market handing over my roubles, I won’t be able to blame myself for going there deliberately and for buying things on purpose. Take a leaf out of my well-thumbed book: never leave chance to anything else but intention ~ you can always confess in the fulness of time.
The line up of commentators includes Chris Phillips, former head of the National Counter Terrorism Office, ‘terror expert’ Philip Ingram, Professor Paul Rogers, Emeritus of Peace Studies at Bradford University, Anthony Glees, director at the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham and Former UK army commander Colonel Hamish De Bretton-Gordon.
In the aftermath of the vehicle attacks in Germany and the United States, the consensus among the experts is that a terrorist attack in Britain is ‘likely’.
A cornerstone key word in this article*, and the many articles like it, is ‘vigilance’.
“Public vigilance is critical to our efforts to keep our communities safe, and we continue to ask people to report anything that doesn’t feel right to police”*
Rather impractical, don’t you think? Since the last time anything ‘felt right’ in the UK, Winston Churchill was prime minister, and nothing has ‘been right’ in the UK since the Immigrant Coup of 1997.
Easy to say and sounding good, just as impractical and also impossible, is the nice and simple notion that vigilance alone is all we need to protect us. Perhaps if we were less busy disproportionally observing ethnic sensibilities and watching our ‘Ps’ and ‘Qs’ for fear we may offend those whose mission it is to destroy us, we might better spot the buggers before they mow us down in trucks.
The takeaway from the cited GB News article would seem to be that what we need to be vigilant for is the waving of the ISIS flag, since the focus of this article, not the editorial focus but that of the security experts, is the resurgence of, or the ongoing threat from, ISIS ~ which it is, I am not quite sure.
However, the real threat is broader than that and also more endemic. For whilst terrorist organisations like ISIS have mass recruitment appeal and structured network resources, the crux of the terrorist problem, as it applies to Britain, lies in the sheer and growing number of migrant hostiles and the imported terrorist mindset that has taken root in British soil and is spreading like a pestilence across a land once green and pleasant.
By adopting the simple but incontrovertible maxim that if we didn’t allow the terrorists in then they could not do what they do, the gateway to the problem is brought sharply into relief. Either by failure, collusion or both, Britain’s liberal political elites have ignored the lessons of history, lowered the drawbridge and let terror in, and now everything they say, such as the paltry ‘you must be vigilant’, and everything they do, which is nothing or not enough, is akin to closing the stable door after the horse has bolted ~ or should that be, leaving the harbour gates open for the boats to come streaming in?
Brits told Be Vigilant
Vigilance is and has always has been a crucial survival pre-requisite, as life is a dangerous place in which to suddenly find oneself, but I belong to a generation that is old enough to remember a time when one could walk the streets of Britain with a vigilance commensurable with civilisation going forward, that is before the open-border fiasco and social engineering programme reversed the trend abruptly, throwing us back into a new dark age.
There is a certain secret satisfaction manifest in the irony of so-called ‘progressive’ liberals shunting civilisation backwards into a medieval turpitude, where the first casualties from harsh reality are destined to be their naïve doctrines and then their gullible selves, but beyond that there is very little to smile about.
You only have to compare the image of Britain’s 21st century police officer, encased in body armour, toting a submachine gun, with the iconic 1950s’ one of the British bobby with his little blue helmet and nothing more to protect himself with than the truncheon in his pocket to gain an understanding of just how radical, dangerous and inherently unstable British society has become under the suicidal postwar stewardship of the loony liberal left.
I for one need no reminding of the ever-present terrorist threat. I see it all around me, each and every time I walk a UK town or city street. But there is only so much vigilance one can openly indulge in before being hauled before the judges of the kangaroo court of social media and condemned for spreading conspiracy theories. Besides, how many different directions can we be vigilant in at any one time?
Chris Phillips, former head of the National Counter Terrorism Office, is quoted by GB News* as stating that it is impossible to protect against a threat where someone jumps into a car and drives it at the public, that “Intelligence is the only … way to stop an attack like this, before they [the terrorist] get into the vehicle”. But this is not as admissible as it sounds, as jumping into a car and driving through the public could be as random and spontaneous as taking a knife from the kitchen drawer and charging through the public. Spontaneous, random, unplanned attacks fly beneath the intelligence radar and therefore are unstoppable.
Thus, we return again to the simple but commonsense maxim that if they were not in our country, they could not be doing what they do. Prevention is better than cure. It is way past time to pull up the drawbridge and deport, deport, deport …
In modern-day, mixed-up Britain, ISIS and the like is not all we have to worry about, nor is becoming skittles for ideological fruitcakes flying at us in trucks and cars. We also have to be vigilant for all manner of other crazed MFs running around with bladed weapons from butchers’ knives to machetes, and occasionally, when they have nothing better to do or nothing much to live for, exploding themselves all over the place. Remember the Monty Python’s sketch: “Oh mother, don’t be so sentimental. Things explode every day.” Even Monty Python, as ahead of their time as they were, could not have had any idea how the premise of this surreal skit would take on a sinister irony in the state of things in Britain to come.
The potential threat of terrorism is everywhere. They are all around us, sewn within the fabric of our lives, and thanks to the ‘small boats’ crisis, the threat grows exponentially.
Brits told Be Vigilant
“The ongoing small boats crisis presents a significant security risk,” states Anthony Glees*. Britain must strengthen its border controls, he warns, to prevent extremists from entering the country.
GB NEWS is one of the very few media outlets that has the balls to tell us this. Most mainstream media corporates would rather tie themselves in knots in an attempt to mislead, appease and capitulate; anything, in fact, to perpetuate false ‘positives’ of the catastrophic diversity myth, rather than fess up to the unpalatable and exposing truth that diversity is our nemesis. Like those in authority who are culpable facilitators in the nation’s grooming scandal, yet another curse visited on us by the twisted desire to uphold the enrichment myth, the collusive concern of mainstream media is with keeping up appearances ~ multiculturalism isn’t it great! ~ rather than admit to the painful ~ and to most of us ~ glaringly obvious truth that it’s all been a terrible failure and that the number-one priority is now to stop the boats, or rather stop their contents from spewing out onto our unguarded shores.
Not that I count, but if I cared to count, I would by now have lost count of the number of times Britain’s media has sought to dodge the issue of the indefensible link between the migrant invasion, multiculturalism, the rising tide of violence raging on British streets and the ever-worsening incidence of terrorism. Nowadays, nearly every reported violent attack in England carries the cynical caveat ‘not terrorist related’, even sometimes when they obviously are, and pathetically there are those amongst us who are all too ready to jump through hoops to swear it’s ‘never migrant related’. But the old tried and tested excuse, the media’s favourite get-out clause, is the ‘don’t panic ~ mentally ill’ routine, which conveniently allows media and government to neatly file attacks away in the ‘not terror related’ cabinet ~ and what a whopper that cabinet is!
Are those who ram cars into innocent people really mad, unhinged? Well, if you consider that over the Christmas period, normal, mentally healthy people, the victims of these killers, were going about their daily business doing no harm to them or for that matter anyone else, then the layman’s answer has to be yes. Those who commit such crimes are unequivocally mentally ill; they are cuckoo, quite deranged, the layman would say, but their mental illness is one brought on by who and where they are, and, when the ‘who’ and ‘where’ are taken as one together, their ‘psychopathic’ behaviour tells us they are exactly where they should not be.
Don’t worry it’s only a madman
The UK media’s brand of obfuscation may be unbelievably brash and simply unbelievable. It is overarching and yet transparent, but in the wider world of disinformation as propagated by liberal sources, it is certainly not alone.
In the wake of the Magdeburg Christmas Market attack, you could almost hear the collective sigh of relief deflating like a bout of bad wind through the corridors of power in the liberal media’s yarn department, as the line was quickly grasped that building a psychological profile of whatever it was behind the wheel was as complex as it was baffling and that the motive for the attack could not be readily determined.
The New York Times reported “The authorities said they were struggling to understand the motives behind ramming a car into a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg…” ~ ‘Germany Tries to Untangle Complex Profile of Market Attack Suspect’, (22 December 2024).
It would seem that the German public have an entirely different take on the matter.
Would it be just too cynical to rewrite the headline of that piece to read ‘Liberals struggle to put spin on …?’ Well, hows about this one then: ‘History repeats itself, so why are they letting them still flood in?’
^We very friendly. Just want 5-star hotel and then want work McDonald’s or NHS^
As these copycat killings are copied time and time again, the questions we should be putting to our political leaders are: “Why are these people here? Why are they in our country? But more and most importantly, knowing who and what they are, why are you letting them in, and letting them in in their thousands? “Not all of them are terrorists!” an irate liberal fulminates. No, but if only one of them is, it’s already one too many.
Brits told Be Vigilant ~ look out for him!
The first suspect at which to point an accusatory finger is the darling of the liberal-left, the man they love to describe as a philanthropic billionaire with humanitarian motives. Whenever I hear this man’s name, I see a winged armchair, a man with his back to the camera, identity concealed, and the goal of the plot world destruction.
Real, genuine, authentic philanthropists with hearts of gold and souls of milk and honey, would surely pour their ill-gotten gains into developing those poor countries where development is urgently needed, not devote their over-rich and presumably idle lives to moving third-world jetsam and flotsam around the map of western Europe, as if they are frightened of dying too soon before f*cking the world right up.
But one man, for all his evil intent and disproportionate wealth, cannot hope to succeed without that he works in concert with the pseudo-liberal elite, which only goes to show that were you daft enough to trust them in the past, now is the time to stop. Come the next election, give the two old parties, both Labour and the Cons, the Order of the Boot, the big, the royal, the final heave ho. Push them out, be rid of them. As Elon Musk succinctly puts it, Britain’s last hope is to vote Reform.
In CNN’s ‘Coverage of The Germany Christmas Market Attack’ (21 December 2024), Chancellor Olaf Scholz is quoted as saying, the German people “need to stick together as a country and not let hatred divide us.” Well said that man! But hatred is not the dividing factor; the problem lies unfairly and squarely on the overstressed and wobbling shoulders of hegemonic diversity and the lies by which it is sold to us.
Terrorism in the UK, as in Western Europe generally, is inextricably linked to the failure and collusion of elitist liberal politicians to exercise due diligence in the matter of immigration. The potential threat of migrant terrorism is everywhere and more, and thanks to the ‘small boats’ crisis, the threat grows exponentially. The boats just keep on coming, bringing with them new recruits to ensure that candle-lit vigils retain government-sponsored popularity well into the dark abyss of an unforgiving and nightmarish future.
I cannot begin to imagine, and don’t particularly want to, how difficult it must be to explain to a seven-year old, brought up to perceive the world as the softness of a cuddly toy or the encompassing safety of his mother’s arms, that his little sister or brother has been taken from this world, destroyed by a hoary-faced, crazy-old-imbecile with his heart full of hatred, his mind full of jealousy and whose only escape from himself and his cult is death.
Vigilant we have to be, it is the necessary evil to an unnecessary evil, but it is no more answer to the problem than the repetitive staging of candle-lit vigils. Stopping them coming in and deporting those already here, whilst that may not be the answer either, as things have gone too far, will certainly help to even the odds should it ever come to the civil war that Elon Musk predicts. And as things are going now, it seems, unfortunately, that it might.
Well I’m about to get sick From watchin’ my TV Been checkin’ out the news Until my eyeballs fail to see I mean to say that every day Is just another rotten mess And when it’s gonna change, my friends Is anybody’s guess
So I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’ Hopin’ for the best Even think I’ll go to prayin’ Every time I hear ’em sayin’ That there’s no way to delay That trouble comin’ every day No way to delay That trouble comin’ every day
Trouble Every Day — Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention
Please don’t misunderstand me. There is absolutely nothing wrong with properly thought-through immigration: immigration properly controlled, immigration carefully administered, but with one unnegotiable qualification: that those who immigrate integrate.
Short of this, it needs to be stopped – yesterday.
31 December 2024 ~ Georgian Restaurant Kaliningrad the Magic of Kavkaz
Like many towns and cities in Christendom, the centre of Kaliningrad undergoes a magical transformation over the festive season. Victory Square becomes a yuletide theatre, a stage of glittering silver motifs, including a life-sized Santa’s sleigh with reindeers and a larger-than-life iconic assemblage of 2025 numerals. A lofty, conical Christmas tree transitions through a dramatic series of illuminating colour contrasts. The commercial buildings that border the square are, for want of a no less appropriate term, all lit up like Christmas trees, whilst the municipal building facing the square takes the Christmas biscuit, with its symmetry of grazing lights gently and slowly ringing the changes in complementary hues through a violet, blue and turquoise spectrum.
We were on our way to the Kavkaz Restaurant, and our route would take us across this bewitching bespangled world. I had one eye on the white magic and one eye on the black. In England, this is de rigueur nowadays, especially during the festive season, for every day and every way is a possible Christmas Market. Happy Christmas (and every day) from Britain’s politicians.
With no discernible goblins grabbing at the ghoulies, I felt safe to take my camera out and shoot some snaps for the folks back home. It was then, at that moment, I saw her: a Christmas angel with very long legs, wearing a skirt that was far too short for winter ~ whatever could she be thinking of? ~ and a pair of black leather boots. As amazing as she was, she was just another stocking filler. The real angel was yet to come. She was waiting for us in Victory Square, silver-white with wings to match, a tribute to the Christmas props with which she was surrounded. She was poised in the centre of Victory Square: a photograph waiting to happen.
“Oh, please take a photograph of me, next to the angel!” Olga pleaded. She knows that I have a limited tolerance to taking smartphone photos for the sake of harvesting ‘likes’ on social media. But that is part of the magic of Christmas, the willingness to make concessions for no other reason than because it is Christmas.
It was hard to resist the angel. She looked the perfect angel, with her voluminous white and silver wings, and here I am confessing that for all my reservations about incessant, gratuitous photo-taking, I myself was beyond redemption to get in on the act. The angel must have had some inkling of her photogenic allurement, as she had thoughtfully brought along with her a second set of wings, not so big and so bold as her own, but like the halos she also carried, convenient and prop sized.
When your halo is a permanent fixture, you have no need for apparatus, but I was chuffed about the wings. I never knew until I watched Frank Capra’s Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life!, the most highly rated Christmas film of 1946 and notably of all time, that angels have to earn their wings, although I have often paused to wonder why mine are so long coming.
The angel, like angels should be, was only too pleased to oblige when we asked to take a photo with her. But just before we assumed the position, she whispered the secret to us that even angels as endowed as they are with all their celestial powers needed to keep the wolf from the door, so a small charge, a small gratuity, 200 roubles in fact, would stamp the seal on the deal. What is 200 roubles, I thought, in the collection box of Christmas. Is it not better to give than receive!
So, with the contract duly signed, Olga and then myself, encouraged by the angel, adopted various angelic-hugging poses, whilst first one then the other snapped away with my mobile phone.
At the conclusion of our photoshoot, we took out our 200 roubles only to be angelically told that we had run up a bill of 1000 roubles, as the going rate for angels was 200 roubles a photograph and not, as we had thought, 200 roubles a sesh. Well, blow me down with seraphim wings, you do learn something every day.
A thousand roubles lighter, we took three or four more photographs without the angel within the Square, which only cost us our time, and then we muggered off to Kavkaz restaurant.
Kavkaz Restaurant revisited
Cool in the summer, both kinds of cool, Kavkaz is in winter forever warm and welcoming, and now with its twinkling Christmas lights festively fondling the susceptible cockles of a receptive holiday heart, no less tender from having been shared with the angel, we were pulled with the ease of a Christmas cracker into Kavkaz’s spellbinding charm.
In an instant and magnificently, staff within this palatial place are swarming all around you: a small, attractive attentive army, ones very own personal retinue, whose task it is to get your clothes off and get you into a seat.
Once divested of your outer garments, you are ritualistically led away into a cavernous mesmerisation, where upmarket, hip and trendy live together in perfect harmony. You mean like Sir Paul McCartney’s ‘ebony and ivory’? No, I don’t mean that at all.
In a kitchen part exposed to view, white smocked chefs are wocking it up as if there is no tomorrow, whilst waiters hither and thither fly. The voices of the seated, who are already pleasantly wining and dining, form a mood-inspiring background murmur, akin to the sound of soothing white noise blotting out the primordial row of that noisy neighbourhood dog.
If ever the Wizard of Oz had owned a palace like this, it could not have been half as entrancing.
Would we be led to the left, or would we be led to the right? On this occasion we are led to the right and given a table for two. My back is against a solid brick pillar, just the way I like it. Seats in restaurants and bars, just like friends and angels, are meant to be chosen carefully; if you don’t feel comfortable where they’ve put you, you won’t enjoy your meal; in fact, the entire evening could be ruined. If you don’t believe me, ask Wild Bill Hickock.
We had dined at Kavkaz before, and the first reason for returning was that Kavkaz serves good food at value-for-money prices, but I was also there on a mission. We have a project pending, and I could think of no better place than Kavkaz to consolidate our knowledge of shabby chic design. From my vantage point, with my back to the wall, I had a commanding view of all that I wanted to see.
The place was busy this evening, the only available seats were on my left and these, too, would be taken later. A squadron of waiters and waitresses, dressed in their becoming livery of tan trousers and matching waistcoats, flitted swiftly from table to table. The restaurant is so vast that every waiter is wired. Ah, the wonders of the electronic age. Wherever would we be without a plug stuck in our ear or a smartphone in our hands!
The buzz it was a happy one. It had that unmistakeable festive feel that Christmas brings to the better world of Christendom. Long may it prevail. An atmosphere like this, which is to say comfortable, requires a specific beer, and the atmosphere this evening seemed to be calling out for Maisel’s Weisse, but first the waiter brought to our table a complementary carafe of water (you have to drink it sometimes) infused with a sliver of cucumber. That sure was a new one on me!
The beer was fast on its heels, and not long after along came our meals. The restaurant may have been busy, but the service as always was slick and swift.
At half time, who should arrive but Father Frost and his daughter. Shimmering silver and white, they passed from table to table, with a Ho! Ho! Ho! and a Snovam Gordam (Happy New Year), handing out small presents to children, who were wreathed in smiles, with sparkling eyes and amazed and enthralled expressions. Call him Father Frost, Father Christmas, Santa Claus, call him what you will, it’s a non-negotiable fact that the world needs a lot more of him.
To even up the score, there was another, a dark and mysterious figure, wandering amongst us, looking as if he had just stepped off a Roger Corman film set. This sinister apparition, a man we must presume, or something of mortal substance, was dressed from head to toe in black. The hood, or cowl, that he was wearing, completely obscured his face, turning his eyes and thus his soul invisible. If one was to level one’s own eyes to a point at which they strained, one could just make out whatever it was inhabiting concealment, peering out from behind an obfuscating curtain of gauze, an almost impenetrable barrier, which must have dramatically altered the hidden incumbent’s perception of anything outside his inside world.
Perched upon his shoulder, above a hooked, outstretched and angled arm, was an ugly looking so-and-so, which, every now and again, according to its will, would home in on a table of quietly seated innocent folk and invade their zone of comfort. Who was this mysterious stranger? And what was his purpose here, tonight?
Nobody seemed unduly perturbed by the presence of this denizen duo. In fact, wherever the two would wend, which was everywhere, they seemed to raise a smile if not a laugh. But the black veil and swooping creature had an entirely different effect on me. Give me Father Frost and his delightful daughter any day of the week, rather than this Soros hobgoblin and his blighted bedighted funereal future. But I ask you to forgive me. My imagination has a reputation for being overly sensitive and has been known to play tricks before. And yet I did have an auntie called Clair Voyant, and my uncle was blessed with crystal balls … It was enough to make me want to order, in fact I felt I had to order, another pint of Maisel’s Weisse.
When eventually ~ eventually being of no greater duration than possibly two minutes, although to hypersensitive senses it seemed there was nowhere he could not be for any length of unspecified time ~ this ominous be-gauzed spectre of inauspicious things to come, and his malevolent menacing mate, left the spot where they had been preying, my clarity was restored.
I took a gulp of Maisel’s Weisse ~ what nectar! ~ and afforded myself the luxury of staring into the middle distance, freely.
Mirror Mirror on the wall do you tell the truth at all?
Between the wall and the open room, an altitudinous wooden screen of shelving had, in the imaginative Kavkaz manner and by considered intersection, created a narrow corridor, leading away from the dining area down to the gents’ and ladies’ loos. A very important direction.
At the end of this long and narrow walkway, mistaken by some for a models’ catwalk, stands a large, tall, gilt-framed mirror. People walking towards it react to its presence in different ways: some gaze directly into it, in the hope of receiving their own approval; others seem to fall shy of it, briefly looking then looking away, but often casting a sideways glance before they turn the corner, as if by failing to do so, they might lose sight of their very existence; and still others stop in front of it, forced to a halt by their own adoration.
One young lady was so enthralled by whoever it was she wanted to be, whatever it was she wanted to see, that she walked that way several times and even, on one occasion, brought her friends to look in the mirror with her. I wondered what it was that each of them could see and if they saw the same as one another. What was that mirror showing them? Was it their present, their past or their future? And would that mirror still be there, say in 50 years from now, should they ever return to Kavkaz, which reflection would they see: the one they had left behind today or the one which they would bring with them?
The time would come this evening when I would have to walk that way myself, and that time inevitably came halfway through my second pint.
What, I thought, was this mirror up to, so bold, so brash, so strategically placed that in any age more primitive it could have been mistaken for a portal to your soul. In Kavkaz, as in life, this is a mirror you cannot avoid. When you have to go, you have to go. But when it was my turn, I wilfully looked away, not completely sure, however, who or what the mirror had captured, or if that something had looked like me had it been grinning as it went past? Mirrors can be funny things. Things funny be can mirrors. Is it little wonder that vampires seldom use them?
Georgian Restaurant Kaliningrad
Back safely at our table the spirit of Christmas welcomed me in the form of a Georgian special. I found a glass of chacha, a Georgian pomace brandy, sitting next to my pint. I had not yet had the pleasure of sampling such a rare intoxicant and was surprised, as much as a vegetarian can be, that I took to it like a hungry shark in a swimming pool, so much so in fact that I had to have another. The fermentation was truly delicious, but I threw myself a lifebelt after the second glass for fear of becoming a goldfish in my reckless Christmas ocean. Sam Cooke knew a lady who couldn’t do the cha cha cha, but that was his problem, not mine. My problem was that I could, but knowing I could, I shouldn’t.
The one thing that I should be frightened of, but, alas, forsooth, am not, is turning into a pumpkin. It is hard to get me home once I have found a hospitable place. But all good things, as we are told, and told, and told, and told … must, and do, come to an end, even a night at Kavkaz.
Leaving the Kavkaz is never easy, particularly when it is still in motion and more so particularly at this time of year. Yet, like all the best and worst of villains swear when their time is up, “You haven’t seen the last of me! I vow I shall return!”, the same was singing in my ear.
And that’s the way it always is, and that’s the way it should be, whenever you go to Kavkaz.
27 December 2024 ~ Pivovar Restaurant Brewery Kaliningrad
Shame on me! It was one of my brothers who first discovered the Pivovar Restaurant Brewery, ‘hidden away’, he said, close to the foundations of a Kaliningrad Spar. That’s Spar as in supermarket not spa as in Roman baths.
He was right in the first place, the location is unusual, or so it seems to us Brits, but not in the second: A large, illuminated logo-branded sign strapped atop a cylindrical portico, all glass and rather tall, facing a busy road that leads to Kaliningrad’s city centre can hardly relate to something said to be ‘hidden away’. But, if that is so, how come I missed it?
The obvious answer is that, unlike my brother, my whole life does not revolve around hunting out bars and beer (polite cough).
I thanked him for letting me know and assured him that when I could find the time I’d stroll along and check out this bar. Then away he went, and off I rushed.
Pivovar Restaurant Brewery Kaliningrad
Since that pioneering visit, I have returned to the bar under the Spar on three or four occasions, which, given the calibre of the establishment, may not nearly be enough.
My recent tarriance at the Pivovar Restaurant Brewery found it, I am pleased to say, much the same as it was on previous visits. We like things to stay the same, don’t we. How does it go? “If it ‘aint broke, don’t fix it.”
I stood outside for a moment and allowed myself the luxury of admiring the bar’s grand portico, until someone, no doubt wondering what had so arrested me, asked if I needed help. This was really nice of them, but having been beyond help for more years than I care to remember, I politely replied, “It’s much too late,” thanked them for their indulgence, then did all that I could to remove myself before someone else came along and mistook me for Colin Conspicuous.
In any event, there’s only so much portico admiring that one can reasonably do when there are better things to be doing, and beer is one of those better things. The next step was to literally pass through the portico. This is what I did.
The grand portico of the bar below the Spar leads to expectations that bad management could easily upend. Thankfully, no such failure is engendered. After the grand portico comes a grand staircase, which leads to a grand lower floor and to a lady behind a cloakroom counter.
The lights in the entrance hall are dim, mindfully so, and together with the woodwork, of which there is plenty, has a significant impact on first impressions. Would this bar be in England, the dark varnish on the doors, panelling and staircase balusters would peg its origin to the 1980s, but as cultural influences take time to travel, my hunch is that the premises date to the mid-2010s.
The pre-bar experience, in spite of the paintwork’s distressed character, which could be actual or artificial, has rather stately and formal overtones, which carry over into the bar itself. And what a bar it is. Vast is a word that springs to mind: JD Wetherspoon vast.
Size isn’t everything, or so we are led to believe, and this is perfectly true if it fails to work, but in this establishment it does work. In fact, it works rather well, even better than most.
The ratio of seating to open space is well balanced, not at all cramped, packed or crowded. A full complement of seating types is offered, including cubicle, booth, banquet, open table and bar stools. I could run around a place like this all night trying different seats, with a different beer on a different table whilst availing myself of a different perspective. But, of course, I wouldn’t do that, because I look silly enough. Like most of us who are creatures of habit, I usually make for the self-same seat that I have occupied on previous occasions, or find a seat as near as dammit, and these are those that have snob-screened partitions to the left of the entrance facing the bar.
There was one occasion, completely out of character, when feeling oddly adventurous, I went and broke the mold. That’s not quite the same as breaking one’s beer glass, which always is and always has been a tragedy, it’s simply an introduction to saying that I found myself sitting pretty, if ever an idiom of this kind could be used to describe one such as I, elevated high and mighty upon the luxurious centrepiece seating, my foam-frothing formidable pint clasped firmly in my hand, the foam-padded faux-leather ochre beneath my pampered bum, which was, of course, in trousers. This, however, was a one-off move. I suppose I like my regular seat as it looks out over the bar, a regular bar at that, with beer pumps thrusting from it and immediately behind it well-stocked spirit shelves, which add to its British persona.
We have already debunked the myth that Pivovar Restaurant Brewery is hidden away German-bunker style, establishing in the process that this clever bar beneath the Spar packs a surprise in size (notice how I rhymed that!). To that we can now add that there is also nothing in its name that conceals the fact that beers are brewed on the premises and that the grub it serves is rather special.
Almost without exception, internet reviews posted by former Pivovar diners are cock-a-hoop and thumbs-up good. Indeed, I myself have once or twice partaken of the victuals, and though far from being a seasoned gourmet am happy to relate that there was nothing to complain about. So, if you are one of those whose reason for eating out is to give your complaints to the chef, you will need to go elsewhere.
The same advice applies if you are longing for a pint of bad or boring beer, since the beer at Pivovar Restaurant Brewery is consistently applaudable, as much for its quality as it is for variety.
The beer range, though not, for example, as breathtaking as the Yeltsin’s revolving stock, is, nevertheless, not to be sneezed at, with or without your old plandemic mask. Most certainly you will find that in downing one of Pivovar’s beers you will want to sink another, maybe more.
On the occasion of my first visit to Pivovar Restaurant Brewery, I wondered why the waitress had handed me the local newspaper. Did she want me to read the article on the art of looking not quite so obviously English? It was only when I spotted the bar’s distinctive beer vat logo centred within the paper’s masthead that the rouble finally dropped: this was no local rag, it was, in fact, the menu.
I cannot recall in my long and distinguished pub-frequenting career ever coming across something of this nature. It is a simple but effective touch, as the branding remains in your mind. “It’s that bar. You know the one; the big place under the Spar. The one that has menus that look like newspapers.”
There are restaurants and bars in Kaliningrad whose menus are printed in Russian and English. I suspect that this was done to coincide with the World Cup tournaments which Kaliningrad hosted in 2018. Unfortunately, Pivovar Restaurant Brewery did not follow this trend, and since the world we live in today is a lot different than the one we inhabited yesterday, insofar as English-speaking folk are thinner on the ground, the bar’s management must sigh with relief that they saved themselves the extra expense. However, that having been duly noted, I was there on the premises, all alone in the world of written Russian, squinting through my Franklin Splits in an effort to determine which one of their excellent beers they could tempt me with today.
Luckily for me, language has never been a barrier, at least not where beer is concerned, although it doesn’t hurt at all to have a decent memory. I went for a deep, dark beer that cost me 300 roubles. This was not the first time that I had drunk this beer at Pivovar Restaurant; thus, cynics might postulate that working from memory negated the need for further squinting, they might also insinuate that as the beers on the menu’s consecutive pages were rather more expensive than the one I had chosen on the front page, I had gone for the cheapest option.
I was far too preoccupied with practising my reading skills to give a definite account of what it was the waitress said to her colleagues after I had ordered. For all I know, she could have said, “Yes, it’s him, alright, that same old tight-arsed Englishman, disguised by beard as Father Frost. He always goes for the cheapest beers!”
“Happy Cheap Year and down the hatch!”
Beer and beards — they were made for each other.
Foaming around the mouth hair, I did not on this occasion partake of the bar’s cuisine. I had a thousand roubles in my pocket and a calculation in my mind that should I order another beer, I would be left with enough nalichka for a loaf of bread and a tin of baked beans from the Spar above the bar.
Pivovar Restaurant Brewery Kaliningrad
On the evening that I was at Pivovar’s, I was flying solo, so all I needed was a table, a chair, and, of course, a glass of beer. However, the size of the restaurant/brewery and its range of food and beer make it the perfect fit for business lunches and birthday parties. Birthday parties are a Pivovar speciality and are catered for at a 10% discount, whilst business lunches are bookable throughout the working week, from Monday to Friday inclusive, between 12 noon and 4pm.
Another Pivovar humdinger is its Beer to Go service. Carry-outs can be purchased in 1 litre or in convenient 1.5 litre containers at a cost of 320 and 480 roubles respectively. Alternatively, food and beer combinations can be collected in person or delivered to your door (web-page link here).
It would be completely out of character if I failed to mention how much I appreciated the retro signs, wall mirrors and other memorabilia which light up the stairwell and entrance hall to the Pivovar Restaurant Brewery. Not only do we like things to stay the same as they were, as when they do they remain the same as they are, but we also like all things retro. Moreover, we like good beer, which is why we like to like Pivovar Restaurant Brewery.
Revised 22 December 2024 ~ Russia Kaliningrad Visa Information
Airspace Closures
Russia has closed its airspace to airlines from multiple countries in direct response to airspace closures effecting its airlines, which were introduced by western governments opposing Russia’s military operation to ‘demilitarise and de-Natzify’ Ukraine. Airlines on the banned list are prohibited from landing in or flying over Russian territory. As a result, air travel disruptions are widespread. If you intend to travel in the immediate future, you should contact your airline or travel agent for further information. Links to Airport/Airlines websites can be found at the end of this guide
To visit Kaliningrad, you will need to apply for and have been issued with a Russian visa. For those of you who are not sure what one of these is, it is an official document that permits you to legally enter a foreign country, in this case the Russian Federation. The visa is valid for a specific duration of time. It contains the date of entry to the country and the date of exit, as well as your name, travel document (passport) details and the purpose for which you are travelling.
There are various types of visa depending upon the
nature of your visit, but, for the sake of this blog, let’s assume that you are
visiting Kaliningrad as a tourist.
Russia Kaliningrad Tourist Information: Tourist Visa
A tourist visa will allow you to enter Kaliningrad,
and leave, within a specified time-frame of 30 days. This means that the maximum
length of stay in Kaliningrad is 30 days and no more. It is important that
you leave the country before or on the date of exit.
Before a tourist visa can be issued, you will need to
have confirmation of where you will be staying throughout the duration of your
visit. Two documents are required,
commonly referred to as visa support documents, and they consist of: (1) a
Voucher; (2) a Booking Confirmation.
If you are staying in a hotel, you will need to ask the hotel to send you a hotel voucher and confirmation of tourist acceptance. Once you have received these, you are then ready to make your application.
To complete your visa application, you will need the following:
1. An original passport, valid for more than 6 months, containing at least 2 blank pages for your visa and entry/exit stamps
2. An application form
3. One valid passport-type photograph
4. Payment for application
Note: The Russian Service Centre (The Russian National Tourist Office) can assist you with all stages of your application, including visa support documents. You can contact them by telephone on 0207 985 1195; and/or visit this page on their website: https://www.visitrussia.org.uk/visas/getting-a-russian-visa/
Their location and postal address is:
Russian Service Centre Russian National Tourist Office 202 Kensington Church Street London W8 4DP
However, you will still be required to go in person to the Russian Tourist Office at 202 Kensington Church St, London W8 4DP for biometric scanning . This sounds worse than it is. Biometric scanning means that you need to supply your fingerprints.
The time it takes for you to receive your Russian Visa depends on which service you pay for. Visas can be received within two days of the completion of the application procedure.
Russia Kaliningrad Visa Information: Professional visa support company
To make things easier for you, there are various visa-support companies that you can contact, which will take you through the entire process. My support company of choice is Stress Free Visas, if only because if you do get stressed whilst using them, you can have a good laugh at your own expense! Their website address is www.stressfreevisas.co.uk.
When using their service, you will be asked to fill an
application form online. It is as well to know what to expect before you start,
since when they start asking you questions, such as what is your inside leg
measurement, it will be difficult to do so unless you have a tape measure
already at hand. OK, it’s not that bad, not quite, but there is information
that you will need that you might inconceivably not have thought of.
To this end, please see the following:
Q: Who is paying for your trip to Russia? A: [If it is you, put ‘independently’]
####
You will be asked ‘information about your financial
situation’. You will need to enter your ‘overall monthly income from all
sources’ and various other financial details.
####
You will need to include your National Insurance number
####
You will be asked to enter ‘place of birth’ and ‘date
and place of birth’ of your spouse
####
You will be asked to provide the following details
about your parents:
Name Date, country & place of birth Nationality If deceased, date & place of death
####
You will be asked to provide the name of the hotel you
will be staying at, plus address and telephone number
####
And that, as Bruce Forsyth used to say, “is all there
is to it!”
To assist you in all visa-related matters, here again is the web address for Stress Free Visas: www.stressfreevisas.co.uk
Updated: 16 December 2024 ~ How to Get to Kaliningrad from UK
Airspace Closures
Russia has closed its airspace to airlines from multiple countries in direct response to airspace closures effecting its airlines, which were introduced by western governments opposing Russia’s military operation to ‘demilitarise and de-Nazify’ Ukraine. Airlines on the banned list are prohibited from landing in or flying over Russian territory. As a result, air travel disruptions are widespread. If you intend to travel in the immediate future, you should contact your airline or travel agent for further information. Links to Airport/Airlines websites can be found at the end of this guide
See: Airlines/Airports Websites at the end of this post
How to Get to Kaliningrad from UK
Most people travelling from the UK to Kaliningrad are not
going to do so by car, train, taxi, bicycle or hitching. Some of you might, but
most of you won’t. You’ll want to come by plane, so that’s what I will focus on
here.
Flights from the UK to Kaliningrad
As far as I am aware, there are no direct flights from the UK to Kaliningrad, and there has not been for some time.
The last time I flew back from Kaliningrad to London direct was many years ago. I remember it well, as I sat in the front of the plane looking through the open door to the flight deck. The date was 10 September 2001. It was most probably the last day that you would be able to do that on an international airliner.
I am told that the only ‘convenient’ way to fly to Kaliningrad from Europe is to fly to Turkey and from there to Kaliningrad. If you aren’t in the market for paying between £400-£800 pounds, then I wouldn’t bother.
If you do fly to Kaliningrad, you will land at Khrabrovo Airport. Once a relatively small red-brick building dating from the Königsberg era with a high wire fence, today Khrabrovo Airport is a modern terminal possessing all the usual facilities.
From Khrabrovo Airport to Kaliningrad
The distance from Khrabrovo Airport to Kaliningrad central is about 20km.
The easiest way of getting to Kaliningrad is by taxi. Look for the cubicles by the airport terminal exit, which offer taxi services. The fare to the centre of Kaliningrad typically costs between 700 and 900 roubles (approx. £5.32~ £6.83). Here is a price guide by destination using licensed taxis (recommended).
The cheaper option is to travel by bus ~ fare 50 roubles (0.38 pence). The route number is 244-Э. Payment is made on the bus, either to the driver or a conductor. Buses run frequently, about every 30 minutes, between 9.00am and 9.00pm (Link to Bus Timetable). The average time of the journey to Kaliningrad’s Yuzhniy Bus Station is 40 minutes.
Kaliningrad via Gdansk, Poland
(Photo credit: Serhiy Lvivsky)
The route that most of us take when travelling to Kaliningrad is to fly by Wizz Airlines from Luton London Airport to Gdansk and then travel from Gdansk to Kaliningrad.
Time was once that I would take a pre-booked taxi from Gdansk Airport to Kaliningrad. If you had contacts in Kaliningrad, which I had, someone could arrange this for you. In 2024, I was told that the journey to Kaliningrad from Gdansk Airport would cost you in the region of £200-300. This is a gigantic leap in price from the 100 quid that I was paying back in 2019. Why? Could the price hike be associated with border-crossing difficulties emanating from coronavirus restrictions, a by-product of western sanctions or just plain old profiteering? Whatever the explanation, you might be of the opinion that the taxi option is no longer viable. Even if you like spending money, Poland is no longer accepting vehicles with Russian number plates crossing from Kaliningrad into Poland (now, where’s my screwdriver!) (Link to article on Poland’s extraordinary measures. It also mentions a ‘big wall’, so you won’t go climbing over that, will you, with or without licence plates! So there!)
I have travelled by bus to and from Kaliningrad via Gdansk many times now.
To do this, you must first take a taxi from Gdansk Airport to Gdansk Bus Station, located at 3 Maja St 12. There are plenty of taxis at the airport rank, and the cost of the trip is about 87 zloty (£16).
The bus ticket from Gdansk costs 170 zloty (approximately £33). There are 3 buses a day from Gdansk Bus Station, and the last bus leaves at 5.00pm. The approximate travel time is advertised at 3hrs and 30 mins, but in reality it often takes longer than this, due to the grilling you get at both borders, especially since the Polish border authorities introduced the practice of photographing everyone on board: Smile please, we are going to make crossing into Kaliningrad extremely irritating for you. It will be inside leg measurements next! (Spoiler: My past two trips took 8 hours on both occasions!)
Catching the bus means buying tickets online in advance. By far the most straightforward and therefore best online booking service is Busfor.pl
Example of Busfor’s Gdansk to Kaliningrad page below:
There was a time when the bay from which the Gdansk>Kaliningrad bus service operated was Gdansk’s best kept secret. You could try asking at the bus information office, but if they had that information they would not be letting you have it. Later, they stuck a piece of paper on the wall, which revealed the bay to be number 11. Don’t be put off if when arriving at the bay you see the name Królewiec and not Kaliningrad. According to what I have read, in 2023 some bright Polish spark came up with the idea of renaming Kaliningrad or, as they put it, reverting the name to its historical Polish name. That’s helpful, isn’t it?
The facilities at Gdansk Bus Station are bog standard. It does have a bog (It will cost you 4 zloty for a pee.), but the metal tins that used to function as a left-luggage department have moved, TARDIS-fashion, from the interior of the bus station to a bit around the back of it, and the Bus Station cafe, which was basic but useful, as there are no other cafes nearby, has closed. There is a burger bar in the bus park, which, in winter has a plastic sheet around it, where you can stand and wait for your order.
At the time of writing, you will have approximately two hours to kill if you catch, for example, the morning flight from London Luton Airport to Gdansk in time to catch the 3.00pm bus. My advice is take a walk into Gdansk Old Town for great cafes and an historic atmosphere.
The buses dock at Kaliningrad’s Central Bus Station in the vicinity of the city’s South Railway Station. Change here for local buses, coaches to Svetlogorsk/Zelenogradsk coastal resorts and taxi services.
Kaliningrad via Vilnius, Lithuania
It was once possible to get a train from Vilnius, Lithuania, to Kaliningrad (the trip took about 7 hours). That service has been suspended now, and if you travel to Vilnius from the UK by plane, the only way to get to Kaliningrad by public transport is to take a bus.
There are three buses from Vilnius to Kaliningrad each week. The timetable can be found here (You will need to translate from Russian.): https://avl39.ru/routes/int/litva/
The journey takes about 7 hours in all but can be longer depending on the number of passengers on the bus and the time it takes to clear border control. The schedule is a late night/early morning job!
Tickets for a one-way journey cost approximately 5800 roubles £45.50; 10,500 roubles £84.30 return.
Buses arrive at Kaliningrad’s Central Bus Station, where connections can be found for multiple routes throughout the Kaliningrad region and also onto Gdansk in Poland.
Kaliningrad’s public transport buses run from the bus/rail concourse, which also serves as a drop-off and pick-up point for taxis.
Rumour has it that an alternative to the cross-border bus from Vilnius is to use local buses/trains, cross on foot via the Kibartai-Chernyshevskoe border and then use local buses/trains on the Russian side. I cannot confirm this, as I have not personally used this route, but it is one you might like to check out.
12 December 2024 ~ Surviving New Year’s Eve: If I can so can you
Oh no, it’s that time of year again: what are we going to do at Christmas and where are we going to go on New Year’s eve?
I’ve heard tell that some party people are so far ahead of those like me who are not that they begin planning how they will spend their Christmas and New Year almost before the last one is over. I don’t disbelieve it. Do you know that there are people who actually plan their summer holidays!
Yesterday, when I was young, planning Christmas was not an issue. It was taken for granted that Christmas Day, and often Boxing Day, would be spent at home with the family. Thereafter, I would traditionally mosey along to catch up with my friends in Rushden, Northants, for some inter-New Year’s pubbing.
I enjoyed those family Christmases. Ours was quite a large family, which permitted us to indulge in a circuit of Christmas parties held consecutively at the homes of aunties and uncles.
New Year, however, was a different basket of presents altogether. Had I have owned a kilt, a set of bagpipes and a large hairy sporran, then I might have seen in the New Year in style ~ if you can call such fetishes that ~ but within my family circle Christmas was the favourite. New Year’s either trailed in second or sometimes never ran.
Looking back, it would not be too far-fetched to say that I have endured more disastrous, that is to say anticlimactic, New Year’s Eves than I have experienced successful ones.
I recall one New Year’s Eve, when I lived in London, trying to evade the issue of where to be doing what at midnight by drinking with friends during the day and then, come 9pm, scooting off home double quick and diving under the bed sheets.
Hah, fooled it this year! Problem was that I had forgotten to tell the rest of the world to do likewise. On the stroke of midnight all hell let loose. Fireworks flashed and blasted, the club up the road cranked out music at fever pitch, there was merriment in the street ~ blast it! ~ with people crying ‘Happy New Year’ and mawkish peels of auld lang syne came kilting through the letterbox.
I never got back to sleep that night, and my New Year’s day was like everyone else’s: faded, jaded and tired. I never went to the party, but I reaped the rewards of it second hand.
Surviving New Year’s Eve
Deriving what your average extrovert might see as a perverse pleasure in being on my lonesome whilst everyone around me obeys the 11th Commandment, “Thou shalt party”, appears to be a forte of mine.
For example, I am probably one of the very few people, if not the only person, to have surprised himself and the organisers by not turning up to a surprise 21st birthday party which was in fact his own. Now let that be a lesson to me!
One year’s New Year’s Eve was deliciously more disastrous than even the best of the worst. I had been left on my own in Rushden ~ What a place to be left on your own! What a place to be with someone! (Dear old Rushden, I love you really …). My wife, having received an invitation to spend New Year’s Eve in Paris, snook off with my blessing. And that was a lesson for her.
For some reason, an idealised one I suspect, she seemed to harbour the strange misconception that the Paris she was going to would be the Paris of the 1920s and 30s, which sadly it is not. I blame Humphrey Bogart and his Casablanca’s “We’ll always have Paris …”, when it is evident we wont and obvious we don’t. It’s like singing anachronistically, “There’ll always be an England …” when there isn’t anymore and will never be again.
My good lady wife returned from her New Year’s jaunt jaundiced by the revelation that Paris no longer possessed the style and panache of its glory years but resembled in parts a ghetto from some dark subcontinent back of beyond; and talk about aggressive begging, it was worse than the streets of Kolkata!
Whilst she had been busy upending a dream, I was sitting alone in the office of our antiques emporium, watching Christmas unfold through the lens of the CCTV camera. Almost every house along the street had friends or relatives calling, all of whom were in party mood. For me, with a Christmas dinner of beans on toast, listening to the festive strains of Leonard Cohen’s Christmas Hits, it felt as though the world was having a party to which my invitation had arrived too late. Yes, that must be the answer; my invitation was still in the post.
I am sure that anyone normal would have been distressed by this exclusion, but somehow it seemed a perfect fit for my innate sense of Gothic melancholy, and I have to admit, hand on heart, that I have never enjoyed a Christmas like it. The only way to have gone one better would have been to put the cat out.
Surviving New Year’s Eve
You’ve probably guessed by now that I am not the world’s most enthusiastic party goer. I don’t go a bundle on them, and I care for crowds even less. This could explain why during the 20 years I lived in London, I never attended the fireworks display held in the capital on New Year’s Eve and have no inclination still to this day to patronise large-scale events whatever they are and wherever they may be.
New Year’s Eve at a pub, waking up the following morning aching from head to toe, having slept it off in the back of a car, now that would be a New Year’s to remember. If only I could remember. I must have the details written down somewhere.
There was one year in London when the New Year’s festivities ended up in a pub brawl worthy of John Wayne. It was not my fault, I hasten to add, I was an innocent bystander, but I was carted away with the rest of them and with them sat out the early hours of a hazy New Year’s Day down at the local cop shop. As luck would have it, however, the venue we were taken to happened to be in Bethnal Green, where I knew of several pubs. So, after they’d booted us out with a caution, it was the hair of the East London dog for us, even though the rest of the dog was rather bruised and battered.
^: My first New Year in Kaliningrad, 31 December 2000: an introduction to party games
In Russia, New Year’s Eve is the big one, the ultimate annual celebration and most eagerly awaited public holiday. At this time of year, every year, Russians push the boat out, and they manage to do it impressively, even without a kilt. (“Excuse me, is it true that you don’t wear swimming trunks under your kilts?” “Not to the office, no. But we do when pushing the boat out.”)
One thing I wasn’t prepared for at Russian New Year’s parties was the obligatory playing of games. Playing games, not one but many, is an integral, unavoidable part not only of Russian New Year’s parties but any Russian party. I couldn’t abide them at first, but twenty-four years on, I seem to have acquired a satisfactory adaptive immunity to the professional and self-appointed maestros who it seems will stop at nothing to get you up on your feet and jump you around the room. With irrepressible party spirit, they hoik you onto the dance floor, where they make you perform embarrassing feats or assign a comedic role to you in an improvised mini-drama.
It cannot be said that these masters of ceremonies, self-styled or otherwise, are not good at what they do. They create a tempo, maintain engagement and prevent the party from flagging, but turbo-charged with extroversion and, in professional cases, the additional lure of fees, they give no concessions and take no prisoners. Woe betide the shrinking violet, the carefully cosseting introvert, the poor self-conscious soul should they fall into the sphere of influence controlled by these unrelenting cheerleaders.
I have heard it said about people, and I am sure that you have too, that they can adapt to anything in the fullness of time. I am not so sure about that, but a word in your shell-like if you please on the subject of party games. You have doubtlessly heard that a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down, well, three or four shots of vodka does for party games what sugar does for medicine. Neck two or three at the start of the party and before the evening is out, your chaperone Self-Consciousness will have left you to your own devices and, mark my words and make no mistake, you will be up their strutting your stuff with the rest and the best of the extroverts. By the end of the evening, you might even believe that you have been speaking Russian fluently and even if you haven’t, nobody will have noticed. That’s the beauty of sugar. Trust me! Your razzling-dazzling party-game prowess will have knocked them all for six.
^:Mick Hart finding rhythm at a Russian party with the help of vodka and a fancy hat
This time last year I had no need to prep myself on vodka or brush up on my party games act, I was on my own again. (It can be addictive.) This bothered me not a jot. I togged myself up and tootled off to Kaliningrad city centre. The proposition was to have one or two libations in town, have a nightcap on my return, shout Happy New Year to myself too early, as my watch is always wrong, and then immediately hop into bed. Unfortunately, however, it didn’t happen that way. Forgetting that New Year’s eve is Russia’s most important holiday, no allowances had been made for every bar and restaurant being fully booked. Beer and vodka everywhere and not a drop to drink. Luckily for me, our neighbours came to the rescue, as they have before on New Year’s Eve. They invited me to join them, and I spent a pleasant evening in their company.
Not only did they save me from the Billy No Mates stigma, sitting alone on New Year’s Eve, but they also gave me access to a telly, something we don’t have, and whilst I am more than happy to do without a telly for 364 days of the year, on the 365th a telly comes in handy.
I am not keen on the stage-crafted jollity, the forced frivolity and razzamatazz of celeb-laden New Year’s Eve shows, but my enduring fascination with our allotted place in the slipstream of time magnetises my interest in counting down the seconds to midnight, besides which I have a thing for the Russian national anthem and the New Year’s presidential address.
^:Midnight New Year’s Eve, Kaliningrad
During the period when we owned and ran our UK antique emporium, we held a succession of New Year’s parties in the adjoining barns at the back of the building. They were, of course, not my idea, but I must confess, with barely disguised astonishment, that most went off successfully, with the unforgettable exception of one, when we all came down with the flu. A quick recovery was necessary, as racked in the room where the party never took place, perched a 72-pint barrel of ale with a shelf life of five days. Downing it before the deadline was not an easy task, but the commitment and enthusiasm with which we went about it was a remarkable example of collaboration at its best. We may have missed New Year’s Eve but only to make it last for a week rather than one evening. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill.
Surviving New Year’s Eve
These back-of-the-building New Year’s parties were always much of a stamina tester, since given our Russian connections, respect for our Russian guests and a sentimental attachment to Kaliningrad, first we would celebrate Moscow’s New Year, an hour later Kaliningrad’s and finally at midnight GMT, we would raise a glass (or several) to our own UK New Year.
We didn’t have a TV, but with the aid of a projector and a slice of white brick wall, we would screen recorded videos of a patriotic nature, belting out Russia’s National Anthem to coincide with two Russian New Year’s and ‘God Save the Queen’, the Royal Salute, on the stroke of UK’s midnight ~ or sometimes at 30 seconds to midnight or 30 seconds past, as nobody had the exact right time; in the depths of our party bunker nobody’s smartphone worked. These sequential celebrations led to three volleys of popping champagne corks in as many hours. We even played some Russian games and added a few of our own. Who said that it couldn’t be done! And me not a party animal!
Holding these parties at the back of the shop from which we sold vintage clothes meant we were never short of a prop or two, so should someone have the secret desire to see New Year in as Lenin, or transform himself into Winston Churchill, the fulfilment of their fantasies was not beyond their grasp.
^:1920s’ New Year’s Eve party in the back room of the antiques/vintage emporium
These parties would typically stretch into the wee kiltish hours, so that the full effect of the hangover would not be felt until late afternoon, the antidote for which was either to wend one’s weary way to the pub or sit at home feeling dreadful, reciting next year’s resolution, ‘never, ever again!’
Older now and wiser, such casting caution to the wind is over. No more shall I encounter the sort of reckless New Year’s Eves outlined in this post and certainly not the kind that occurred in 2002, when we arranged to meet Victor Ryabinin after a New Year’s party.
Arriving at 1am, we left Victor’s Kaliningrad art studio at 9 o’clock in the morning, having conversed and drunk through the twilight hours. The snow was thick underfoot and a blizzard up and blowing, and yet in spite of the hour and all we had drunk the memory of that morning trudging back to our flat is as clear as if it had happened yesterday. I can see the snow and I can see my boots mechanically tromping up and down, but only through one eye. I had one eye open, and one eye shut. Autopilot is not recommended, but it got me back safely that morning.
When all is said and done, surviving New Year’s Eve is small potatoes. It is the 365 days that follow which pose the greater challenge. The big issue is not what are you going to do on New Year’s Eve, but how are you going to spend the rest of the year. What are you going to do with it? What is it going to do with you? Perhaps if you set your mind on making New Year’s Eve not quite so happy as you have in the past, the year to come may be brilliant. We’ve had a lot of practice, but will we ever get it right? In the last analysis, does it matter? The countdown has begun: 2024 is quickly slipping away from us.
Whatever you do, Good Luck!
Below:The ghosts of New Years’ past. Hotel Russ, Svetlogorsk, since demolished …
4 December 2024 ~ Russia Day in Kaliningrad Honours Past and Present
RUSSIA DAY has been celebrated annually on 12 June since 1992. It is the national holiday of the Russian Federation, originally and officially known as the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), but that was a bit of a mouthful, even for Russians, so mercifully it was changed in 1998, so that even I can say it.
The idea that the Russian calendar is dominated by celebrations is not entirely misleading if you factor in everything from music, film, theatre, food, famous people to winter. However, Russia has no more public holidays than most other countries ~ eight, I believe.
Just like Bank Holidays in the UK, most public offices and schools are closed on 12th June. It’s a national day off, with events taking place throughout the country.
It’s also a chance for Russians to revisit, remind themselves of and celebrate all things Russian.
For some people, older people, those who were brought up in the USSR, the day has different significances. For those who bemoan the loss of the Soviet Union, it is a day of fond, if not sad, remembrance; for those who answer ‘No’ to my question, “Do you miss the Soviet Union?”, it is a day to celebrate pre-Soviet history, the Russia of the here and now and/or the Russia of the future.
Without mastery of the crystal ball to preview destiny, at least two of these time periods coalesced in Kaliningrad’s 2024 Russian Day festival. Held in the attractive grass and meandering paved precincts bordering Königsberg’s Upper Pond, Russian culture and its past were brought evocatively to life in colourful costumed pageants, tableau vivant and displays of living history. Craft stalls of a multifarious nature plied their trade in traditional hand-made Russian goods, augmented by the up to date and novel to attract the eyes of children and appeal to less retrospective types.
Also at hand was costume and fine jewellery, which, If you failed to keep your navigational wits about you, could eventually end up on the hands, around the wrists and upon the neck of your wife or girlfriend.
“Look, over there! [away from the jewellery stalls]. There’s a very interesting, er, what do you call it, thingymajig.”
June, like most other months of the year, can be temperamental (I knew a girl called June once. Heaven knows why they christened her that, they would better have called her December.), but I am pleased to say that on the twelth day of this June, the clouds rolled back in the heavens, the sun came out to join us and Russia Day in Kaliningrad was a gala day to remember.
The English are told to celebrate everybody else’s culture (hint almost everybody else’s!) Unfortunately, the English, what’s left of us, have no such state-ordained or government-supported equivalent to Russia Day; in fact, quite the opposite. We are encouraged to celebrate Black History Month. (I’m sure they would like to extend this to Black History 12 months, which they are doing anyway via the TV commercials.) Headlines in the liberal press exhort us to learn about everyone else, all except ourselves: “What you should know about Ramadan and Eid” “What you should know about Diwali” and “What you shouldn’t know about any of your own Christian festivals, coz it don’t matter!”
St Patrick’s Day is a public holiday for the Irish, but St George’s Day (the Patron Saint of England) is hardly recognised anymore and deliberately suppressed by the left, who are afraid that it could remind the English of their ancestral history, and thus consolidate their cultural identity, which they, the left, have for some time now been working hard to eradicate.
One black activist operating in the UK has put it on record that in his opinion the English do not deserve a day off to celebrate its culture. I should imagine that the English feel that they don’t deserve him.
Hopefully, Farage and Reform will change all that in the very near future! 👍
30 November 2024 ~ Croissant Café Kaliningrad it tastes as good as it looks
Never let it be said, and it seldom is not, that an exorbitant number of my posts have a disproportionate beer focus. I like a drink, and I am partial to the odd atmospheric pub/bar, but I am just as at home ~ well, nearly just as at home ~ in a good restaurant or café, and whilst I feel no need to prove the point, I will let you into the secret of one of my favourite Kaliningrad cafés: Croissant.
Croissant Café Kaliningrad
Croissant Café resides on Alexandra Nevskogo Street, which, in my opinion is an excellent street. Among its many other delights and facilities, there is the Tourist Hotel, a well-stocked Spa supermarket, the legendary Cultura Bottle Shop, a shop selling all kinds of inexpensive household products, including socks, pants, slippers and woolly hats, a special bread kiosk, an arty farty barbers, in fact, everything needed for daily sustenance.
Croissant Café is, of course, an all-year-round establishment, but I am particularly drawn to it in the winter months. I like the way on a cold, damp, frosty or a snow-settled day, the light ~ soft, warm and inviting ~ frames its windows in a cosy glow and then, stealing out into the street, tugs at your lapels. If you feel like a moth drawn to a flame, don’t worry. For a café serving quality food, the prices are quite reasonable. You can open your wallet, and you won’t get burnt.
Croissant Café likens itself in atmosphere and fare to the best in French tradition. It proudly emulates the pastry shops and bakeries from which French gastronomy gets its good name. Certainly, its bread selection, which comes in all shapes and sizes, has enough French sticks and crispy baguettes bristling from its wicker baskets to conjure up boulangerie.
Its website speaks in mouthwatering terms of all-day breakfasts and exclusive desserts, and its confidence in its ‘confectionary showcase’ allows it to mention by name its celebrated pastry chef Alexander Dianov.
In an illuminated glass display unit below the bread-laden shelves, a sumptuous banquet of choice awaits for those who have a sweet tooth. There are cakes, tarts, tempting delicacies covered in rich dark chocolate, an enticing array of exciting desserts and countless peerless pastries.
Excuse me, why do they call it Croissant Café?
Even though Croissant Café places great store on its sweet’s selection, and not without good reason, its range of savoury dishes are no less gastronomically adventurous or relegated by aesthetic indifference.
Every picture tells a story, and the café’s glossy booklet-style menus capture every dish using full-colour high-res photographs accompanied by descriptive profiles. The only flaw in the café’s menu, which in fairness is an oversight endemic in Kaliningrad, is that it fails in its savoury dishes to cater sufficiently for vegetarians, a funny lot, I know, among whose number I am one, but a consumer group all the same growing exponentially whose converts await entrepreneurs who can convert their conversion into roubles.
I am frankly quite surprised that no one in Russia’s hospitality industry has identified the vast potential lurking in this untapped resource, brought it on, encouraged it and mined it for all it is worth.
Croissant Café (Kruassan-Kafe) Kaliningrad There are a number of Croissant Cafés centred in and around Kaliningrad each proudly purveying a tempting range of high quality pastry and confectionary products and unique recipe freshly baked breads. Aromatic coffees and a wide selection of teas, plus hot beverages of an avant garde nature complement the café’s cuisine, or, should you wish to pamper the palate further, you could always go for one of the wines from the café’s European selection.
Other cafés in the Croissant Café family in and around Kaliningrad пл. Победы, 4 ул. Багратиона, 87 Ленинский пр. 67 пр. Мира, 84 пр. Мира, 23 Zelenogradsk, Lenin St, 3 Светлогорск, ул. Ленина 33
On a menu so extensive that it could have been the work of Tolstoy, I could only find three meat-free meals, and when I went to place an order, two of these I discovered though pictorially on the menu were not really on the menu at all.
Croissant Café Kaliningrad
The advantage of being a simple-food person is that disappointments like these have no earth-shattering consequences, and I was not so very much perturbed by the only option left to me, which was avocado salad. This relatively humble offering, like every other Croissant Café meal, could not be better presented, and with an appetising salad dressing and an assortment of tasty breads, each one freshly baked, I was not unhappy with my lot.
As with its savoury dishes and sweets, the café does not stint on its coffee and tea varieties, which are almost more diverse than the migrant-invaded West. It also caters for those whose approach to beverages is more intrepid, who are open to trying something new, something enticingly different, something overtly exotic.
Excuse me, why do they call it Croissant Café?
Contrary to Western media, Russia is rather sweet (see that picture below). I, on the other hand, am not a sweet man (Sorry, what was that you said? You’ve worked it out already.). However, providing the quality and price is right, I have been known to make exceptions, and nowhere am I more inclined to make exceptions of this kind than when dining at Croissant Café.
Cafés can be many things, for example cafés exist in England that bear more than a passing resemblance to the down-at-heel soup kitchens in Chicago’s prohibition era (I kinda like these too!). Croissant, on the other hand, is the very Ritz of cafés. The food is consistently good and presented with such an artistic flair that it would not look exceptionally out of place displayed at the London Tate.
The service, on my most recent visit and on previous occasions, was and has been commendable, scoring top marks for efficiency and ~ now read this café owners and read it in slow motion, since loyal patronage depends on it~ a gold medallion for friendliness. I am not, as some would appear to be, in the habit of frequenting cafés to lord it over the waiters and waitresses. Empathy is good for digestion, and Croissant Café’s friendly staff are a credit to the café’s appeal and to its overall experience.
Now look here and for the last time! Why do they call it Croissant Café?
Because the croissants at Croissant Café are the real, the absolute deal. They are freshly prepared, baked and produced in a seductive variety of flavours and fillings.
People come from near and far to sample and savour the pastries from which Croissant Café takes its name.
Would you care for a tip? Whilst the chocolate croissants should not be passed over, the marzipan ones are marvellous!
Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)
23 November 2024 ~ Baltika 8 Wheat Beer in Kaliningrad
Article 26: Baltika 8 Wheat Beer
A wheat beer is a wheat beer is a wheat beer. That’s that then! No, not quite. This particular wheat beer, the one I am reviewing at the moment, comes in a nice waisted bottle, with a gold brand-named collar, an embossed medallion and a gold-banded label.
It’s Baltika 8.
It’s billed as wheat beer, smells like wheat beer and has a wheat-beer taste ~ you can’t go wrong with wheat beer.
The first sip is, now, let me see, wheaty ~ as it should be, since the beer is brewed from wheat. The bottle does have ‘Wheat Beer’ written on it, and it also says Baltika 8. I wondered why the ‘8’? Was it because it was brewed from 8 different kinds of wheat? That it took 8 brewers to make it? 8 weeks to brew it? Does 8 pints make you really drunk? Is the 8 supposed to rhyme with something like ‘gate’? ie ‘After 8 pints of Baltika 8, I had considerable difficulty closing the gate’, or ‘8 pints of Baltika 8, left him in a right old state’’.
What the 8 might stand for is 8mm of head, which dissipates in less than 8 seconds, but hey! It’s wheat beer and that’s what wheat beer does!
PS: I’ve been told not to be so stupid. Baltika 8 contains eight nuances of taste.
Normally, wheat beer is good and cloudy but, in Baltika 8’s case it’s good and cloudy, too. The opaqueness of it let’s you in on the secret that the brew is unfiltered, signalling that the beer is rich in protein and other biologically good-for-you substances.
Baltika 8 Wheat Beer in Kaliningrad
I know you can’t wait to say that I added the last bit as it was beginning to become more than apparent from what you’ve read so far that I cannot tell the difference between one wheat beer and the next. My sentiments with regards to this are that if I was mugged by one in London’s Brixton and they put it in a police line-up, I wouldn’t be able to tell you which one it was who did it. They’re all the same to me.
What I can say without fear of calling myself a liar is that the price of Baltika 8 is not daylight robbery, not at 85 roubles a half litre for a yummy beer made from wheat. It’s somehow pleasing to see that the price of Baltika 8 has an ‘8’ in it. (“Innit!” ~ a fan from south London)
It is difficult to say whether Baltika 8 has more wheat in it than other wheat beers and, even if it does, if someone was to place Baltika 8 Wheat Beer in a dark room with seven other wheat beers whether I would know the difference after tripping over one of them. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t know Jack from Jill. Well, you can’t these days, can you!
If I had to make a definitive statement about the quality of Baltika 8 without recourse to comparison, I would say ‘Bingo!’ ~ Baltika have got this one right! It is a good, tasty brew, with more body than Chicago during the prohibition era. What really endears me to it is that the taste lingers on. If it was a criminal record, it would certainly be a long one.
The best way to enjoy a bottle of Baltika 8 Wheat Beer is to sort the wheat from the chat.
Cheers!
😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS Name of Beer: Baltika 8 Wheat Beer Brewer: Baltika Breweries Where it is brewed: St Petersburg, Russia Bottle capacity: 0.5 litre Strength: 5% Price: It cost me about 85 roubles (0.65 pence) Appearance: Foggy Aroma: Wheat with subtle abstracts Taste: Wheat Fizz amplitude: 4/10 Label/Marketing: Gold but not too bold Would you buy it again? No reason not to Marks out of 10: 8
*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.
