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Стас Калининград Кенигсберг Гид

Умер Калининградский Кенигсбергский Гид Стас

Потеря незаменимого друга

Опубликовано: 3 декабря 2020 г.  

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.

Copyright © 2018-2021 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

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Stas Kaliningrad Königsberg Guide

Stas Kaliningrad Königsberg Guide has Died

The loss of an indispensable friend

Published: 2 December 2020

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.

In recognition of this, I had Stas write a brief biographical account of his work and life, including his longstanding association with Victor Ryabinin, and included it, along with references to his tour guide practice, in the permanent pages of this blog, under the ‘Victor Ryabinin Königsberg’ heading.

Stas Kaliningrad Königsberg Guide

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

Stas Kaliningrad Königsberg  Tour Guide ~ links to his videos

Copyright © 2018-2021 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

RT Breaking News: A TV set showing RT News superimposed with a question mark

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

I think those chaps at RT write a jolly good article …

22 September 2026 – RT Breaking News: Why Don’t They Want You to See It?

😱 If you’ve arrived at this page from the EU, look away now!!

So, there I was a few weeks ago flicking through the western news channels which saturate the internet trying to dream the impossible dream, ie to find one whose coverage wasn’t overtly couched in the propaganda of the liberal left, when I came across an article on the United 24 Media website, described by Media Bias Fact Check as ‘centre-left’  [https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/united24-media-bias-and-credibility/].

Media Fact Check Screen about United24

At the time I had no idea, honestly, m’lud, that United24 is in fact a fundraising platform launched by erstwhile comedian, now Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Excuse me for droning on, but you learn something new every day!

For the purpose of this post, however, whatever it was that Zelensky was up to had everything to do with nothing as far as I was concerned. It was the article’s headline that interested me:

‘EU Court Confirms Blanket Ban on All RT Russian State Media Content’
“The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that the EU ban on distributing content from Russian state broadcaster RT (Russia Today) applies to non-commercial websites that provide free access to such material, regardless of whether they generate profit or the specific content being distributed.” – United 24 Media

“Well, I never did (honestly). They’ll be banning straight bananas next! – Don’t believe it if they tell you differently; MEPs seem to prefer anything bent or twisted, such as expecting us to believe that boatloads of migrants pouring into Britain after a nice sojourn in France are not part of an EU plot conceived in pique at Brexit, which the froggy French and the Gerries saw, and indeed continue to see, as an audacious British rebuttal of their suicidal – you could say insane – open-border policies.” – A man who never voted to Remain but wishes to remain anonymous. Only his mum knows who he is, but not, apparently, by whom. His mum comes from Wellingborough.

By the way, on the subject of France, let’s talk about Germany and say well done to the AfD for its recent seismic shift of the EU’s leftist political landscape. Onwards and upwards, one might say, without führer mention of bent bananas.


RT describes itself as providing an “alternative point of view” and a “second opinion” on world affairs, framing its coverage as a counterweight to mainstream or censored Western media. – AI Gemini, 7 September 2026

Like the UK, which, allegedly, has seen more than 60,000 arrests for online communications offences over a five-year period* but isn’t very hot when it comes to halting illegal migration and/or stopping the rumoured money-laundering racket fronted by a growing succession of high-street barbers shops, nail bars and sun-lounge boutiques (guess which sector of society owns most of them) – every small town has a dozen or more – the EU is shit hot on clamping down on RT links but doesn’t do much at all, except take the UK’s money, about stopping the migrant boats that sail merrily and unhindered from its teeming shores, except, perhaps, to help Britain-bound migrants pump up their monstrous dildos dinghies, grant them rights of passage, and wave them off as they happily go. John told me that. He’s a six-year-old far-right activist who was given a very powerful pair of binoculars by his mum for his birthday – incidentally, she comes from Wellingborough – and he took them with him to Dover. So there!

How the UK treats RT News

Whilst RT is officially hampered in the UK, the legalities surrounding its access and sharing links via social media and through one-off blogs like this are nowhere near as Orwellian as they are in the ‘liberal’ EU.

The UK is a country that fields many regulators that regulate things to make them seem regulated, like Ofgem, Ofcom and Ofwat (the only thing missing is ‘t’). It even has a special body, Ofsted, which is devoted to the science of persecuting teachers by way of enforcing woke in Britain’s state-run schools. When Reform eventually comes to power, I hope to witness the rollout of an entirely new and much-needed regulator officially known as OffFck (the only thing missing is ‘u’), whose powers will heavily regulate the landing on Britain’s shores of thousands of things which, by look and presence, could spark a prodigious uptick in balaclava sales.

The Ofthing that regulates UK media is the regulator Ofcom, and it was they who ruled, for the good of the public, naturally, that RT News’ broadcasting licence be revoked in Britain, possibly because the news that it promotes is nowhere near as laundered, by which I mean clean and impartial, as that disseminated by the BBC, The Guardian (of what), and the thoroughly speculative Independent.

As far as I can ascertain, because UK law is as comprehensible as a bowl of dropped spaghetti, which is why we need such erudite people as lawyers, judges and the like, to whom we can pay lots of money to untangle what they’ve tangled for us, it is illegal in the UK for television companies to transmit RT across the airwaves. Similarly, the big lefty tech companies and lefty-controlled social media platforms actively restrict RT’s distribution channels, but there is no restriction, as far as I can discern, should Joe and Abdul public wish to access RT’s coverage via alternative digital sources.

Andy Burnham pledges to stand ‘shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine’ but appears to have adopted his predecessor’s, Sir Kier Starmers’, strategy of turning the other cheek and kicking Britons so hard up the arse regarding the migrant invasion that perhaps he hopes by the laws of cold shoulder they might stay indoors and forget it is happening – Political Anatomy by A.R.S Elbow et al

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

Lookee here for RT links!

Note> “The views expressed in this post are not necessarily those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of individuals or companies that grow and/or ship bananas, manufacture rubber dinghies, and make up colourful stories about old white ladies living in Dover being ‘genuinely disturbed’ by white men saying hello to them whilst wearing black balaclavas. Even though in days of yore they tuned in every Saturday night to the BBC’s Black and White Minstrel Show – and while you’re at it, take down that flag; it’s British and you’re in Britain!”

Please note that in the present Western geopolitical climate of mass Russophobia, I have provided links to RT’s articles not to its website itself but via the Archive.org website so as to mitigate suggestions that the objective of this post is to direct traffic to RT. As if!

Comedy and Tragedy Masks. RT Breaking News about the farcical process by which prime ministers in the UK are voted into office from within the party.

Headline: Starmer out, Burnham in: What you need to know about leadership change in UK

Can you see anything inherently wrong with the substance of an article, which considers the strange way in which new prime ministers are elected internally when one becomes unpopular and not fit for purpose and provides valid reasons why Starmer had to go whilst questioning the media-hyped regenerative powers of his Labour makeover Andy Burnham? Is there anything in this RT article that reeks of the untrue, or isn’t it merely confirming what we already know?

https://web.archive.org/web/20260720043923/https://www.rt.com/news/643240-uk-leadership-change-explainer/

A black silhouette of a graduate symbolising a preponderance of foreign students at British universities

Headline: White students in minority at nearly one in five UK universities – Telegraph

The headline says it all, but it doesn’t say anything more than we know already, given the anti-white ethos of British politics. RT merely highlights a disproportionality which, if it is correct, proves that white British are fast becoming a subordinate class in their own country. Whilst most of us are aware of this, our political elites would rather it not be shouted around the globe megaphonically. The word ‘surreptitious’ or even ’embarrased’ springs readily to mind.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260703041317/https://www.rt.com/news/642502-uk-white-students-minority/

Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs used here to symbolise female fragility in the UK due to migrant rape gangs. RT Breaking News published this article on their website.

Headline: Pakistani serial child rapist cannot be deported from UK – media

Is it true? Or do we, the British, need to be protected from a story that beggars belief?

Well, judge for yourself.

“A Pakistani rape gang ringleader convicted of dozens of child offenses in the UK cannot be deported under British immigration law despite being stripped of his citizenship, the Oldham Chronicle newspaper has reported.”

Who thinks that something like this just couldn’t happen in Britain today?

https://web.archive.org/web/20260701105345/https://www.rt.com/news/642412-rape-gang-leader-not-deported-uk/

A violent sword marauding washing machine projected as clipart, symbolising Britain's desiire to perpetuate the Ukraine conflict

Headline: Britain needs war: Why London can’t afford peace in Ukraine

Intro: “The UK’s power machine runs on war, and conflict in Eastern Europe is its new fuel”

I fully comprehend and appreciate why the content of this article and its alternative perspective on the perpetuation of the Ukraine conflict might be something that the British establishment would rather we did not read. But if, as we are constantly told, we live in a democracy and not an Orwellian state, then surely different points of view matter as much as black lives, and whilst avoiding a knee-jerk response to either is an excellent act of prudence, what we choose to view and read could be considered a sovereign right.

There is one statement within this article that I do find hard to agree with, and that is “Britain has always known how to turn disaster into capital.” Could it be the exception to the rule then, the ongoing, never-ending and soon-to-be-fatal full-scale migrant invasion?

https://web.archive.org/web/20251112152617/https://www.rt.com/news/627673-britain-needs-war-in-ukraine/

King of Spades playing card, illustrating King Charles' buckling under woke pressure regarding his title 'Defender of the Faith'

Headline: King Charles loses historic ‘Defender of the Faith’ label

And in yet another cultural and historic climbdown in which we cede our Christian heritage to appease those who oppose it, we have another prime example of Woke in the Royal Family’ (We won’t mention the other one …)

RT reports:

“Buckingham Palace has dropped “Defender of the Faith” from King Charles’ official job description, swapping the 500-year-old title for a vaguer pledge to safeguard religion across Britain’s “multi-faith nation,” according to the UK’s annual royal finance report.”.

Why not just open Buckingham Palace as a bus-them-in-migrant-hostel and donate the Crown Jewels to Black Lives Matter? If you’re going to give the country away, at least make a proper job of it.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260629151222/https://www.rt.com/news/642356-king-charles-loses-defender-of-faith/

And now for something completely different …

A blue teddy. RT Breaking News. Why does the UK want to ban the cartoon Marsha and the Bear?

Headline: British MPs demand ban on Russian children’s cartoon

So does a Russian cartoon about a little girl and a bear pose any threat to Britain? Or is the call by ‘more than 50 British MPs’ for a ban on this children’s programme ‘a culture-war theatrics’ staged as a diversionary tactic in our pantomime of politics to steer us away from our homegrown nightmares? “Look out! They’re behind you!” – a little girl and a cartoon bear.

A spokesperson for the Russian company that produces the cartoon, which has been entertaining families in more than 100 countries for nearly two decades, states that the programme contains no militaristic content and has gained popularity purely for its “friendship, kindness and imagination.”

The article goes on to say “Moscow has condemned these measures [the call for a ban on the programme] as censorship and Russophobia, accusing Western governments of using the Ukraine conflict to suppress Russian culture, language and media.”

Perhaps if Russian culture, language and media came from where the bananas come from, all may be forgiven, even, perhaps, exhorted.

Read the article yourself and see what you think, and then go and watch the cartoon. I think you might enjoy it.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260703232540/https://www.rt.com/news/642534-uk-mp-russian-cartoon-ban/

Postscript

I am not sure which, if any, of these RT articles could be credibly lambasted as either mis- or disinformational, and if they stand up well to scrutiny, why ever is RT blocked?

If you live in the UK and want to tune into the web version of RT, all you need to do is key ‘RT International’ into your internet browser.

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

Now, here’s a sign of the times!

Purpose and Intent: This article is published solely for the purposes of journalistic commentary, media analysis, and public interest debate regarding freedom of expression and state-enforced censorship. The inclusion of links to archived material is intended to provide historical context so that readers may independently evaluate the subject matter.

Disclaimer: This is a small, private blog hosted in the US for informational, educational and entertainment purposes. Posts may contain references, links to web archives (like the Wayback Machine), or embedded media. Due to varying international regulations and sanctions, some external links or videos may be geoblocked or inaccessible in your country. The inclusion of a link is for reference only and does not imply endorsement. Visitors access external sites at their own risk.

Reference
*https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/campaigns/save-free-speech/

Image attribution

Vintage TV Set: https://freesvg.org/vintage-tv-vector-image
Comedy & Tragedy Masks: https://freesvg.org/comedy-and-tragedy-masks-vector-image
Blue Teddy Bear: https://freesvg.org/blue-teddy-bear
Graduate: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Image-of-a-graduate/42725.html
Snow White: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Snow-white/61195.html
Warring Washing Machine: https://freesvg.org/washing-machine-character
King of Spades: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/King-of-spades-playing-card-vector-drawing/11230.html

Britain Goes Balaclava: a black balaclava

Britain Goes Balaclava as the Boats Keep Bowling In

More money for Ukraine and migrants, but shhh, don’t mention the boats!

9 September 2026 – Britain Goes Balaclava as the Boats Keep Bowling In

On the day that it is proudly announced by an Andy Burnham’s Labour Party that the UK will give away £100,000,000 to Ukraine’s air defences this winter, whilst spending approximately £4 billion to £6.4 billion on illegal migration over the last fiscal year*, a second wave of illegal migrants in less than three days sailed merrily into Britain, first into Dover and then into Portsmouth, causing a double dose of understandable protests.

Immediately, and no longer surprisingly, our out-of-touch, arrogant left-wing politicians demonstrated their unstinting commitment to putting migrants above Britons, condemning protestors as thugs, whilst saying nothing and doing nothing about the thousands of third-world young men whose alien cultures they complacently accommodate, even though they come from countries which are arguably among some of the most dangerous places in the world.

A comprehensive distillation of the sad and dangerous magnitude of the British establishment’s blameworthy migrant crisis, which, with the first boat of its obnoxious cargo waltzing into Portsmouth, has taken Britain to a new threat level, is delivered here by Patrick Christys, presenter and journalist for GB News.

GB News, Patrick Christys> Instagram

I personally watched GB News’ coverage of the balaclava protests and thought how smart and well togged out those who were wearing them looked, though doubting seriously at the same time that their choice of head dress was sartorially motivated but had more to do with the need to conceal their identities at all costs from a proven leftist-prejudicial law and justice system.

As Patrick Christys’ balanced coverage shows, there is, as with UK policing in general, a disturbing political two-tier response to anti-migrant protests, verging on the totalitarian, compared to the pussy-footing, arms-length way in which social disorder issues perpetrated by Black Lives Matter, Asians, Arabs and liberal lefties are handled.

Britain Goes Balaclava as the Boats Keep Bowling In

“Black-clad Dover vigilantes will return if police do not act” – this was The Guardian’s headline, shortly after the British boys donned their balaclavas. The skewed view is predictable, but did you catch the alternative Guardian headline, ‘Black-clad things will keep on coming if the government does not act’? No, of course you didn’t, because this is the one they will never publish. And yet it is food for thought and enough to give you indigestion that if the government does not act to curb this leftist agenda soon and stop the boats from coming, they might find that by not acting, it may be their very last act. As that well-known call for action goes, “When it’s gone, it’s gone!” But will it be the boats, or will it be the country?

Patrick Christys from GB News reporting on Britain Goes Balaclava

By and large, and mostly large, UK mainstream media made much more fuss about the naughty balaclavas than the reason for wearing them and the protests.

The BBC ran this headline: “’No excuse’ for threatening behaviour or disruption, says minister after small boats protests.”

Here are some pretty, or not-so-pretty, taken-in-the-literal-sense, credible excuses, which some people might offer up as counterarguments to ‘no excuse’ in the absence of political will and of positive action by UK governments who have serially refused, and continue to refuse, to listen to the people who elect them. {Strong hint> The only way to end this deleterious situation is to vote Reform! Don’t be suckered in by the smear campaigns of the leftist media. They will stop at nothing to persuade you to vote for the same old parties, whose only credible manifesto, if they were honest enough to publish it, is to transition the United Kingdom into a migrant wasteland. {On condition of anonymity, I am not at liberty to divulge who it was who told me that.}

Credible excuses that might force UK citizens to put on balaclavas:

1. A dramatically and drastically overpopulated island where more migrants are the last things needed
2. A rising tide of violent crime directly linked to the migrant invasion
3. Streets becoming more dangerous as police lose control of them year on year
4. Asian rape gangs plying their trade as leftist politicians and its collaborative media turn a blind eye in fear that failed multiculturalism and free-for-all open borders, plotted by the EU, might be exposed for what they are – a programme of wilful mayhem
5. High-profile migrant-linked gratuitous violent atrocities, sundry murders and terrorist acts and a growing divisive cultural imbalance
6. The astronomical cost of supporting the migrant invasion
7. Loss of Britain’s culture and its ancestral-home identity, which is increasingly visible in every city and virtually every town in the country
8. Labour’s creepy dispersal plan to shift unwelcome migrants out of hotels they occupy in an attempt to hide the true numbers by relocation to private houses scattered across the country, which will have the lasting effect of leaving nowhere British, nowhere feeling safe, and which will ultimately threaten national security.

The list as to why there is an excuse not for ‘threatening behaviour’ so-called and neither for ‘disruption’, but for the British people to make a stand, make themselves seen and heard, goes on, but no excuse would be necessary if our politicians would only protect us, which is one of the reasons we elect them and grant them their well-paid jobs, from the threats and disruption to our lives, which every Briton today is faced with, by weaponised migration.

Cutting back to that BBC article, the one that advocates ‘No excuse’, what I found particularly telling was the typical guest appearance, almost mandatory and thus always suspect, by comments reportedly made by a person or by persons unknown, who, ‘on condition of anonymity’, frame every British protest so that the leftist narrative has the last word.

For example, in the BBC article cited, we have a very convenient yet unnamed, if they exist, silly old bugger who is supposed to have whinged to the BBC that on the day of the protests “it was difficult not to worry ‘where people hold and openly express [and they called them] such extreme views.'” So, protesting about the migrant invasion is judged to be ‘extreme’, whereas letting migrants in without limit and the police turning on protestors wielding batons and PAVA spray is a completely acceptable situation. Inside out, upside down, back to front and arse about face, welcome to Britain today.

Conversely, someone, whose anonymity we must respect as we do all others, posted this comment on the net:

“The police 👮‍♂️ used battens, etc., to bash the balaclava-clad demonstrators so as the invading 🚤 [beep] could safely arrive at their destination, Ha!” Ha!”

Yes, Britain really is the laughing stock of the world.

Britain Goes Balaclava

Quoting again from that BBC article, Police Minister Sarah Jones (is she a woman? I suppose she must be), stated: “People who ‘cross the line from peaceful protest into illegality will face the full force of the law.'”

Oh no, there it is again, that silly old hypocritical ‘Let’s get tough with white Britons’ slogan’, which, adopted as a soundbite by former Prime Minister Starmer, helped to make him a former prime minister.

Britain Goes Balaclava as the Boats Keep Bowling In

I am one hundred per cent and a little bit extra certain that the vast majority of the British electorate would feel considerably reassured about their chances of survival and of the existence of a future for their children if such mambys (sorry, Sarah, old girl) would dedicate the law’s full force, of which we hear so much about, to stopping and stopping and stopping the boats – you can almost put that to music! What, ‘They’ll always be an England’? No, that song played out long ago.

Mark Twain emphasised that there are three kinds of lies: “lies, damned lies, and statistics” (thank you, Mr Twain; does he work for GB News?), an observation which lends itself perfectly to the let’s-pull-the-wool-over-the-halfwit-nation’s-eyes approach, which has Labour and its partisan media boasting as it blags a 43 per cent reduction in the arrival of small boats.

Politicians lie, and politicians love statistics. But, as we see on GB News, if we see it nowhere else, the boats, indeed the much bigger boats, crammed with all that the left could wish for, still keep romping in, despite pleas from the British majority to their elected government to stop the boats completely and – here’s a vital and honest statistic – crash migration down to zero.

As for the media-incited uproar about intimidating men roaming the streets in balaclavas, I couldn’t agree with them more; it is very intimidating. In fact, I would go so far as to say that all face coverings are intimidating and that no matter what form they take or pretend to be, they all should be banned with no exception. Indeed, if I owned a newspaper other than a leftist one, I would push the following line: “There is no excuse on Britain’s streets for threatening behaviour by people in face masks.” Hoodies and face masks must be banned right across the board! Savvy? But, in the interests of staving off a crisis which, in the final analysis, neither government nor police will eventually have sufficient power to act upon at all, let’s make our first priority, please, stopping the boats from coming, and if you don’t, won’t, or can’t, then please get out of the country’s way and let Reform do the job for you.

Vote Reform and Stop the Boats! – It’s really the UK’s last chance!

Reference
* https://ifs.org.uk/articles/home-office-budgeting-and-asylum-overspends

Image attribution:

Balaclava: https://pngimg.com/image/60093

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

Old Bobby Ale reviewed by Mick Hart

Old Bobby Ale – is it what it says it is?

Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Old Bobby

Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad

29 August 2026 – Old Bobby Ale – is it what it says it is?

At a time in history when it is no longer possible to define what exactly is British and what is not – for example, people with a different-coloured skin given a piece of paper by the Home Office claiming that they are British may not be anything near so British when compared with some white-faced bloke who can trace his UK family lineage back across decades and centuries.

“Ah, yes,” I hear you say. “But does he own a dinghy?”

Britain today (whatever that is and wherever it is) is littered with (please don’t anticipate me!) legions of impersonators and impersonations.

Men impersonating women and women impersonating men; weird and unnatural pink things impersonating human beings; liberal lefties impersonating intelligence, and may I add, not with conviction; impersonators impersonating themselves; men and women in Number 10 impersonating prime ministers; a police force intent on impersonating a social-worker-public-relations hybrid, often with a worrying political slant; mixed-race adverts impersonating a melting pot dream, a modern fantasy of middle-class Britain in which every loveable actor, irrespective of race, creed or colour, is homogeneously unified by a revisionist version of British values, when sadly the streets outside tell a very different story, but hey ho, as long as it sells a fridge, a bland and boring living-room suite, or a multicultural weekend in Spain, does it really matter? ; and then there is the BBC, The Independent (laughably called), and The Guardian (of what?), all to one impersonating unbelievably comic strip news – nothing which only the dumbest of us could bring ourselves to swallow – but it makes us snigger if nothing else.

And yet, as surreal and unrestrained as this impersonation is, there is one element of British life – although they are trying to squash that too – which remains essentially undiluted, and that one survivor is British beer.

Beer review links:

[Butauty] [Kanapinis (light)] [Kanapinis (dark)]
[Keptinis Farmhouse][Bistrampolio] [387 Osobaya Varka][Double Mother T.]
[Tapkoc Belgian Blond Ale] [Evening in Bruges] [Primator Double 24 beer]

There are a number of distinguishing characteristics that set British beer, by which we mean ‘real ale’, apart from its worldwide cousins. For a start, it is top fermented, meaning that during fermentation yeast at warmer temperatures rises to the top of the liquid, whereas lager is bottom fermented (you thought that might be the case!). Once in the cask (barrel), British beer undergoes secondary fermentation and natural conditioning. When it is ready to be drawn from the cask, it is done so by mechanical means with the help of a hand-pulled beer pump; carbon dioxide is not added. Consequently, British cask-conditioned ale has a reputational low-fizz profile when generically compared to sharply gassy mass-produced lagers. And then there are Fuggles and Goldings, terms with which you may not be familiar. Sounds like a firm of chartered accountants or the names of my two favourite teddies? Not even close, I’m afraid. Fuggles and Goldings are the classic hops to which age-old British beers owe their celebrated taste and guaranteed authenticity.

And now we come to a British-styled beer manufactured by Russia’s Baltika Breweries, which is so keen on emulating Britain’s inimitable beer culture that at 4.5% it has modelled the strength of its brew on British session tipples and has even gone so far as to market and sell the product in British imperial-pint-sized bottles.

Old Bobby Ale, a bottle of it produced in Russia with a small British flag in the background.

Traditional British beer, as distinct from the citrus revolution, which since its inauguration in the 1980s has gained impressive traction among British beer enthusiasts, of whom naturally I am one, is immediately identified by its deep copper to amber colour, flat compared-to-lager appearance and is occupied by tastes predominant in biscuit-like malts and a balanced hoppy bitterness.

Old Bobby Ale – is it what it says it is?

Baltika Breweries’ Old Bobby, not to be confused, as it easily could be, with ‘Old Nobby’, a village gentleman who … well, we haven’t got time to expand on that … has to be awarded at least 6 out of 10 in its quest to impersonate Britain’s real ale, that of the amber variety.

The packaging goes a long way in pushing the image of the product; for example, there’s the Old Bobby name. I am sure you will agree with me that it just wouldn’t have struck the right note had they called it Old Abdul, although that brand is expected soon, and on an industrial scale, from Dover’s Daily Dinghy Brewery. The bottle also carries the image of a ‘dug’ (bow wow, in English and guv gav in Russian) wearing an old flat cap. Is there a suggestion here that this Russian beer comes from up North, from the land of flat hats and whippits, and if that is the general idea, wherefore art thou pigeon shit?

The bottle, as already noted, is the right pint size, and the deep red and intense blue label and the clever use of white-printed text are a livery nod to the Union Jack and therefore to British tradition.

So much for appearances, but as we who come from the UK know, that is, those of us who have been here longer than it takes to get bussed to a free hotel, appearances can be deceptive. “I say, excuse me, old chap, are you sure you are really British?”

In the glass, Old Bobby has the look of an old-fashioned English ale. However, the aroma is a little heavy, accruing to certain ingredients, particularly the malt, which leaps out when the cap is removed – the cap from the bottle, not from the ‘dug’ – like a non-elected Labour prime minister or an Arabian genie in full flight. The effect is so audacious that it nearly knocks your socks off!

In keeping with Britain’s brewing tradition, Old Bobby is top-fermented. Additional Bobby Brownie points are its use of imported pale ale malt, which functions as a foundation ingredient in many British ales.

The flavour of the beer is on its way to authenticity but falls down at various hurdles, for although it impersonates British ales in various selective and commendable ways, its brewing methods and scale of production place it irrefutably within the industrial output category. When all is said and done, it is macro rather than micro-brewed, and the flavour reflects this difference, as the complex notes of real ale are lost in this stringent process. Intense filtration and pasteurisation slim down the fuller body typically associated with many British amber beers (and one could say the size of many British beer drinkers), leaving Old Bobby’s finish a comparatively bland experience. Moreover, Old Bobby’s adherence to the kind of super-charged carbonation almost every lager could be condemned for is seriously at odds with cask-conditioned ales, whose relatively flat consistency is one of its leading hallmarks.

For those of us who were unfortunate enough to have been brought up with the terrible fizz of Watney’s Red Keg Barrel and are still waiting to this day for Double Diamond to work the wonders promised by its advertisers, the voluminous effervescence and pronounced afterburn taste, which are salient features of Old Bobby, might well bring back ambivalent memories of British beer before its rennaisance.

Old Bobby Ale – is it what it says it is?

Old Bobby is not Old Nobby; he’s a man who … well, never mind about him. Old Bobby comes in a bottle that could have been made in Britain, and the bottle contains a pint. The beer is deeply malty and matched in depth by its caramel taste, and providing you have never drunk a pint of handpump-pulled genuine fresh real ale drawn from a British pub beer cellar, Old Bobby’s impersonation is as complementary as it is passable, especially in the absence of a head-to-head evaluation, where ignorance is bliss and being none the wiser deserves to be called a positive virtue.

Impersonation, like mimicry, is one of the highest forms of flattery, and that’s the way that these things work.

😊BOX TICKER’S CORNER
Name of Beer: Old Bobby (English Ale)
Brewer: Baltika Breweries
Where it is brewed: St Petersburg, Russia
Bottle capacity: 1 pint
Strength: 4.5%
Price: 105 roubles (92 pence) [28 August 2026]
Appearance: Coppery amber colour
Aroma: Malty with tinctures of toast, wood and caramel
Taste: Medium malt, sweet to begin with but with a slightly bitter finish
Fizz amplitude: 65%
Label/Marketing: Red and blue with a ‘dug’ on the collar
Would you buy it again? It’s not outside of the bounds of possibility

Beer rating

Mick Hart's beer in Russia rating's system

According to Emalt, the brewer had this to say about Old Bobby when it was launched:
“Old Bobby is a beer brewed according to traditional English recipes. England is a country with a rich history of brewing, and British ales are known worldwide as an essential part of any good English pub,” said Lyudmila Yakushina, Brand Director, Licensed Beers, Low-Alcohol Beverages & Non-beer Brands at Baltika Breweries.

“Currently the only ales sold widely in Russia are expensive imported brands. Old Bobby Ale will be the first ale brewed in Russia in the best of British traditions and sold throughout the country,” she added. [03 November, 2010]
Webpage cited: https://www.e-malt.com/mnewsasp/news.asp?Command=ArticleShow&ArticleID=18015

Wot other’s say [Comments on Old Bobby ale from the internet, unedited]
🤔I had the impression that it was as much an ale as Belfast is a stout. [Comment: Belfast is a stout, isn’t it?]
😊 Very flavorful beer, great drinkability, hop aroma is very volatile, disappearing quickly. The flavor is not very intense but pleasing and contributes to drinkability. [Comment: A satisfied customer.]
😐 A very good beer to drink, but it can’t be considered a benchmark within the style.
It has a slightly hoppy aroma and a sweet taste with some strong woody notes and a slightly smoky hint. With a fleeting head, it’s a beer with good drinkability and nothing more. [Comment: Some would argue, but never a beer enthusiast, that this is all a beer is and all that it will ever be.]

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

AI- generated image advertising the Uniform Museum Restaurant in Kaliningrad

Trying it on at the Uniform Museum Restaurant in Kaliningrad

Hats the way to do it! There are uniforms, but there’s nothing uniform at the Uniform Museum Restaurant

15 August 2026 -Trying it on at the Uniform Museum Restaurant Kaliningrad

What is it about hats that wants to make you plonk one on your head? Perhaps it’s because if you plonked one anywhere else, it might look suspicious.

Suffice it to say, when we owned a vintage warehouse, we had a lot of hats, and, of course, people tried them on. We didn’t mind that, as long as they were doing so with a real intent to buy. But some people came to the shop to try them on and try it on, simply because they wanted to take photos and selfies and stick them on social media. Very often, as they handled the genuine vintage merchandise, which they had no more intention of buying than I have of voting Labour, and may I say, handled it in a cavalier fashion, including the cavalier headgear, I felt as though I could stick one on them. Such was my annoyance that I could have very easily cast myself as the Basil Fawlty of the antiques world. Indeed, I am fairly certain there were some who believed I was.

Trying it on at the Uniform Museum Restaurant Kaliningrad

Cozy industrial cafe with warm lighting, wood tables, and a long bar lined with stools on the right. The Uniform Museum Restaurant in Kaliningrad.

In Kaliningrad, where there is no shortage of one-off bars and restaurants, a quirky venue exists which resembles a giant wardrobe, hung with historical military uniforms and hats from bygone eras, allowing patrons, as they see fit, and even when they do not fit, to try on at their leisure. No Basil fawlty there!

Cunningly catering to the selfie and social media crowd, this dine, drink and dress-up emporium located on Gorkogo Street stands recessed from the thoroughfare, its large glass-fronted prospect belying the formal municipal image which people of a certain age freely ascribe to venues traditionally charged with the responsible task of curating, preserving and presenting the remnants of former epochs. I would say that its modern appearance works in an opposite way to mine, in that on the other side of purported modernity, when you become familiar with it, lies a sanctuary for the old and interesting, the curious and the antiquated.

Bar half-lit, with stools in the foreground. Scene inside the Uniform Museum Restaurant, Kaliningrad.

Furthermore, in keeping with the adventurous proclivity exercised by today’s museums to fully embrace modernity, turning to all that interaction can bring to the minds of those that cannot live without it, the Uniform Museum Restaurant does not attempt to confine itself to merely encouraging admiration for selective obsolescence, which is something, for example, that Kaliningrad’s London Pub has got off to a fine art. By contrast, this unusual restaurant, because remember that this establishment is first and foremost a place to eat and drink and not a vintage clothes emporium, is an open invitation to see, touch and then try on any clothing that takes your fancy, be it any one specific garment or multiples thereof, which, for those whose lives are ruled by the constant need to nurture social media, is an opportunity made in heaven; nor is it one to be discouraged by the restaurant-bar itself should you naturally have the inclination when posting yourself in their attire to name the location that made it possible.

The number and the variety of uniforms on display combine to produce a rather staggering prop piece, and whilst, as one might not unreasonably expect, the majority of the uniforms are rooted in Russia’s Soviet past, interspersed among them, spanning several Soviet-era decades and covering all of its three main military services, together with law enforcement clothing, are equivalents fetched from further afield, from countries that spark the dealer’s question, “I wonder who they sourced those from?” This consideration makes for a quiet sport; convenient, pleasant and erudite in the distraction it affords, as you wait to receive your orders from the bar, which, unlike certain orders, are ones you will want to act upon with relish and with gusto.

As I was waiting for my beer to arrive at the table appointed for that purpose, my observations had yielded examples of various military uniforms pertaining to, I estimated, several different nations. The compulsion to leap out of one’s seat in defiance of the natural instinct to honour one’s drinking fidelity and to do so with an alacrity that might dangerously suggest one wasn’t nearly as old as the uniforms surrounding one, was not, for all its magnetism (bygone clothing has this effect), a powerful enough enticement to waylay enjoyment of the restaurant’s beer, arguably the best of which is brewed there on the premises. Forbearance in this matter was not induced by mind over matter but rather by what mattered most; as beer outranking the highest office projected by the most powerful uniforms mustered in that place commanded unstinting obedience and called for immediate respect. This was indeed a ceremony I honoured to its utmost, raising my hand several times in a dignified salute, which just happened in the process to have a tankard grasped within it.

The restaurant’s onsite brewery centres its craft on brewing beers Germanic in style and origin (Quick! Put that German helmet on! And now, just as quickly, take it off!) offering connoisseurs the loyalty incentive which a regular rotation of fine premium beers never fails to recruit.

I was slurping my way through one of these beers when some battered mushrooms and smoky cheese straws as limp as an evening without Viagra requisitioned my mouth, whilst other diners in my vicinity resourced the pleasure of choosing fare from a rather more substantial selection of European and Russian dishes or, staying strictly within the rigid framework of masculine convention, organised their eating campaign around a manly well-done steak or tactically mapped out a safer strategy by enlisting burgers and chips.

“Tell me,” a voice enquired, heavily tinged with exasperation, “do you ever eat a proper meal?” The gap from where the voice ensued was wrapped around the very thing that the adjective ‘proper’ qualified.

“Only when I do,” came my guarded reply, “but if I were wearing that suit of clothes –” I pointed my hand in such a way as to suggest the arrival of reinforcements, which, pursuant to my gesticulation, were at the bend of the stairs – “I’d do it 18th-century style. ” For that was my conclusion.

Trying it on at the Uniform Museum Restaurant Kaliningrad

Of all the garments arrayed that day in the Uniform Museum Restaurant (like many Russian names of restaurants, the translated version can be a bit of a mouthful), there was none among the myriad that recommended themselves more strongly than those that adorned the turn of the stairs, garments which, in their masterful cut and sparing no expense in the tailored art of procuring embellishment, were all that elegance could possibly wish for. And here we have reached a stage convenient in our encomium on the triumphs of a restaurant interior second only in bygone clothing to the renowned costumeries of Angels and Bermans’, where nothing can deter us longer from digressing into a proverb that will, I ardently promise you, return full circle in later paragraphs.

The proverb ‘Manners Maketh Man’ must surely, at the didactic level, a place where virtue and morality superintend its every attribute, be underwritten by the observation that the part played by sartorial elegance underscores the doctrine and, whenever elegance is commendable – and when feasibly can it not be? – attends to the spirit of that attainment that William of Wykeham most properly endorsed, his being the sort of opinion that one would expect from the Bishop of Winchester installed as such in the 14th century.

In today’s world, however, anywhere in that portion to which the conceit ‘developed’ can be pinned, clothes, and not just they alone, reflect our fall from grace; but the former in loss of style and finesse stands as our greatest reminder of the miserable depth to which relentlessly we are descending because visually clothes so boldly demonstrate how cattle-minded we have become.

Try to imagine, for example, how liberated you would feel if you caught yourself in the act of casting aside those ruddy awful, oh-so-ugly work-like pants hung with unsightly cargo pockets, or divesting yourself and your tortured image of that ‘Ee-mon!’ thuggish hoody, or burning those nasty cheap tracksuit bottoms, like those pitiful, sad, ill-advised and now quite droopy feminists did back in the 1960s, who were made to look so very daft by burning their bras in public; and you, having reclaimed yourself by shedding those awful clothes like the skin of the snake or the caterpillar, with an independence beyond your experience, attire yourself instead in such an elegant livery of bold exquisiteness as that depicted faithfully on the unassuming stairway wall of the Uniform Museum Restaurant. (See, I told you we’d get there in the end!)

UNIFORM MUSEUM RESTAURANT

… garments which, in their masterful cut and sparing no expense in the tailored art of procuring embellishment, were all that elegance could possibly wish for.

Imagine the dash you would cut, the Beau Brummell you would unfurl, and how, on a scale of 1 to 10, effectively transformed and influentially transformational, you and your image would become; better by far than any sex change, if not more controversial, the outcome of such a wardrobe shift would be marked with approbation, your own, of course, for yourself included.

Three ornate, embellished coats on display under studio lighting, with white wigs above them on mannequin heads above the rack. Some of the vintage clothes in the Uniform Museum Restaurant.

On the feasibility of this exercise I leave you to ponder thoughtfully, examining the 18th-century styles that hang on the bend of the stairs, as, thinking it proper between pints, I venture now to reconnoitre the restaurant’s upper quarters with a wish to observe the scope and nature of the uniforms it holds and to assess the ambience that dwells therein.

To me, that is to say, to my particular way of thinking, which, I most humbly own, is not the way of everyone’s or, to tell the truth, of anyone I’ve met, the restaurant’s extensive room upstairs is a low-lit, smoochy, mood-infusing, clubby kind of a place, whose snob-screened and comfortable encompassing cushioned booth-style seats make the prospect of assignations an almost mandatory ritual, whether in your own mind you consider yourself to be one of a kind with Leslie Phillips, that is to say, an old-school romantic, or are one half of a typical pair of timeless canny canoodlers.

Both the ground and first floors of the Uniform Museum Bar in Kaliningrad are bathed in a uniform dimly lit style, which brings out the best, I feel, in drinking and dining ambience if liking it darker is your thing, whilst allowing the spotlights to do what they do at their most effective, which is to highlight and illuminate the thematicising principle donated by the vintage attire.

It would not be based on empirical science should I venture the suggestion that the upper echelons of this most eccentric, most unusual bar and restaurant are more replete with uniforms than its contemporaneous downstairs cousin’s; possibly yes, possibly no, but whatever the final reckoning, the amount of such is prodigious and wants for nothing in great variety; moreover, the lower ceilings of the upstairs room and the lowered lighting framing the spot-lit clothes lend something familiar to its character, which, I would bet my best cravat on, is akin to a boutique feel, as though the venue in its entirety would not be out of place should it be lifted and transported back to the days when Carnaby Street in London was incontestably chic, that is, back to the 1960s, before London became a migrant warehouse (I did mean ‘warehouse’, didn’t I?). This is an image also bolstered by hat stands full of hats – what else! – and where military visors in abundance are contrasted here and there with civilian and vernacular headwear, which, like those in the shop I used to own, immediately tempt you to pick them up and plonk them on your head. I said so, did I not, in the opening sprint of this post?

Trying it on at the Uniform Museum Restaurant Kaliningrad

I was most surprised, and may I say not only a little impressed, to find displayed among these hats a traditional British coppers’ helmet, one of those Noddy-like pointy things, sometimes called the ‘custodian’, which sadly Britain’s ‘bobbies’ wear less and less these days because life on the streets has become too dangerous and nothing short of a reinforced bucket, painted regulatory police force blue, would do the job intended of it.

Museum display of a medieval suit of armor with a red-and-black shield and a dark British policeman's helmet on a wooden stand.

It is only the second of these helmets that I have witnessed in Kaliningrad; the other is known to me, as it was the one I carried from England, circa 2007. I gave it as a present to artist Victor Ryabinin, later to be told by him, with a grin lighting up his face, that of all the many and interesting items dotted around his studio, the one that intrigued his art students most was the British policeman’s helmet.

But let us now put our helmet away and make that significant move from anecdotal reverie to ponder on the nitty-gritty that makes a restaurant and a bar, and, where they still exist, a UK public house, the particular place you think it is, and go there via our intuition with a word or two on personality.

The selection process by which we nominate any one person for membership to our private club of liking and appreciation, an individual whom, from the moment of introduction, stands unambiguously out from the crowd, is one that sifts computer-style through numerous character attributes, sometimes instantaneously, at others with measured deliberation but certainly decisively, all but for the exception of those who are wanting in judge of character, before approval can be stamped. Yet, deeper qualities notwithstanding, the mostly initial yet often sustaining credentials by which these fellows gain admittance to the inner circle of ourselves are defined intuitively and subjectively by that all-appealing influence that goes by the name of personality.

You may ask, or if you won’t, I may ask it for you: what is there that makes one place more memorable than the next, assuming that nothing too bizarre or rather out of the ordinary happens to exert a disproportionate influence over recall and reflection, be such as they are thought good or bad? What is it that attracts us to one particular bar and restaurant to the full and obliging extent that with the first visit now completed, we vow to return and do? The perceived quality of beer and food, of course, plays a major part, but there is never not at least something persuasively more in addition, the absolute magic ingredient, unless you are a cheapskate whose only seduction is less to pay, and that extension to delight is synonymous with, or no different to, our reaction to personality.

Personality, when ascribed to objects other than strictly human, is typically, generically and often loosely defined by the substitution of atmosphere. We often do not say that a venue has personality when, in actual fact, we do, for personality is what we mean when we talk of a somewhere or something which, according to our sentiments, is endowed with attractive, positive qualities to which we are receptive and of which our senses firmly approve.

An example here in Kaliningrad would be if I were asked to judge which of the two, the London Pub or the subject of this post, the Uniform Museum Restaurant, tops the personality league. And the winner, ladies and gentlemen, but only by a narrow margin and perhaps because the building itself is old, is to pull no punches or wriggle from under the clinch and to honour honesty without reservation none other than the London Pub.

The reasons for this evaluation are beyond the scope of this current post, but a word or two in explanation should make the distinction clear enough, for what the Uniform Museum Restaurant surrenders in personality to its charismatic competitor, apart from and including an excellent range of beers and, I am told, a competent menu, it more than advances positively with a gimmick that stamps its mark not casually, nor sufficiently, but with a lasting indelibility, like the backstamp on a fine piece of Minton, except that in this case, on the ledger of your memory.

By building itself around the theme of vintage military clothes, it guarantees by power of novelty, uncontested as the restaurant is by any Kaliningrad equal, a retentive, singular character trait more than considerably capable of rescuing its reputation from run-of-the-mill obscurity. This leitmotif of archived military clothing, which, when it is shared with others, both by word of mouth and inevitably via the techie-grapevine, will encourage those that learn of it and feel they are missing out to hurry along there double quick to try on those lovely tunics and hats. They may also, whilst they are doing this, purchase food and drink, thereby making the circuit complete.

And when you acknowledge the unholy alliance forged between the ubiquitous smartphone camera and social media’s inducive drug-like fix, linking that manipulation to the irresistible urge to bedeck oneself with vintage clothes and to plonk on a vintage hat or two, which I did, mark my words, and with no less care for restraint than I appear to have for hypocrisy, then Wallah! Look no further! Your restaurant-bar has a winning formula.

Smiling man with a gray beard wearing a captain's hat in a dim room, standing beside vintage red and leopard-print sarmorial plaques with brass accents. It's Mick Hart in Kaliningrad at the Uniform Museum Restaurant

Of course, the litmus test for any bar or restaurant worth its weight in food and beer is, after having drunk and dined there, will you recall the holistic event as one of quality and with affection, and will you have the will, or even better, a great desire, to make yourself no stranger to the venue? If the answer to both is ‘yes,’ and recommendation by word of mouth asserts itself with no hesitation or obstructive second thought, then all the right boxes have been ticked. Apropos of which, I think we can let on here that the Uniform Museum Restaurant has all the vital boxes covered and has therefore lost little of that which otherwise could exert itself to impactful lasting detriment; its only concern, maybe, is that the presence of all those vintage clothes, should this review be appraised by moths, attract the opposite of the right clientele, the sort of clientele that any keeper of ancient textiles would rather do without. About which I am able to speak with no less of a lot of authority, having, as I undertook to mention in this wise post’s prologue, been once the proud and insufferable owner of a vintage clothes emporium. So, that is where we’re going to leave it now: trying them on, taking them off, and generally enjoying the food and beer at the Uniform Museum Restaurant, Gorkogo Street, Kaliningrad.

Uniform Museum Restaurant
150a Gorkogo St, Kaliningrad 236029 Russia

Tel: +7 963 350-73-09

Opening times
Monday to Thursday: 12pm to 12 midnight
Fri, Sat and Sunday: 12pm to 1am

Food – International Cuisine
German, European, Russian, Eastern European, Ukrainian

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

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

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

A racist-themed evening down at the local

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

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

[Posted in category Mick Hart’s Diary 2026]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job

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

“You’re not supposed to say that!”

“I know. It’s a bugger, isn’t it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Racists in the UK!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What did you say?!” she demanded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Woke Watch PC UK!

Woke Watch UK!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🎶🎶Things aint what they used to be 🎶🎶

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

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

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

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

Victor Ryabinin Artist: a man who continues to inspire

A scene from Otradnoye beach, January 2005

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

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

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

Victor Ryabinin Artist: a man who continues to inspire

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

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

Victor Ryabinin Artist: a man who continues to inspire

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

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

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

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

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

Victor Ryabinin: 17 December 1946-18 July 2019

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

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

A postcard featuring the former Albert Blankenstein Brewery, now Polessk Brewery in the Kaliningrad region.

Polessk Brewery: Revisited in the autumn of 2025

Restored breweries should brew and purvey craft beers. Polessk Brewery does.

7 July 2026 – Polessk Brewery: Revisited in the autumn of 2025

POLESSK BREWERY, formerly the Albert Blankenstein Brewery, founded in 1840, is no small building, so, not surprisingly, the renovation project on which I expatiated in a post entitled Restoring the Polessk Brewery (2021) is still ongoing. During autumn past, I took time out to revisit this splendid neo-Gothic monolith, whose social and economic significance and, more to the point, the nature of the products that it historically purveys – and here we are talking beer – conjoined with its architectural style, have everything going for them that appreciation could desire.

Prior encounters, of which I believe there were three, were either undertaken in summer, the height of the tourist season, or coincided with special events, so it felt rather odd but no less fascinating to venture to this exotic place in an out-of-season capacity when other mortals were busy elsewhere, doing what, I have no idea, when they could, like me, have been up to something not without validity, such as supporting their local brewery by toasting its venerable history with beer once again brewed on its premises.

A postcard featuring the former Albert Blankenstein Brewery, now Polessk Brewery in the Kaliningrad region.

The feature image shows the Albert Blankenstein Brewery reproduced in postcard format during its turn-of-the-20th-century heyday. Comparisons of this view taken from the front of the brewery can be made with the photographs taken by us of the restorative process as it appeared in 2021: see Restoring the Polessk Brewery.

It did not bother me a jot, on completing the flight of stairs and making an entrance into what is effectively the brewery’s main reception hall, that apart from Olga and me, the only other evident person was the young chap behind the bar. Ye who are acquainted with my predilections and lifelong habits will not need me to tell you that the motive for this reprisal, I am not ashamed to say, was to ascertain if the worthy project had remained true to its stated trajectory and was now, as in days of old, brewing and selling beer again, in which regard I am pleased to disclose I could not have been more delighted.

Albeit a little early in the day for a wise and sensible man like me to initiate imbibing, as there was no one else to do it for me, it would have been rude, as the saying goes, had I deferred for the sake of propriety an act that seemed unconditionally proper in contrast to the alternative, which would have been to observe misguidedly a churlish point of temperance. Besides, the day it was rather cold, so what could be more appropriate than warming it up with a chilled glass of beer?

  • The rustic interior of the Polessk Brewery with a curved glass display case, wooden barrels, and bundles of dried wheat on a planter.
  • Smiling man with gray hair and beard, wearing a navy jacket, sits at a wooden table with a beer mug in hand. It's Mick Hart, expatkaliningrad.com
  • Ornate wooden wall cabinet with an oval mirror; reflection shows a bearded man. It's Mick Hart from Kaliningrad!
  • Rustic indoor hall with wooden picnic tables, barrels, and warm hanging lights.
  • Vintage beer sign mounted on a wooden shelf in a rustic room; the sign shows a woman in a dirndl holding a beer and the German slogan 'Bier ist wie Urlaub im Glas'.
  • Rustic beer-brewing display with wooden barrels, pumpkins, burlap sacks, and a Cyrillic sign on a cutting board centerpiece, shelves with glassware in the background
  • Vintage metal bottle carrier with grid compartments, a few green bottles inside, resting on a wooden barrel in a rustic room.
  • Two decorative ceramic bottles with flip-top stoppers and wicker handles, featuring old-fashioned folk-art scenes on a wooden table.
  • Rustic beer tasting room in Polessk Brewery with wooden barrels, long picnic tables, and info boards along whitewashed walls.

Polessk Brewery: Revisited in the autumn of 2025

As there was no one to compete with, which meant that we had the unbridled run of the place, there was ample space and opportunity for getting reacquainted with this fine old building’s history, aided and abetted to no unexceptional extent by its superb exhibition graphics and many excellent didactic panels, and all the while enjoying in their various appointed places scattered memorabilia of assorted brewing shapes and kinds, all of which, in their obsolescence, were glorious and engaging. The fact that this educational as well as recreational tour can be undertaken, as it should, whilst indulging in the very product on which the 19th-century brewing plant had built its reputation enhances and consolidates the overall experience

Indeed, whilst indulging in absorption, I was so absorbed by industrial history that I bought two litre bottles of the end result to take away for further contemplation, as there was little doubt in my mind to instigate the contrary that I would not give them my best attention later that evening at home. And on this score, I could hardly have been more accurate than if history yearned to prove to me that it does indeed repeat itself, as we are frequently led to believe it does by those who know better than you and I. An exotic doctrine, to be sure! But perfectly acceptable if the space or place prescribed by history to which we must return is one we are ready to vouch for and one that is worth revisiting, and here we need to introduce that unequivocal asseveration that the Polessk Brewery has worked so hard for and which, therefore, it so richly deserves. Praise where praise is due: Raise your glasses, ladies and gentlemen; let’s drink to the brewery’s continued success!

Where it is and how to get to it

The Polessk Brewery
Rabochaya Ulitsa, 3, Polessk, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, 238630

Tel: +7 921 262-60-28

Location: 31 miles (50km) away from Kaliningrad

Travel time and cost by taxi: approximately 45 minutes from Kaliningrad; fare approximately £20 (2,062 roubles)

Travel time by bus 152: approximately 1.5 hours from Kaliningrad; fare from £2.57 (265 roubles)

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

Further reading:

Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open The Polish Revision Centre

Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?

Rummaging in the Polish Revision Centre

Revised 30 June 2026 | First published 16 November 2024 ~Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?

Update: Since first writing this post and revising it, I have passed through the Poland-Kaliningrad borders a number of times. Much has remained the same, except on the last occasion I travelled, the Polish were no longer hopping on the bus and taking photographs of each and every person with a hand-held camera. However, it is still necessary to have your mugshot scanned when you produce your documents at border control.

The other change, again at the Polish border, is that both travelling into and out of Kaliningrad, we were made to cart our luggage into the border control office and have that scanned, too. This is a new one, as border security used to check the baggage randomly by peeping into the hold underneath the bus.

Having your baggage scanned is no great shakes, as long as you haven’t got a bootlegging and tobacco-import fetish, as the Polish are hot on the alcohol and fags trail. However, the building into which you have to traipse to have your credentials and yourself gawped at is up a short, but rather steep, flight of steps, so stand by to struggle and curse as you drag your heavy luggage, like the Grand Old Duke of York, up to the scanner and down again. There are some who say that borders border on insanity and others who would reply, “Where would we be without them!” I’m saying nothing; just my rank and serial number.

The answer to the question is ‘yes’. Yes, it is possible to access Kaliningrad via the Polish-Kaliningrad border and vice versa. The only caveat is that before you go, stock up on patience.

In the not-too-distant past, the bus from Kaliningrad going to Gdansk was held up at the Polish border for as long as it took to miss a flight at Gdansk – seven hours, in fact. Whilst this particular case may be the exception to the rule, lengthy delays are not, and in response to this and other inconveniences generally assumed unnecessary, and some infer deliberately obstructive, a petition has been launched, which you, dear reader, can access here. Against the intolerable conditions on the Russian-Polish border (Kaliningrad)! {Note: to read this in English, you will need to click on ‘Translate’ and change the language from German.}

Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?

Not all border crossings are as bad as the last one you experienced, but some can sometimes be worse, and some can be worse but interesting. For example, take a crossing I made in 2024.

We cleared the formalities at the Russian border without let or hindrance and trundled off with great expectations, fifteen of us in all, onto Polish territory.

There were no other vehicles in transit, only our bus, and the usual procedures went smoothly enough. We were gawped at, our credentials were examined, we had our mugshots taken (again!) and, after 30 minutes, we were back on the bus.

We took our seats, brum, brum (that’s the sound of the bus starting up), and off we merrily went.

Traditionally, it is at this point of the journey when, with the inquisition over, the invisible stays shared by all release themselves collectively, letting relaxation spill palpably out in a sigh-giving rush of relief. The advent of this liberation is customarily celebrated by proper professional travellers in possession of proper professional travelling cases with a dignified mass unzipping, whilst those of us who own neither dignified travelling cases nor commendable travelling standards have to be content with rustling through our carrier bags. The end result is the same, however. Having given stress the elbow, it’s time for comfort eating.

Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open?

I had just begun to tuck into my penultimate hummus and tomato sandwich when, ay up, mother! What’s going on? Instead of hitting the open road, our bus was being syphoned off into a fenced and gated compound.  

“Ay up?” I thought again. Well, you would think that, wouldn’t you.

I cannot say for certain whether it was my fault or not. Perhaps I want to believe it was for the sake of an impudent ego. But the question kept repeating itself: were we locked inside this compound, sitting motionless inside our bus in front of this big, this bland, this ominous, this nondescript and bureaucratic building because of something I had said?

When the clam-faced female within the Polish border office had fired the question at me, “Cigarettes and alcohol?”, my facetious reply had been, “Yes please?” And then when she did not get the joke (what joke exactly would that be?) and barked the question again, I had waved it away with an Englishness, simpering yet polite, which Leslie Phillips would have been proud of, but possibly she was not.

Alcohol and tobacco. Mick Hart declares nothing at the Russian-Polish border

Cigarettes? Alcohol? Never touch the stuff!!

Whoever was or was not to blame, there we sat on the bus, and we sat there for a bad 10 minutes, us and this dull, brick, windowless building, facing each other down, one with complete contempt, the other suggesting complete containment.

Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?

There was something about our situation and the building that confronted us that nudged my idling imagination into the realms of the deep mischievous. That sign at the compound’s entrance, did it really say ‘Work sets you free’? I am glad to say it didn’t. But what exactly did it mean, this reference to a ‘Revision Centre’?

The bland building was giving nothing away. Indeed, there is not much more to say about its external aspect, except that high upon the roof it had a prominent funnel-shaped air vent.

I could not see anything clearly, as the sun was in my eyes, but I am almost willing to swear on anything other than a stack of beer bottles that for one second I saw, or bore the conviction that I saw, poised at the mouth of the air vent, the shadows of two men. They were crouching down at the sides of the vent, leaning in towards it, and each had something in their hands, something that looked like canisters. I had just begun to focus on the containers’ labels when a shard of light leaping out of the sun temporarily blinded me. Through the eclipsing halo that ensued, and with the bus now moving in reverse and distorting my perspective, the words on the label were reduced to a blur, and all that I could make of them was a capital ‘Z’ at one end and a capital ‘B’ at the other.

How to Get to Kaliningrad from UK – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Our bus had not entered the building by the floor-to-apex roller door in front of which we had initially parked. It had taxied around to the back of the building, where it slowly disappeared through a similar portal at that end. Creeping at a snail’s pace, it inched its way gradually in, permitting me to regard at will the character of the chamber into which we were being swallowed. We were saying goodbye to the outside world, but one hoped it was temporarily.

We were passing into an alley, just the right width for the size of the bus. To the left of us was a platform, solid, broad and deep, not unlike one you would loiter upon whilst waiting for a train. It was not the height of the vehicle’s windows but fell just a little below it.

At the back of this platform at regular intervals were two or three large doors. They were big doors, metal doors, with handles of such prodigious proportions that the only way to open them would surely be to enlist the brawn of two thick Polish men with arms that did not fit. In a corner close by the doors stood a bag that seemed familiar. It looked like one I had seen before on the lorry of KG Smith & Son, Northamptonshire’s premiere coal merchants.

Until now the bus had been trickling forward, but it suddenly drew to a shuddering halt. The driver got up from his seat, made an announcement I did not catch and opened the doors of the vehicle. Before you could say Polish sausage, especially before you could say it in Polish, a man in paramilitary uniform had bounded up the steps and, standing at the front of the bus, all officious-like ~ did I hear someone say ‘full of piss and importance’? ~ was presumably ordering us all to get off. Simultaneously, a larger man armed with a big black dog had stationed himself strategically next to the door at the side of the bus, from which the young and old, singles and couples, some with children, some without, two or three middle-aged gents and a peculiar sort of Englishman with a grey and straggly beard were struggling to alight, laden down as they uncomfortably were with their assortment of bags and chattels.

The platform to which this innocuous group had descended was considerably narrower than that on the opposite side. Folk were bumping into each other as, ‘Roust! Roust! Schnell! Schnell!’, they were ordered to take their travelling bags from the hold beneath the bus.

Nobody seemed quite to know what it was that was expected of them. A big, as in overweight, man, looking not unlike Hermann Göring – perhaps it was his time-travelled brother – had already started rummaging through one of the passenger’s bags. He had the bag perched on a table placed at the side of the wall and was going through the contents as if he was pulling the entrails out of a late-for-Christmas turkey. He looked much more like a TV villain or an officer from the Guesswho than a man who ought to be showing respect to the public he was frisking. 

Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open. Yes, but watch out for the Polish caveman!

Hermann’s brother had a very loud voice, which he used to good effect. Stopping in mid-rummage, with his hands inside some lady’s lingerie, he bellowed, “Form a queue!” at the meek, the innocent and the inoffensive, over whom he lauded ultimate power and whose only crime today was that they wanted to get from A to B. Obediently, one by one, they fell silently into line.

During this demonstration of ‘I’m a man in a uniform, so you’d better do as I say!’, two other guards had joined the jamboree: a flint-eyed woman in a boiler suit spoilt only by its insignia and one of those strutting cockerel types: ‘I’ve got tattoos on my neck, and I’ve come to throw my weight about’.  

And now the carnival commenced in earnest: The man who had the sniffer dog was sniffing; the cockerel was in and out of the bus as if someone had knocked him off his perch. The flint-eyed thing was glaring. ‘Look at those eyes! Those eyes! Those eyes!’; and  the mountain man with a skinhead haircut who went by the name of Hermann’s Brother was rifling through one’s personals as if he were mixing cement.

His brawny arms were in there, his paddle hands a-swirling. He had obviously learnt his cultured trade from washing his pants in a tub.

Fortunately for me, no such ignominy would besmirch my person. I was, as they say, travelling light. I only had a carrier bag, in which I had placed my laptop and the sad remains of a pack-up meal prepared for me by my wife. 

Most of what had been packed for me, I had already scoffed. All that remained was a lonely sandwich, lolling half in and half out of one of those flimsy, thin plastic boxes routinely used in supermarkets for the display and sale of cakes.

Although I was not in the least bit hungry, having eaten just minutes before, the thought of the Polish strangler rinsing his mitts about my sandwich spurred me into action. Better to eat the sandwich now than have it used like a paper towel hanging next to the gents’ urinals. The problem was that Fatty Arms was getting through those bags like Joe Stink from the Secret Service, and the combination of hummus and bread not being the easiest thing to masticate resulted in a situation of alarming prematurity, an unfortunate occurrence whenever it chooses to strike and one not entirely limited to such incidental matters as love, proposals, life and death but also, or so it would seem, during the crucial business of crossing borders.

Thus, when the big you-know-what turned to me and barked, “Cigarettes? Alcohol?”, it was an effort of no small magnitude for me to reply, “Yes please.”

He glared at me contemptuously – well, can you blame him, really? – and pulling his girt big shoulders back in a show of manly authority (he had done the same with the 80-year-old standing frail and tired in front of me), said slowly and precisely, “We will wait until you have stopped eating, then you and I will talk!”

“Oh, really, what about?” I spluttered, choking on my sandwich. “The weather? Football? Religion? Politics? ~ Er, no, anything but politics.” 

The sandwich safely swallowed, he sang the refrain again: “Cigarettes?” and “Alcohol?”

Do you know what I think? I think that he was asking me whether I had the aforenamed items concealed about my person or stashed inside my laptop. When I answered in the negative, first he looked suspicious, then profoundly disappointed.

I took a swig of mineral water. He probably thought the alcohol was hidden in that bottle ~ as if! ~ and that I had hurriedly eaten the illicit cigarettes between two slices of bread. Whatever it was he didn’t know, and I think it was a lot, he was not a happy man, which is hardly surprising really, looking and acting the way he did. But he wasn’t finished yet.

Furtively, he glanced down, looking at my little one – at the little bag that I was carrying – and a tiny ray of hope shone briefly through his cold pork pies, though it was tinged with disbelief by the answer he anticipated but did not want to hear.

“No big baggage?” he asked.

I could, of course, have just said ‘no’, thus putting him out of his misery, but Bernard Manning answered for me, “Just the wife,” said Bernard, “and she’s at home at present.”

Hermann Rummage pursed his lips, shuffled, scowled and then dismissed me. The interrogation over, I climbed back onto the bus.

Ten minutes after my ascension and with no contraband having been found, we were out on the open road again, steaming towards Gdansk: the young and the old, singles and couples – some with children, some without – two or three middle-aged gents and a peculiar sort of Englishman with a grey and straggly beard.

Those lovely chaps at the Polish border, I mused, stood a greater chance of finding a rational thought in a liberal’s head than illicit fags and booze on the God-fearing lot inside this bus, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it. Who of us can say with any degree of certainty what goes on in the cranky minds of liberals?

Yet the trees were green, the sky was blue, and every cloud has a silver lining: after all, we hadn’t been gassed, just inconvenienced and harassed. 

It was just another sourpuss day at Checkpoint Proper Charlie.

How to Get to Kaliningrad from UK – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Image attributions
Outline of a building: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Outline-vector-of-a-house/3503.html
Moonshiner: https://loc.getarchive.net/media/effects
Caveman statue: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/free-download.php?image=caveman-statue&id=161215
Hearts: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Hearts-for-Mom/8942.html

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

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

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

Summery Scenes in Kaliningrad and its region 2024-2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Celebrating summer’s divine attributes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Polessk in Winter is Rather More Than a Frosty Atmosphere

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

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

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

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

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

Polessk and thereabouts

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

Polessk in Winter

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

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

Eagle Bridge

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

Curonian Lagoon, Frozen

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

On your bike! It’s the Phantom Cyclist!

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

The Ponart Brewery Beer Shop

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

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

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

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