Published: 21 August 2022 ~ Café Seagull by the Lake Kaliningrad is hard to beat!
As summer peters out, it’s time to take every opportunity available to sit outside and enjoy a beer. The problem in Kaliningrad is that everybody appears to be doing just that. Consequently, bars, restaurants and cafés with outside seating areas are heavily subscribed to. It is always refreshing, therefore, when supply is overstretched by demand, to discover something new.
Recently, we discovered Кафе Чайка у озера (Café Seagull by the Lake). The café’s terrace is small, but, as English estate agents like to say when advertising properties, it is ‘well-appointed’. The terrace and the restaurant windows look out over Kaliningrad’s (Königsberg’s) Upper Pond, which was created in 1270 by the knights of the Teutonic Order as a repository for fish farming. Today, fishermen sit patiently by the water’s edge hoping to get a bite, but they share the recreational space with non-fishing Kaliningrad citizens and visitors to the city for whom the pond, paths and parkland surrounding it are a convenient natural habitat for walking, cycling or simply relaxing.
Mick Hart enjoys a moment of peace and sobriety outside Café Seagull before guests and beer arrives
Café Seagull is an excellent place for simply relaxing; thus, if you are walking or cycling around the pond you could always make it your destination or a halfway house on your journey. On the afternoon that I visited, I was doing neither. I had purposefully gone there with my wife’s family to enjoy the view from somewhere new, have a ‘pint’ and a bite to eat. I was not disappointed ~ nobody was. The menu is varied, interesting and offers something for every taste, even strange vegetarian tastes like mine. The beer, which is a tad higher in price than I would normally want to pay, was nevertheless just what the doctor ordered, or probably wouldn’t, although my UK doctor might because he likes a beer or two as, come to think of it, does my gastroenterologist in Kaliningrad. Reassured by this twin prescription, I could sense that the afternoon had all the makings of a guilt-free one. Today’s choice, therefore, was Maisel’s Weisse, a German wheat beer with plenty of flavour, more so and especially if you opt, as I did on this occasion, for the brew’s unfiltered version.
Café Seagull by the Lake Kaliningrad
Inside, the café is bright, airy, unpretentious and welcoming and, as I have said (you were listening, weren’t you?), offers a pleasant view of the Upper Pond from an elevated advantage.
Königsberg’s cobbles and Upper Pond from the terrace of the Seagull by the Lake Café in Kaliningrad
Two large, framed prints on the walls, one of a cabbage and the other a rear view of a rather well-built seated lady, invite speculation as to what the symbolic connection might be, but are too thought-provoking to cogitate on at length when all you want to do is relax and sip your Maisel’s Weisse.
Fortunately, that’s all there is to puzzle over. The cuisine, both in terms of presentation and taste, received top marks and the service could not be faulted. The young staff are helpful, polite, attentive and, most importantly, resoundingly cheerful. They are a credit to the restaurant and thus a valuable asset.
If my posts on bars, restaurants and cafés in Kaliningrad included a rating system, it would be difficult, if not impossible, not to give Café Seagull 10 out of 10. What we can say with impunity is that Café Seagull by the Lake is highly recommended and a venue you should bookmark under ‘I must definitely visit’.😊
Essential details:
Café Seagull by the Lake (Кафе Чайка у озера) Verkhneozernaya, 16A Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad region, Russia 236008
Tel: +7 921 711 71 80
Opening times Seven days a week: 0800 to 2200 (8am to 10pm)
Mick Hart reviews the London Pub (Pub London) Kaliningrad
Published: 14 August 2022 ~ London Pub Kaliningrad Best Pub not in London
My first encounter with the London Pub, or Pub London as it is known in Kaliningrad (note the crafty way the Russian language confuses us!), took place in the summer of 2015. Let me say from the outset that I was not attracted to it just because I used to live in London and it calls itself the London Pub.
Thankfully, whenever I visit a foreign country the need to hotfoot-it to the nearest British themed bar to cry wistfully into my beer in demonstrative affection for the native land I have left behind ~ even though I may only have left it yesterday ~ is a failing I have yet to cultivate, and one I suspect may forever remain a singularly Irish phenomenon. For wherever you go in the world, you can always be sure to find, usually when you least expect or want to, shamrock, porter and diddley dee.
No, what appealed to me about the London Pub, forgoing for the moment the historic building in which it is housed, was the layout, interior décor and the atmosphere bestowed by both; a combination which was “a tad unfortunate” as this entry in my diary, dated 8 March 2020, shows: “upon our arrival [at the London Pub] we found that it had undergone a complete and startling refit.”
Incidentally, on that day, which would be the last day I would drink at the London Pub until the ‘all-clear sirens’ sounded on the two-year coronavirus blitz, we got our first glimpse of the new-look world. For it was in the London Pub that we were introduced to what was destined to become that global, or rather globalist, absurd coronavirous fashion accessory, the never proven to be effective but still mandatory mask.
The London Pub staff were wearing their new regulation uniforms ~ black waistcoats, bow ties and black bowler hats (and other things, I hasten to add) ~ which were excellent in themselves as they suited the London Pub ethos ~ but teamed with coronavirus muzzles?! Laugh, of course we did, little knowing at the time that this sinister remake of Clockwork Orange was a prelude to our future.
Right>>: London pub staff kindly poses for our camera. This photo taken in May 2022, post-coronavirus mask era >
When I say our future, I mean to imply the world in general, as Olga and I only ever wore masks in situations where we had no choice, such as when travelling on public transport or shopping in the supermarket. As soon as choice resumed, off the silly masks came.
We returned to the London Pub in May this year (2022), which is when the photographs used in this post were taken. The observations, however, have been borrowed from my diary, written on the day when we discovered that the London Pub had been dramatically refurbished, which was 8 March 2020.
Above: Mick Hart enjoying a ‘hair of the dog’ at the London Pub, circa summer 2015
The London Pub that is not in London
The ground floor of Kaliningrad’s London Pub, accessed as it is by a flight of steps, is effectively an elevation above street level. It consists of a large room divided in two by a crook-shaped bar, which is a copy, albeit an inaccurate one, of the ubiquitous horseshoe bar with which many a London Victorian pub is typified.
To the right of the bar, at the point where the loop curves, the narrower portion of the room no longer imitates the British convention of pubs divided into two social halves, the ‘public’ and the ‘lounge’, where the public bar was often more basic in fixtures, fittings and furnishings and the lounge, as the name implies, more comfortable and upmarket, attracting, in terms of class taxonomy, a better clientele. The old London pub was never exactly this, but I think it is fair to say that one side of the room, the narrow side, was less cushion-filled, textile based and given to reclining in than its more spacious counterpart.
Before the refit, the bar area was furnished with an assortment of tables, each seating between four to six people, some of which were separated if only to a symbolic degree by the inclusion of chest-high snob screens. The dominant colour, not just of the bar area but the entire pub, had been mid-blue; in keeping I suppose with the contemporary trend in British pubs for light and pastel painted interiors
Above: London Pub bar-side, circa summer 2015 Below: London Pub as it is today (photos: May 2022)
To justify the London Pub’s eponymous connection with England, stenciled references to traditional English idioms, well-known sayings such as ‘My cup of tea’ and the ‘Apple of my eye’, guested on the beams and walls together with quotes from British literary figures, men of letters and arcane wit, such as the famous and equally infamous Oscar Wilde with his ‘Moderation in all things, including moderation’.
London Pub Kaliningrad
From the looks of things, it appeared that whoever masterminded the pub refurbishment had borrowed from Oscar’s irony, since no moderation was apparent neither in the extent nor dramatic character of the changes.
Gone are the high stools in the alcoves, the circular tables and padded bench seats. The minimalist wall décor and the traditional British slogans have also been axed, substituted by an enormous profusion of curios, collectables, memorabilia, vintage and retro items of an exceedingly English nature. They proliferate on walls where no expense or imagination has been spared in the interest of procuring that tatty-torn, disheveled look which aspiring interior designers and Sunday-magazine supplement editors like to call ‘distressed’.
I wrote about distressed décor in my piece on the Georgian bar Kavkaz but the effect therein is far more restrained than it is in the London Pub.
The London Pub employs the same ageing technique of peeling wallpaper and fading paint. Like Kavkaz it seeks to create the impression, and succeeds, that fragments of old wallpaper and patches of former paint schemes are seeping through more recent layers, but the mat green and dull orange hues favoured by the London Pub are hauntingly subtle and a few extra trowels worth of rough-surfaced rendering spattered with differing tones conveys an authenticity that enticingly raises the question why if neglect is so deucedly comfortable should we ever go out of our way to improve on its virtue?
Above: How to make a wall distressed and then scatter it with memorabilia
The alcove to the customers’ right of the bar has been taken a step further into the world of designer neglect by plastering various parts of it with three or four scraps of newspaper, all belonging to bygone eras and which, by their torn, wanting and dog-eared state, pass as having been stuck to the wall for years rather than the few weeks it has taken to present them.
On top of this imaginative scheme of fading colours and random pages torn from British newspapers (By the way, The Three Kings pub in London’s Clerkenwell Green also favours newsprint walls.) no restraint has been exercised in turning back the clock to earlier times in Britain: framed prints of 18th century classic architecture, silk cigarette cards, film advertisements, decorative wall plates, pictures of celebrities, brassware, hunting horns and you name it and you’ll probably find it have found a home on the London Pub’s walls.
On the pier between the windows behind me hung a vintage English naval jacket with corresponding visor hat next to a British army officer’s cap and dress jacket. Other uniform combinations of a British military nature adorn the walls on the opposite side of the room; all familiar items to us, as many passed through our hands whilst running our vintage and antique shop in England.
Above: Vintage British military uniforms adorning the ‘aged’ walls of the London Pub
Each of the London Pub’s window piers have been fitted with a shelf enabling all manner of collectable items shipped to Russia from England to accumulate ‘naturally’ in a perfectly haphazard way. Neither my memory nor my imagination struggled with this concept, as the clutter and its variegation closely resembled a place I once called home, where junk and I co-existed in harmonic correlation.
Some of the London Pub’s shelves have become resting places for old books, diverse in topic but indefatigably English by origin, their covers turned to face the room for all the world to see. For example, behind me there was a book on the Royal Navy and at the other end of the same shelf one about Queen Elizabeth II (Gawd bless ‘er!). On other shelves nearby there was a book on England’s Home Guard (WWII) and a second on the Royal Navy but harking back to a different era. Above these books hang two ancient tennis rackets both constructed of good honest wood ~ none of your carbon-fibre nonsense here! ~ obsolete in themselves but appearing even more archaic slotted inside their square wooden braces.
Above: Clutter against its natural backdrop
Looking back from the bar towards the entrance of the London Pub it struck me that something rather exciting, even magical, had happened since I last drank here. The door surround had turned into a Tudor-Bethan fantasy. Thick, curved oak pilasters ~ or so we are led to believe ~ stepped cornices profusely carved and scrolled, rise above an elaborate entablature to an impressive second tier containing a grand, baroque, armorial crest, which speaks to us in medieval tones of the dynastic power of barons and earls, whilst a couple of coal buckets either side of the uprights speak in brass of a giant fireplace. Whatever you want it to be, it is only disappointing when exiting under its lordly lintel, the fantasy dissolves and you are back on the streets of the 21st century. And yet it could be worse, much worse, for at least the 21st-century streets on the other side of the door are not the ones that the Pub, if it was in London, would put you out on ~ streets that you walk in fear and at your peril! But you should have stayed for another pint, so it jolly well serves you right!
Above: The coal buckets on either side imply exiting into the real world via the fireplace
In the old London, the London Pub before the refit, we would have been sitting on plain, high-backed bar stools. Now, we were sitting on not-so-plain new-old bar stools, in other words stools antique in appearance but not so antique in age. At first glance, every other glance and a prolonged unfaltering stare, these ‘prop you up at the bar’ devices have more about them than just a touch of Louis. They have near heart-shaped backs and deep blue silver-trimmed frames. They incorporate a classical shell motif. Their front legs are sweeping sabres; their back legs pad-feet cabrioles. They are, of course, like the fireplace door, strictly fantasy pieces.
The bar top, which was rather plain before the refit, is now a satin polished light wood with a feature-distinctive grain. The choice of seats, either open armchairs or rectangular tubs, has been rescinded, replaced with the accent on uniformity. The new kids on the block are back-to-back button-down leather-look seats capable of accommodating six people comfortably around rectangular tables.
London Pub Kaliningrad refurbishment
The opposite side of the pub has also undergone a startling transformation. Gone is the design concept of no two seats or tables the same, and out with the low (far too low for comfort) chairs, which either put your knees around your ears or rested your chin on the table ~ an anomaly in restaurant seating that may by its regular recurrence be construed as peculiarly Russian. Gone also are the open-backed sofas sprinkled with various cushions that started off as comfy but at some point during the evening slid quietly and unreasonably away, off out through the latticework backs. In their place the same pitch-black, button-backed vinyl seats lining the walls and sitting at right angles to the windows in the ‘bar’ march along the room like two brigades of German stormtroopers. Whilst these seats might work in the smaller area as space-saving maximisers, they do not work for me in the larger portion of the room. They are much too regimented and just too much. It is hard to imagine any true London pub trying to get away with this, although put such seats in an American diner and Bob’s your uncle and Earl’s your aunt, no question!
Above: Seats very plush but also very regimented. However, also very comfortable
As I mentioned in my piece on the Kavkaz Restaurant and in my article Kaliningrad Art Exhibition, lighting is everything. The old London Pub could not be faulted in this respect and neither can its newer namesake.
Lighting in the London Pub Kaliningrad
About an hour after we had taken our seats at the bar, because every other seat was reserved (more about that at the end of this article), the lights went down a notch causing everything around us to turn seductively atmospheric. I had already noted that in the bar area a series of ceiling-recessed spotlights shone down on the mosaic floor, forming round circles of slowly changing colours. These had worked well when the lighting was up, but seen in the muted half-light are really quite spectacular.
The wall lighting bar side is augmented by long-reach Anglepoise lamps bolted in series along the wall. As my photos taken in 2015 reveal, similar lamps existed in the London Pub’s previous life, but they have multiplied since then and the poles on which they are mounted allow in addition to the angling of the shade a retraction or extension option. Smaller lamps of a similar type have the practical advantage of directing the light on the walls to illuminate the wornout theme and the eclectic items that live there. Taken together in sequence, the lamps add a touch of steampunk to the London Pub’s unique aesthetic.
Staying with lighting, in the old London, there had been a hanging structure, a sort of raft framework suspended from the ceiling on which lights were attached and sundry knick-knacks supported. This feature has been retained but cased inside a decorative unit, its segments of coloured glass echoing the stained-glass mosaics popularised in Victorian pubs. The glass work is predominantly green, profusely decorated with stylised floral motifs and geometrical patterns in pink and blue. The dimmed light shining through the casework receives a second tonal effect, a lightly suffusive overlay. The mood-conditioning aura that this creates is repeated in the curved translucent border that runs around the wall’s perimeter at the point where wall and ceiling meet. It is a continual convex band of Tiffany-patterned, luminous coving, which is subtle and highly effective.
Above: Uniforms, angled lamps and an illuminated coving screen of exotic abstracts
The London Pub’s lighting mix is such a fabulous orchestration that it is difficult, virtually inexcusable, to single out a centrepiece, but should I ever be pushed to do so I would probably opt for the pendant lights that float around the bar and dangle from the ceiling like so many gossamer Chinese lanterns. Large, floaty, bell-shaped silken balloons that would not be out of place in Alice’s Wonderland, these extraordinary, extravagant lamp shades are infinitely more fascinating than the screen of your mobile phone and make excellent, in every sense, dreamy light diffusers.
Above: Forget about the telly! Look at those delicious lanterns!
I liked the old London Pub, but I did not like it any better or any worse than the new one. Admittedly, before embarking on what must have constituted a not inexpensive design programme, the proprietor of the London Pub could have consulted the idiom ‘If it ‘aint broke don’t fix it’, but had this been the case we would have been deprived of the current iteration and forgone the concept of culture-linked vintage as a versatile, and if I may be so bold as to say not entirely conventional, idiomatic design approach.
There is no doubt in my mind that refraining from fixing unbroken things should have been the lesson taught to those corporate young men in suits employed by Britain’s breweries, who shoulder much of the blame for vanadalising and continuing to vandalise British pub interiors, showing scant regard for history and even less appreciation for atmosphere and taste.
Have you booked?
If I have one criticism of the London Pub ~ and to be fair, this is something that you come across in various Kaliningrad drinking establishments ~ it is the ‘all the tables are reserved’ trick.
Our visit to the London Pub in 2019, the day when I wrote the notes for this post, had been the third time we had stopped for a drink there in as many weeks, and each time we had been turned away as we had not reserved a table. On that occasion we were allowed to drink at the bar, although had we not explicitly asked to do so, we would have been asked to leave.
Above: It’s the only way they’d let me stay. I hadn’t booked a table.
We sat and drank in the London pub for over an hour, during which time five tables in the bar area became vacant and three of the reserved tables remained unoccupied. Being told to leave when you have not reserved a table, seems to me bad business sense. Surely, if a table is reserved for, let’s say 9pm, and someone without a reservation comes into the pub at 8pm, would it not make sense to permit paying customers to use that table for the duration that it is empty?
The psychology behind repeatedly turning people away who have not booked in advance might be that they will book in future and, if they have taken the trouble to book, will prolong their patronage throughout the evening.
If so, then this is a fallacy. Turning customers away results in resentment not patronage, and I can think of no pub in London that would entertain the notion. I am not suggesting that the London Pub or any other drinking/eating establishment in Kaliningrad try to emulate the ‘stack ‘em high treat them cheap’ model adopted in UK city pubs, pampering the customer never hurt anyone, but it is advisable to remember that modern-day Kaliningrad hosts an awful lot of competition, which is growing all the time, and that customer loyalty is predicated not only on atmosphere and commendable service but also reliability. Not everyone wants to plan ahead, and regular casual trade, ignored, deterred, is money lost to somebody else’s bar till and customer loyalty possibly lost forever.
Here endeth the lesson.
Having got that off my chest, I can say without fear of contradicting myself that the London Pub continues to be one of the most atmospheric, ingeniously designed, relaxing drinking and eating establishments that anyone could wish for. In fact, I am prepared to go so far as to say that any guide to Kaliningrad’s bars that does not include the London Pub in its ‘best of’ top-10 line-up either does not know his quality from his dross, is mathematically challenged or both. It really is that simple.
✔ The London Pub, probably the best London pub not to be found in London!
The London Pub in Kaliningrad, Russia, is a unique and charismatic venue vying for top place in Kaliningrad’s bar, restaurant and entertainment scene. It bills itself as a ‘real English pub’, and I have to admit it comes very close. Boasting a choice of 35 draft beers, if you can’t find something to suit your palate at the London Pub then you should urgently switch to drinking something else. As with the interior décor, ambience and beer selection, the menu is varied, surprising and reputedly tasty. Something that I have not touched upon in my review is that lurking below the London Pub there are two extremely atmospheric late-night/early morning music clubs called, respectively, the ‘City Jazz’ and ‘Piano Bar’. I can reveal that I have frequented both, but since they are endowed with their own distinctive ambience, they deserve to be treated separately from the assessment of the public bar and restaurant. Hopefully, we will get together soon and chat about them at our leisure.
Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)
Published: 5 August 2022 ~ Cesky Kabancek Beer in Kaliningrad
Article 21: Cesky Kabancek (Czech Boar)
Before we start, take a look at the photograph that follows.
I know what you’re thinking. Well, that’s a rum way to introduce a post that purports to be a beer review. But what do you see on the table, apart from that lovely old biscuit tin from England? You see a bar of chocolate, two sachets of meaty cat food, two packets of crunchy cat biscuits, a 1000 rouble note and a pile of medications. My wife, olga, left these for me before setting off for a weekend at the dacha, knowing that in her absence I would be sedulously embarking upon another rigorous research project into the variegated world of beer tastes and qualities. The contents of the table represent a weekend’s survival kit. Not that I was about to sit down with a beer and two plates of cat’s grub. I’m odd like this: I much prefer peanuts, olives and cheese myself, but the moggy needs his food as much as I need my beer. He also likes the odd piece of chocolate. He’s a most extraordinary cat: a ginger version of Tomcat Murr.
The 1000 rouble note would eventually be exchanged for a beer from the local supermarket, along with carefully selected not-for-cats snacks and as for the Gaviscon and Omeprazole, well I should think they are self-explanatory.
The beer that was given to me in exchange for that piece of paper with the figure 1000 printed across it, comes wrapped in a brown paper bag. The bottle within the bag has no commercial label, just one describing the contents, where the beer is made, who it is who makes it and other official trading stuff. All this is written on a small, plain label and in print the size of a pin head, so once the bottle is out of the bag, without the aid of a microscope, you won’t know what you’re drinking.
The bag says it all, however, and in a rather cute and attractive way.
Working purely from presentation, initially I could not make up my mind whether this beer fitted comfortably into my ‘bog standard beers from supermarkets’ category or whether it should be included in a new series on which I am currently ‘working’ (ah, hem) titled craft and speciality beers.
Eventually, and rapidly, pressured by the desire to sup not think, I decided to go ahead and review it within the beers purveyed through supermarkets’ category, justifying my verdict on the grounds that since it was bought in such an establishment who could argue otherwise.
However, not wanting to expose myself for the guzzler that I am, before whipping the top off and splashing the beer eagerly into my glass, I took a calculated moment to observe the packaging ~ sort of thoughtfully like ~ as if by doing so I would exculpate myself from all and any accusations of being nothing more than a beer-swilling lush.
Ye of little faith might consider my brief excursion into the world of packaging to be nothing more than a rather crude and obvious workaround, but the benefit of the doubt seems to lie in my favour. At least I am inclined to think so. Why else would I linger lovingly at the sight of a pig with a snarled snout and two curling tusks when I could be getting it down my neck? I believe that this particular method of beer drinking, of ‘getting it down one’s neck’, is reserved for the benefit classes (formerly working class) who populate Northern England, some perilously close to Haggis country where goodness knows where they ‘get it’, possibly up their kilts!
But of tartans and tarts there were none. The brown bag into which the bottle is dunked has a big-toothed porker (Does she come from Rushden? Check for tats!) standing proudly above a foaming tankard of beer (I suppose she must.) beneath which is written ‘Live’ ‘Nonfiltered’. This tells you that the beer is made from natural substances with no additional additives and/or preservatives, which also tells you that it has a lower shelf-life threshold than its filtered counterparts, so you’d better get it down you, one way or another, as swiftly as you can.
Above: It’s worth buying the beer for the packaging!
I’d looked at the bag for long enough (Am I still in Rushden?) Now it was time to dispose of the beer.
For this purpose, I selected one of the Soviet tankards given to me by Stas, which once occupied the little drinks cabinet in Victor Ryabinin’s Studio. Beer and sentiment go well together.
The first whiff of Cesky Kabancek does not go against the grain, but it is definitely and robustly grainy. It smells like a brew with tusks, but with an OG of 4.4%, which is pretty tender in this here drinking neck of the woods (Get it down your neck!), the aroma belies the alcohol content. Intermingled with the boar musk, subtle scents of an aromatic nature rise but struggle to the surface adding a touch of Je ne sais quoi. But who cares what it smells like when you are showing off in French?
Cesky pours into the glass in a light ambered way and because it is unfiltered, it is naturally hazy. After a couple of bottles most beers look hazy; after seven so is everything else.
“Excuse me, do you have the time?”
“For what?”
“I mean the time!” pointing at my watch.
“Yes, I do thanks.” Relenting and looking at watch: “It’s seven pints past sobriety …”
As a beer connoisseur, not a lager lout, I would only be drinking one litre of Cesky, and after another would call it a night. Or anything anybody wants me to.
I said, before everything went silly, that on taking the top off the bottle the beer had thrown a grainy aroma, which was no word of a lie, but the taste had a lot more going for it. It was fruity, zesty with a clean refreshing finish and a mellow aftertaste. It had palate appeal and, at 4.4% strength, recommended itself as a good session beer.
Nevertheless, if it is a real Czech beer that you are after or even expecting, Caveat Emptor!
Just because I was satisfied with it, does not mean that everybody, or even anybody else, shares the same opinion. Beer reviewers far more accomplished than myself appear to have ganged up on Cesky Kabancek and are telling the world via the internet that it is not all that one would want it to be.
First off, what is all this with Czech and boar! When did Czech and boar ever go together? You’ll be naming British beer Brit Mountain Goat from the Fens next! Thus, the consensus has it that Cesky Kabancek masquerades as Czech only insofar as the packaging allows. Once inside the bag, all you’ve got is a plain PET bottle and once inside the bottle you’ve got a ‘beer drink’ as distinct from beer. Why is this? Because the mix is said to contain ‘fragrant additives’ and has loosely attributed wheat beer characteristics.
For all this ~ what would you call it, skullduggery or effective marketing? ~ the brew is easy to drink, satisfying and has no definable flavour drawbacks or repercussive faults. And if I was not to tell you the truth, then I would be lying, for I consider Cesky Kabancek to be one of the better brands from Baltika Brewery that I have drunk so far.
As they say in beer-drinking circles, and even somewhere outside of them, there’s no accounting for taste!
😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS Name of Beer: Cesky Kabancek Brewer: Baltika Brewery Where it is brewed: St Petersburg Bottle capacity: 1litre Strength: 4.4% Price: It cost me about 187 roubles (£2.53 pence) [at time of writing!] Appearance: Hazy amber Aroma: I’m working on it! Taste: A little bit of this and that Fizz amplitude: 4/10 Label/Marketing: A convincing paper bag Would you buy it again? It depends on the competition Marks out of 10: 6
*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.
Published: 30 July 2022 ~ Sunak or Truss? Who will end Globalism even the World?
There is an aggravating little icon in the corner of my computer on the right-hand side of the task bar, which whenever I accidently sweep my cursor over it something grotesque and repugnant pops up. It is UK mainstream media news. There, in all its hideous glory, is the day’s main news in brief, generally more vile than vital, from the theatre of the absurd and surreal that the UK has become.
One of the benefits of living in Kaliningrad is that I can be more selective than I used to be about what I choose to read or see from UK media. And on those occasions when I have no choice, because of the intrusive tricks of Mr Gates’ technology, at least physical distance and societal worlds apart cushion my sensibilities.
Sunak or Truss?
These reasons partly explain why the soap-operatic shenanigans of who will succeed Boris Johnson have largely passed me by. Moreover, as the candidates for Tory leadership offer little in the way of anything bright and beautiful, or just old-fashioned competent and credible, what have I missed, if anything? Especially now that the ‘contest’ has been whittled down to the choice of a sulky old woman or, as a friend recently remarked, a ‘Paki’. Yes, yes, I took him to task. Mr Sunak, I said, is not of that extraction, he is, like our good friend Jerry, an Indian.
“God help us!” replied my friend.
There was a time when the lefties would be making love to themselves, in public, about the possible appointment of a woman prime minister, but all that old hubris fizzled out with Mrs Thatcher and Theresa May and is clearly about as exciting today as a feminist’s bra on fire.
Nevertheless, the ethnic hat in the ring has not gone unnoticed; already one extreme lefty newspaper from across the murky pond has written that should Sudoku, or whatever his name is (Why can’t these foreigners just call themselves Smith, or something?) wins, he would effectively become Britain’s first prime minister of colour.
If that was important anymore, indeed if ever it was important, Boris Johnson could have consulted with George ‘Minstrel’ Mitchell, slapped some boot polish on his face, bought himself a curry and stayed put, or he could have had a sex change and spent ridiculous amounts of money on sending arms to lost causes whilst avoiding accusations of ‘toxic masculinity’. Think of all the fuss it would have saved, not to mention embarrassing scenes of petty Tory infighting and additional raids on the public purse at a time when the cost of living in Britain is leading to civil war. But with the media losing interest in Ukraine, I suppose something has to be dumped on a susceptible British public along with their daily dollop of Woke.
At the end of the proverbial day, it doesn’t matter and who cares anyway? Yes, Truss is a goofy old thing and Sunak isn’t British (‘Oh yes I am!’), but if you look hard enough can you tell them apart? Of course not, because in spite of their stated differences they are both cut from the same piece of card. In the hands of the puppeteers Sunak casts the longest shadow ~ the globalist versus the jingoist ~ but the importance they have in common is that both, whatever the media says sets them apart, possess the potential to make a much bigger mess than the one that Boris inherited and adopted as his own.
The real difference between Truss and Sunak is, apart from the obvious difference colour, that Truss is in it for the fame and glory (‘Look, mum, I’m the prime minister,’) and Sunak is a banker ~ yes, I have spelt the word correctly, but you be cockney if you must.
Like Moron Macron and Justin (only just in) Turdeau, the Sunaks of this world are nothing more than front men for neoliberal globalists. But whomsoever it is who gets his or her arse into Number 10, whether it will be the podgy white arse or the scrawny brown one, is fundamentally irrelevant. Predetermination has already decided who will replace Hair-fright Johnson and finish the job he started. This is not to deprive Boris of the debt of gratitude so obvioulsy owed to him, as I can think of no one, and that includes anyone in the Labour party, who could have primed the charge as successfully, and definitely not as comically, as Boris has.
All it needs now is a spark from the sabre-rattling abrasiveness of Truss or the short-circuit disconnect of Sunak and up will go the UK tinder box, igniting the socio-political implosion that will send neoliberal globalism and their satanic world of woke into the septic tank of history where they both belong. Regrettably, however, other blasts are possible, less welcome and even more devestating than the end of an evil doctrine, but I shall leave it up to you decide who of the two self-interested culprits chasing the key to Number 10 is liable to be more culpable of bringing about the end of the world.
At the end of the world, sorry, at the end of the day, whoever is handed the poisoned chalice, be it All Trussed Up Like a Turkey or Rishi Samosa Sunak, the important point to remember is that both exist to fulfil one destiny. The hand that presses the plunger, unlike the arse that takes the throne, will be the hand, the same hand and nothing but the hand ~ the almighty hand of fate. It’s just a matter of time ~ and that time is almost upon us.
Alena Kravchenko writes about her love for photography and a past project in the present
Published: 26 July 2022 ~ Alena Kravchenko Photos 1940s’ English Home in Kaliningrad
About Alena Kravchenko, Professional Photographer
Alena Kravchenko: I have been interested in photography for as long as I can remember. It began in my youth as a hobby. Using my then state-of-the-art Polaroid camera, I would happily snap photos of family and friends and the more pictures I took, the more immersed I became in the art of photography. Furthering my education in this direction purely through self-study, I eventually mastered the art.
For the past three years I have been photographing professionally, receiving commissions for various commercial projects, whilst continuing to develop my skills in the art and science of photography.
To assist me in this endeavour I attend various master classes, study paintings, go to exhibitions and to concerts.
In each context I challenge myself, experimenting with different shooting techniques, different genres and with different stylistic interpretations. Every time I work on a project, I try something new and learn something new! This is the joy of photography! It is an endless source of creative self-expression.
Anything can inspire me to create a project: Nature, with its extraordinary colours and lively locations; people by their charismatic appearance, idiosyncratic character or simply because of their interesting features; diverse forms of architecture – both historical and modern. Whatever the subject matter, I pay great attention to detail and location.
I look at the world through the eyes of a photographer, frequently wishing that the pupils of my eyes were small lenses themselves, able to capture immediately the beauty that surrounds me. But, alas, this never can be, and my phone’s memory is often full, because it is neither practicable nor feasible to carry an expensive and heavy camera with me everywhere I go.
Sometimes I wonder where my inspiration comes from. For example, I recently drove past a field of lambs and visualised a photograph of a shepherd girl and her sister. Photography allows this licence. It allows me to project my vision of the world. The world of photography is wonderful. There is so much to see and explore!
About Alena Kravchenko’s 1940s’ project shot at the home of Mick and Olga Hart
A word from Mick Hart: You know, everybody needs someone to say nice things about them sometime, even me ~ it’s different from when you say them about yourself. So, for the record, for my detractors, the sentiments that follow are not exclusively my own, and I can honestly swear that no money passed hands between Alena Kravchenko and myself for her modest opinions of us and her restrained appraisal of our home.
Alena Kravchenko: A couple from England inspired me to create a project with an Art Deco flavour.
Mick and Olga Hart were performing in Yuri Grozmani’s WWII film Last Tango in Königsberg.
Elegantly dressed in 40s’ style, they looked as if they had stepped from the silver screen of cinema during the Art Deco era.
Immediately, I wanted to get to know them and arrange a retro photo session.
It wasn’t difficult. Olga agreed and a few days later I was invited to their home.
What joy I experienced when stepping over the threshold!
Mick and Olga are real rarity collectors; keepers of 30s’ and 40s’ history.
Music from the 30s and 40s, commingled with the smell of sweet perfume, carried into the hallway. The vintage space immersed me. It was as if time had been placed on hold.
Mick and Olga were exceptionally friendly, giving me free reign to photograph whatever and wherever I liked. I started using my camera from the hallway and couldn’t stop. By the time I had finished, my camera and I were satisfied that we had explored and captured life as it would have been lived in the period leading up to and during the war.
Using Yury’s screenplay as my premise, I wanted to capture the story of this house; the story of a warm relationship between a married English couple and the home and working environment of wartime British intelligence agent, Mick Donovan, as portrayed by Mick Hart in Yury Grozmani’s film. I was more than pleased with the end result.
Mick and Olga’s house is a real museum; a tribute to the 1930s and 40s. As I moved from room to room taking pictures of this special couple from England, I was overwhelmed with delight. They are true custodians of history.
Below: In the UK, during WWII, no sooner was your back turned than …
Fishdorf Country Guest Complex, Kaliningrad region, Russia
Published: 22 July 2022 ~ A day out at Fishdorf Country Guest Complex
In my last post about Matrosovo, we entered the village together, passing a pretty old German house and some rather malodorous cows (no problem, if like me, you are an afficionado of country smells!) and glancing warily at the high tin fence on the other side of the road, which has something inflatable thrust high above it, we rolled on, on our car wheels, until shortly confronting a T-junction. Here, I took you right; now I take you left.
Before doing so your attention will have been drawn to an interesting feature on your right. There, standing in what I can only imagine in Soviet times was a mown and tended green, but now badly in need of a lawnsman, is a typical example of socialist realism from the collective-identity genre: a statue, striking in colour and pose, of a fisherman and his son.
Small riverside communities such as Matrosovo would once have been greatly reliant upon the role that fishing played in guaranteeing livelihoods, and statues such as these, as well as performing an ideological function, were a way of saying thank you.
Above: Madam, kindly unhand that fisherman!
Across the way, by the side of the river, sits a typical Soviet children’s playground, with all facilities preserved and functioning ~ a marvellous sight to behold ~ and immediately left a municipal building, once the village shop, then and more recently, but now abandoned, the village’s House of Culture.
The road ahead, left at the T-junction, has nothing in common with the road leading into it, except, of course, it is also a road. The dirt-covered rubble track suddenly changes to new block paving, on either side of which stands modern buildings and proper fencing. I mean by proper fencing, not ugly sheets of tin but fences made from real brick piers inlaid with panels of wood, and the buildings that accompany them solid-state buildings of consequence.
A day out at Fishdorf Country Guest Complex
On the right is a restaurant with private carpark, whose grounds lead down to the river’s edge. It has a spacious veranda made of wooden decking and, closer to the waterside, rusticated bench seats with built-in tables for two, purposefully made and conveniently positioned for patrons to sit and gaze idly across the rippling river at the attractive commune of houses nestled on the opposite bank. The perfect place on a hot summer’s day for sitting, staring and eating ice cream.
Next door is an establishment designed for people in mind who do not abide by the maxim that if God had meant for us to swim (or do anything else in or on water), he would have given us gills. Here, all sorts of water-borne craft, including tandem canoes and sapboards, are available for hire, but if it is something bigger that floats your boat, there are always things you can row and even a canopied catamaran that will romp you along the river whilst you sit there for a fee in the smug and requited pose of completely paid-up passenger.
Above: Things to go floating about the river on
The establishment next door to the establishment next door is presently under construction. Perhaps it will be a bingo hall, or am I thinking Hunstanton? But next door to that, looking handsome, refined and sophisticated (Shame on you, you thought I was going to say me!), stands the eminently functional Fishdorf restaurant, which is almost immediately across the road from its namesake the Fishdorf Hotel.
Above: The self-explanatory Fishdorf Restaurant
Both buildings, the restaurant and hotel, are built in a charming, modern, East Prussian style. The Fishdorf restaurant boasts extended eaves, half-timber decoration, ‘distressed’ brickwork and lots of natural wood embellishments. The main building, the Fishdorf Hotel, is distinguished by the presence of a giant illustration on its gable end of a fisherman of old, suitably endowed with clay pipe, neckerchief, a pair of rolled-up wellies and carrying a whopping great fish. The ‘aged’ brickwork around the doors and windows, which cut a dashing contrast with the white and textured walls, is another memorable Fishdorf signature.
At the side of the hotel and prior to its reception area there is a large rolling gate, which would appear to conceal the hotel carpark, but in fact conceals a whole lot more. A suitable cliché at this point would be that it opens onto another world, the pertinence of which can be better understood by recourse to my previous post regarding Matrosovo village. For this particular roller gate does not just give access to the hotel carpark but access to the surprisingly ‘off the beaten track’, and all the more astounding for it, Fishdorf recreation park or, to revert to its official name, as noted on its website, the Country Guest Complex Fishdorf.
A family-oriented retreat
In trying to describe what Fishdorf is, apart from and in addition to a hotel and a restaurant, I run shy from using a word like ‘complex’, although Fishdorf use it themselves. I hesitate to use this word for fear of evoking impressions of spirographical mental states and complicated things devised from cold mathematical precision, since Fishdorf’s realm of influence is rooted in the natural world and the only precision one can accuse it of is the skilful manner in which its grounds and facilities have been mapped out to produce a certain appealing something that respectively lies between the ordered elegance and intrinsic sublimity of the formal and natural garden.
So, how does one sum up Fishdorf? What shall we say it is, exactly? We could try: A family-oriented retreat, secluded and steeped in nature, combining the best in formal and natural landscaping, where both guests and day visitors alike can enjoy a variety of outside leisure pursuits and other diverse recreations. Yes, I think I can live with that.
Fishdorf park
The extensive area that the park takes in is designed around two large and interconnecting ponds (don’t think village ponds, think lakes!), stocked with extroverts ~ both fish and frogs ~ which are either leaping out of the water and going splosh at regular intervals or putting in guest appearances and going croak whilst sitting on leaves. (I’ll leave you to work out which one is doing which.). At the centre of these two ponds, dividing it geometrically, is a pretty, single-span bridge of the arched, romantic kind, and around the ponds on every side the lawns trimmed to perfection are sprinkled with plants, shrubs, bushes and trees, intersected by meandering pathways and punctuated with globe lights.
Already you should detect that Fishdorf is an environment in which Mother Nature is everywhere and everywhere in excelsior. She graciuosly presides over a spacious open-air schema where wood is what it always is, versatile and wonderful, and used in so many different and in so many more inventive ways.
Above: Mick Hart on a garden swing ~ wood you believe it!
A day out at Fishdorf for lovers of wood
Garden swings with bench seats hewn out of solid tree trunks, their frameworks assembled from the curving boughs of trees, are studied by wooden toadstools peeping out of the long, trained grass, each stem of each toadstool carved with faces from folklore. Dotted here and there and sometimes assembled in communes, the alternative answer to a hotel room takes the form of standalone chalets, attractive little retreats successfully given the log-cabin treatment. To ensure exclusivity is complemented by privacy, rustic fencing, skilfully put together by weaving tall, thin, branches into a vertical plane and by using slightly thicker branches for horizontal stabilisation, screens and beautifies in one fell swoop.
Above: Cabins well-appointed
Above: Picturesque log-cabin accommodation
The visual affect is so thoroughly pleasing that you make a mental note that when you get home you’ll build one yourself and you’ll also include the wood-panelled gates, as you rather like the serpentine arch and find the naïve motifs with which the gates are illustrated seductively quaint, cute and engaging, perceiving something in them, indeed in the whole composition, that you faintly recognise long ago as lying between the covers of the books that you read in your childhood.
A day out at Fishdorf Country Guest Complex
By the side of a nearby pond, much smaller and more secluded than the two that share the bridge, an open-ended gazebo beckons. Unsullied by professionalism, or clever and artful in this suggestion, the wood used in its making looks as though it could have been cut and taken from the forest nearby and then brought together to form the function that it now fulfils using nothing but an artisan’s eye and the skills of one of those men of whom we have heard it said, much too often for comfort, ‘he can turn his hand to anything’ ~ don’t you just love such people!
In the same vicinity as the log gazebo an elongated wooden barrel, big enough to get inside, makes me think of Beer. But this is no beer barrel, mores the pity. It is in fact a barrel-shaped sauna in which, if you like it steamy, you can tarry at your leisure, perhaps between gruelling sessions swinging around on the tennis courts or charging about on the football pitches, which are visible from this point on the other side of the lawn.
If I was sauna inclined, which I am not, I would have jumped into the barrel and sweated it out, but I didn’t. However, had I for once been less than predictable, at least in matters like these, the incident may have passed without comment, considering that minutes before, estranging herself from maturity, Olga had shown little restraint in hopping inside a funnel-shaped object, made, of course, from wood, and holding a twig-ended broomstick retained by this odd receptacle, declared herself to be that infamous mythical figure from the annals of Russian folklore, Baba Yaga, the witch. Had my name been Bernard Manning, the impetuosity of this performance would not have left me stuck for words, but I decided not to become him today presuming for my impertinence that the broomstick could take off in a hurry and could get stuck right up … in the clouds.
Above: Olga Hart on her broomstick
One thing I can say is that I never knew until I came to Fishdorf how hungry wood could make you, and it had the same effect upon me. Whilst I presume that Fishdorf’s salient restaurant is the one across the road from the Fishdorf Hotel, on the other side of the roller gate, within the grounds of the park itself there is a second restaurant, plus a cafeteria à la carte, the latter cunningly equipped with a canopy-covered dining area designed to outwit the weather should it begin to act unseasonable.
It was here, overlooking a neat and expansive lawn, that I had my mid-morning snack and (sssh, please don’t tell anybody) an alcohol-free beer ~ well it was an extremely warm day and even though the sun was considerably over the yard arm … but why should I explain to you?!
Above: Non-alcohol beer on a hot day
For those who like it hot, and may or may not have issues drinking beer that is alcohol free, Fishdorf has extensive sauna and various hot bath facilities. For those who like to chill out, it has a combined poolside and children’s recreation area, where adults can recline on the recliners meant for reclining on and children can amuse themselves by flying up and down on any one of a number of colourful bouncy castles or for higher and more exciting plunges take a turn or two on the stupendous Aqua Park waterchute. (You may recall, gentle reader, my mentioning of something large and inflatable towering over a tall metal fence in my previous post on Matrosovo village; was this the item in question? Indeed, the very same.)
Above: Very large, indeed
As a river runs through it, the village of Matrosovo that is, there are any number of ways that a person can take to the water but, if like me, the only volume of water that you can cope with comfortably is enough to balance your whisky glass, you could do considerably worse than book yourselves a table on Fishdorf’s riverside dining area, which I believe is part of the restaurant ‘Cheshuya’, as described on Fishdorf’s website.
Country Guest Complex Fishdorf
Here, when all around you are clamouring to live the life of a fish, you can annoy your company by saying ‘I don’t do water myself’, and then watch from the comfort of your riverside table them doing something that you don’t do whilst you do something you do: I have it on good authority ~ the best authority, my own ~ that Cheshuya serves a very nice pint. So, let’s have a toast to the Fishdorf restaurant, one to the Country Guest Complex Fishdorf and also, whilst we’re at it, to Matrosovo itself.
Essential details:
Country Guest Complex ‘Fishdorf’ 238634, Kaliningrad Region, Polessky District, Matrosovo Village, 21 Levoberezhnaya Street
Room tariffs (Details can be found on Fishdorf’s website)
Prices per day vary according to the type and location of the accommodation required, which includes traditional hotel rooms, chalets and buildings capable of occupying multiple numbers of guests.
Services A full and detailed breakdown of costs for all amenities offered at the park both for residential guests and day visitors can be found on the park’s website. These include: Spa, Bath & Aqua Zone; River Vehicles (Kayak, Canoe, Catamaran, Boat, Sapboard); Adult and Children’s Bikes; Games (Virtual Reality & Air Hockey); Children’s Vehicular Amusements (eg, Electric Car, Electric Scooter); Fishing Permits and Bait; Gazebos (priced according to size and location).
Restaurants There are two restaurants listed on the website, Restaurant ‘Gans & Beer’ and Cheshuya Restaurant. The first has a banquet hall that will accommodate 150 people; the second can hold 45 people and is well-appointed with a veranda overlooking the river.
The menu is available through the park’s website.
Entertainment The many and varied entertainments offered at the park are covered on its website, including the Aqua Park, The Club (which has billiard and pool tables); the Bath Barrel Sauna, etc. For comprehensive details, see the park’s website.
Matrosovo Village Matrososvo village, charming and sequestered, nestles beside Matrosovka River. It is also the astutely chosen location of the Country Guest Complex ‘Fishdorf’.
Angel Park Hotel The Angel Park Hotel, Kaliningrad region, is a gift from the people of its past, an unaffected rural retreat that breathes new life into a timeless realm where history and the natural landscape flow together like the rivers that run through it.
Zalivino Lightouse The restored lighthouse on the shore of the Curonian Lagoon is a singular maritime experience. Imagine what life was like as a lighthouse keeper in the early twentieth century and enjoy the coastal views from the lighthouse lamp room and platform.
Fort Dönhoff Fort XI (Fort Dönhoff) is one of Königsberg’s 19th century fortresses, part of the former city’s monolithic defence system. Vast, intricate and painstakingly restored, it is a must for anyone fascinated by military history generally and by Königsberg specifically.
Polessk Brewery Lovingly restored, Polessk Brewery is one of the region’s historic treasures. Even if you are not a beer fanatic (is their such a specimen?) you cannot help but be enthralled by the neoGothic architecture and the German and Soviet timeline of this splendid and remarkable edifice.
On the third anniversary of Victor Ryabinin’s death
Published: 18 July 2022 ~ Remembering Victor Ryabinin, Artist, Königsberg
Photograph: Victor Ryabinin seated on the right at the far end of the table
On 30th June this year, the thought occurred to me that three years ago to this date in less than four weeks we would be deprived of one of the most significant people in our lives.
On this, the third anniversary of Victor Ryabinin’s death, I have rescued from my photo archives an image for this post that was taken in a Kaliningrad restaurant shortly after I moved to Kaliningrad in the winter of 2018.
This restaurant, situated below ground level not far from the Kaliningrad Hotel, had become a popular haunt of Victor’s and his inner circle, his coterie of friends and fellow artists, not purely for its Soviet theme, although this coalesced perfectly with Victor’s love of history, but also for the very practical and very reasonable reason that the food was affordably priced and, more importantly, it was one of those rapidly fading establishments where customers were permitted to bring their own alcohol with them.
In the intervening period between my last visit to Kaliningrad and my return in 2018, a revolution had occurred, not arguably of the magnitude and life-changing tempestuousness as that experienced in Russia in the early years of the twentieth century but nevertheless in drinking circles on the scale of one to 10 somewhere close to 11: Victor and his clan had largely renounced the drinking of vodka and taken to cognac instead.
In the last few months of Victor’s life, and our association with him, the new trend was so evidently established that whenever we would meet, I would refer to those occasions as a meeting of The Cognac Club.
Remembering Victor Ryabinin, Artist, Königsberg
Sadly, not only is Victor no longer with us, but the old haunt, the Soviet café, has also vanished from our living timeline.
For as much as it appealed to me, I am not entirely sorry that the cafe has ceased to exist. Knowing me and memories, it would have been all too tempting to return there and try to close the gap between what once was and nevermore can be. Life, as we grow older, is full of half-way houses where we hope one day we might meet again and mausoleums where if we do at least we won’t be alone, even if none of us know it.
The photograph I have used for this post was taken in the Soviet café at a time before we knew what it would eventually come to mean for us. Not every grain can be counted or heard as the sand runs down in the hour glass. Victor Ryabinin passed away a few months after this photograph was taken.
The memories you painted, all are good my friend …
or how we got there and how interesting it was when we did
Published: 11 July 2022 ~ On the Polessk Canal Road to Matrosovo Kaliningrad
Out on the single-track road that runs along the canal from Polessk to wherever it was we were heading, there’s a sense of going somewhere, which is good enough in itself. The canal, which links the rivers Deyma and Nemunas, provides a mostly parallel route to that place where, when we eventually got out of the car, I would call our destination.
The narrow road, no doubt constructed on the canal’s one-time tow path, is a cambersome experience, dipping, rolling and bowling along. The route takes in vast tracts of overgrown land which, at this time of year, is fifty shades of green, or even more, across and through which the Polessk Canal holds a straight and steady course.
Dotted along both sides of this sweeping tract of water, stand, in varying degrees of stability, old German cottages, typically composed as single-storey abodes but with attic space more than sufficient for filling up with all sorts of things.
On the Polessk Canal road to Matrosovo Kaliningrad
The canal road is like all roads of this nature, unambiguously elevated, and often the humble cottages built on the opposite bank to the water’s edge lie at a lower level. Those homes that abut the road are so close to it that an occupant stepping outside could in any unguarded moment find themselves swept away or knocked for six by a passing vehicle. The cottages in the hollow, in the cut below the bank, are exempt from this particular problem but arguably not from others; they can be so tightly sandwiched against the edge of the road that their windows are nearly contiguous.
They made stout hinges those Germans did!
At this time of year, the trees, wild bushes and virile foliage are so profusely laden with leaves ~ embracing, entwining and intimately enmeshed ~ that the houses seem to lose their way. It is not unusual, for example, to see entire portions of house appropriated by nature, swallowed up by all manner of creeping and climbing plants, whilst small trees and saplings jostling for space in front of the windows lead one to conclude that for all its idyllic rusticity subtract the picturesque and what you are probably left with is a multitude of sins, ranging from light-deprived interiors to issues with rising damp.
For the traveller, however, bouncing and bounding along without a care in the world, such phenomena, where they may or conversely may not exist, are of little or trifling consequence. One of the joys of travelling this road by car is that the presence of such houses often makes themselves known to you when you least expect them. The point at which two walls meet (the right angle of a cottage) can lean out from the natural shrubbery where nothing is, or seemed to be, only a moment before, followed quickly by a gable end and then the building in its entirety; only sometimes it does not, as you see as much and no more as the foliage permits.
A good many of these cottages are in states of disrepair that border on amazing qualities of things that refuse to fall down, their ability to remain standing testifying to construction techniques of old, where the need for durability and ‘everlasting’ strength are indubitably all that they should be.
The unifying deterioration is one, however, that could be remedied without considerable outlay, this is to say where painted walls have turned blotchy and brown with age and in some places on higher and lower planes where the substrate screed has fallen away, leaving irregular patches of brickwork exposed to view and the elements. In some instances, however, the pan-tiled or asbestos roofs have given up the ghost: rafters have resigned and the lot has sunk and plummeted inwards. This is not to say the ‘whole lot’. Indeed, the greater proportion of any one structure may have generally held its own against the concerted depletions inflicted by time, weathering, neglect and despair, thus rendering what remains if not exactly practicable to live in notwithstanding liveable.
As this condition is one that marks the fate of detached premises, you can imagine how much more acute the situation can be with regard to the semi-detached, where one half is maintained and the other lies forgotten, even to the extent of appearing, or actually being, abandoned. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish which of the two applies.
An old German barn with some signs of ageing and later additions
We travelled the canal route twice over one weekend, enabling me to get a closer look at two buildings in particular. One, a property with torn sheets of polythene flapping from collapsed windows, surrounded by blistered brick and flaking woodwork and bound by a garden resembling that of my friend’s garden back in Bedfordshire, only revealed its occupied status when on the second day of passing a venerable old rustic gentleman, swarthy faced and of matted grey beard, pausing conveniently at his rusting gate to gawp at the awesome sight of a motorised carriage with us tearing past in it, inclined us to believe that here indeed was the owner.
The second of the two buildings that prompted further attention was one which did so on account of its size and shape and also in possessing something more substantial and aesthetic in its character. I stop short of pronouncing it grand, speculating that it may once have been a school or chapel, its cruciform outline and the series of arches framing its entrance suggestive of civic importance and lending to it an air that asserted a presence more commanding than most.
One suspects that the majority of the buildings that I have described are hand-me-downs from the Soviet era, gifted on by folk who had been given them themselves by power of the authorities after Königsberg and its outlying region fell in World War II; in other words, they are family homes passing along and down the generational chain.
Houses that overlook the canal do so from large picture windows and some from the envy-making platforms of dark-wood fretwork balconies
Of course, the picture that I have painted is only one half of the canvas. Although they would be considerably less shiny and new, considerably less conspicuous should they exist in a hypothetical exclusivity created by the absence of their impoverished German neighbours, accomplished restoration projects and executive-status mouth-watering newbuilds share the same verdant space along the quiet, sleepy, secluded banks of this reclusive strip of water.
Kempt and curated, the freshly seeded lawns, attractive outbuildings and accessory dwellings blend neatly with the master home, offering tantalising glimpses into near perfection. Houses that overlook the canal do so from large picture windows and some from the envy-making platforms of dark-wood fretwork balconies, and always these and lesser properties whose gardens touch the canal have a jetty of some description and a motorboat moored nearby.
Such houses stand out like a sign saying, “See what you can do, if you’ve got the lolly!” Let’s take a break and put that idea to music: Dr Feelgood As long as the price is right. “If you’ve got no bread, you’re as good as dead”; “If you’ve got no loot, you just can’t shoot”; “If you’ve got no cash, then you’ve gotta dash”.
Off to Matrosovo in the Kaliningrad region
At the risk or repeating myself, I will say again that out on the single road that runs along the canal from Polessk to wherever it was we were heading, there’s a sense of going somewhere, which is good enough in itself. I suppose it is a fait accompli that sooner or later the canal veers off and that when it does it takes with it the narrow track that was originally its in the first place.
The road continues, but now is wide enough to accommodate oncoming traffic with ease. The wheels dip and the suspension rocks across the slightly less than level tarmacadam but soon rumble and jog respectively as the relative smoothness is abruptly replaced by sequential concrete sections. This type of construction always puts me in mind of a certain approach road that may still exist, and which was certainly there in the 1970s, on the way to Norwich, although in this geographical neck of the woods a road consisting of concrete slabs would, I guess, have been laid back in Soviet times.
I cannot remember exactly whether the road changed before or after we crossed a broad sweep of rapid rippling water, which I presume is the Deyma River, but there is no forgetting the bridge. It is a heavy metal-plate affair, with the ability to pivot on a mechanical mechanism. Lower than the road it services, when vehicles pass over the access slope it throws them slightly off-balance producing at the same time a mildly alarming clunkety-clank, likewise at the opposite end when leaving. The bridge appears to be solid enough but could do with a coat of paint.
On and on and on and on and then hoving into view is the signpost for Matrosovo. So, could this be where we were going and had we now arrived?
Matrosovo Kaliningrad region
On entering the village Matrosovo to the right you will see a quite substantial, attractive German house. It has been professionally reroofed using either terracotta tiles or their modern metal equivalent. The gable end, the end that faces the road, has a chevroned woodwork finish, and the house stands in its own grounds amidst a very nice cottage garden. Just beyond it, by the side of a silted brook, is something rather more down to earth, meaning decidedly earthy. A patch of ground, grazed relentlessly into dust is home to some rather whiffy cows and chickens as well as the paraphernalia required for sustaining them, such as wooden shacks full of hay and, scattered about in no particular order, various metal feeding troughs, buckets and the like. Suddenly I was young again, back on the farm in my youth!
On the whole, Matrosovo village has stood the test of time.
And now for something completely different; for across the road from this veritable Ponderosa looms an abnormally high metal fence and poking out above it is a rare, colourful if not grotesque very large plastic what-have-you ~ an inflatable how’s your father? It most resembles a bouncy castle but if that is what it is, it must have been made for giants. Moving on, as we were, we can discuss this curious contraption and other astonishing Matrosovo things at a later and more convenient date in my follow-up post on Matrosovo Park.
The road, that by now has turned into a dusty hardcore track, wends along a little until it meets a junction. Here you have a choice, which is either left or right, as before you lies the wide, the deep and the rather fast-flowing Matrosovka River, the mouth of the Neman River, destination Curonian Lagoon.
There are such a lot of waterways, rivers and the like, criss-crossing in these here parts that it is hard to determine who is which, but if at this point in my post you were to drive straight on the name of the river would matter less than the sound of going plop and feeling incredibly wet.
Avoiding this fate by turning right we followed a twisting hardcore lane with buildings on either side; this comprising the greater part of Matrosovo village, a village that instinctively feels like one with a genuine East Prussian heritage. (You have no idea what one of them feels like? Then you have to visit Matrosovo.)
Into Matrosovo
On the whole, Matrosovo village has stood the test of time. Yes, there are modern renovations of older buildings that could have been more sensitively restored in order to vouchsafe original features as well as newbuilds recently landed from the planet Super Affluent, but by and large along this meandering lane the houses of Matrosovo have managed to escape the worst excesses of insensitivity during periods when conservation was as alien a concept as ridiculous things like women prime ministers.
Matrosovo Kaliningrad region
The German cottages of Matrosovo are predominantly wooden-clad structures. Detached or semi-detached each possesses bilateral features and a sense of uniformity in the relative space that they occupy, both vertically and horizontally, with one or two exceptions. Some are super-simple, standard pitched-roof jobs, their longest dimension aligned with the road but can be gable-end facing, a not unusual arrangement, in fact typical in this region but inversely so in England. Others, a little more posh, have a large, pitched dormer-style window intersecting geometrically, which, in the semi-detached variation, is the dividing point between the two properties.
Not all of the houses in Matrosovo conform to the wooden-clad principle, but plank cladding is certainly prevalent. Where it is employed, it is usual for the cladding to stand proud along the upper portion of these buildings, sometimes with no embellishment, in other words it starts as a plank and ends that way, but others are pointed, like the upturned staves of a traditional picket fence, or even nicely rounded so as to form a decorative apron.
Wooden cladding with ‘pie crust’ finish
Hardly any of these domiciles, whether partly hidden behind the trees or exposed to view, have escaped the make-do-and-mend and aesthetic-free philosophy of Soviet DIYers, who during the era of their tenure thought nothing of tacking a porch on here or amending a section of pan-tiled roofing there, usually from the loan of a ubiquitous piece of asbestos or by recourse to any number of unremarkable materials but admittedly novel techniques that may have conceivably rectified but certainly not improved, and yet when they are beheld today cannot fail to gratify with their touches of eccentricity and unique dedications to social history.
A number of these establishments are still endowed, if only just, with their original German barns. Here, in the former province of East Prussia, German barns can be as big as their imperialist ego or as small as there … (please send your answer to Mick Hart on a postcard). In Matrosovo, they are generally, and may I say delightfully, less alpha in their bearing, but notwithsatnding no less endowed with the universal characteristics of the whoppers you find elsewhere.
Former East Prussian German barns are built on the following principles: The lower parameters are composed of red brick, which make them solid, sturdy and handsome to say the least, but the upper sections are made of wood, simple wooden planks nailed to a framework of beams and supports. The roofs, which are pan-tiled, are heavy and seem to press down forcibly, much to the detriment of the load-bearing structure beneath, causing the wooden mass to assume a splayed or bowed effect. But without wishing to delve too deeply into principals of design that are better left to the experts or for you to research at your leisure (I shall be asking questions, later, children) a revisionary approach implies that perhaps these barns are made this way to spread the load as needed.
A buckling barn of typical German construction
If so, time, neglect and Soviet hap-hazardry has tested them to the limit. Many have succumbed to various states of collapse ~ roofs stoved inward, walls buckling, bits missing, doors as unhinged as Justin Turdeau, and even when this is not the rule but rather the exception, proletariat bodgery is written on almost every surviving quarter like a vandalistic antecedent to the gunge that liberals delude themselves is ‘street art’ but those who live in the real world routinely condemn as graffiti.
Notwithstanding, the buckling barns of imperialist Germany are inspirational remnant art-forms from the hands of Father Time meant to give living artists something bold to emulate. They are a concomitant of hieroglyphics each one firmly rooted in its era, each with a story to tell for those who know how to read them. And what they may have ceased to be from a utilitarian standpoint they more than make up for in visual delight and empathising Romanticism.
Matrosovo Kaliningrad region on the Deyma River
Along the side of the village riverbank, at the back of the houses and land adjoining, old boats can be found, some which with their happy occupants would have come whistling in to dock many years before but, for reasons we may never know, have whistled nowhere since. Lamentably becalmed, strangled by waterside plants and the encroaching branches of trees, their fading blue and yellow paintworks (they are invariably blue or yellow) and weather-cracked mouldering windscreens project on the first encounter a sad and silly impression. Wanted once, will they ever be wanted again? There they sit, like single mums abandonned (even bereft of benefits), dull and dowdy, water-logged, without engine and nowhere to go. No matter where in the world you trek, be it by river or sea, rest assured you will always find that old boat sitting somewhere: becalmed, sad, no longer needed, possibly taking in water, largely forlorn, resolutely forgotten.
Up the garden path
Gardens, unlike boats, are not so easily forgotten but, like most things known to man, you can either devote your life to them or live your life and let them live theirs. In Matrosovo both philosophies and the nuances that derive from them are open to conjecture. It all depends on how you like your gardens: traditional, cottage, formal, pre-planned, secret, maintained, natural, exotic or simply not at all. They are all here in Matrosovo.
Lovely wooden shutters and a nice garden
Reconditioned and new houses tend to go for reconditioned and new gardens. Many contain supplementary/ancillary buildings and seem to go on forever. They remind me of our cat: they have been tended, pampered, revitalised, put down to new grass (even our cat has grass) and may contain a pond or two or a stream that runs gently through them embroidered by trees large and mature that attest to a natural border. (My word, that’s some cat you’ve got there, Mick!)
Yet Spick and Span is but one short band on the overall garden spectrum. Others have become repositories of overspill modernity, among which, and noticeably, is the human compulsion not to recycle when one can simply discard. Old tin buckets, fridges, enamel bowls and any number of garden implements and ornamental wares that have ceased for some reason or other to provide either the useful or novelty value for which they were intended, peep sleepily out from behind clumps of yellow dandelions, play hide and seek in the long wild grass or prop themselves up wearily against the separating sides and quiescent, weed-fringed borders of geriatric sheds that have seen it all and more and may just go on seeing it when we have long since gone.
Heaven forbid, however, that you would find anything of this nature in the exalted gardens of immaculate conception. But don’t worry; it does forbid. Not that the shuffling, folding, falling sheds complain. Like old folks that have been leaving home since the day that they were born but never got further than the garden gate and will never go anywhere now, except in one direction, they belong to a realm of static contentment upon which no amount of the present has neither the will nor authority to intrude.
On a hotter than usual summer’s day this then is the village of Matrosovo, offering all that the senses could wish for ~ a time-honoured rustic seclusiveness on the balmy banks of the Matrosovka River.
Next up: Would you Adam and Eve It ~ the contrast on the other side of the village! (Wait a mo, I’ve yet to write it …)
Updated: 8 July 2022 ~ First published: 8 July 2020 ~ Family, Love and Loyalty in Russia
On 28 June 2022, it was reported that President Vladimir Putin signed a decree officially establishing 8 July as the Day of Family, Love and Fidelity. The day is devoted to the preservation of traditional family values and encompasses the spiritual and moral education of Russia’s children and teenagers.
Each year, on 8 July, Russia celebrates family, love and loyalty. The celebration coincides with an ancient Orthodox holiday dating back almost 800 years, which is devoted to the saints Pyotr and Fevronia, who became symbols of devotion and family harmony.
Various events are held throughout Russia to mark the occasion. Cultural institutions, such as museums and libraries, run special programmes, which include lectures and thematic exhibitions. Interactive activities range from learning how to paint souvenirs to participating in yoga classes and, in the larger cities, concerts and firework displays are held. Medals for love and loyalty are awarded to those families whose marriages exemplify love, strength, devotion and family unity. Whatever the character or the scale of the event each embodies the same belief, which is that individual and societal stability, their moral and spiritual foundation, are inextricably linked to the conservation and promotion of traditional family values.
Family, Love and Loyalty in Russia
As a token of today’s emphasis on family, love and harmony, our neighbours left us a gift on the window sill this morning: chamomile flowers, which, according to the ancient tradition, represent innocence and fidelity, along with other garden produce of a more physically sustaining nature ~ which I was pleased to have with my dinner!
Whilst I can safely say that in the UK traditional family values share something in common with the Invisible Man (sorry, person), take heart! ~ in the UK we do celebrate International Women’s Day (from a purely feminist angle, mind), are tickled pink during Gay Pride Month and, oops, how could I possibly forget, Black Lives Matter. Time do you think, for a rethink?
Published: 3 July 2022 ~ Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions
With Lithuania threatening to blockade Kaliningrad by restricting transit of goods from mainland Russia by train, the Latvian Interior Minister gleefully announcing that this proved that the West was poised to ‘take Kaliningrad away from Russia’1 and the Prime Minister of Poland making so much noise that it is difficult to tell whether it is his sabre rattling, his teeth chattering or something else knocking together, it looked as though once again the storm clouds had begun to gather over the former region of the Teutonic Order.
I cannot say with any semblance of sincerity that, as the shadow slowly dispersed, the Kaliningrad populace breathed a sigh of relief for, quite frankly, and with no flippancy intended but wanting as always to tell it how it is, nobody ~ at least nobody that I am acquainted with ~ seemed to give a fig.
You can put it down to whatever you like: the Russian penchant for c’est la vie, faith in themselves and their country, a growing immunity to the West’s mouth and trousers or perhaps the absence of a corporate media that makes its fortune by pedalling fear. But whatever you ascribe it to, if the residents of Kaliningrad were supposed to feel afraid, it didn’t happen.
Perhaps it was because we were all too busy laughing at Boris Johnson’s jokes, the ones about the situation in Ukraine never occurring had Vladimir Putin been a woman, which, Boris woked, was “the perfect example of toxic masculinity’ (By the way, what is the definition of non-toxic masculinity? Is it where you rove around without your pants on having painted your gonads rainbow colours? Or when go into hiding like President Turdeau whenever you hear a trucker’s horn?) and his suggestion at the G7 Summit that the leaders of the ‘free’ world (free with every packet of neoliberal dictatorship) should take off their clothes to equal the manliness of Vladimir Putin, to which Mr Putin replied, and I think this is something we can all agree on, “I don’t know how they wanted to undress, waist-high or not, but I think it would be a disgusting sight either way.”2 Er, I assume that Boris was joking ~ wasn’t he? ~ and joking on both accounts?
Alack-a-day if he wasn’t, they just might be some of the most stupid things he has ever said. That’s a close call, because occasionally, but very seldomly and most likely accidentally, Boris can say things that make some sense, not much and not often, but it does happen, which is more than can be said for anyone in the Labour party ~ or about any and all of their supporters. But you must admit, Boris, that the things you are blurting out of late do have a rather silly public schoolboy wheeze about them. Were you the President of the United States at least you could plead senility or, failing that, insanity. But beware! Keep on behaving like this and you’ll make yourself the perfect candidate for filling Biden’s boots when Biden’s booted out.
I suppose we should all just take a step backwards and feel thankful that in the pre-bender-gender days of Winston Churchill, the great man himself was endowed with more than his fair share of so-called ‘toxic masculinity’, had he not been, we’d all be speaking German now. Mein Gott!
We don’t. And the storm over Kaliningrad and the storm in a teacup, the G7 Summit, both failed in their endeavours.
Actually, I have been rather parsimonious with the truth, I mean about the storm in Kaliningrad. It did break and when it did, it surprised everyone. After a glorious week of sun, sand and sea weather, Kaliningrad and its region were suddenly plunged into the most frightful and persistent series of electric storms that I have ever experienced.
For three days and nights, the firmament’s guts growled, sheets of livid light flashed across the sky, and lying there in bed listening to it, as we didn’t have much choice, it was easy to imagine that the entire world was forked ~ forked with lightning!
Olga was in a right old tizz. To her it was a celestial sign, a sign that her tarot-card readers and crystal-ball gazers, whose predictions she believes implicitly and to whom she refers collectively as the esoterics, and whom I call snake-oil salesmen, had got it right: change was in the air, tumultuous change. This was the start, the new beginning, the tip of the dawn of a different world. As strange as it may seem, Gin-Ginsky our cat did not appear to have any opinion on it at all, or, if he did, he was saying nothing. He is a very diplomatic cat. He might also be a very crafty cat.
Considering him to be a little less slim than he used to be, Olga recently changed his food to a product branded ‘Food for Fat Cats’. This and the use of the word ‘light’ on the packet obviously implying dietary benefit. Our cat Ginger loves it. He scoffs it twice as fast as his usual food and in ever-increasing quantities. Every now and again he will look up from his bowl between mouth fulls and fix you with his ginger eyes as if to say, “I’ll show you!” Perhaps, the ‘Food for Fat Cats’ tag line is meant to read ‘Food to make cats fatter’? I must remember to warn him, if he ever attends a G7 Summit, not to take his shirt off!
Those of you who in the West, especially those of you who changed your avatars and are now ashamed you did so (but will never admit to it!), are dying to hear, I know, how badly the sanctions are biting here in Kaliningrad. That’s why I mentioned the cat: he’s biting his grub. But I would be Boris Johnson should I say that the price of cat’s grub has not gone up. But what other things have gone up (ooerr Mrs!), or are we all eating cheaper brands of cat food?
I know that an interest in this exists because lately a lot of people have been tuning into my post Panic Buying Shelves Empty. I can only presume that this is down to Brits kerb-crawling the net in search of hopeful signs that western sanctions are starting to bite. In a couple of instances, we, like our cat, are biting into different brand-named foods than those we used to sink our gnashers into, the reason being, I suppose, because the brands that we used to buy belong to manufacturers who have been forced into playing Biden’s spite-your-nose game: Exodus & Lose Your Money. Also, in some food categories, price increases have been noted. Pheew, what a relief. If these concessions did not exist then the whole sanctions escapade would be more embarrassing than it already is for leaders of western countries who are ruining their own economies by having introduced them.
Were we talking about beer? Well, we are now. Some beer brands are absent, although the earlier gaps in shelves have since been filled with different brands from different companies and from different parts of the world. Those that are not the victims of sanctimonies, which is to say those that still remain, do reflect a hike in price, but as prices fluctuate wildly here at the best of times it is simply a matter of shopping around as usual.
So, there you have it. Not from the bought and paid for UK corporate media and their agenda-led moguls but from a sanctioned Englishman living in Kaliningrad, Russia, who is willing to swear on a stack of real-ale casks, honestly, one hand on heart and the other on his beer glass, that life in Kaliningrad under threat and sanctions has changed so little as to be negligibly different to life as it was in the days of pre-sanctioned Kaliningrad.
If I have disappointed your expectations, I’m sorry.
