Christmas in Gdansk

Updated: 11 February 2022 | First published: 5 October 2019 ~ Christmas in Gdansk

Christmas in Gdansk is the fourth article in a series of posts that recount my first visit to Kaliningrad in 2000, and my first impressions of the land, the people and its culture.

The idea to celebrate Christmas in Gdansk, Poland, and not Kaliningrad, Russia, was taken because Christmas according to the Russian Orthodox Church takes place on the 7 January. This meant that the 25 of December would be just another day. In Russia, New Year’s Eve is the main event of the festive season and Olga had forewarned us that for Russians this was the big one!

Previous article: First Day in Gdansk

Unwrapping the presents that we had bought for one another in the Gdansk hotel was a first, but after that, followed by a cold meats and cheeses breakfast, the novelty of Christmas quickly wore off. It turned out that being in Poland was no different from being in England: there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. At least in England you can stuff yourself on the much-vaunted Christmas dinner and then collapse in a heap in front of the good old goggle box, but our dinner was another round of exciting meats and cheeses ~ left under towels by the hotel staff who had all gone home ~ and the good old goggle box with its three different channels was broadcasting only in Polish. I couldn’t understand why?

My first visit to Kaliningrad (year 2000) and my first impressions of Kaliningrad and Russia. Links to posts in this series arranged in chronological order:
1. The Decision: My first visit to Kaliningrad December 2000
2. Kaliningrad via Gdansk (23 December 2000)
3. First Day in Gdansk (24 December 2000)
4. Christmas in Gdansk (25 December 2000) {{You are here! 😊}}
5. Boxing Day in Gdansk: Kaliningrad 2000 (26 December 2000)
6. Into Russia (27 December 2000)
7. Kaliningrad: First Impression (27 December 2000)
8. The Hotel Russ, Svetlogorsk (27 December 2000)
9. Exploring Svetlogorsk (28 December 2000)
10. Svetlogorsk to Kaliningrad by Train (28 December 2000)
11. Kaliningrad 20 Years Ago (28 December 2000)
12. Russian Hospitality Kaliningrad (28 December 2000)

Bored stiff, we did venture out into the city in between meats and cheeses, but the closest bar was closed and the next and the next and the next …

Fortunately, we were old enough to have experienced a good many English Christmases, so we hunkered down for the evening with hooch we had stockpiled earlier and nibbled our boredom away on the meats and cheeses left over from lunch.

Perhaps Boxing Day would be better?

No Fringe Benefits in Trashing Truckers Freedom Convoy

The short back and sides of it

Published: 9 February 2022 ~ No Fringe Benefits in Trashing Truckers Freedom Convoy

As the rallying call from the Freedom Convoy resonates around the globe, the liberalarsey media do what they always do at a time like this, disappear up the same place where Trudeau has gone. According to one liberal corporate media outlet based in the USA, the Canadian Truckers’ Freedom Convoy ‘represents a fringe viewpoint north of the border’. You know, it really is time that the neoliberals came out from behind the settee and faced the inevitable fact that the people are calling time on them. This is what happens when you get out of bed on the wrong side of history. But such denial is not that surprising. It was Joseph Goebbels who said that “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it …”, what he forgot to mention was that if you continue to repeat that lie you run the risk of believing it yourself.

Link: How to Fund Those Canadian Truckers!

No Fringe Benefits in Trashing Truckers Freedom Convoy

‘Fringe groups’ is a term reserved and used exclusively by the liberarsey media for any movement that challenges its ideological hegemony, and, as with all things liberal in these days of its waning empire, if you tap on it just rings hollow.

Take the headlines and standfirst that appeared this morning (9 February 2022) in a corporate liberal media source in the USA:

Headline: ‘With No End in Sight, Ottawa Protests Extend Beyond Canada’s Borders’
Standfirst: ‘Officials are grappling with a new protest blocking a major border crossing, while similar demonstrations have disrupted traffic in New Zealand and Australia.’

Now, both the headline and the standfirst emphasise magnitude and extent. In other words, the numbers involved, and the reach of the demonstration is truly awesome. Indeed, it has taken on a scale of international proportions.

However, if you look at the series of drop-down menus at the top of the website page on which this article is published, you will see:

Canada Trucker Protest> Protests Extend Beyond Canada | A Far-Right Rallying Cry | Who are the Protestors? | A Moment for Fringe Groups

There really is no need to read any further. Whilst acknowledging that the protests have taken on an international dimension, the liberal media moves reflexively to deligitimise them as ‘A far-right rallying call’. It is essential, from an ideological perspective, that on no account must the protestors be considered concerned citizens with legitimate grievances; Tom, Dick, Harry or Abdul, whoever they are and from wherever they come, they must be painted to suit the liberal narrative as swastika-waving Nazis. And even though in the real world the protest has ‘gone viral’, the message from the puppet masters to their trembling minions below is, don’t worry snowflakes it’s just a ‘Moment for fringe groups’.

We would all do well to remember that everything in our short lifetime is just a moment, and yet, as we know from history, a ‘moment’ can be extremely significant. It only took a moment to drop the atom bomb, but that moment ended WWII and changed the course of history.

Let us remind ourselves, however, that the media source to which I refer is written for liberals, served to liberals and read by liberals, thus the depth and need for denial is understandable. These are truly difficult times for liberals, and as their ideology spirals out of control, they can only become more difficult and the denial they seek proportionally vapid.

Even so, when at their most delusive does a fringe group stop being a fringe group and become a mainstream movement in the mind of the Liberarsey? The answer, as if you did not know it already, is when it occupies pride of place in the little toy box of liberal effects, deceits and cuddly dolls that they like to call their own.

Black Lives Matter is a prime example. Although it devastated cities, cost lives and millions of $/£s, it was billed by the liberal corporate media as a ‘largely peaceful protest’, whereas the Canadian Truckers’ Freedom Convoy is condemned out of hand as a despicable threat to democracy, that same democracy, incidentally, mugged, abused and left in the gutter by those who purport to exalt it, to which the truckers and their supporters are attempting to give the kiss of life.

Nevertheless, whilst liberalism is clearly on its way out, its grand impresarios continue to call on their minions and stooges to play what tricks they might have left concealed inside their sleeves.

Take Justin Trudeau, for example (You thought he had been taken? Yes, abduction by aliens could be one explanation). Just when we were beginning to suspect that Justin Trudeau had become the victim of a secret experiment gone woefully wrong, possibly undertaken in a laboratory in China, an experiment that seemed to have turned him into a likeness of the invisible man, suddenly, yesterday, he re-emerges, as though sneaking out from behind the false back of a corny magician’s cabinet, to resume his second-rate act as Canada’s prime minister ~ but only on video, mind.

No Fringe Benefits in Trashing Truckers Freedom Convoy. An invisible Trudeau.

Trudeau:
Am I see through?
Voice of Reckoning:
Yes, Mr Trudeau. You always have been. The difference now, however, is that totalitarian practices in the name of Coronavirus are waking them up to who you are, what you are, who you represent and what it is they are up to. It’s only a matter of time …

Link: Trudeau gives Truckers $100 via GiveSendGo!

#######

In an address that is the stuff of melodrama and comedy, Trudeau proceeds to define real Canadians as those unconditionally obedient to lockdowns and jabs, thus by implication dispossessing the Canadian truckers and disparaging their worldwide supporters, who are opposing totalitarianism, as respectively unCanadian and members of a fringe group.

Trudeau’s recorded address is sickly, gushing, fawning and fulsome. It might have won some plaudits had it been televised on children’s hour, but for real, mature, grown-up adults it is as flimsy and as see-through as Trudeau is himself and only deserving of ridicule.

In this opinion, it seems that I am not entirely alone. See the following clip:

If you feel that Trudeau, Macron, Blair are all from the same mould, that they have rolled off the same neoliberal production line, groomed in everything from the way they speak, the type of clothes they wear, to the body language that they exude, then you might suspect that they are clones from the disingenuous and deceitful matrix of neoliberal globalism.

If you wrapped them up in HG Wells-type bandages, they might attain more substance but seen in the flesh they are nothing more than dressed-up shop-window dummies, plastic for the most part and invisible when it suits them. Let’s hope that their invisibility, and the invisibility lost by those who pull the strings behind the scenes, lost thanks to coronavirus and overreach authority, soon become a permanent feature, like lockdowns, masks and jabs, of a swiftly passing and vanishing yesterday: Unseen, forgotten, utterly gone.

Now that would be a New World Order that we could all embrace and be proud of!

PS: If anyone has an idea for a ‘fringe event’ like that of the Canadian Truckers’ Freedom Convoy that could earn us global support, accelerate the demise of a despicable ideology, change the course of history and, no less significantly, generate $6mn dollars for us in 24 hours, please feel free (‘free’ an important word that!) to contact me at World Fringe Group Unlimited.

Image attributions
Red truck: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Vector-clip-art-of-red-truck-on-the-road/18710.html
Hand holding planet: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Big-world-in-hand/36246.html
Fringe: https://www.clipartmax.com/download/m2K9A0m2m2K9G6m2_hair-clip-art-vector-clip-free-clipart-images-hair-boy-clip-art/
Canadian flag: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Canadian-vector-flag/2900.html
Invisible man: https://pixabay.com/vectors/invisible-man-spy-agent-anonymous-154567/

Trudeau gives Truckers 100 dollars via GiveSendGo

Justin Trudeau gives $100 to Freedom Convoy (If you don’t believe me, see the screenprint below!)

Published: 8 February 2022 ~ Trudeau gives Truckers 100 dollars via GiveSendGo!

Yesterday should have been an awful day for me. At 6pm I had to leave my isolation bunker and head off to the dentist to have a wisdom tooth removed. Covid-wisdom had kept me away from the dentists for more than 24 months, causing untold damage in the teeth department. I just could not understand how you could have a tooth removed whilst wearing a face mask. I had a similar deficiency in comprehending how people using bars or restaurants could eat and drink with their muzzles on.

If I am really that dense, I thought, how mentally impaired will I be after the wisdom tooth has been removed. Would I start believing that everything that I read in the corporate media is true? Would I be tempted to vote liberal? Would I condemn the patriots of the Canadian Truckers’ Freedom Convoy as racist, far-right, extremists, anti-gender-neutrals, anti-gay parade-ist, supporters of Canada for Misogynists and/or relatives of Mr Hitler? Anything is possible? You only have to look to what extent the radical left has overplayed its hand this week, exposing the machinations of local and national neoliberal globalist governments and their evident collusion with the Silicon Valley Mob to know that this is true.

Just as well then that I decided to catch up on the predictable news by corporate media, and the thrilling news elsewhere, in the latest instalment of Things Will Never be Quite the Same Again, before I went to the dentist!

Trudeau gives Truckers 100 dollars via GiveSendGo

First, I tried to find out what had happened to the leading man in this grim drama of political vileness ~ Justin ‘Baby Face’ Trudeau. But he was nowhere to be seen. I assumed that he must be doing something useful, somewhere, after all he is Canada’s prime minister. Perhaps he was addressing a Black Lives Matter’s rally? But then it clicked! In addition to donating $100 to a very good cause, he had contracted a very fashionable disease at a very convenient moment. Western politicians seem to have a habit of doing this, don’t they?

Next, I tried to get on to the GiveSendGo Christian funding platform. Surprise, surprise I got a 404-error notice, which happened several times. Obviously, this was down to a couple of interrelated but opposing factors: one, that the donations to the Freedom Convoy campaign were pouring in so fast that the server could not cope and, two, that the brownshirt brigade of the loony liberal left were feverishly launching attacks on the website. No matter, after three or four search attempts, and some cunning circumvention of a stream of sites, which seem on Google to be stacked in favour of the radical left, I eventually beat the system. You see, at that point, my wisdom tooth was still intact.

GiveSendGo inundated with Freedom Convoy donations!

I concluded that the success of the Freedom Convoy, particularly with regard to GoFundYou’s failed attempt to padlock the Convoy’s money chest and throw away the key, a despicable, unethical and possibly illegal action that had exploded the looney left into a fit of premature gloating, taken together with the unprecedented support that the truckers are receiving from around the world, had plunged the liberarsey into the throes of such a ginormous shitfit that they were subjecting GiveSendGo to a cyberattack of Nazi Blitzkrieg proportions.

I finally got on to GiveSendGo by going directly to their website (www.givesendgo.com) and not via the convoy link on Google. The effort had been worthwhile! What a sight to behold! The scrolling line at the top of the screen was one continuous stream of $$$$, as donations poured in from around the world (and continue to pour in!) in support of the truckers’ campaign for freedom and, by default, the end of globalist tyranny.

Now see this>>>HOW TO FUND THOSE CANADIAN TRUCKERS!

Meanwhile, GoFundMe was ‘blasted’ and ‘slammed’ (sorry to resort to the old corporate media headline slogans, but as they say, what goes around …) for purloining the truckers donation money. In fact, one chap with a few quid in the bank described them as ‘Professional Thieves’¹.

There was even talk of GoFundMe (or should that be, GoF*!kYourself) giving the truckers’ money to charitable causes of which GoFundMe approve: I wonder how many ‘isms’ we can detect in those’².

Anyway, a quick change of pants later, and those in charge of the leaned-on site are crying. “We will give the money back”. Let’s hope they do. Better late than never, although for them, I am pleased to say, it’s a case of slamming the neoliberal door after Justin Trudeau has bolted. Prosecutions may well follow and as for GoFundMe’s reputation that is well and truly shafted.

On the subject of liberal-left partisanship, it is a wonder that the Freedom Convoy 2022 Facebook page is still up and running. From what I gather the DC Freedom Convoy, inspired by the Canadian Truckers and scheduled to take place later this year, is yet another victim on the growing list of the media giant’s hatchet job³.

“Trucker Jeremy Johnson, who established the group, [said] … ‘It’s censorship at its finest,’ … ‘They like to silence people that speak the truth.’” ~ Dailymail.co.uk³

You may feel, if you have personally been suspended, barred, blocked and banned by Facebook that they routinely target those who post anything on their site that does not conform to the liberal-left agenda? You may be right. What they have been doing throughout the Covid situation is redirecting users to selected information sources where you can read the truth about Covid. The question is, whose truth is it?

The following videos and links contain an alternative truth, the truth according to those who claim to be speaking out against and debunking the official coronavirus narrative. You all know the coronavirus story as told by social-media, the corporate media and its ‘Big Tech Big Pharma Globalist coalition’. The following videos and links provide an opportunity for you to watch, listen, absorb and then weigh the balance between the two opposing viewpoints. If you have a mind ~ if you have managed to retain your own mind after the past two years ~ I am sure that you will use it.

Happy viewing:

(Dark Knight) Freedom Convoy ADDRESS TO THE NATION – Feb.6, 2022 “State of Emergency Update”

Julia Brewer from Talk Radio discusses the ‘racist’ truckers and liberal authoritarianism with James Melville, Political Commentator

https://www.facebook.com/talkRADIOUK/videos/461979925627743/?extid=NS-UNK-UNK-UNK-AN_GK0T-GK1C

If you are a left-wing liberal and you think Trudeau, Macron, Ardern and Biden are authentically representing this ideology, then god help you. They are representing a corporately influenced marketing gimmick on the left. It’s completely bogus. And I say this as a lefty.
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) February 7, 2022

REINER FUELLMICH. It’s extremely difficult to obtain detailed information about Mr Fuellmich via Google. I wonder why that is. However, if you look you just might find the following: ‘Leading German lawyer and member of the German Corona Investigative Committee, Dr. Reiner Fuellmich specialises globally on the prosecution of fraudulent corporations. He now leads a stellar team of international lawyers in what will become the world’s largest global tort case—against all protagonists and accomplices in what is now being termed ‘The COVID Scandal’
https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/committees/paec/COVID-19_Inquiry/Submissions/119._Kassandra_Mouzis_Brudenell_Redacted.pdf
More information: (https://www.nogeoingegneria.com/news-eng/corona-investigative-committee-starts-the-grand-jury-trial/

By the way I was lucky. On my return from the dentists minus my wisdom tooth, I was relieved to find that I had enough wisdom left not to be tempted to make a donation to the Justin (only just in, but soon to be out) Trudeau Fugitive Fund, even though a certain disgraced crowdfunding platform gave me their best assurance that as this was one of the causes of which they heartily approved my money would be safe!😏

References
1. https://nypost.com/2022/02/05/elon-musk-gofundme-professional-thieves-for-withholding-10m-from-anti-vax-rally/
2. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10482895/Ted-Cruz-demands-FTC-probe-deceptive-GoFundMe-shut-page-raising-money-Canada-truckers.html
3. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10475507/Facebook-REMOVES-page-promoting-Freedom-Convoy-DC-GoFundMe-started-returning-donations.html

How to Fund those Canadian Truckers!

Conspiracy or not, Liberal Globalists seem to have overstepped the mark somewhat …

Published: 6 February 2022 ~ How to Fund those Canadian Truckers!

The CANADIAN TRUCKERS’ FREEDOM CONVOY has achieved much more than it set out to do. Not only has it sent a firm and resolute message to Mr Trudeau (who seems to have run away and gone into hiding) that enough is enough but is sending ripples across the world that are astonishing and terrifying liberal-lefty New World Orderists everywhere.

Breaking Wind! (which is what liberals everywhere are doing ~ even more than usual!) 7 February 2022
!!!!!!!!!!!!
Extreme far-left neoliberal globalists (did I get everything in there?) exhibit panic on a meltdown scale!
Politico (liberal-lefty) headline: “Ottawa truckers’ convoy galvanizes far-right worldwide”

CNN (liberal-lefty): A different angle in an article by Andrew Cohen today, but it rings hollow. Patronising and smirky-smug, but beneath the veneer of complacency there is a palpable fear that seeps through the subtext, saying that until now Canadians have been easy meat for the liberal sausage-making machine, so what’s gone wrong?!! Anything other in Canada than total compliance is almost unprecedented. Even more worrying then for the button pushers is this bold stand against liberal fascism by Canada’s backbone ~ those good old Truckers
😍😍😍

Even with all the glitches/attacks, $4million+ has been donated in 48 hrs on GiveSendGo. This is nothing short of a MIRACLE even with all the issues God is growing this company. We’re so excited to be on this adventure. (FYI it took over 2 weeks for the gfm to reach the $10M)
— GiveSendGo (@GiveSendGo) February 7, 2022

How to Fund those Canadian Truckers!

In the UK, anything that gets either The Guardian (guardian of what, exactly?) or Independent (independent my arse!) barking is a sure sign that liberal pants are being changed quicker than their journalists can get words down on paper.

Their desperation is particularly obvious when they resort to name calling, viz anybody and everybody who stands up against liberal fascism are immediately fascist themselves, far-right, extreme-right yawn, yawn, yawn. This crude and childlike polarisation, implying, as it does, that there is no middle-way, ie you are either a processed, unthinking, obedient liberal or an extreme far-righter, is rather unfortunate for them, because by this definition most of the world is far-right, and its number appears to be growing!

To see for yourselves just how far up they are running, make a search on Google for ‘GoFundMe removes donation page for Canadian trucker protest’. By the way, when you see why GoF!*kYourself removed the donation page, you might, with justification, think, “Hello, is Al Capone back in business?”. As each day passes the powers that were, and hopefully won’t be for much longer, become more and more transparent.

The attempts to cancel @joerogan

The collusion between #GoFundMe and the @JustinTrudeau regime.

The outrage at Jimmy Carr.

All it shows is how weak and terrified the crumbling the establishment is.

Keep attacking it from all sides.

Stand up for free speech.
— Laurence Fox ✝️ 🚚🚛🚚🚛🚚🚛🚚🚛 (@LozzaFox) February 7, 2022

Now, in the following article there’s an awful lot of Chagrin (with a capital ‘C’, which also stands for Globalists), so it’s time to wheel on (Tantara, Tantara) The Guardian for a bit of ‘Shriek!! They are all far-right extremists!!

Here is that article: https://torontosun.com/news/national/trucker-convoy-finds-alternative-funding-platform

You will see that the Canadian Truckers (liberal-lefty media just hate the ‘T’ and the ‘r’ in the word ‘truckers’ ~ I bet their subeditors are champing at the bit to insert an ‘F’) have a NEW FUNDING PLATFORM. Donations are flooding in!!

How to Fund those Canadian Truckers!

The funding platform for those stalwart truckers now is: https://www.givesendgo.com/freedomconvoy2022

Note: As I write this the donations are pouring in so fast that the traffic is crashing the server. Either that, or the site is under attack! See https://twitter.com/givesendgo/status/1489770036105469954
If you have a problem getting on to the site, just be patient. Remember the popular saying: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!”

In these grim lockdown, mask-wearing, vaccine-forcing, authoritarian, One World Government, New World Order days, the fact that a dedicated band of freedom-loving hairy-arsed truckers is holding up a huge freedom finger to Big Pharma, Big Tech and a handful of nasty globalist despots shows that every plandemic has a silver lining.

You might say, that’s just a load of old conspiracy bollocks! Maybe, but it doesn’t alter the fact that those truckers are putting a much-needed smile on our over-vaxed jaundiced faces.

My apologies to The Guardian, I suppose this makes us all far-right extremists!

Other countries are following the freedom example of the Canadian Truckers! https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/02/03/canadas-freedom-convoy-is-inspiring-protests-in-other-countries.html

Image attributions
Truck: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Big-rig-truck-vector-clip-art/7229.html
Street name plate: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Vector-image-of-street-name-board-in-Portland/19135.html
Thumbs up emoji: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Vector-drawing-of-thumbsup-smiley-face/22733.html

Heard the one about Herd Immunity?

It’s just something I herd …

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 700 [2 February 2022]

Published: 2 February 2022 ~ Heard the one about Herd Immunity?

If I am not mistaken, and I often am, from what I can make out it seems as if it was announced on 31 January 2022 that the rule of restrictive access to bars, restaurants, museums etc, implemented under the auspices of the controversial QR Codes (Vaccination Passports to you in the UK) have been repealed in Kaliningrad¹. If this is the case, what a relief.

Herd the one about Herd Immunity? Canadian Truckers for Freedom

Support the Canadian Truckers’ Freedom Convoy
The funding platform for those stalwart truckers is: https://www.givesendgo.com/freedomconvoy2022
www.givesendgo.com

Diary of a self-isolating Englishman in Kaliningrad
Previous articles:
Day 1 [20 March 2020]
Day 6 [25 March 2020]
Day 7 [26 March 2020]
Day 9 [28 March 2020]
Day 10 [29 March 2020]
Day 16 [4 April 2020]
Day 19 [7 April 2020]
Day 35 [23 April 2020]
Day 52 [10 May 2020]
Day 54 [12 May 2020]
Day 65 [23 May 2020]
Day 74 [1 June 2020]
Day 84 [11 June 2020]
Day 98 [25 June 2020]
Day 106 [3 July 2020]
Day 115 [12 July 2020]
Day 138 [30 July 2020]
Day 141 [2 August 2020]
Day 169 [30 August 2020]
Day 189 [19 September 2020]
Day 209 [9 October 2020]
Day 272 [11 December 2020]
Day 310 [18 January 2021]
Day 333 [10 February 2021]
Day 365 [14 March 2021]
Day 394 [12 April 2021]
Day 460 [17 June 2021]
Day 483 [10 July 2021]
Day 576 [11 October 2021]
Day 579 [14 October 2021]
Day 608 [2 November 2021]

Heard the one about Herd Immunity?

Before coronavirus and QR codes, it was not unknown for me to frequent the city’s bars, enjoy a beer or several and appreciate the presence of fellow drinkers and pretty women, all of which if it did not make me feel at least 40 years younger would make me wish that I was. In latter days, however, as a mature self-isolator, I have forsaken the city’s bars and taken instead to sitting in the attic with a couple of bottles of beer and the cat.

Yesterday, my wife informed me that she heard me singing in the attic to the cat, substituting the words of Elton John, who was warbling away on YouTube, for more meaningful wowling ‘meows’. As my old friend Leonard would say, “Yes, it’s come to this, and wasn’t it a long way down?” Ahh well, the one consolation has been that at least the cat appreciates it. If he didn’t, I’m sure that he’d have told me.

The cat was also pleased to learn that in the UK the brown man with a bald head revealed today (1 February 2022), in more words than it takes to say U-turn, that the British government had changed its mind about sacking half the NHS for not wanting to be vaccinated. Is this a sign that common sense is prevailing, or should we keep glancing sideways for the suspected imminence of a ‘more deadly Covid variant’?

Now out of the attic, nursing a hangover and with a ginger cat wearing two earplugs, I am also rather pleased that I am in Kaliningrad today (1 Feb 2022) and not attempting to cross the border between Canada and the United States, where Canada’s plucky truckers have had to convene a freedom convoy to ram the message home that they, and many other freedom-loving Canadians, have no intention of caving in to conscripted vaccination.

Well done, Canada! And just when I was beginning to think that the national idiom, ‘The Mountie always gets his man’, had begun to mean something else!

Support the Canadian Truckers’ Freedom Convoy
The funding platform for those stalwart truckers is: https://www.givesendgo.com/freedomconvoy2022
www.givesendgo.com

Heard the one about Herd Immunity?

Inspired by these reports, I wondered what the situation was in the new totalitarian state of Austria. Was it still threatening to tax people for not having the jab and was the resistance holding fast? I sat back with my self-isolator’s cup of coffee and flicked idly through today’s news, brought to me by the internet as we ousted the telly 21 years ago.

Well, now, what do we make of that? I asked myself, as I discover via the liberal-dominated media that all of a sudden Covid-19 has been ‘downgraded’ from a ‘socially critical disease’ and that Europe, like a feminist scorned, was ‘gradually opening up again’.

These admissions have not, however, prevented totalitarian Austria from following through with its threat to enshrine compulsory vaccination in law, an unworkable and quite frankly embarrassing gambit which the feudal state hopes to enforce by subjecting the country’s Great Unvaccinated to such stupendous fines that the only way to go presumably will be to resort to desperate acts. Time to get that dosh out of the Austrian banking system folks and into those socks under the bed!

However, bets are on that the Austrian government, which like Mr Trudeau in beleaguered Canada has underestimated the single mindedness of those who value freedom, already has in the pipeline a face-saving contingency plan, which, before the end of March ~ before the introductory phase for riot-igniting fines ~ will see a positive U-turn attempt to restore the country’s tarnished image as a democratic state. Of course, should another Covid variant pop conveniently out of the political woodwork, WHO knows what will happen?

Recent experience tells us that it would be sheer folly to allow ourselves to be lulled into a sense of false security! Indeed, those ‘gud ole boys’ at the WHO are already warning us that the situation remains unpredictable. Thus, WHO can rightly say if all this relaxation and semblance of normality is not just another example of the psychological warfare strategy of ‘soften them up to knock them back down’!

Now, I’m no conspiracy theorist. If I was, I would be naming that quarry somewhere in the Home Counties where some of my peers in England assert the United States staged the first moon landing. But I don’t mind telling you, and nobody else, that I am one of the few people who know exactly where it was filmed, because I have in my possession a photograph of the lunar landing which has a burger bar in the background which they forgot to airbrush out!

Herd immunity & Moon landing conspiracy theory

So, please send £10 via debit and/or credit card to Mick Hart at I am no conspiracy theorist {Iamnoconpiracytheorist.com} for your copy of the aforesaid photo.

In the meantime, Ginger cat, which song by Elton John would you like to hear next?

Meow!!

Oi! Mind your language!

Reference
1. https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/98811-v-kaliningradskoj-oblasti-otmenyayut-qr-kody-pri-poseshhenii-tc-i-obshhepita

Image attributions
LP: Evan-Amos, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/12in-Vinyl-LP-Record-Angle.jpg
Map of Austria location: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Austria-location-label/67794.html
Vaccination passports: https://pixabay.com/photos/covid-19-coronavirus-vaccine-6553695/
Man behind bars: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Man-behind-bars/87242.html
Burger Van: https://www.freeimg.net/photo/595247/hotdogvan-burgervan-cafe-restaurant
Quarry: https://www.freeimg.net/photo/56882/stonequarry-quarry-mine-mining
Spaceman: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/92631.htm

Image attributions
Red truck: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Vector-clip-art-of-red-truck-on-the-road/18710.html
Canadian flag: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Canadian-vector-flag/2900.html

All White in Kaliningrad More Snow on its Way!

Snowy scenes in Kaliningrad 2021/2022

Published: 31 January 2022 ~ All White in Kaliningrad More Snow on its Way!

For the past three or four days the rain has been teeming down here in Kaliningrad. It has washed away the snow and left the city and my shirt, which is hanging on the balcony railings, looking gloomy and bedraggled ~ as I wrote in a previous post, Kaliningrad is far from its best during a rainy winter season!

I also wrote in an earlier blog that ‘It always snows in Russia ~ and sometimes it doesn’t’. Such flippancy becomes me, but affirmation that all is still well can come from the strangest of sources. A few moments ago, I consulted the BBC weather forecast and contrary to my expectations of alighting upon something inexcusably liberal-left, such as for the next seven days it will be sunny over the English Channel, perfect weather conditions for the Royal Navy to taxi across more migrants, I was heartened to discover that more snow was making its way to Kaliningrad. Good, white snow!

The fall may not be sufficient to make hundreds of snow-Its but, as winter still holds illimitable dominion over the calendar, until such time as spring breaks a little more snow is unlikely to offend a conservative outlook on how the seasons should conduct themselves.

All White in Kaliningrad More Snow on its Way!

To tide us over, I have selected and posted here a number of what I consider to be atmospheric ‘Kaliningrad in the snow’ scenes taken just before Christmas 2021 and after Christmas in 2022.

Those of you who are still children at heart will feel the magic in what you see; those of you who have grown up too quickly, grown too old without realising it or just grown out of it, will be excused for thinking snowballs but pitied for a species of short-sightedness that any number of trips to Specsavers is unlikely to resolve.

Every snow cloud has a sublime lining!

All White in Kaliningrad More Snow on its Way!

Soviet Re-enactors take Polessk Brewery in WWII Battle

WWII Re-enactment at old German brewery in Polessk

Published: 27 January 2022 ~ Soviet Re-enactors take Polessk Brewery in WWII Battle

On 23 January 2022, the Polessk Brewery hosted a re-enactment of the battle for Labiau (Russian: Polessk), originally orchestrated as part of the Soviet East Prussian Offensive, which culminated in the surrender of Königsberg on 9 April 1945.

A better location for the re-enactment is hard to imagine. The grounds of the Polessk Brewery fall gently away from the foot of the brewery wall to the reed beds and banks of the River Deyma. Between the river and the brewery stands the solid remains of a reinforced concrete German gun emplacement . With the Soviet forces advancing from two separate points of the river, this genuine WWII obstacle provided the perfect place for the defending Germans to ‘dig in’ and attempt to repulse the invaders head on.

Soviet Re-enactors take Polessk Brewery in WWII Battle

Germans (re-enactors) gather by the side of the ‘bunker’ before the battle commences
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As with English WWII re-enactment scenarios, attention to detail was paramount. Re-enactments have an entertainment value, but first and foremost they are educational, which is why their participants are known by the generic name of Living History Groups.

Re-enactors on both sides, those representing the German and Soviet forces, dress in authentic uniforms, each item of which, including field gear and insignia, is meticulously researched and worn in the way it would have been worn by serving members of each country’s armed forces during the Second World War.

Soviet re-enactors in authentic WWII Red Army gear
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The de-activated weapons carried and used by re-enactors are often not replicas but blank-firing originals, the cost of which is frequently more alarming than the sounds they make when discharging. The same goes for the rest of the entourage: uniforms, insignia and field gear come at a not inconsiderable price. Good reproductions, ie the sort sold through the militaria outlet Soldier of Fortune, can be expensive enough, but the real thing, especially the real Third Reich thing, can cost the proverbial arm and leg. (Sorry, perhaps not the nicest metaphor when used in conjunction with military re-enactment!) Nevertheless, at the end of the day, re-enactment is no different from any other leisure pursuit: in other words, it costs!

Soviet Re-enactors take Polessk Brewery in WWII Battle

Although the area covered by today’s Polessk re-enactment was extensive, spectator attendance was high and in order to ensure an advantageous viewing point it was necessary to arrive early and stake out your claim. Low ambient temperatures and snow on the ground did not seem to have deterred anyone, and with a fair proportion of Germans and Soviets wearing snow suits, the scene could not have been more suitably convincing.

Olga and I had chosen to stand at the lower end of the field, which gave us a pretty clear view of the start of the battle, with Soviet forces firing mortars at the entrenched Germans, followed by the infantry advancing slowly on both sides.

Small children had been warned that their ears would be subject to ‘loud bangs’, and although the reports of rifles and machine guns were bearable in the wide-open expanse in which they were discharged, no one was prepared for the heavy canon fire and punctuating pyrotechnics. As I wrote earlier, re-enactment is serious stuff!

As the Soviets advanced, Olga and I retreated to the interior of the brewery (well, I would, wouldn’t I!), where it was possible to witness the battle from an elevated perspective. If anything, the confrontation was more dramatic from this standpoint, since as well as the commanding view it gave us, the background commotion of battle emanating from a giant sound system placed at the side of the brewery wall rose tremulously from the ground below and rent the air asunder.

It was a nice touch at the close of the assault to see a triumphant Soviet soldier waving the Red Army victory flag from the stairwell window of the old Labiau brewery!

отличная работа!!

Soviet soldier waves flag of victory at Polessk Brewery

More about the Polessk Brewery

Restoring the Polessk Brewery in the Kaliningrad Region
WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement Polessk Kaliningrad

April Fools’ Day Mandate for NHS Workers

It’s a pandemic! I know, let’s sack thousand of NHS workers!

Published: 26 January 2022 ~ April Fools’ Day Mandate for NHS Workers

“Thousands of protesters flocked to central London to remonstrate against mandatory coronavirus vaccination for NHS staff¹.” So reported the Express on Sunday 23 January 2022. But what have the others got to say?

Crikey, one thinks, the liberal-lefty press, the traditional banner carriers and left-wing collective social conscience for all UKers, who put the NHS and its workers above everything else, will have a field day about this!

Protect the NHS, Save the NHS, Support NHS Workers!!!!!!!!

Can you hear them? No, but did you hear that pin drop? The silence is deafening.

Where are the champions of the NHS now? Presumably, they are too busy stigmatising people who choose not to have a dodgy less-than-satisfactorily efficient and side-effect censored vaccine stuffed into their bodies.

As many as 70,000 NHS staff stand to lose their jobs if they do not cow-toe to the vaccine mandate. That’s Democracy for you folks! 🙄

April Fools’ Day Mandate for NHS Workers

The new rules come into effect on 1^st April, which, unless you haven’t twigged it yet, is April Fools’ Day ~ it fits quite neatly, don’t you think, with the Omicron anagram ‘Moronic’. If justice never prevails ~ and let’s hope it will ~ at least those who we respect least (the WHO-Fauci-Witty-Vallance-&-Co alliance) could always turn their hand at writing Christmas cracker jokes to go with your face masks and lockdowns.

Whilst the usual NHS moral high-grounders are conspicuously invisible, the initiative to strike a blow for freedom of choice and rebuff the medical fascism of compulsory vaccinations was taken by a group of ambulance workers. Their website, NHS100k.com, launched in November 2020, is supported by healthcare workers across the entire NHS spectrum, both vaccinated and unvaccinated but united by the resolution that vaccination by force must be opposed at all costs. Their website states: “We stand united in favour of freedom of choice, bodily autonomy and informed consent.” What’s not to like?!

See: NHS Together

So, I ask again, why isn’t the liberal media that has been bellowing loud and long at us about protecting the NHS throwing its moral weight behind the plight of our NHS staff? Could it be because like everything else they shout about, when push comes to shove, they just don’t care?

Admittedly, mainstream liberal media has put itself in an awkward place. Its authoritarian approach to everything Covid, particularly vaccination, has gone even further than Brexit in flushing out into the open the incontrovertible truth that human rights, civil liberties, equality and the rest, indeed all the institutions that it and its adherents claim to cherish, and on which they presume to hold a moral monopoly, are little more than meaningless soundbites.

Endless cycles of lockdowns, compulsory mask wearing and three hurrahs for a plethora of tests are nothing compared to their Ace card, which is to force millions of people, including thousands of frontline NHS workers, to submit to a quick-fix fast-tracked vaccine that many don’t trust and don’t want.

Ace of Spades card of death for NHS workers in vaccine mandate

Having played their cards so arrogantly, it is difficult, if not impossible, for them to make concessions for NHS staff, whose only desire is that they be granted the right ~ the human right ~ to choose bodily autonomy above biological invasion.

Clearly, the hole that the Liberarsey have dug for themselves is easier to stay in than try to climb out of. In other words, it is easier to stay shtum whilst hundreds of NHS staff lose their jobs than speak out for them. When, or if, it happens, these same self-styled media champions of the NHS will no doubt find a voice again, vilifying and condemning those who followed their intuition and insider knowledge of medical practices, and lost their jobs in the process, as selfish and irresponsible, when only a few weeks previously this once overwhelmingly clamorous, but now remarkably quiescent, media hailed the workers of the NHS, particularly its nursing staff, as brave and selfless frontline defenders in the crusading war against Covid-19.

A dose of the clap

There was a time when the Liberarsey, and their media cronies, at least aspired to the semblance of caring and, if nothing else, would clap for the NHS, but even something as simple as clapping is not that easy to do when double-standards and sheer hypocrisy have your hands tied firmly behind your back.

Listen?

No, that is not clapping you hear; it is just the sound of the blinds and shutters rattling against their collective conscience.

But tell me, are you really surprised that those NHS potato makers from the make-believe mainstream media have gone and dropped their political hotty into the turncoat shite? Of course, not … You’d have to be half-baked to swallow the nonsense they try to feed you.

Think! From the same people who brought you the EU, multiculturalism, open borders, candle-lit-vigils and boats across the Channel, comes the truth about Covid-19 …

“Protect the NHS!” they shouted. But then the gaunt, lean figure of Democracy, shuffling out of the crowd of clones, stepped up to take his appointed place at the podium … and not so much as a whisper could be heard.

Here’s a couple of videos that should be heard and seen. Whether you choose to agree with their content is entirely your choice. But choice you should have!

<<See: Dr Scott Jensen ‘You are being played’>>

Reference
1. https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1554262/London-protest-UK-vaccination-unvaccinated-unjabbed-April-1-NHS-healthcare-workers-VN

Image attributes
Hand clapping: http://cliparts.co/clipart/2497328
Sack: file:///C:/Users/mickh/Downloads/misc-pig-bait.svg
Pratt’s Sign: https://www.freeimg.net/photo/1083781/pratts-sign-oil-petrol
Ace of Spades: https://www.freeimg.net/photo/171797/spades-ace-card-playing

Cesky Medved Beer in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Published: 19 January 2022 ~ Cesky Medved Beer in Kaliningrad

Article 18: Cesky Medved

What’s not to like about a bear drinking a pint of beer? It’s so Russian. Look at him there on the label, that big cheeky grin and that foaming, frothing tankard. But wait! There’s something not quite right! It’s nothing to do with the bear. We all know that bears have big cheeky grins and drink beer. No, it’s the big beery head. Not the big beary head, but the soap-sudded head on top of the beer.

You see, Cesky Medved does not pour like that. It has no gargantuan head, in fact, it has very little head of which to speak. In fact, it’s as flat as your hat.

Ahh, that explains it, both the grin and the froth: our loveable old bear is not drinking Cesky Medved at all, he’s supping away at something completely different.

Cesky Medved Beer in Kaliningrad

Here is a quote about Cesky Medved that was posted to a beer-review website. The website is Russian and (surprise, surprise) most of the comments posted there are in Russian. This comment may have lost something in its Google translation, but I am sure you get the drift:

“The aroma [of Cesky Medved] is artificial, candy-fruity. That’s what cheap fruity beer drinks smell like. (Malt extract?) … the same, sweet with sourness and notes of hop extract or oil … I don’t know what they use there, but the beer is very bad.”

To be brutally frank, this beer smells like … I don’t know what? When I first lifted the bottle lid and attempted to whiff it, I thought for a moment that I had forgotten to take off my face mask. (Please don’t mock. I am certain that there are some of you out there, and you know who you are, who live in your masks day and night!) But gradually, with the bottle shoved up my hooter as you would a decongestant, a pungency filtered through.

I would not describe the smell of Cesky Medved as sweet or ‘candy-fruity’, but rather more on the sour side with an indiscernible back-twang, the sort of thing you sometimes get when you are offered a drink of something and the cup that you are drinking out of has not been washed up properly.

What had not smelt strong in the bottle, however, had an accumulative effect as it was served to the glass. Thereupon, the more subtle scents evaporated, leaving in their wake a certain lingering muskiness.

As the beer poured hazy and as flat as a road-killed rabbit, the appearance and smell conjoined to produce a disconcerting thought, that of a cobbled-together recipe strained through last week’s gym sock. It did not help any that, with this thought in mind, just as I was about to take my first sip, there was Jimmy Saville peering at me from Google Images all sweaty in his track suit. “How’s about that, then?”

What was it that he had carved into his gravestone in Scarborough before some well-meaning soul scrubbed it out? Ahh yes, I remember, “It was good whilst it lasted”! I am sure that this reference was to life in general and not to a glass of Cesky Medved.

I must say that with no head, medium fizz, a dish-water haziness and the smell of Saville’s socks, somehow Cesky Medved managed to be drinkable. Certainly, for the nominal amount that I paid for the pleasure, 110 roubles (£1.06) , I was not about to complain. No, I thought, I would save that for later, when, for example, I write this review.

My last word on the subject is that there are exemplary beers, excellent beers, good beers, satisfactory beers, tolerable beers, insipid beers and bad beers. This bear wasn’t that bad.

It’s a bear-faced lie!!

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😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Cesky Medved
Brewer: Baltika Breweries
Where it is brewed: Yaroslavl, Russia
Bottle capacity: 1.35 litre
Strength: 4.6%
Price: It cost me about 110 roubles (1.06 pence)
Appearance: Light, unfiltered
Aroma: You could call it that
Taste: Acquired
Fizz amplitude: 4/10
Label/Marketing: A cheeky, grinning bear
Would you buy it again? Never ever say never
Marks out of 10: 3.5

*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.

Kaliningrad via Gdansk

Kaliningrad via Gdansk
My first visit to Kaliningrad: left UK 23 December 2000

Kaliningrad via Gdansk is one in a series of posts that recount my first visit to Kaliningrad in 2000, and my first impressions of the land, the people and its culture.

Updated: 18 January 2022 | First published: 16 August 2019

It’s 7pm, 23^rd December 2000, and I am sitting nervously on a British Airways’ plane bound for Warsaw, Poland. I am one of those peculiar types that believes sitting in an aluminium tube with thousands of gallons of highly inflammable fuel at 35,000 feet is perfect insanity. Never mind about the well-meaning ‘statistically safest form of travel’.

But was it a nice place where I was hopefully going to get to?

Previous post in this series: See you in Kaliningrad, Russia!

As I said in my previous blog post, I hadn’t flown since 1971, but here I was jetting off to Warsaw. From Warsaw, we would take a bus to Gdansk and then, after a night or two there, a train to Kaliningrad, Russia.

For a non-flyer I took a perverse almost masochistic delight in the journey, overcoming much of my fear with the aid of three or four vodkas and a very complacent brother, who grinned like a jackanapes all the way.

For my own part, arriving at Warsaw Airport was not only novel in that we had arrived but also for the officialdom that greeted us. Here we were in the East, where it pleased my literary and cinematographic prejudices to discover a far more officious and militaristic reception. In London, Heathrow, it had been all suits, ties and ‘ladies and gentleman’; here, in the East, it was visor caps, uniforms, side-arms and cold stares. Passing through passport control was a stereotypical dream come true: the steely eyed and expressionless face of the man inside his little glass booth, glancing first at my passport photo and then searchingly back at me.

My first visit to Kaliningrad (year 2000) and my first impressions of Kaliningrad and Russia. Links to posts in this series arranged in chronological order:
1. The Decision: My first visit to Kaliningrad December 2000
2. Kaliningrad via Gdansk (23 December 2000) {{You are here! 😊}}
3. First Day in Gdansk (24 December 2000)
4. Christmas in Gdansk (25 December 2000)
5. Boxing Day in Gdansk: Kaliningrad 2000 (26 December 2000)
6. Into Russia (27 December 2000)
7. Kaliningrad: First Impression (27 December 2000)
8. The Hotel Russ, Svetlogorsk (27 December 2000)
9. Exploring Svetlogorsk (28 December 2000)
10. Svetlogorsk to Kaliningrad by Train (28 December 2000)
11. Kaliningrad 20 Years Ago (28 December 2000)
12. Russian Hospitality Kaliningrad (28 December 2000)

The ‘Sausage’

Somewhat disappointed that I had not been mistaken for the spy that they had been waiting for, I was then treated to what for most people I should imagine is a dull and onerous routine ~ retrieving one’s luggage ~ but which for us, thanks to a certain bag in our entourage, proved to be most entertaining.

The bag in question was a cylindrical-shaped canvas hold-all with a rubberised waterproof base. In theory it was a great piece of kit, capable of holding, well, anything really, and, when empty, folding away into nothing. Problem was, however, that when full it was very bulky, extremely heavy and extraordinarily long and, although it was well-catered-for with various handles and straps, those little wheels, which are such an indispensable feature of today’s large travel bags, were conspicuously non-existent.

So there we were with the rest of them waiting patiently at the side of the carousel for our luggage to emerge. One by one our cases appeared, and we duly retrieved them. But where was that last, that special bag?

With about six people left around the carousel excluding ourselves, we began to grow concerned. But just as we began to fear that we may have lost our exclusive bag, we caught sight of it, coming out of the luggage hold from behind the rubber flaps ~ only it didn’t. It sort of popped out, sat there for a while and then nipped back in again.

Two or three large heavy cases then came tumbling out in a kind of jumbled confusion, quickly followed by another sighting of our long and lost bag. For some odd reason, it was making its exit and entrance at a compromising angle.

Moving closer to the exit point, we could clearly hear lots of huffing, puffing and cursing from behind the rubber curtains. Our bag was now sandwiched sideways across the gap, forming a blockade with the remaining cases caught on top and behind it. From what we could make out, a lot of frustrated energy was being expended out of sight behind the scenes and then, with a thump and a cry, our obstinate bag and the others that it had bullied came tumbling into view.

Whether our long bag didn’t think much of Poland or was simply a petulant creature, this we will never know, but It was evident from the large boot prints on either side of the bag that our ‘Sausage’, as it became to be known, had put up a hell of a fight!

By bus to Gdansk

After this trauma, we no doubt took a quick snifter or two of vodka from the hip flask that I had brought with us. It was now time to lug our luggage, including our recalcitrant Sausage, from the warmth of the airport to the snowy wastes outside.

The plan was to bus it to Gdansk. We were both looking forward to the journey, to relaxing on the bus, that is until we saw what it was that we would be travelling in. Being English, we can be forgiven for believing that we would be going by luxury coach when, in fact, the carriage awaiting us was a rusting, clapped-out minibus with mustard lace curtains that once no doubt had been white.

I don’t recall being too perturbed by the fact that almost everyone was smoking on the way; my brother was a smoker and I was prone now and then to indulge in the odd cigar. Looking back on it, it must have been a right old stinker ~ the curtains weren’t yellow for nothing, although my smell memory retains a distinct essence of diesel fumes more than it does tobacco.

It was a long journey, and we were very tired. It was snowing continuously and sometimes quite heavily, but this merely added to the stereotypical image that I had nurtured, and it pleased me for its novelty as much if not more than for the differences I noted as we trundled on our way: shops and road signage, all written, of course, in Polish; the filling stations whose names I did not recognise; and, when it was possible to see through the steamed-up windows, the distinctive change in architecture.

As the open road gave way to increasingly built-up areas we knew we were travelling through the outskirts of Gdansk.

We had in our possession a computer printout identifying the hotel where we would be staying and, according to the bus driver, we were close to where we wanted to be. We alighted from the bus, cramped and stiff, on the side of a dual carriageway teaming with traffic, shell shocked from travel fatigue but anaesthetized by vodka.

My wife to be, Olga, had arrived there some hours before us and, as luck would have it, I spotted her having a cigarette in the window of the hotel restaurant across the busy street from where we were standing. Remember those wonderful days? Having a cigarette in the restaurant! {Post-normal days’ comment: Remember those days before coronavirus, ie sitting in a pub or a restaurant!}

Thus, the first stage of the journey into Russia was complete. We would stay for three days in Gdansk, which included Christmas Day, and then, on the 27^th December, leave Poland by train for Kaliningrad.

Next post in this series:
3. First Day in Gdansk

Feature image attribution: Photo by USFWS on Pixnio: https://pixnio.com/vintage-photography/men-in-the-aircraft-cockpit-old-vintage-photo#