Ozerki Lock Masurian Canal the brave and beautiful

An incomplete German masterpiece

17 May 2024 ~ Ozerki Lock Masurian Canal the brave and beautiful

Pursuant to our trip to Znamensk, we motored on that same afternoon to a lock on the Mazurski Canal (aka Masurian Canal), a German project implemented in 1911. The plan was for the canal to connect Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) with Lake Mauersee (aka Lake Mamry), but the project faltered and eventually failed due to Germany’s hyperinflation.

Travelling from Znamensk, we were to pick up the trail of the Mazurski Canal at the Ozerki Lock. There are no major roads servicing this region, thus the trip by car from Znamensk is seemingly protracted but on the way you get to appreciate views of woodland, open countryside and original East Prussian dwellings, some of which are delusively quaint for the sightseer, or, where standing empty and derelict, curious objects on which to dream and speculate. These are the homes of those who enjoyed, or did not, the day-to-day realities of an agrarian lifestyle and do, or do not, enjoy it today.

Ozerki Lock Masurian Canal

Popular theory has it that first impressions are often wrong and in the case of Ozerki Lock, they are often wrong and right. Yes, Ozerki Lock is a great slab of concrete, this is the first impression, but as with most first impressions, there is more to the subject than meets the eye.

Like a lot of things German, especially leading up to and during the Second World War, Ozerki takes you unawares, sitting there, as it does, on a 90-degree sharp bend, camouflaged to a certain degree (Them Germans were good and are good camouflagers.) by the outer reaches of a ragged coppice. But the real drama is concealed inside, waiting patiently to ambush your senses blitzkrieg style. It’s all so very German, isn’t it!

Pulling off the road, we came to a halt on a dirt track widened on the nearest side to the lock by constant use as a makeshift carpark. Although the number of vehicles in our retinue had diminished since we left Znamensk, some drivers having decided that it was time to head back home, the improvised carpark was yet insufficient to take all of the remaining retro club cars, thus those that could not be accommodated dutifully regrouped on the outside curve of the bend.

A metal staircase with an open rail, similar to those in England that climb the sides of control towers on disused WWII bomber bases, was the means by which we would ascend to the upper level of the lock’s superstructure

I am not very good when it comes to guessing heights, but I would say that we were about twenty-five feet above ground level when the old metal staircase on which we were climbing turned at an angle of 90 degrees. No great height, admittedly, but the unexpected discovery that age and rust had done for the handrail had quite an unnerving effect. It actually signalled what was to come, but nothing of a preparatory nature was in and of itself sufficient to subtract from first-hand experience.

The initial encounter is, to coin a phrase, breathtaking. There are no handrails, no safety rails of any type; nothing to stabilise or assist yourself with. You are standing upon a ledge little more than six feet in width, staring across the cut to its opposite half, a sheer and brutal-walled descent into a dark abyss of semi-stagnation. You follow this man-made ravine, drawn to what appears to be a solid wall of water at the farthermost end of the lock. It is nothing of the sort, of course, simply an illusion, created and perpetuated by a constant flow of water escaping at a uniform rate over the top of the lock gate. Nevertheless, the spectacle makes you pause, and then you are falling, visually down, carried by the sheet of water into the yawning gulf below ~ a precipitous man-made canyon entombed in reinforced concrete.

Ozerki Lock Masurian Canal Kaliningrad region

Hailing from Northamptonshire in England, to be a stranger to waterway locks would be more difficult than impossible. Along the river Nene and Grand Union Canal, many fine examples are to be found, some in fact quite deep, but nothing that comes nearly as close to the overpowering awesomeness of this giant concrete sandwich.

Ozerki Lock Masurian Canal

Far be it for me to confess that I shrunk from my response and instinctively made my way towards one of two small rooms that flank the structure at its roadside end. But had I gone in search of solace, I would not find it there, for not only was the chamber skeletised ~ it had no doors, no roof, its windows had no frames nor glass ~ it was in short as open to the world as any object could be ~ but also and often at floor level deep declivitous shafts, waterlogged some several metres below so that they borrowed in appearance from a staggered series of man-made wells, presented themselves as cunning traps intended to compromise life and limb. The feeling, or rather the inclination, that this combination of heights and pits engender, is an interesting voyage of self-discovery that is not to be fostered or encouraged.

A second doorway, second to the one through which I suspect I had passed in haste, also had no wood to close. It looked out high above the road, giving access to a narrow walkway, some of which was shattered, connecting either side of the lock to the other. It formed a bridge, a precarious one, between the two opposite chambers.

Ozerki Lock Masurian Canal open to the elements

As myself and my male associate hesitated, contemplating the daunting prospect of crossing the narrow divide, the ladies in our company took the initiative for us and verily showed us up, as altogether in one mind and without a second thought, even pausing at the midway point to pose for several selfies, they traversed what we had not and eventually decided would not.

“Huh, anyone can do that!” I thought.

Back on terra firma (about two seconds after “Anyone can do that!”), I decided to walk in line with the lock and approach it again at the opposite end via an earthen bank. This I succeeded in doing with no incredible effort, arriving at the end of my circumventing labours once again at the top of the lock but overlooking the gate.

The vertical view at this point is altogether astonishing, invoking a sense of sublimity in the purest sense of the term.

A momentary distraction

A beautiful young lady with her midriff all on show, whom and at which I was looking purely because she and it offered some respite from the effect of staring giddily down into the swirling depths, had a large boyfriend with her, so I quickly looked away. But then, quite unexpectedly, it was he who became the object of my fascination, and for reasons understandable; for caring not a fig, even if he should have done (does anybody care a fig?) he strutted across to the other side of the ramparts and, without a care in the world, or care to remain within the world, judging by his temerity, proceeded to descend inside the bowels of the concrete monster via a series of cylindrical rungs embedded in its wall. Meanwhile, the voluptuous Miss Midriff, teetering on the edge of the platform arm in arm with her own excitement, leant out at a remarkable angle and snapped some photos of her man, who had decided to take his fate in one hand and also on one leg.

This ‘cast all caution to the wind and laugh in the face of danger’ stunt is one that I can readily associate with my English friends, the Wilcox family, who, in all the long years that I have known them, have never been backwards in coming forwards when Challenge throws down its gauntlet, no matter how dangerous that challenge may be or simply because it is dangerous.

I returned to the car and drank tea.

When we were all safely back inside the car, not talking about who had been brave and who hadn’t, it was time to motor off to a nearby glade opposite a dwelling place. Unbeknown to me, arrangements had been made to stop here for refreshments.

The occupants of the aforementioned house showed us to a picnic table at the side of the canal, whose footpath they had cleared. Here we were able to park our arses and partake of the picnics we had brought with us. Some people, those who had not signed a secret treaty many years ago with the Vegetarian Society, were occasioned with meat soup from a sizeable cauldron, so expertly slotted into a motor-vehicle hub mounted on a metal pole that customisation could not be ruled out.

The spot was perfect, but for the absence of a public lav? It was a long way to the bushes and without a rope and a course in abseiling, it would have been indecent, but rejoicing came in two flavours: one, that the owners of the nearby abode possessed a privy we were welcome to use, and two, it was outside.

What a thrill! Talk about reliving my childhood! Our family had, and had a reputation for having, the last outside loo in our village. It became so phenomenally unusual by virtue of its archaism and also so utterly embarrassing for reasons of the same that I cannot imagine what life would have been like without it: more difficult certainly, yet not so amusing. It furnished us with many a joke and anecdote and became so embedded in family folk lore and legend that it and it alone was enough to turn us one and all into after-dinner raconteurs.

It is difficult to explain such an honest affection honestly to someone with an outside loo without sounding condescending and raising the hackles of suspicion, but as in Monopoly I took a chance, and the people to whom the loo belonged took it in good part. It was far less controversial than the passionate urge to sing, on seeing Olga’s photograph, “Oh dear what can the matter be, xxx lady stuck in the lavatory.” Best not, ay! Discretion, as they say, is the better part of valour! I was heavily into discretion today.

From Ozerki lock to outside privies in one fell swoop, there’s an epic digression for you!

Ah hem: Getting back on subject, the Ozerki Lock. If I had been expecting somewhere National Trust protected, the lock renovated, enclosed within its own neat grounds, with a ticket office up front, a carpark in the near beyond and the whole outlay serviced by cafes and souvenir shops then, like they say of the teddy bears’ picnic, I would have been in for a big surprise. Seeing it as it is and exploring it in the raw, so to speak, and doing it all for free, has obvious advantages, but I would not be at all surprised if my fertile imagination does not one day give birth to fact and the vision that I have outlined is not a reflection of Ozerki’s future.

“Ozerki Lock! Tickets, please! And mind the steps as you go!”

Znamensk (Wehlau) Before You Go What to Know!

There are more things in Znamensk than meet the eye

9 May 2024 ~ Znamensk (Wehlau) Before You Go What to Know!

It is about 50km / 30 miles from Kaliningrad to Znamensk. That is no distance when you are whipping along in an all-mod-cons motor vehicle, but when you are travelling by classic car, such as a 1960s’ Volga, ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ is less likely to spring to mind than ‘oversprung and lurch quite drastic’. But isn’t that just the fun of it!

As is the custom of the Kaliningrad Auto Retro Club, those members who were attending the latest meet, met up on the concourse of a filling station. As pre-planning goes, this strategy cannot be faulted. Most large filling stations have all you need for a temporary stop: fuel, food, tea and coffee, toilets, and, most importantly, a place to park and space to stretch your legs.

Mick Hart & Olga Hart with a classic Volga car in Kaliningrad Oblast

They are also perfect for saying hello to and shaking hands with people whom you may not have seen for months, and you can amble around and look at the cars and, of course, take numerous photographs.

All of these things we did, until, when all the participants were herewith assembled, we hopped into our respective motors and cavalcaded away.

Znamensk (Wehlau)

Znamensk, our destination, is a small rural settlement, population less than 5000, situated in the Gvardeysky District, east of Kaliningrad, Russia. As with many places in this region it has a chequered and violent history, changing hands many times over the course of centuries.

Wehlau, as Znamensk was known in Prussian times, fell to the Teutonic Order in the mid-13^th century. Having populated it with Germans, the Order then went on to fill the town with horses. In the first half of the 14th century, civic charters were granted turning the hitherto sleepy settlement into a major centre for horse trading. Three horse fairs were held each year, one of which lasted for three whole days.

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR PHOTOS OF WEHLAU >
Велау (Знаменск). Довоенные виды. | Pro History | Tilsit | Дзен (dzen.ru)

Opposition to Teutonic rule in the mid-fifteenth century sparked a war between the Kingdom of Poland and the Teutonic Order. Lasting for 13 years, someone with an eye for detail decided to call it the Thirteen Years’ War. The outcome of this conflict was that the eastern lands of old Prussia, including the town of Wehlau, was granted to the Teutonic Order as a fief and protectorate of Poland. The Teutonic Order had not been entirely vanquished, but it was certainly no longer the force it had been.

The sixteenth century came and went. It was not the best of times for Wehlau as it suffered a number of natural disasters, including a terrible fire. But in the 17^th century, its fortunes changed. Frederick William, ‘The Great Elector’ of Brandenburg, acquiring full sovereignty over Prussia, proceeded to develop the country into a major power.

In January 1701, the Kingdom of Prussia was formed, and in 1871 Wehlau, along with the rest of Prussia, was absorbed by the German Empire.

During the 19^thcentury and up until the mid-20^th century, Wehlau grew into a handsome town and one with a thriving community. The town was served by all essential amenities, including a school, a court and a church. The Prussian Eastern Railway provided access to Königsberg and also to Berlin and from Berlin a link to St Petersburg.

On the 23 January 1945, Wehlau’s history ended. After two days of gruelling urban warfare, Russian troops wrested the town from its embedded German defenders. By the time the fighting was over, nearly all that was left of the old town centre was rubble. In the aftermath of war, the ruins were flattened and cleared, and the town in its pre-war form was never rebuilt.

WWII: January 1945, the Red Army attack and take Wehlau
Wehlau (now Znamensk) was almost totally obliterated in the last year of the Second World War, but it was not an easy prize. Record has it that it took the Soviet forces two days of intense fighting to defeat the German defenders and, as with other East Prussian towns, the only way to rout the enemy was to confront them street by street, building by building. The Soviets eventually won the day but casualties were high.

Znamensk (Wehlau)

Before we set out on our trip today, I had been forewarned not to expect too much of Znamensk, as there was little left to see.

First impressions of the still-standing Seven-Arch Bridge over the Pregolya River and the bronzed cupola of St Jacob’s Church visible above the distant rooftops appeared to belie what I had been told. But after snaking our way through a narrow street with German buildings on either side, we emerged into nothing much — much of empty space but little of town. To the left stood the ruins of St Jacob’s church, to the right a block of flats, typically Soviet 1970s, rather rundown and tired and of no aesthetic value.

Trundling on, we eventually hung a right, which brought us into a little enclave of shops nestled against the side of the river. This partly developed oasis in the desert of Wehlau’s former glory is pretty much today what Znamensk is all about — a place to come if you own a boat and want to make use of the water. And what a lovely stretch of water it is!

We passed a rack of canoes and a vehicle with a boat in tow and pulled up beside a building, which, we would later be pleased to discover, was an attractive restaurant serving good food.

It was here on a narrow strip of ground that our Captain of Ceremonies, Arthur Eagle, would have the unenvious responsibility in his role of car-club president of marshalling the cars in our company into some kind of orderly parking

With no responsibility for us to abdicate, which is one of the joys of travelling passenger class, Olga and I disembarked, and, after a statutory session of photograph-taking, using the river as a picturesque backdrop, we took to the nearby restaurant.

Minimalist and light, bright and sensorially breezy, it is hard to picture a restaurant more inviting, especially after an hour or so of motoring classic style.

Halfway through our repast, however, Mr Eagle attempted to roust us out, we and the other club members who had sidled in for a bite to eat, for a guided tour of St Jacob’s, but the twin considerations of the restaurant being well-appointed and a paucity of enthusiasm when it comes to guided tours, we politely declined the order.

We would stroll to St Jacob’s church in our own good time, take in it’s red-brick architecture and feel our way back through the centuries to the dawn of its inception (1380), but as for the moment, it was comfy seats and coffee.

St Jacob’s Church Znamensk (Wehlau)

Like so many churches decommissioned by time, St Jacob’s is a shell, but it must have been born with survival in mind, because in 1540 a fire engulfed the town and the church was one of the very few buildings to resist complete destruction. Likewise, in 1945, most of Wehlau went up in smoke, save for St Jacob’s church. It seems that in this world of ours some things are heaven blessed, whilst others suffer the consequences of unmerciful indifference.

St Jacob's church, Znamensk. The cupola can be seen above the rooftops

St Jacob's church, Znamensk, front elevation

Mick Hart expat kaliningrad near St Jacob's church, Znamensk (Wehlau)

St Jacob’s church is often described as the only building of note in Wehlau to have survived the Second World War, but this is in fact untrue. Rising above the German buildings on the approach to the railway crossing, in all its faceted and Gothic glory, is the lead-crowned tented roof, complete with spire-topped dormer windows, of what easily could be mistaken for the bold, extravagant centrepiece of a medieval castle but which is in point of fact a 1913 water tower.

Standing on an abrupt eminence next to the railway crossing, the tower built according to the Gothic revivalist style cuts an imposing figure, its tall tapering brick arches contrasting with and complementing the railway lines it looks down upon, as they sweep past in opposing directions and vanish quite spectacularly into the distance of themselves.

Znamensk (Wehlau) water tower built in 1913

Railway lines at the crossing in Znamensk

Wehlau tower was love at first sight, which is probably why fate stepped in and prevented me from buying it. ‘You can’t buy love’, the Beatles warbled? And when I inquired is the tower for sale? I learnt the bitter truth that it had been for sale most recently but most recently had been sold.

Thwarted, thus, there was nothing more to be done than to cross to the other side of the tracks and find yourself in an abandoned graveyard.

Between two brick piers, minus their gates, the ground beyond was unkempt, and though not a spinney as such, it was interspersed with far more trees than would otherwise permit it to be described as open land.

Not exactly a stranger to graveyards, on the contrary I have tarried within and walked through many a graveyard in England, most of which are neglected to some degree, and yet I cannot recall witnessing one so complete in its desertion that, like the inmates it accommodates, it had fallen into abject decay.

I assumed this piece of ground was once the town’s main burial plot, dating at least to the mid-19^th century, but should my assumption be correct, where was the immediate evidence of legacy German tombstones?

It had been the railing enclosures that first made it known to me that I was walking across a graveyard, and these, as I suspected and later would confirm, were not of German but Russian ancestry. All told, the sight they presented was emphatically forlorn, almost film-set in their sorry spectacle, randomly scattered among the trees, some with trees having grown up through them. The railings forming their compounds were for the most part intact, but with yellow, green and blue paint fading, bleached by the sun, scoured by the frost and the rain. And some of the enclosures lay at awkward angles, pushed up from the ground by tree roots or brought down into hollows by water-logged and sinking soil.

The tombstones, where surviving, were all to an object gnarled and cracked, their inscriptions barely legible. They shared their space with plastic containers, improvised make-shift flower vases, now destitute of purpose and strangled by the undergrowth. All were sad reminders of moments of grief in people’s lives, who, many years long since past had gathered at these gravesides to bid farewell to their nearest and dearest. They had placed their flowers upon the graves and continued with this ritual until, within the relentless march of time, they had either grown too old to visit, moved so far away that visiting was impractical or kept their own appointments with death and now, in turn, were the visited ones and would continue in this way until such a time would come when the reasons I have given would commit them to a solitude even greater than first inflicted. And now, in the here and now, was I, staring down at the graves of the dead-forgotten, among whose number we already belong in the eyes of those who are staring down at us and thinking the thoughts that I am thinking, but whom we will never know as they exist in a future that we have run out of.

Trees grow through grave compound in Znamensk garveyard

Whilst I was engaged not in what I would define as a reflection of a morbid kind so much as a contemplation of mortality, Olga had gone on a mission, to hide from what I was seeing and not to share in what I was thinking. For a short while, therefore, but who is to say it was not an eternity, I was given free reign to immerse myself in the oddity of it all; to ponder on time’s mysteries and the obsolescence it inevitably brings. Znamensk is that sort of place, you know; it does this sort of thing to you and does it when you are least expecting it.

Suddenly a grating noise, as though Peter Cushing was dragging the lid from Christopher Lee’s sarcophagus, startled me from my solitary reveries. For a split second I knew not what to make of it, and then I remembered my smartphone ~ yes, I actually had one of those. It was ringing in my pocket, but not with a ding-a-ling-ling or a tune to make you look silly. It was ringing with a customised tone, the guttural sound of the TARDIS in the famous throes of it taking off. How very appropriate, I caught myself thinking.

There are no prizes for guessing who it was who was ringing me. It was not a long-distance call. She was, in fact, ‘next door’, having discovered, as she said, a ‘wonderful Catholic church’.

Orthodox Christian Church in Znamensk, Rssia

We made arrangements to meet there. Not bad things, these smartphones, ay?

The gardens of the church next door do have an air of wonder about them. They are neatly laid out, formal style, in stark contrast to the graveyard opposite, and the church which they contain alludes to renovation in a period not too distant to the one we occupy now.

I found Olga where she said she would be, sitting on a park bench with the caretaker of the church, whom she had told me was about to lock up and go home but was willing to wait a while to allow us to look around.

This church, the deserted graveyard, the gorgeous red-brick water tower, St Jacob’s church, the handful of old town buildings that had refused to give into destruction, the river bridge and near-river scenes, everything, in fact, that constitutes the town that was and the settlement that is, works a kind of magic. I could feel it in the air as surely as I could feel the warmth of the sun upon my body.

Don’t be fooled by what people tell you: There is much to see in Znamensk: much of what was and is. And that which you cannot see with your eyes, if you give in to your inclination, you will see with your mind and your heart, and something, call it imagination, will join the dots between.

Places to visit in the Kaliningrad region

Waldau Castle
A 750-year-old castle, now under the auspices of a friendly curator-family from central Russia. The castle shares ground space with a fascinating museum.
Nizovie Museum
Once it was a multifunctional retail premise, then a school and now an evocative museum dedicated to local social history, vintage transport and Soviet militaria.
Fort Dönhoff (Fort XI)
One of the 19th century forts that formed historic Königsberg’s formidable ring of defence, now restored to a high standard and offering visitors a labyrinth experience on a scale and of a kind most likely never encountered.
Angel Park Hotel
A rural recreation centre on the site of an old East Prussian settlement set in a beautiful natural landscape replete with timeless mystique.

Kaliningrad Celebrates Kant on his 300th Year

Kant be fairer than that!

30 April 2024 ~ Kaliningrad Celebrates Kant on his 300th Year

Of the many things that Kant and I do not have in common, two stand out more than others. The first is that he was one of the world’s great philosophers, considered to be the third wheel behind Plato and Aristotle, the second he did not like beer. The first is an accomplishment worthy of applause; the second we will let quietly slip away, as it does not behove a gentleman of such intellectual stature whose name is synonymous with logic and reason.

Not widely read today, because his style of writing does not conform to the SEO prescription for sentences of 20 words or less, it is indeed a sobering thought that had Kant lived in the early 21^st century, the systematic dumbing down of language and generational attention deficit attendant on this rule, would seriously have obstructed him in his quest to play linguistic games on paper. Instead of engaging the intellect with works of a ground-breaking nature, he would most likely be biding his time posting snippets to Twitter, taking selfies for social media, and pinning pictures of cakes on Pint-rest (incorrectly referred to as Pinterest). Deprived of these unspeakable pleasures, he had to be content with the lesser mental dynamics required to come to grips with epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics.

300 Years of Kant

Immanuel Kant was born on 22 April 1724 in Königsberg, East Prussia, where he lived until he died on 12 February 1804. Hardly venturing from his home city, Kant, nevertheless, through philosophical thought based on transcendental idealism, is largely credited for changing the way that people think around the world. So, if you have ever wondered why it is that you think the way you do, just think Kant and you have the answer.

Kaliningrad Celebrates Kant on his 300th Year

In life, Kant was a professor at Königsberg University, specialising in logic and metaphysics; in death, he lays entombed near Königsberg Cathedral on the appropriately named Kant Island ~ Kneiphof Island in Königsberg times.

Did you know?
Kant was German. I bet you knew that. But did you know that for seven years he became a Russian subject? During the ‘Seven Years’ War’ in Europe, Austria’s allies, Russia, captured the East Prussian city of Königsberg , whereupon Kant, along with other Konigsberg citizens, pledged his allegiance to the Russian empress, Elizabeth. It was an allegiance he would not renounce even after Königsberg was returned to East Prussian rule.

As a philosopher of universal acclaim, a distinguished member of Königsberg ’s academia and one of the city’s most prominent citizens, Kant was fully qualified to be buried inside the cathedral itself. In 1880 that honour was extended when his remains were exhumed and rehoused in a chapel purpose built for him at the cathedral’s northeast corner, opposite the then prestigious Albertina University.

Was he boring, Kant?
History has it that Kant was so regular in his routines that Königsbergians could set their watch by him. His habit of walking the same route at the same time each day earnt him the nickname of ‘The Konigsberg Clock’. However, contrary to his stereotype, that he was dull and prone to reclusiveness, Kant, by all accounts, possessed an uncommonly good sense of humour, loved to drink red wine and was a congenial host of dinner parties.

The university perished in the heavy Allied bombing of World War Two, but the mausoleum that would eventually replace Kant’s chapel, the one that we know today, whilst not escaping damage entirely at least escaped it sufficiently to allow for restoration.

Described by some as ‘minimalist’, the simple column and canopy structure has a certain aesthetic elegance and a dignity not detracting from the cathedral’s Gothic profile. The chapel, built in 1924, is the brainchild of Friedrich Lahrs, renowned East Prussian architect.

Kaliningrad Celebrates Kant

The 300th anniversary of Kant in Kaliningrad in 2024: how the philosopher’s birthday will be celebrated in his homeland.

“The anniversary of the philosopher will be celebrated by the whole of Kaliningrad and guests of the city. The International Kantian Congress, various lectures, presentations, seminars, concerts, excursions, performances, as well as several exhibitions are planned here. Events dedicated to the 300th anniversary of Kant will take place in the city throughout 2024.”

Click on the link below for the Schedule of Events.
300th Anniversary of Kant in Kaliningrad 2024: Holiday Program, Schedule of Events (kp.ru)

Photographs have been reproduced with kind permission of Vladimir Chilikin

Tawerna Rybaki Gdansk Old Town a Warning!

Tawerna Rybaki Gdansk Old Town a Warning to the Unwary!
Piwna 9/10, Srodmiescie, Gdańsk, 80-831, Poland

23 April 2024 ~ Tawerna Rybaki Gdansk Old Town a Warning!

Note (added 9 May 2024): Booking.com asked me several times to leave a review of my ‘hotel room experience’. It was a tad difficult, as I never got inside of it, but, anyway, I left a review. When I checked the reviews on Booking.com’s page for Tawerna Rybaki, I found mine via the link, but when I checked again using their ‘slider’ on the page, only positive reviews appeared. So, it’s ‘magnificent’, ‘wonderful’, ‘the best ever’ … as I intimate in my post headline, “a warning to the unwary”. Perhaps I should have included the word ‘collusion’ 🤔

This story is sad but true. Its main protagonists are the world’s largest online travel agency, a so-called ‘apartment’ in Gdansk and last, but by all means least ~ or so it would seem ~ me, the customer.

A few weeks ago, I was returning from the UK to Kaliningrad. As you will know if you have read my earlier post, the journey is an onerous one: early morning, 4am start; Wizz Air to Gdansk; taxi to Gdansk bus station; three hours of loitering in Gdansk waiting for the bus connection; two-hour bus journey to the Polish-Russian borders; one-and-a-half-hours processing time at the borders (if you are lucky); forty-five minute journey to Kaliningrad.

“I know,” I thought, in an excited moment of uncharacteristic exhilaration, “I’ll break the journey up. I’ll stay overnight in Gdansk and catch the bus to Kaliningrad refreshed the following morning. What a spiffing idea!”

Intoxicated (it’s those English ales, you know!) by the cunningness of my plan, specifically the chance it would avail me of spending an afternoon sight-seeing around Gdansk Old Town and thereafter a relaxed evening dining out in a restaurant of my choice, I was on Google before you could say ‘you will only end up on Booking.com’, and two minutes later, having keyed ‘Hotels in Gdansk’ into the browser, there I was, on Booking.com.

Now Gdansk, like any other large tourist city, is not short of a hotel or two, and before I could apply one of the many Booking.com filters, I had been directed to the most expensive hotels in the city. My stay was an out-of-season booking, when £120+ seemed a tad extravagant for crashing out for the night. The in-season prices, or rather open season on gullible punters’ bank accounts, are beyond a profligate’s dream.

Screenshots from hotel-booking websites taken on, appropriately, April Fool’s Day, 2 April 2024 (April Fool!), show that the in-season prices for almost all accommodation in Gdansk has trebled. If you are a real mug, you can even pay in excess of £600 a night just to slide between the sheets.

I personally, could never justify paying anything like that, even if I had a name like Elon Muskrat, after all a bed’s a bed, and unless you’ve got a nice bit of totty with you and don’t mind being sexist by saying so, what’s the point of stumping up more dosh than you would if you accidently went to a brothel. And you would; wouldn’t you!

No, I was looking for somewhere perhaps not exactly as cheap as chips or for the price of a shish kebab from fatty Abdul’s burger bar, but at least pegged at a price so that I would not cry come the morning after, “They should really invent a pill for this! Oh why, oh why did I open my wallet last night!”

Applying Booking.com’s filters, but sparingly (one can have quite enough of a silly thing), their search engine unearthed several hotels that accorded with my budget and requirements, namely rooms at 40 to 60 pounds a night and a hotel in easy walking distance of the city’s bus station. Clapped-out, Gdansk bus station is the hole in the crown where the jewel never was, and so say all of us.

Within seconds I was faced with a series of affordable options, including something that I had never used before, rentable apartments. Apartment is such a wonderful word, is it not? It certainly beats ‘flat’ or ‘bedsit’ or a single room with no hotel lobby and no staff on hand to help you out in the unlikely event that something goes wrong, and some of these apartments in Gdansk, when taken out of season, are as cheap as the paper we used to wrap chips in before the EU ruled that we couldn’t.

Tawerna Rybaki Old Town Gdansk a Warning to the Unwary!
Piwna 9/10, Srodmiescie, Gdańsk, 80-831, Poland

Always one for adventure ~ I bought a new cravat last week ~ I latched onto an interesting place, the exotic name of which, appealing photographs and exquisite reviews plastered over the net were surely too good to be true. Let me just repeat that, ‘Too good to be true!’

The place in question, and I had no question to ask, after all wasn’t I about to book this ‘apartment’ via one of the net’s most acclaimed online accommodation booking sites, Booking.com, was called Tawerna Rybaki Old Town. I repeat: Tawerna Rybaki Old Town.

“Let’s do it!” I said, saying it out loud, as if somebody else was with me, a party to my decision. There’s confidence for you!

And by Jove, I did it!

Tawerna Rybaki Gdansk Old Town

At 39 quid for the night, and as Booking.com’s receipts rolled into my email inbox (and don’t they just!), I do not mind admitting, I was feeling rather smug. But that was because at that point in time I assumed I was all booked up, rather than being something else that inconveniently rhymes with that phrase.

A couple of days rolled by (I probably went to the pub in between.), when, for some inexplicable reason, possibly prompted by that fate-tempting phrase, ‘in the unlikely event that something should go wrong’, I returned to my booking receipt.

It was all looking self-explanatory, until I spotted something that I thought was rather odd.

In a box within the tabulation, a third of the way down the page, a statement appeared in English ~ ‘A door code is needed’ ~ and beneath it a longer sentence, but this was written in Polish. I copied the sentence in Polish and pasted it into Google’s translator, but it did not tell me anything that I did not already not know, such as where was the code that was needed?

Tawerna Rybaki Old Town Gdansk a Warning to the Unwary!
Piwna 9/10, Srodmiescie, Gdańsk, 80-831, Poland

I searched through the plethora of booking receipts but found nowt. So, I emailed the apartment owners using the email link on the form and left it at that. Two days passed ~ nothing. I emailed again, ensuring that my second email was flagged ‘urgent’. As before, I received no reply.

It was surely time to get in touch with Booking.com and ask for clarification. If only life was as easy as it was before the internet!

Booking.com ~ Is there anybody there?👻

Booking.com had sent three or four automated emails to me regarding my booking, none of which, as far as I could see, contained their contact information.

A Google search for Booking.com’s telephone number or a live chat option unearthed several dud numbers and no live chat.

With a sense of intense foreboding, fuelled by déjà vu (we’ve all been here on the net), I turned to their website — nothing.

“Perhaps,” I mused, “they want me to open an account so that they can fill my email inbox with a load of shitey ads.” I was already running out of time and patience, so I placed my trust in my email spam box and signed up as they wanted.

And here is where the nightmare truly began. Next stop the Twilight Zone.

We all know, or should know from hard and frustrating experience, that many, far too many, online-only trading companies, large, exclusive and monopolistic, demonstrate unparalleled expertise in the art of concealing their contact details.

The irony of this is that we are supposedly living in the so-called information age; communication made easy!

Booking.com are by no means the only organisation whose website is constructed like a maze, with lots of circuitous paths, junctions and dead ends guaranteed to flummox anyone impudent or desperate enough to try to speak to someone or message a real human entity, something preferably in human form, possessing eyes, ear holes, a voice, and maybe even a brain, with which to reply to queries.

I appreciate, of course, that Booking.com is an aggravator, sorry, I meant to say aggregator, and as such does not want to encourage every Tom, Dick and Ikmar to swamp the lady at customer support with a lot of unnecessary questions. But when accommodation proprietors who have already taken your dough shun your attempts to contact them, then, to quote the telephone ad of old, it really is “nice to talk”.

The slideshow below illustrates how well hidden Booking.com’s contact details are. Apologies for the ‘misty’ images, but symbolically speaking they capture perfectly the obscurantism encountered in searching for what could and should be a simple highlighted click away, ie ‘Contact Customer Support’.

Booking.com: Welcome to the Help Centre
Booking.com:Fill in the booking details
Booking.com: How to open the next window?
Booking.com: You must type in something, ie 'Key'. Click on 'Other topics' at the end of the list.
Booking.com: Click on 'Something else'.
Booking.com: Click on ‘More Options’
Booking.com: There's the Contact options: fingers crossed!!!
Booking.com: Believe it or not ...

As soon as you are directed to ‘Please read our FAQs’ (Frequently Asked Quackery), you can be sure that you are dealing with a company that will stop at nothing to thwart your outrageous ambition to speak to someone human. Rest assured, that you will never find what you are looking for by reading FAQs — an abbreviation that should be changed under the Trades Description Act to reflect what it actually stands for. I suggest FKUs.

Finding the means by which to communicate directly with Booking.com requires the patience of Gungadin ~ perhaps it was he who designed the site. “Hello, can I speak to Mister Mykel Hart, please…” to be said in a sing-songy Asian voice.

But, as it applied to my experience, there was no one there to talk to, not from India, from Pakistan not even from Asian Leicester.

I had signed up to Booking.com; I had spun the internet roulette wheel: round and around and around we go, where we’ll end up nobody knows.

Having entered an Edgar Allan Poe nightmare world, I eventually find a link to the ‘HELP (for Pity’s Sake Help Me, Somebody!) Centre!!!!’ But it does not end there!

I click on the Help Centre link and am taken to a Welcome to the Help Centre window. ‘Send us a message’ or ‘Call us’ does not take you anywhere. The options are to ‘Sign into your account’ or ‘Continue without an account’. I had already had a brief whizz around the signed-in account and had whizzed out of it again, having found nothing that I wanted and lots of what I could do without, so I decided to plump for the ‘Continue without an account’ option.

I am then asked to fill in my booking details, which I did with gratitude.

The next window asks: ‘How can we help?’ Beneath this there is a whole list of fob-off things that you do not want help with. But no visible means by which to talk to or to message someone. So, I click on ‘More’, which is at the bottom of the list. Note, however, that in order not to go around and around and around on the seemingly never-ending carousel, you must type something in the search box, even if it is only ‘arseholes!’ I refrained and typed in ‘key’.

In the next window the name and dates of my apartment appeared with a little picture next to it, and below this another lost, sorry, I meant to type ‘list’, headed ‘Things you can do’, which looked very much the same as the list two pages back, except, perhaps, for the option ‘Please Commit Suicide, which was not included, since the site designer was no doubt convinced that by the time you reached this window you would instinctively want to jump out of it.

Not wanting to oblige, I clicked instead on ‘Other topic’ at the end of the list (where else?!). The last of three options in this list was the intentionally vague, ‘Something else’. Heaven forbid that they might indicate that this was where you might find a telephone number or a messaging option.

Are you still with me at this point? I know the feeling!

The next window was called ‘Get in touch!’

“Yu don’t say!!’

But the recommended option was to contact the owners of the property. This was an absolute ‘No No’, as I had already received no replies to two emails and did not want a third.

So, we click on ‘More contact options’.

Once again, the drowning man instead of getting a life raft is thrown a straw, as you are siphoned off again down the dead-end direction of the never-answering property owners. But here, at last, is a chance to communicate. You’ve ducked and dived and weaved and woven and at last more by luck than design you find yourself at the core of the puzzle. The options open to you are to telephone customer service or send them a type-written message. I opted for the latter, as I wanted them to respond in writing.

And so it was, having travelled in my mind to the very antipodes of Distress and Despair, I wrote:

“I note in my booking there is reference to a key code to access the property. However, it is not clear whether there will be someone at the property to provide this code, or if the code should have been included in the booking confirmation. I have contacted the property twice by email for clarification, but they have not replied. Please advise.”

I did get a response. I wondered if I would. But I wasn’t convinced. Here it was stated that the owners of Twanky Dillo apartment would send me by telephone or email the entry code for the apartment on the morning of my booking. I did not like it, but I left it like that. ‘Don’t hold your breath!’ was the maxim that sprang to mind.

Tawerna Rybaki Gdansk Old Town

Now, I’m not the world’s most cynical guy … but, come the day, there I was, extremely tired after my early-morning flight, standing in this beautiful, aged-like-a-fine-wine street in Gdansk’s Old Town, having just been deposited by an airport taxi, the driver of which confessed that even using his sat-nav, he was having trouble locating the address that I had given him ~ the address of my lovely apartment.

Let me reiterate the name of that apartment and the apartment’s address in case you have missed my previous references:

Tawerna Rybaki Old Town Gdansk a Warning to the Unwary!
Piwna 9/10, Srodmiescie, Gdańsk, 80-831, Poland

There I stood with my laptop case in hand, a weary traveller in Old Town Gdansk.

And a more enchanting, bohemian street you could not wish to be standing in. Now, all that was needed was to find your room, deposit your case, freshen up and sightsee until you drop. Little did I know that I would walk … and walk … and walk, but devoid of all enjoyment, and by the end of the day I would be more than ready to drop.

Not comfortable still ~ I am a pragmatic pessimist ~ I strolled slowly up the street peering at the property numbers, more than certain that I would not find the apartment I was looking for. And would you Adam and Eve it, there was a 7/8, and next to it an 11/12, but as for 9/10 it was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they forgot to rebuild it after Hitler blew it up?

I will not say that I did not believe it. I did believe it, but wished to be proven wrong. I walked that same stretch of street three times, as though by doing so the missing numbers would miraculously make themselves known to me, but no such luck and more of the same eventually had me pop inside a café and ask the people therein if they knew the mysterious whereabouts of mislaid numbers 9 to10.

Nice people but no idea. They suggested I try the alley next door.

This little street fanned out into a wide rectangle with flats on either side, but number 9/10 was not among them. I walked to the end of the street and back again, but, as the song goes, on completion of this exercise ‘I still hadn’t found what I was looking for’.

Tawerna Rybaki Old Town Gdansk a Warning to the Unwary!
Piwna 9/10, Srodmiescie, Gdańsk, 80-831, Poland

I retraced my steps, peered up and down the street that traversed the one I was walking, and then, none the wiser, returned to the café where I had asked directions before.

It may strike you as strange, but the café people did not know any more than they did 20 minutes previously.

Over another coffee, I tried to telephone the apartment which did not exist and whose owners never reply to their customers, but my O₂ roaming was roaming somewhere else, and the café had no wireless internet with which to connect my laptop. As I said earlier, we expect too much; this is the age of communication. Now, had there been a telephone box …

But this would not have helped either. Four or five streets later (I had begun looking for alternative accommodation), somehow I manged to make a phone call, but the number for apartment Twanky Wanky returned the message, ‘unrecognised’. So, their email is unmanned, and their phone number is a false one.

Tawerna Rybaki Old Town Gdansk a Warning to the Unwary!
Piwna 9/10, Srodmiescie, Gdańsk, 80-831, Poland

By now, I had drunk three more coffees in as many cafes, none of which had wireless internet, neither customer toilets, and this, the latter, let me tell you, is a real problem in Zloty land: public loos are few and far between and when you do eventually find one, if indeed you do, you either pay up or pee yourself.

As I trudged moodily through the very streets that I thought I would enjoy, my laptop bag crammed with presents, which made it all the heavier, I wondered if I was the victim of a cynical and sadistic trick that had me following signs to the loo only to be taken around and around in circles. Perhaps the loo signs were Booking.com sponsored and soon I would come to FAQs?

As luck would have it, I remembered the subterranean bogs on the little side street where I was told Twinky Winky apartment might be, so I detoured back there, disturbed the female bog attendant who was sucking on a fag (ah, hem), gratefully used the loo and upon emerging from it, happened to cast a glance into a gated compound, and guess what it was I saw there locked away and hidden? Yes, you’ve got it right: the elusive numbers 9/10. This astonishing discovery, as elucidating as it was, mattered not a jot, since I neither had the code which would allow me to access the gated compound or the code for the door of the property.

F.ck! F.ck! F.ck!

All I wanted now was to find a hotel, dump my case and secure a room for the night. I was exhausted; bear in mind that I had been up since 4am and had undergone the cattle-market of travelling discount airways.

I wanted a hotel desperately, but I was not prepared to pay silly money, even in my beleaguered state.

Tawerna Rybaki Old Town Gdansk a Warning to the Unwary!
Piwna 9/10, Srodmiescie, Gdańsk, 80-831, Poland

A young lady in a bar (where else!) after telling me that I looked much younger than I was (I told her I used Buttocks.) offered to put me up for the night (I think that’s what she said?) for nothing. But as I am rather fussy about who it is I get mugged by, I politely declined her offer, and me and my trusty laptop took to the streets again.

In another bar, I met a young lady (I don’t make a habit of this … Trust me, I’m an antique dealer), who would have been speaking perfect English if she could lose her American accent. She sympathised with my plight. “Have you been had?” she asked. “Well, not recently and not as much I’d like,” I Frankie Howard replied (for the edification of deprived millennials, Frankie was a camp comedian). She then asked me where I was going, and when I replied Kaliningrad, an ominous hush fell over the bar. She then treated me to a diatribe about Russia and the Russians, before admitting that she wasn’t too fond of most of western Europe either, and couldn’t stand the globalists. But she had been drinking all night long and had the very English female habit of saying F.ck! a lot.

Having enjoyed my brief encounter with Miss F.ckalot, off I trudged, completely in the wrong direction to the one in which I wanted to go, but with the applaudable compensation that I ended up on the historic side of the river.

The sky was a complementary blue and the air crisp with the first flirtation of spring. As tired as I was, I made time to make love to the scenery. I even unzipped my camera. But I shied away from the top-price hotels with their fancy names and liveried doormen.

Swish hotel in Gdansk. Not Tawerna Rybaki Gdansk

There are very few places in the world as distressing as the immediate area that borders Gdansk’s bus station, and it was quite far on foot for a senior citizen who had already spent two hours plodding the cobbled pavements to drag himself to, but I reckoned that close to the bus station there must be a cheap hotel.

I reckoned wrong. There wasn’t. At least a visible one.

I stopped and asked a taxi driver if he knew of a budget hotel? He didn’t. Why should he? He was only a taxi driver. In the golden age of communication an impediment indeed.

I walked and walked, and based on the same hypothesis that travel stations were associated with hotels, ended up at the city’s central railway station. Here, as everywhere else, there was no hotel in sight. But then it happened. The man up there answered my prayers, either that or it pays to advertise. Lit up, like a beacon of hope, white, bright, refulgent and gloriously unmissable, it could have been a mirage but thankfully was not. Two simple but adorable words on top of a high-rise building: here is the ‘Mercure Hotel’, they said.

Locked out of Tawerna Rybaki Gdansk, the Hotel Mercure should be called Haven Hotel!

Mercure Hotel Gdansk Website

With blisters on my feet and soul, I hopped into the nearest taxi and dismissing as a fait accompli the taxi driver ripping me off, 10 Euros for a four-minute trip, I asked the delightful man, whom my feet regarded as their saviour, to part the waters of my discontent and take me to the Mercure.

Could it have been the height of the Mercure or its grand, perpetual revolving door that made me think ‘too costly’? This we will never know. But I went in all the same. Went in! I actually just went in! I didn’t need a door code? All I had to do was walk through the open door — the revolving door that never closes — and there was a reception desk and someone there to talk to! Don’t you just love a proper hotel?! Asking the price of a room for a man dead on his feet, the reply came back ‘sixty quid’. Good enough! Job done!

Yes, the electronic door card did not work the lift the first time I tried to use it, no matter how I waggled it! Yes, the toilets were also electronic door-card operated. Yes, the lighting system in the hotel room only came on if one shoved the card in the reader attached to the wall. And yes, wasn’t it all, in spite of this, wasn’t it all so lovely!

My stay at the Mercure, which I would like to write about later, was a blessing and would have been no less so had I not been led a merry dance by the owners of an apartment in Poland, which might have been just the ticket if, after I had paid the tariff, they had simply provided the codes I needed to get me through the door.

Pay heed to my experience. It is a warning to the unwary.

It was bad enough as it was, but imagine how worse it could have been had I not been travelling light! I only had a laptop case, not a 35kg bag!

The moral of this story is, if you are going to run the risk of booking an apartment room instead of a proper hotel, ie a place which has a front desk with staff that you can talk to, make sure you get your key code early. Otherwise, take a burglar with you, a ladder and a battering ram.

Think this is a joke? It’s not so funny when it happens to you!

Tawerna Rybaki Old Clown
Pillock 910, Sodyou, Gdwańks, blank blank, Poland

Tawerna Rybaki Old Town Gdansk a Warning to the Unwary!
Piwna 9/10, Srodmiescie, Gdańsk, 80-831, Poland

NOTE> Booking.com: Once I had alerted Booking.com to my plight, they were quick to respond to me and quick to issue a refund for the booking, which included the difference between the price of the non-accessible apartment and the cost of a night at Mercure Hotel. I am grateful to them for this.

Craft Garage Kaliningrad a Pit Stop for Good Beer

Arty Crafty it is and all the better for it!

17 April 2024~ Craft Garage Kaliningrad a Pit Stop for Good Beer

On the same evening that we happened upon the Beer Bar on Prospect Mira and Bar Sovetov, we stumbled upon and into Craft Garage. You’ve guessed it! Whereas it could be argued that my MOT was long overdue, that I was urgently in need of a rebore and my big ends had gone, Craft Garage is not that sort of place.

In spite of the name, the service that Craft Garage provides is strictly beer related. Why else would I beer there? (Ho! Ho!) The clue lies in the ‘Craft’ part of the name. Craft standing for ‘Craft Beer Bar’ ~ crafty, ay!

Craft Garage Kaliningrad

The trend for this type of bar, as opposed to a fully fledged traditional pub, gained popularity in the UK in response to the micro-brewery boom and the inherent advantages of low start-up and maintenance costs together with ~ as the bars are usually small ~ a means of avoiding or at least diminishing the outrageously iniquitous business rates ~ a robber baron tax, which, not unlike death duties, is totally unjustified and is the current primary cause (bar one🙊) of the decay of Britain’s high streets.

The trend for such bars in Kaliningrad, whilst not motivated by the same factors, has gathered pace in recent years, as the taste and therefore the market for beer in general shows an exponential increase, decreasing the sales gap of old between Russia’s flagship vodka.

With my fan belt slipping and my radiator running dry, I was pleased to learn that not only was stumbling into Craft Garage an excellent idea, but that the bar dispensary was in stumbling distance itself, ie just inside the door.

Behind the bar, a youngish chap presided over a chalkboard containing beers of sufficient quantity and with enough interesting names to verily make one’s moustache curl. I’d left mine at home, but the barman’s made up for it. He had one of those Salvador Dali jobs, and the beer was certainly working.

As Salvador Dali was not listed among the range of beers on offer, and I didn’t know how to say in Russian ‘Which beer should I drink to grow a moustache like yours?’, I decided to play it safe, plumping for a beer recently tried and tested at bar Forma, which goes by the name of Kristoffel. It’s a nice name and a nice beer.

Craft Garage is not full of old engine parts, grease monkeys and the smell of spilt fuel and tyres; it is a well-oiled hip joint, suitably decorated and furnished around the novel theme that it has adopted. Its name and image lend themselves admirably to the continued restaurant and bar interest in the nuts and bolts ‘industrial look’, of which there are two categories. Both are shabby chic, but one is more shabby than chic, and Craft Garage occupies the top-drawer end of the chic curve. Excuse me, I am going to use the word ‘plush’.

For example, there is nothing shabby about the brick-effect walls, the cutaway oil drum chairs, the framed exploded vehicle-engine diagrams, the polished tables and bar area. In fact, polished is another good word, as everything in Craft Garage is as clean and sparkling as the pampered plugs of your favourite Rolls Royce’ engine. And whilst the floor is designer distressed, it is completely free of skidmarks.

The vintage accoutrements are, of course, less believable than a black Dr Who, but the willing suspension of disbelief works better for me in this case than my analogous reference. Moreover, Craft Garage has the advantage of allowing you to travel back in time with the company of your choosing, and whilst you can and must fault woke, you cannot fault Craft Garage.

A complete oil change (which you will need if you have spent half a lifetime drinking Watney’s) starts from 300 roubles.

There’s regular and premium, thus every engine is catered for, even the high-performance kind, and as every beer comes complete with a not-to-be-sneezed-at octane rating, when you finally reach the finishing line you can be sure of feeling well tuned up.

Craft Garage, the place to go when you want a night on the pistons!

Mick Hart & Inara outside Craft Garage in Kaliningrad

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro in the House of Soviets

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro with a Heart of Gold

It’s a venue which immortalises the House of Soviets, serves good beer, hosts music evenings and likes you, the customer.

13 April 2024 ~ Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro in the House of Soviets

Do you believe in coincidences? In my most recent post I wrote about the gradual disappearance of Kaliningrad’s most infamous and controversial landmark, the House of Soviets. Less than a week later, I find myself in a subterranean bar dedicated to that very building.

Bar Sovetov is located in what once was, during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the residential quarter of choice for Königsberg’s affluent citizens.

On foot, it is something of a trek from the city centre to this still sought-after district, but it is one I made on numerous occasions in the days when a bar, long since gone, the enigmatically named Twelve Chairs, exercised a consistent influence and justified the effort.

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad

Whilst in the character of its rooms, Bar Sovetov does not possess the intricacy or the old-world charm that gave Twelve Chairs its je ne sais quoi, it is no less thought-provoking in the nature of its decoration and appurtenances of thematic quirk.

The two-roomed bar, with its truncated corridor leading to the lavs, is very much a pop art haven. Victor Ryabinin, former artist and local historian, would have adored it! Symbolism abounds: ‘Look Out!’ the slogan reads. ‘Big Brother is Watching you!’ You see it above the full-sized wall mirror in which you are watching yourself.

A white face mask framed between two suspended lamps exudes from the wall. Wearing a baseball cap in such a way that it partly conceals its features, it holds to its lips an admonitory finger attached to a long white arm. As with the face above it, the arm emerges from solid brickwork as it would through the fold of a curtain. Both face and arm are whimsical, especially in the matter of their relative dislocation, but irony and surrealism are the uniting forces that bring them together.

These are just two of many examples of Bar Sovetov’s camp milieu. Wherever you look, be it high or low, another element of the quaint and fanciful leaps out to greet and surprise you.

With the obvious exception of Aleks Smirnov’s Badger Club, lovers of the out-of-the-ordinary will be hard pushed to find even among Kaliningrad’s most unconventional watering holes anything that surpasses Bar Sovetov’s quaint burlesque. But for all that it camps it up, the nostalgia has a genuine ring; it springs from a source of real affection. And the humour the props elicit, be it aimed at you and me or tailored to the refined perception of the discerning intellectual, leaves plenty of form intact for the inquisitive mind of the history buff.

The genesis, erection, completion and the long-standing but idle years of the House of Soviets’ occupation are captured step by step in a series of timelined photographs. The images of the building in its promising phase of construction, with cranes on either side, are particularly poignant memories, given that in its obliteration almost identical cranes in almost identical places stand either side of the shrinking structure.

On the opposite side of actuality, a wall in the bar’s first room is a bold painted visual replica, close up and in your face, of the House of Soviet’s exterior. The effect is profoundly Gotham City, gaudy, haunting, claustrophobic but seminally cartoon, a perfect piece of ‘dark deco’ kitsch. Further urbanisation occurs not in the question itself, which is off the wall whilst on the wall, but in the way it is daubed across the wall, which reflects the mind of graffiti man stretched to its utmost limit: “Who,” it asks, “killed the House of Soviets?” If we didn’t laugh, we’d cry.

More real photos of the fated hulk that over its 53-year existence dominated Kaliningrad’s skyline, exciting in its awesome prospect, ambivalent and contentious in what it actually stood for and why it stood for so long, can be found in the bar’s back room.

Mick Hart and Inara at Bar Sovetov in Kaliningrad

It is here that the structure’s rightful place in the socio-political era into which it was given a sort of life or maybe a life of sorts is given historical context. Framed copies of Soviet art, amusing, powerful and all iconic, visually break up the hard brick-wall to which they are attached, whilst in one corner of the room a little shrine pays tribute to the final days of Sovietism.

There, upon a shelf, rubbing shoulders with the printed word and a quaint assortment of nick-nacks, sits a large portrait photograph of if not the architect of perestroika then the man who is widely considered to be its chief executive officer, former General Secretary Gorbachev, twinned in the opposite corner with a replica set of traffic lights, which, for some exotic reason or perhaps no reason at all beyond their anomalous presence and illuminative oddity, cast a lurid reddish glow across the whitewashed brickwork.

The seats in this comic-strip memory, when not authentic 70s’ vintage, are made from wooden pallets, painted to look distressed, put together as benches and kindly equipped with padded seats. However, recalling the slatted wood benches with which Kaliningrad’s trains were furnished twenty-three years ago, such convenient cushioned luxury may be but the useful product of indulgent historical revisionism. Whilst the past is unrelenting in its prescribed but often unforgiving and impractical perpetuity, concessions ought to be made, don’t you think, to our poor post-Soviet posteriors. Historical accuracy has its virtues, but is it worth corns and blisters?

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad

The bar itself, that is the thing on which when you buy your beer it temporarily rests on top and the area to the rear of it, is a content-managed zone, where normal things normally sold behind bars share more than their fair share of shelving space with the weird, the wild and the whimsically whacky. Note the hollow concrete blocks shown in the photo below that have been used to comprise the wall of the bar. Is that or is it not a passing nod to the House of Soviets?

A conforming principle of all such bars, that is to say craft-beer bars, is that the beer selection is written in chalk on good old-fashioned blackboards. What is it, I ask myself, and I suppose you ask yourself too, about this rudimentary practice that makes it so applicable, so pleasingly, conventionally and fundamentally right and so well received in its prime objective, which is to call to our eager attention the dispensation of quality brews? When you’ve found the answer to that one, you might go on to answer the question ‘Who killed the House of Soviets?’ I have a hunch that in both cases we will discover the hand of Old Father Time.

From the six or so beers on offer, I ordered myself a ‘Milk of …?’ Er, a ‘Milk of …?’ What was the name of that beer? Ah yes, now I remember, I bought myself a ‘Milk of Amnesia’. How could you not drink a beer like that, with a name so unforgettable?

In summing up the Bar Sovetov experience, the beer is good. The atmosphere is atmospheric. The people who run the bar are real; in other words, they are genuinely friendly and they are also good at what they do. They effortlessly embody and earnestly convey the qualities prerequisite for fulfilling the role they have given themselves, that of convivial mine host, in an age when many are either not up to it or simply not fit for purpose.

Those who earn their living in the hospitality trade at customer-facing level, would do well to bookmark this truth, that the bar or pub in which they perform is as much a stage as any other and their customers are their audience. Once the curtain goes up, if you cannot manage authenticity, you must put yourself out there, put on a smile and remember that it’s show time! If the act is one the punters like or at least is one that they can believe in, and the beer is good and well kept, they’ll keep on coming back. Loyalty is everything, and that applies to the service industry as it does to everything else, and I cannot think of a better bar more deserving of it than Sovetov.

The main thing:

Bar Sovetov
Prospekt Mira, 118 ground floor, Central District, Kaliningrad, 236022

Link to street map: https://2gis.ru/kaliningrad/firm/70000001082036462

Tel: +7 921 616 36 26
Telegram: https://t.me/barsovetov
VK: https://vk.com/barsovetov

Opening times:
Mon: Closed
Tues to Thurs: 4pm to 12 midnight
Fri, Sat & Sun: 4pm to 2am

Kaliningrad House of Soviets Melts into the Past

What goes up must come down, but it took 50 years to do so

29 March 2024 ~ Kaliningrad House of Soviets Melts into the Past

I go away for four weeks, and this is what happens! In my absence, someone has nipped off with three-quarters of the House of Soviets!

I must confess (no, it wasn’t me), as I sat on a bench with my coffee and sandwich, looking across the Lower Pond, that the sight of the House of Soviets dwindling into nothing plucked in my nostalgic heart a sentimental chord.

Kaliningrad House of Soviets Melts into the Past

Like it or not, the great concrete monolith has dominated Kaliningrad’s skyline for more than 50 years. Photographed arguably more times and from every conceivable angle than any other structure in Kaliningrad, in spite of itself and for all the wrong reasons, the towering, bulky edifice, with its plethora of empty windows achieved cult status, most notably, ironically and cynically, as a prime example of the best in Soviet architecture, and with its unfortunate reputation for being the house that never was occupied, haunted itself and the city with the cost of taking it down.

Its huge rectangular cross-bridged frame, which had incongruously, but none the less defiantly, replaced the splendour of Königsberg Castle in all its baroque and historical glory, had idled away the years as an unlikely city-centre successor to the 13^th century Teutonic castle, later residence of choice for the region’s Prussian rulers, which eventually became the point of convergence for the city’s cultural and spiritual life.

Conversely, the House of Soviets never became anything more than an object of curiosity and a convenient hook for western media on which to hang derogatory.

In my 23 years of visiting and of living in Kaliningrad, I have to say I have never heard anyone admit to loving the House of Soviets, and yet, to balance that out, likewise, nobody ever committed themselves to hating it

In its lifetime ~ fairly long lifetime ~ I suppose we can conclude that the inhabitants of Kaliningrad neither revered nor reviled the building. It was simply there and where it was, and very soon it won’t be.

<It’s Curtains for the House of Soviets>

Published 2021: It is official: 51 years after its construction and the same number of years of non-occupation, arguably one of Kaliningrad’s most iconic buildings, and ironically one of its most lambasted, especially by the western press, is about to be demolished. I am, of course, referring to the House of Soviets, ninety per cent of which was completed in 1985 on a site close to where once stood the magnificent Königsberg Castle, the East Prussian city’s jewel in the crown, which was extensively damaged in the Second World War and then, in 1967, dynamited into oblivion.

Fisherman’s House Museum Zalivino Kaliningrad

Fisherman’s House Museum Zalivino: a must for social history buffs

27 March 2024 ~ Fisherman’s House Museum Zalivino Kaliningrad region

If you are planning on visiting Zalivino lighthouse or taking a day trip to Zalivino, you should take the time to stop off at Zalivino marine and maritime museum, aka Fisherman’s House. Although it is tucked away, if you head to the sandy cove at the far end of the village, a short walk from the village’s second bus stop, and follow the road to the left, you will find you are almost there. Now, just look for a white building with a painted seascape mural on its wall.

Zalivino’s museum is dedicated to the village’s fishing heritage. It provides an unforgettable insight into the working lives of the people who lived there across successive eras and subsequent generations from when it was German Labagienen, then Haffwinkel, throughout its Soviet years.

The museum, or rather how it came to be a museum, has an interesting history of its own. During the perestroika years, Zalivino, a once thriving community, which relied on the water for its livelihood, had declined so substantially that even access to the lagoon had been rendered virtually impossible. Left to its own devices, the coastline had clogged itself with vegetation, turning the erstwhile open shore into a dense and impenetrable forest, choked with invasive reeds, wetland plants and willows.

In 2015, local residents, some of whom personally remembered the coastline’s former glory from their childhood days, got together to form a group to action the shoreline’s reclamation.

Calling themselves ‘Clean Coast’, the group’s hard work won them recognition in a fund-raising competition. The proceeds from this competition enabled the group to launch an assault on the stifling shoreline foliage. They trimmed back trees and bushes, removed strewn rubbish and, when the clearing job was done, used its remaining funds to purchase planks with which to make public benches.

Inspired by their success, the group’s next venture was to establish a museum, which would tell Zalivino’s story as a working fishing village. The property in which the museum is now housed came to fruition following the Clean Coast’s group successful application for a charitable foundation grant, which once obtained was used to develop both the building and the site.

Research suggests that in German times the renovated building was less likely to have been a private dwelling than a warehouse or stable. Personal recollections from the Soviet period see it as a sawmill and a wood-working shop, turning out an array of goods from oars and boat boards to coffins, and later, in the 1990s, when the sawmill was relocated, as the village’s communal bathhouse.

From bathhouse to social history museum, the first exhibit to mark the transition was a sleigh of German origin dragged from the lagoon. According to those in the know, such sleighs in Soviet times were given a new lease of life. Come winter, they were attached to and drawn by horses to trawl the ice-bound waters across the bay for fish.

Zalivino’s museum may be small, but it is also neat and compact, every space having been carefully utilised to bring the story of the settlement’s past to life. Photographs, display boards and documents intermesh successfully with the exposition’s tell-tale artefacts ~ the fishing lines, nets, floats, waders, kerosene lamps and household items ~ all of which have a part to play in the biography of the village.

Weathervane history at Fisherman's House Museum in Zalivino

But whilst they aid the visitor to reconstruct a picture of what life was like in the village many years ago, the museum’s greatest assets are by far its guides, who, because of their palpable love for their subject, enthuse and infuse in equal measure, turning the pieces the past has left for us into a thought-provoking dynamic.

In days of old a fisherman’s life was hard ~ some would say, still is. Relying for your livelihood on the quantity and quality of fish caught in the surrounding waters, and fishing those waters come rain or shine, day in, day out, and often at ungodly hours, was no faint-hearted occupation. The photographs in the museum’s collection underscore this hardship. But they also reveal expressively in the gnarled and weathered faces, in the look of determination, in the brightness of the villager’s eyes and the smiles upon their lips, a satisfaction almost bucolic, deriving from sometimes aligning with, sometimes doing battle with but always being respectful of the laws and forces of nature. After all, to coin a phrase, every villager was in the same boat.

Overall, there is nothing in the Fisherman’s House museum that fails to captivate. But if I was asked to select from the many exhibits one that hits the unusual spot, then the one I would be inclined to choose would be the weathervane.

I am not talking about a wrought iron something that typically spins in the wind high above a chimney pot but of an intricately carved and brightly painted sign-board made of wood which, whilst effectively showing the wind’s direction as any weathervane should, had as its primary function to identify the sailing ship to which it was attached together with the details of its owner. All Curonian sailing ships would be marked by such a device, and those who were acquainted with the lexicon of their symbols would be able to decipher them without a second glance.

Museum Fisherman’s House, Zalivino, is not just a venue for examining relics from a sepia-coloured bygone age, as entrancing as they are, it is a meeting place for the past and present, which will take you into a world and introduce you to a way of life made obsolete by the tides of time and the undercurrents of ‘progress’.

The world it preserves was different then and life in its way much harder, but, as the exposition depicts, it was strong in kinship and fellowship ties. Visiting this museum will help you to understand that it is also Zalivino’s social history as much as its natural landscape that infuses it with allurement and awakens the senses to timeless mystery.

The main thing

Fisherman’s House
Zalivino, Kaliningrad region, 238633

Tel: 8 (962) 266 44 57

Opening times
Monday to Friday 3pm to 5pm
Saturday and Sunday 11am to 4pm

Website: http://tos39.ru/

More about Zalivino

Support the restoration of Zalivino Lighthouse
Zalivino Lighthouse flashes again after 36 years!
Zalivino Lighthouse Restoration reaches new heights!
The Natural Beauty of the Baltic Coast

Kaliningrad Victory Square Flowers of Condolence

24 March 2024 National Day of Mourning

24 March 2024 ~ Kaliningrad Victory Square Flowers of Condolence

Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared 24 March to be a national day of mourning.

As the death toll from Russia’s worst terrorist attack for almost two decades reaches 137, moving scenes in Kaliningrad today see residents of the Kaliningrad region lay flowers, light candles and place toys at the base of the monument in Victory Square.

I share the grief and sorrow of my Russian friends.

Kaliningrad Victory Square Flowers of Condolence

Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad

Good beer in a vintage-inspired bar

13 March 2024 ~ Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad

Those of us in the UK who are firm believers in the importance of preserving traditions and the history of our country, and who do their bit in this regard by paying homage to, and overpaying for the beer in, one of the oldest legacies of our country’s heritage, I am talking about the British pub, will be well acquainted with such familiar pub names as the King’s Arms, Nag’s Head, Fox and Hounds etc, and had you been around in the 1980s and 90s the fad of renaming pubs with silly names, such as the Slug and Lettuce and Goose and Firkin, but in all your days of pub frequenting you may never have come across any drinking establishment, be it a pub or a bar, that goes by the name of Form.

Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad

Form is a malleable word with manifold definitions, as any search through online dictionaries testify. One of the simpler meanings is that of a hard, plain bench, the more complicated reserved for the exotic world of aesthetics. Then there’s ‘he’s got form’, which is, in police parlance, another way of saying he’s done time, which is another way of saying he’s been in the nick, which is another way of saying that he has been in prison. But whether ‘form’ has to do with a hard-arsed bench or is recognition of a criminal record, one thing we know for certain is that Form is the name of a Kaliningrad bar that sits next door to the Yeltsin.

In short, the Yeltsin and Form are geographical neighbours, located either in the same building or one that is joined and adjacent. I have not quite made up my mind which of the two it is, as usually when I visit them I have downed a pint or two, which seems to a certain extent to demagnetise my compass. Suffice it to say, for arguments sake, that the space between the two establishments is less than a stone’s throw away.

This convenience of vicinity does not automatically mean that once you have found the Yeltsin, you have also found Form. The Yeltsin has a belter of a sign and sits prominently on the cusp of a junction which, at certain times of the day, is fairly heaving with traffic. So, if you are looking out for bars, the Yeltsin is hard to miss, and those that say it isn’t should hurry along to SpecSavers.

Conversely, its bedfellow, Form, has no such startling signage, at least not one that is visible from the busy vehicular street, and as the entrance is off the pavement, down some steps and tucked at the back of a forecourt, getting to know that the bar is there either involves a pedestrian element or relies upon word of mouth.

Take us, for example, me and my fellow pub crawlers. It was the bar staff at the Yeltsin who apprised us of Form’s whereabouts in answer to our question where is the next nearest bar?

Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad

Vicinity, and close proximity, are not the only things that the two bars have in common. Both bars cater predominantly for a young clientele. Both, in fact, are student hangouts. Both bars have an appealing basic look. Both have a vintage approach to décor, and some of their customers, not all, but some, have a bit of vintage about them. Both bars cater to the craft beer penchant for the names of beers and their respective strengths to be written in chalk on boards. And, last but by no means least, both bars have a reputation for keeping and serving premium beers on a selective, rotating basis.

Where the two differ is that the Yeltsin is more alpha male and Form more feminine. Now, don’t get excited and don’t go all western liberal gender woke on me, I do not mean it like that. My definition divides the two bars into one which seems geared to young male drinkers who equate craft beers with male camaraderie, and the other that seems to attract a more mixed crowd. Or, to put it another way, go to the Yeltsin for good beer, to listen to tracks on a classic juke box and a game of table football ~ you can also admire the urbanised bogs, with their lashings of bold graffiti ~ but go to Form if you want to sit in a group around tables you’ve pushed together to discuss the grades you got for your essays.

Neither of the two bars are better than the other, not in the strict comparative sense, but nuances in composition lend to each a slightly different feel.

From an architectural standpoint, Form has less form than Yeltsin. Yes, yes, I know: he was a larger-than-life man, with a lived-in and craggy face … Form, on the other hand, is little more than a room ~ little more than a large room, granted ~ hived off down one end by the inclusion of a shelving unit filled with intriguing vintage stuff, which acts as a screen for a makeshift cloakroom.

Form is not exactly spartan, but neither is it cluttered. It contains a number of antithetical but, even so, well-planned pieces that might not or ought not work together, but in Form they actually do. And Form is very comfortable. The floor may be plain old concrete, but it is patched with vintage mats — real, proper, woven mats, agog with interesting patterns. The retro furniture is hotch-potch, but all the more engaging for it. The wall mirrors look in shape as if they once belonged to, and are now on loan from, a 1970s’ lava lamp, and up there on the ceiling some strange artistic drawing is going on: lots of dark black swirling lines, some being tightly compressed, others apart and free flowing, which would not look less at home superimposed on a TV weather chart.

As for the lighting ~ how could I possibly not mention the lighting! ~ the ambient light is dimmed exactly to the right level, and the wall lights are of that special kind that direct illumination in an accommodating intensity only to where it needs to be and just as much as there needs to be, thus creating the sort of mellow cloistered moon-filled shadows in which a canoodling couple could easily fall in love or a single man could fall in love with his beer.

The bar within the bar, ie the actual bar itself, is straight out of DIY Ville. Wooden, too high for comfort, so that when you try to lean upon it, you look as if you’re begging, which, when the bar is full, I imagine you very well might be, all behind it is on display ~ buckets, pipes, barrels, glasses ~ whatever they use behind the bar you see it. It’s a wonderfully basic bar and that’s basic with a capital ‘Б’.

As the seating is notably mismatch, finding a chair to suit you should not be a crucial issue, but in the unlikely event it becomes one, there is plenty of scope for musical chairs.

Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad

My most recent visit to Form was a strictly Jack Jones affair: I was going it alone. Having purchased for myself a half-litre of Kristoffel Blond, six percent in strength and 400 roubles a pop, I took up temporary residence in a low-slung, wooden-framed fully cushioned chair, which, in my professional opinion as an always-on-duty vintage dealer, had travelled into the 21^st century from way back in the 1970s. The chair and I were perfectly matched. Within a few minutes of sitting there, a couple, on whom I had never laid eyes before, opted for the seats opposite and joined me at my table.

In broken Russian and beery English Me, and in beery Russian and broken English Them, we conversed quite satisfactorily. What the gentleman of the two did not know about craft beers you could write on a half-torn beer mat. Thus, we spent in our comfortable vintage chairs a pleasant 60 minutes talking the kind of talk that only beer drinkers are able to talk whilst they are drinking beer.

Definitively and succinctly put, Kaliningrad’s Form is a comfortable, laid-back place. It has a lighting system to sing about, a convincing vintage feel and beers you can fall in love with. It caters inexclusively, but let us hint predominantly, for those who are young and intelligent enough to know what it means to drink sensibly, but nevertheless probably don’t, and strange old English fellows who certainly do but don’t, never have and in all likelihood never will be able to, but who are skilled in waxing lyrical about beers of outstanding quality — which is something that Form has — and also about good bars — which is something that Form is.

If it was up to me, I would say that Form is always on form, but I’ll leave it up to you to form your own opinion.