An Englishman's Experiences of Life in Kaliningrad
Category Archives: DAILY LIFE in KALININGRAD
Daily Life in Kaliningrad
Daily Life in Kaliningrad is a category of my blog expatkaliningrad.com. It is, as the title suggests, devoted to observations, thoughts and opinions of what it is like to live in Kaliningrad, and it is written from the point of view of an expat Englishman. Unlike my diary category, Kaliningrad: Mick Hart’s Diary, the posts featured in this category are not necessarily linked to any specific timeline or date but are topic or theme oriented. For example, at the time of writing this brief description the category DAILY LIFE IN KALININGRAD contains the following posts:
A Day at the Dentists
One of the first reactions I received when I divulged to friends and colleagues my intention to move to Russia, apart from perhaps the obvious one, was what is the health service like? A not unusual preoccupation, especially with older people, because, let’s face it, as we grow older we fall to bits. I wrote this article about a trip to a Russian dentist’s partly in response to this question and partly because the experience surprised me. Well, we all have our prejudices; take real-ale drinkers and Watney’s.
International Women’s Day Kaliningrad
Now you would not think that an old and proud chauvinist like me would want to go on record as saying that I enjoy something as seemingly PC and ism-oriented as International Women’s Day, but in these days of tats, butch, Its, Others and Old Uncle Tom Cobbley, Russia’s nationwide display of affection and sentimentality traditionally symbolised by the giving of flowers to the fairer sex pulls wonderfully at one’s conservative heartstrings. Whether flower power and a kind heart were influential enough to pull at my wallet strings with regards to treating my better half to flowers is revealed in this article.
Self-isolating in Kaliningrad
Rather self-explanatory don’t you think? This, I believe, was my first article as the world entered the coronavirus maelstrom, since when expressions like ‘self-isolating’, ‘social distancing’, ‘lockdown’, ‘masks’, ‘vaccines’, ‘New Normal’ and so on have become the defining lexicon of the 21st century. I want my money back! When I was young, and I was once, I subscribed to a Sci-Fi magazine called TV 21. It was, as the title suggests, a preview of what it would be like to live in the 21st century. It was all about cities on stilts, suspended monorails, hover cars, people with metallic-looking hair and all-in-one shimmering silver jumpsuits. I, as with my entire generation, have been had! There was nothing in this magazine’s Brave New World prediction of open borders, social engineered societies, political correctness, sect appeasement, streets too violent to walk down, globalisation and global warming, anti-patriotism, revisionist history, stage-managed free speech or coronavirus. We were had! And, as we continue to self-isolate, there are those out there who believe that we are still being had. But I prefer to self-isolate …
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Daily Life in Kaliningrad
I am aware that Daily Life in Kaliningrad is not exactly overpopulated with articles. You can blame this on coronavirus ~ I do. Since making its debut, I, like almost everyone else who writes things, has had their focus ~ nay their lives ~ shanghaied by the why’s, what’s and therefores of this life- and lifestyle-changing phenomenon. This, let us hope it is only a, detour, is reflected in the disproportional number of posts that appear in my Kaliningrad: Mick Hart’s Diary category (sub-categories Diary 2000 & Diary 2019/2020) and my exposition category, Meanwhile in the UK, which is devoted to events in my home country, England, oh and sometimes the other bits: analysis, comment and exposés on UK media content together with cultural, historical and nostalgic subjects which appeal to my idiosyncrasies or are taken from the barely legible pages of my old and initially handwritten diaries.
We live in peculiar and interesting times, and as I consider myself to be first and foremost a diarist, it is as impossible not to be waylaid by events as they unfold as it is not to time travel. When you take the two together and place it within the context of somebody’s life, in this case mine, the impetus to write expatkaliningrad.com is not difficult to understand.
Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: 387 Osobaya Varka
Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad
31 October 2024 ~ 387 Osobaya Varka beer in Kaliningrad good or not?
Have you ever wondered why Baltika Breweries number their beers instead of giving them a name, for example Russian Sausage or Yalkee Palki. I read somewhere that it is a hangback to Soviet times when everything was numbered, ie School No. 26, Bakery No. 38, Factory No. 97, but perhaps the real reason Baltika use a number instead of a name is that it is easier to recall. Also, whenever one asks for one of their numerical brands, they have first to refer to the brewery name. I mean you can hardly ask for a ‘9’, can you, without running the risk of buying a pair of 9-sized slippers, or a packet containing a German negative. Nine, I mean no; when you ask for any Baltika beer with a number instead of a name, you have to append the ‘Baltika’ first, and, from a marketing point of view, this is rather clever.
Disregarding the fact that not many people ask for bottles of beer when they take them off the shelf (No theory is perfect!), Baltika may have smugly thought that they had the numbers game sewn up … and they had, until along came this little beauty: a beer that goes by the name of 365, sorry that’s a phone number of an old flame (Old Flame Bitter! That’s a good name for a beer!) I meant to say 387.
387 Osobaya Varka beer
387 (never start a sentence with a number!). Is it a bus? Is it a car? Is it a plane? No, the answer to the riddle lies, as revealed by Svoe Mnenie Branding Agency’s comment on the website packagingoftheworld.com, that this Russian brew was not named after Tyre Repair Centre No. 387, but because of 387’s vital statistics. According to what I have read, each bottle of 387 contains three types of malt – lager, caramel and burnt; it has taken eight hours to brew; and not less than seven days of natural fermentation. Put it together and what have you got? 387. Now that’s rather clever too, is it not!
More clever is the fact that the figures ‘387’ all but completely overwhelm the label and are produced in a clear, strong, attractive typeface with closed counters, thus ensuring that the beer leaps out at you from the multiplicity of brands seeking attention on any one shelf.
The little image of the Kaluga brewery projected in a contrasting orange colour on the collar label is also a nice, effective visual touch.
Heckler: “’ere mate, did you buy this [beep] beer to look at the label or to drink the [beep]?!”
We’ll have less of that, my good man! I thought we said no liberals?
When I first bought and drank this beer on 12 September 2022, it cost me 79 roubles. The average price today for a 0.45 litre bottle would appear to be around 80 to 84 roubles. Can’t complain about that.
Beer 387 Osobaya Varka, to use its full name, weighs in at 6.8 per cent. For an old Englishman like me who is used to drinking beer at strengths between 4.1 and 4.5, that’s quite a hike, but who is complaining? Live dangerously. It’s safer than walking down many a street in London once the night has mugged the day.
As always (“He’s so [beep] predictable!” It’s that [beep] heckler again!), the assessment of a good beer and, indeed a bad beer, starts with hooter appraisal. Tops away and the smell genie that pops out of the bottle is strong, sweet and barley-like, with jostling hoppy undertones. The aroma is not lost between the bottle and the glass, into which the nectar happily settles to give a good mid-amber colour and a head which is ‘now you see it and now you don’t’.
The head fizzling out faster than a TARDIS escaping from Dover [see episode 28,000 of Dr Woke ‘The Invasion of the Third Worlders’] is as significant to me as paying my TV licence. I don’t want to have to shave every time I drink a beer. I don’t get the taste and high-volume foam connection, if, indeed, there is one.
Here we have a mid-hoppy taste; a malty taste; a little bit of fruity taste; culminating in a taste that owns up to its strength. The first sip loses nothing in the making, and there is a nice balance among the flavours. The finish is a ‘back of the tongue’ gripper, and the aftertaste in no hurry to let you down and scarper.
The beer is moreish, which is good news for the brewers and also for you, providing you weren’t so daft as to only buy one bottle!
Patric McGoohan’s Prisoner said, “I am not a number, I’m a free man!”
Beer 387 is a number. It is not a free beer, but, believe you me, it’s worth every rouble.
“AB InBev Efes is currently the biggest player on the beer market in Russia” AB InBev Efes
BOX TICKER’S CORNER Name of Beer: 387 Osobaya Varka Brewer: AB InBev Efes Where it is brewed: Russia Bottle capacity: 0.45 litre Strength: 6.8% Price: It cost me 79 roubles (0.63p) Appearance: Light amber Aroma: Barley with fruit nuances Taste: Starts mild-hop bitter; Finishes with a bite Fizz amplitude: 3/10 Label/Marketing: Unique Would you buy it again? There’s no reason not to
A brilliant beer with rich and original flavour. Caramel malt gives a rich colour, whereas brown malt adds a rye bread aftertaste. This light beer is slightly stronger than average, which makes its flavour more complex and pronounced.
Wot other’s say [Comments on 387 Osobaya Varka from the internet, unedited] 😊Excellent beer, for lovers of strong foamy drinks, good quality, easy to drink, no alcohol aftertaste! [Comment: No idea where he got the ‘foamy’ from!] 😊Yes, I have been enjoying this beer for a long time. It goes well with pistachios. It is cold and just right in the heat. Not weak and not strong… 😑 The taste is flat a bit sweet, a bit sour with faint malty finish. Too much carbonation along with alcohol make very bad mouthfeel. Really needs some food pairing. Avoid it. [Comment: A bit bitty. Avoid bit.] 😊I forget what it tastes like, but I know I enjoyed it!
Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Bistrampolio Dvaro Alus
Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad
25 August 2024 ~ Bistrampolio Beer in Kaliningrad is it any good?
Bistrampolio! It’s very much a mouthful, isn’t it! To the complacent, or could that be arrogant, English, who expect everyone else to speak their language, it sounds like a cross between a poser’s restaurant in old-time London’s Tooley Street and a disease brought on by inveterate mint eating. But have I got news for you: it’s nothing of the sort!
Bistrampolio is, for want of a better description, a chocolate stout. Its full name is Bistrampolio Dvaro Alus, but we won’t hold that against it.
It is brewed by Lithuanian brewers Aukstaitijos Bravorai, who seem to specialise in my favourite bottles ~ flip top ~ and win countless awards in my mind for best labels in their class, possibly because their labels exist in a class of their own.
The Bistrampolio bottle is dark but not as dark as its contents. If you were to pour it into a glass, and where else would you pour it (?), and then swiftly turn off the lights, you wouldn’t be able to see it. No, honestly, it really is that dark. As black as your hat, which is green.
And even with a miner’s helmet with a torch strapped on the front, which you probably bought from eBay, you would only need to wear it, if you felt you had to.
A full body is easily found, and this beer certainly has one. If you’ve got a girlfriend like that, you’ll know perfectly well what I mean.
Bistrampolio Beer in Kaliningrad
I’m busy at the moment sampling what the brewers of Bistrampolio tell me is a beer containing five types of malts. That’s not one malt! That’s five! Another interesting figure, which ties in like a pair of corsets to the image of full-bodied, is its 6% O.G., making it not just a full body but an appreciably strong body.
The flavour is all there, and believe you me it’s rich, but, unlike many strong, dark beers, its consistency is light, not intensely glutinous, thus giving you, the drinker, the full malty, as it were, but in a rather surprisingly thirst-quenching way. Drunk chilled, as the brewers suggest, Bistrampolio hits the right spot from the top of the glass to the bottom.
Has it a good finish and an aftertaste to match? What sort of question is that? Has a globalist got morals? The first is a yes; the second a no. Bistrampolio is smooth, as smooth as the finest black velvet. Comparatively speaking (why not?), Guinness is to Bistrampolio what a horse-hair blanket is to silk. “On my sainted mother’s life, to be sure, to be sure, to be sure …” In the second place, there is no second place, for if Bistrampolio was a horse and I a betting man, I would be quids in on this one-horse race.
But enough of this idle banter! Switch the light back on and let’s have a proper look at her!
She’s dark, dusky, sultry; she carries the perfume of caramel malts with just the right hint of barley; and boy does she go down well.
With a pedigree like this (woof!) and an O.G. of 6%, she possesses the kind of darkness that I could gladly take a knee for, or anything else for that matter…
BOX TICKER’S CORNER Name of Beer: Bistrampolio Dvaro Alus Brewer: Aukštaitijos Bravorai Where it is brewed: Lithuania Bottle capacity: 1litre Strength: 6% Price: It cost me about 310 roubles (£2.71) Appearance: Dark chocolate Aroma: Rich malty chocolate Taste: Handsome Fizz amplitude: 3/10 Label/Marketing: Classic Would you buy it again? I want to
“BISTRAMPOLI MANOR unfiltered chocolate dark beer. This 6% ABV beer is brewed with a combination of five malts – Pilsner Light, Munich, Caramel, Dark and Chocolate – which gives this beer a dark mahogany colour and a subtle dark chocolate bitterness and aroma. Serving this beer cool (about 12 ⁰C) reveals its true aroma and taste.”
Wot other’s say [Comments on Bistrampolio Dvaro Alus from the internet, unedited] 😑 Smooth and very drinkable. Just slightly sweet overall. Not a roast bomb. 😐 The taste is sweet, malty with a noticeable rag. [Comment: Is he drinking it through his underpants?] 😊The aroma is persistent and tasty. Damn, really tasty. The aroma is clean and chocolatey. [Comment: Now here is a chap who tells it as it is!] 💪F*ing Handsome! [Comment: My brother! He’s got a way with words, but rarely gets away with them …]
Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Keptinis (Farmhouse Beer)
Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad
6 June 2024 ~ Keptinis (Farmhouse Beer) in Kaliningrad is it good?
“Anyone for tennis?”
Hardly!
“Anyone for Keptinis?”
I should say so!
‘Keptinis’ ~ it doesn’t exactly roll off of the British tongue, does it? How I remember the name of this beer is to think of a sport I don’t like. Problem is there are many ~ football, cricket, rugby, tennis, I have a healthy dislike of them all. But for the sake of recalling the name of a beer, and a very good beer at that, no sacrifice is unjustified.
Thus, I take the silly game in which three rackets are involved, two that are held in hands and the other that coins in money, and, by the simple cross-referencing method, I think of that common earole complaint medically known as tinnitus, but spelling it wrongly ‘tinnitis’, and I allow the tail of the misspelt word to wave in my direction. Then all I have to do, by way of association, is to think of a beer so all consuming that it would save me from anything foolish or rash, like playing or even watching tennis, and ‘kept away from tennis’ thus, with tinnitis in my ear, I say it so fast it becomes ‘Keptenis’, which is as near to Keptinis as dammit and as damn them is to a boat load of migrants steaming into Dover.
An easier, far less linguistically challenging means of bringing this beer to mind is to focus on the label. With its striking green and yellow shapes and the stovepipe hat and long moustache of its mysterious pop art poster man, it really is, to coin a phrase and in the process mix two metaphors (which like mixing race is never advisable), the ultimate dog’s whiskers, and just to please the equality conscious, the absolute cat’s bollocks. Mix your metaphors if you will, but before you go mixing anything else, for heaven’s sake think of the pups.
Keptinis is a mixed-up beer. The moment you flip the Keptinis stopper you are nose to brew with a different species. This is no simple mass-produced, wishy washy paleface lager or bland keg-bitter fizz bomb. What you have is a subtle hybrid. So subtle, you may not know what it is, but it sure as hell smells different!
So, there I am, sniffing away like a kid in a baker’s shop. Although, I never was a kid, as I never was American. And my first reaction to Keptinis is: For what I am about to receive, will it taste like liquefied rye bread?
“Is there any body there?” I ask, like the only one at a lonely guy’s séance.
And remarkably there is. An awful lot of body. Almost too much in fact (and also too much in fiction): a crowded coven of smell apparitions which, in no one order of merit or preference, gives vent to nasal impressions like dried fruit, molten caramel, aromatic scents, spices of the orient and something not dissimilar to chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
Whiffed from within the glass, the subtle and complex combination of deep and rich aromas give way to a smell that is more pronounced, more reminiscently rounded. The jury is out on the soft drink kvas, which is, it may surprise you, mildly alcoholic, while at a stonking 5.7% Keptinis commands a virile strength that by any stretch of the wotsit is hardly soft and rarely limp.
The creamy head that flows profusely and lathers up at the top of the glass looking like old-fashioned shaving foam is a sight for proverbial sore eyes, especially eyes up North (It’s looking up at those pigeons that does it. Why are they all wearing head scarves these days?). But it reminds me more of ice cream; Mr Whippy passing his flake. It was all 69 in the ’70s. (That’s ’99’ with a bit knocked off.)
Keptinis (Farmhouse Beer) in Kaliningrad is it good?
The first mouthful revs up your kvas. Talk about turbo-charged! The taste is full-throttle and it comes at you fast, bouncing from taste bud to taste bud, like brown ale on a Friday night down at the working It’s club, and though incipiently and enduringly dry, both the finish and the aftertaste possess a hitherto secret hint of a not unlikeable sweetness.
The contrast is right-on punchy and funky. To give it a visual translation, a kind of non-binary gender-neutral pole-vaulting limbo dancer strutting her stuff on a pinball table. Please, if you must indulge you fantasies, Keptinis them to yourself!
Some beers are disappointing. They flirt with you in the early evening yet fold before the evenings through, after parting with your money. You might just as well have sat and drank tea whilst watching some tripe on the BBC (It rhymes!) Is this something else you shouldn’t have paid for? A lie, lie, lie, lie, lie-sense. Look out, you’re being investigated! Will you be in next Thursday? You bet your wife I will, but possibly not for the rest of the week! (Sorry, that’s an ‘in’ joke.)
Of all the things on God’s great Earth that are not worth the salt of being kept in by, the BBC is top of the pops. They forgot to investigate Jimmy. But even without a TV licence, I would do everything in my power not to be kept in by a Liebour party political broadcast, or by something equally appalling and unequivocally just as implausible, which rules in coronavirus. And I never have, at least to my knowledge, been kept in by the rogue desire to watch a game of tennis. I would rather stand outside in the street and laugh at cyclists in Lycra shorts. Yet, to be keptin by Keptinis, now that is a horse of a different colour. We won’t divulge which colour (clue, it’s nothing to do with Persil) or we may be coerced into ruining our trousers, along with our integrity, by doing something really stupid like taking a virtue signalling knee. Ho! Ho! Ha! Ha! He! He!
Thankfully, Keptinis is 100% hysteria free: a ‘no one size fits all’ beer that bucks (Did I get that right?) the stereotyping straightjacket. It is less insane than more well-balanced, and though it does resemble kvas, in unassuming and subtle ways, especially if you smoke, has flavours hidden deep within arranged in such cunning and clever ways that the taste bouquet only glitters (all that glitters is not Gary) by slow and teasing degrees, which is all to the ‘so say all of us’, hooray! ~ for Keptinis, it is telling us, is not a one-glass beer and that in order to fully appreciate the deluxe brew it surely is, you have to finish the bottle. I suppose it is what is colloquially known as a drink that is rather morish.
They say, and they are always saying, and I suppose they always will, that the saying about the ‘good thing’ of which, it is said, ‘you can have too much’, will, if you say it often enough, get in the way of the very thing that you cannot get enough of. But shucks (and a word that rhymes with shucks), what the hell do they know!
“Anyone for Keptinis?”
Everyone, I should think.
Disclaimer: Keptinis bears no resemblance to cyclists living or dead or to anyone else not as daft as cyclists who nevertheless would not be seen dead in a pair of Lycra shorts? (sponsored by the Save Me from Being a Sheep Society and the Campaign for Corduroy Trousers in association with Bicycle Clips)
BOX TICKER’S CORNER Name of Beer: Keptinis (or is that ‘Keptenis’?) Brewer: Aukštaitijos Bravorai Where it is brewed: Lithuania Bottle capacity: 1litre Strength: 5.7% Price: It cost me about 230 roubles in 2021. More recently in Kaliningrad, it cost me about 399 roubles/£3.44 Appearance: Dark Aroma: Not unlike kvass Taste: Predominantly caramel but with other things going on Fizz amplitude: 3/10 Label/Marketing: Pop Art Would you buy it again? Faster than I would buy the Labour party’s policies
Beer rating
About the beer: Aukštaitijos Bravorai | Keptinis
Keptinis is categorised as a ‘Farmhouse Beer’, a rare beer, difficult to brew, native to Lithuania. It is called ‘farmhouse’ for the very good reason that it was traditionally brewed by farmers. Rumour has it that as the special kind of malt that was needed for the brewing process was cost and distance prohibitive, the crafty farmers would create a mash and then bake it at high temperatures in order to produce the distinctive caramel taste for which it is renowned.
The brewers, Aukštaitijos Bravorai, refer to it as an ‘Oven Unfiltered Beer’ and describe its unique personage thus: “This beer stands out because it uses not only caramel and Pilsner malts, but bravura roasted malts, which give this beer a mild bitterness and aroma. Beer after fermentation and maturation has a frozen taste and a dark color.”https://www.aukstaitijosbravorai.lt/
Wot other’s say [Comments on Keptinis (Farmhouse Beer) from the internet, unedited] 😑Taste is close to aroma, but with harsh yeasty note. [Comment: Yeasty note, yes; harsh, no]
😊A very rare farmhouse style [Comment: Wellies and all the rest of it?]
🤔Initial malty flavours soon got tired, it really needs some hop bite to balance it out [Comment: Your application for tightrope walker has not been successful]
😊 Kvassy, super bready, yeasty and bit funky, bit caramelly sweet and quite bitter [Comment: Yesy, very goody, welly saidy]
The cynic’s guide to speaking Russian fluently even if no one understands you … least of all yourself
10 February 2024 ~ Learn to Speak Russian in 1000 years
Whenever anybody hears about my associations with Russia, once they have voiced the usual prejudices and have stopped tutting and shaking their heads or staring at me in abject astonishment, I am often asked “Can you speak Russian?” They obviously don’t expect or want an affirmative answer, so I oblige them with, “Don’t be ridiculous! Russian is such a complicated language even the Russians can’t speak it!” Most Brits tend to take the answer at face value and, instead of having a chuckle, look at me with solemn sincerity and nod their heads in a sanguine way. Ahh, now it all makes sense.
That having been said, I remember remarking to our late friend Stas that in attempting to learn the Russian language, I was having difficulty following and even determining some of the rules. To this, he replied cynically, “Well, what do you expect? This is Russia not England. Which rules are you referring to?”
So, what is it that is so difficult about being English when it comes to speaking Russian? The quick, but insoluble, answer lies in the juxtaposition, English-Russian. Historically, the ‘West’s understanding of Russia, all things Russian and Russians themselves has been mired in myth, misconception, intentional and unintentional myopias and homespun mystery. Consider Winston Churchill’s cryptic comment: “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. By accepting his definition, Stas’s “Which rules are you referring to?” is meaningfully abstruse.
Nevertheless, if you take politics and the latent desire not to understand out of the equation, the fact remains that linguistically, grammatically, syntactically and the rest, the inherent dissimilarities that exist between the Russian and English languages are so obvious that gradually not being able to speak or understand it makes infinite more sense than otherwise.
In the course of my studies, I have arrived at the near paradoxical point where I can speak Russian, basic Russian, better than understanding it. Patience on the part of the second party helps, since patience is a confidence-builder. (Please be gentle with me; I am but a language virgin …) But patience is a virtue which, like decency and common courtesy, is fast going out of fashion.
In the real world (and that’s a scary place, isn’t it!), whenever I listen to, or listen in, on other people’s conversations, I very often catch enough of their words and phrases to get the gist of what they are talking about, and as I am constantly working hard on expanding my vocabulary, I’m getting slowly but progressively better. Besides, the way I see it, the effort and mental concentration involved in attempting to learn a second language, irrelevant of success, has to be good ooprasnernia (exercise) for my starry oom (old brain).
Did you know? Russian is the third most difficult language in the world to learn, superseded only by Mandarin and Arabic!
I am not sure how many different ways, scientifically proven or hearsayed, exist for learning languages. By all authoritative accounts, the one that rates most highly for success is being born into the culture of the language taught at birth, which, the experts tell us, is the language one will most likely master. However, exceptions to that rule exist. In Britain ~ especially in Britain ~ not everyone speaks their native tongue and many of those that do, either speak a different language or just speak gibberish (especially Liberals).
Conversational language courses
An all-time and back-dating favourite of year-dot language learners has to be the learn-from-recordings method. As an antiques junkie, I have often turned up old 78rpm record sets called ‘Conversational Courses’ that promised the would-be linguist that all it takes to learn the language of their choice is to drop the needle into the groove and listen yourself proficient. The fact that so many of these cased record sets have survived, and a disproportionate number with the disks in better condition than the protective cases themselves, would seem to suggest that the eager students’ initial enthusiasm quickly fizzled out on making the discovery that whilst sales talk may sell records it doesn’t necessarily a fluent speaker make.
Nevertheless, since the dawn of this methodology, which first saw light in the early 1900s, learning how to speak sales has never been less problematic. Every generation has been faithfully supplied with its version of the shellac-based miracle language-learning recording, along with the proven art and science that by combining the spoken and written word vintage dealers such as myself are destined to uncover in virtually every house clearance throughout the land a boxed set of language recordings and the booklets that accompanied them.
Thus, over the decades, we have seen vinyl ‘conversational courses’ supported by written work, books adorned with reel-to-reel tapes, partwork publications married to cassettes and, since the advent of the good old internet, a veritable explosion of visual aids, podcasts, YouTube videos and interactive learning programmes all purporting that they can provide a fast-track lane for learning languages. Not that this approach is resoundingly futile for everyone, it’s just the ‘fast and easy’ that you need take with a pinch of salt.
Four easy steps to learning Russian
To be frank, I have not the slightest idea which of the many language-learning techniques flaunted as the most effective has the edge on the other, but what I have gleaned from discussions on the subject, and from my own experience, is that in the world of learning per se, there are two preferred often separate approaches, the one being auditory, the other visual.
Take me, for example, at the risk of sounding voyeuristic, I can categorically state that I am a visually dominant learner. In other words, I memorise what I see better than what I hear. Whilst this propensity doubtlessly has its advantages, ie there’s a lot to learn from peeping through keyholes, I cannot help suspecting that when it comes to learning the spoken language any advantage attributed to a photographic memory is relegated to second place.
Illustrative of this could be when someone shouts F..k Off! Assuming you are a visual learner and the recipient of this imperative, if at the time the instruction was given you happened to have no visual contact, learnability could be gravely compromised, depriving you of the resolve to act, whereas a learner in the auditory class would get the message loud and clear, quicker than you could see Jack Robinson, and presumably without hesitation would swiftly arrive at the understanding that he or she is longer required.
Learn to speak Russian the visual way
To learn a language by the visual method, it is necessary to write out the phonetic spelling of each and every particular word and commit them to memory. Writing them repetitively after the fashion of writing lines at school for having been caught doing something you should never have been caught for, eg “I must not whinge when I am made to write lines at school, because that is what woke people do”, is a good way of hammering home the words you are trying to learn. You can also mimic your auditory peers by saying the words out loud.
Sometimes, on those occasions when I am secretly being big headed, I will take the words that I have photographed cerebrally and think the pictures through until they form and move in streams of language, thus creating sentences in my mind which I can ‘speak’ at the pace I would normally utter them. In this way, I am learning language according to my visual penchant and also listening to myself in an auditory fashion, although the only one who knows this, and the only one who can hear me doing it, is nobody else but me [a peel of fiendish laughter!]
Whoever we are and however we do it, when we come to speaking a second language, that is speaking language out loud, mistakes inevitably happen. It is only natural and also unnatural, for example think of Biden. The sounds of our own language, our native language, are familiarly attributable, whereas the sounds of a second language are, particularly during the early days of learning, mere alien substitutions, seemingly made to trip you up. Sometimes, when I am actually speaking Russian, that is speaking Russian to Russian people and know I have made a mistake, I simply think ‘Good moaning’. It always brings a smile to my face. To paraphrase the great bard, “To err is to be stupid”. And he really does have a point.
The numeric problem
Numerically challenged, and there are few so numerically challenged as I, (I got a grade 9 CSE in maths), getting my head around Russian numerals is like trying to comprehend why inadequate people need lots of friends on their social media page.
On a day-to-day basis, my latent numerical deficiency exposes itself at worst when I go to the supermarket. It’s all well and good to boast that I can count to one hundred in Russian, but as the Russian currency routinely extends into thousands and multiples thereof, I can find myself at the checkout till in a right old two and eight (and they said he couldn’t count!).
Luckily for me, the local supermarket checkout ladies are willing to make allowances. They see this silly old bugger, an Englishman, heading their way with his burgeoning basket of produce the cost of which he cannot add up let alone put into words, and they know it’s back to primary school.
There is one till in the local shop the payment screen of which is a close-guarded secret to customers. Without this visual aid, all I hear is a ‘grr, grr, grr’ as the shop assistant asks for payment. How I get around this problem is to think myself Squint Westwood, hand the lady a fistful of roubles and then on receiving the change, along with my receipt, walk away looking tall as if I have done something clever.
But enough of this idle waffling. Let’s consider some of the inherent difficulties the English person will encounter in his or her attempt to master spoken Russian.
If I were to say to you, and I am going to, ‘masculine, feminine, neuter’, you, being English, wouldn’t be too surprised, although you might feel inclined to ask, ‘Don’t you mean gender-neutral?’ and ‘Would it not be more inclusive to give equal preference to the non-binary?’ To which I would typically reply, “Don’t be so daft, you silly old leftie.”
In the context of the Russian language ‘masculine, feminine and neuter’ are the three categories of noun gender. So, how does one know which words in Russian belong to which gender? The ‘Learn Russian the Day Before You Thought of Learning It’ books, tell you that the secret lies in the last letter of the noun. Thus, masculine words end in a consonant or the letter ‘й’; feminine words in the letter ‘a’ or ‘я’; and neuter in an ‘o’ or ‘e’. However, if the last letter is a ‘soft sign’ ‘ь’, it might be masculine or it might be feminine. “Ah, so, the Russian language suffers from the same problem we have in the UK when it comes to gender identity!”
Not exactly, but one thing for certain is that my way of visual learning does not like it. To best enable my memory to flag which noun goes with which gender type, I have had to create a table and separate the different nouns into three vertical columns headed up by the three noun genders.
To give you some idea of the complications involved, let’s now take a look at the way in which possessive pronouns work with gender. For example, the seemingly innocent and simple word ‘my’.
In Russian, there are three permutations of the word ‘my’, each governed by gender association. Thus:
My (+ masculine noun) = Moy My (+ feminine noun) = Miya My (+ neuter noun) = Miyor
I see.
No, you don’t, because there is in fact a third form and that comes into play when the word ‘my’ is used in conjunction with plural nouns. The plural form of ‘my’ is ‘miyee’.
And, if that isn’t bad enough for native English speakers to get their heads around, each possessive variant changes according to who is doing the possessing, ie ‘my’, ‘your(s)’, ‘his’, ‘hers’, ‘its’ ‘ours’ ‘theirs’. Easy peasy, no it ‘aint, because there are two types of ‘your(s)’: the first used when you know somebody well and the second used when you don’t; in other words, type 1 is familiar and type 2 formal.
I cannot understand why nationals of the West have difficulty understanding their counterparts in the East, can you?
Unlike the Cold War of days gone by and the disavowed cold war of today, the language cold war has been going on for centuries and shows every sign of abating never.
Now let’s take a look at verb endings but, for the sake of brevity, in the present tense only. The endings of verbs, and indeed other words, in Russian tend to change faster than couples at a swingers’ party. That prompts the example ‘To love’.
‘To love’ in Russian is the same as ‘to like’. I’m not sure how you navigate the difference with a verb like this, when, for instance, you are talking about your history teacher. ‘I like/I love my (Moy? Miya? Miyor? Miyee?) history teacher’, but let’s not go there and press on with our verb-ending example.
The infinitive of ‘to love/to like’ in Russian is ‘Lubits’. And here are the variations:
I love = Ya lubloo You love = Tey lubish He/she loves = On/Ana lubit You (formal) loves = Vey lubitye We love = Mey lubim *They love = Anee lubyat
*Note that the ending here has a ‘yat’ sound, but don’t be fooled by this. Mysteriously, and for no apparent reason other than with some words it sounds phonetically better, the ending ‘yat’ can turn to ‘yoot’, as in ‘they sell’: ‘Anee pradayoot’. And don’t forget that here we are dealing with the present tense only. There are different forms and rules for the past and future tenses.
When making the comparative transference of English to Russian and vice versa, the two languages throw up all sorts of interesting and perplexing anomalies. The above are just two examples.
Here is another: ‘to have’.
Now, based on what has been said already, you might think that ‘I have’, ‘you have’ etc, would follow the same pattern as that already demonstrated, as in ‘Ya’, ‘Tey’, ‘On’ etc. But, as far as I can make out, not so.
My understanding of this usage goes something like this:
I have = oo minya yest You have = oo tebia yest He has = oo nevor yest She has = oo neyor yest You have (formal) = oo vas yest We have = oo nas yest They have = oo nihu yest
What was it my late friend Stas said, “Which rules are you talking about?”
The word for ‘what’ in Russian is ‘shtor’. So, you would naturally presume that the question, “What is your name?’ would begin with ‘shtor’, but that’s where you’d be wrong, because the word ‘shtor’ in this phrase is substituted with ‘kak’, which means, among other things, ‘how’. So, the question ‘What is your name?’ becomes ‘Kak tebia zavoot?’
It couldn’t be simpler if you wanted it to be.
So, let’s recap on what I stated earlier about the two fundamental and essential approaches to learning a second language (because after learning a second language, only child prodigies and masochists go on to learn a third and more).
There are two types of language learner and some of those are bi (It’s not what you think, I hope!) Some people are auditory learners, they learn not only language but almost everything around them by listening, or, as you might say in colloquial terms, ‘ear-oling’. Others are visual learners; they remember what they have clocked with their eyes. Often auditory learners and visual learners live in entirely different learning dimensions, but there are some, as in all walks of life, that are apt to swing both ways.
Unfortunately, where language is concerned and, by extension, in every other sphere of my life, I am a visual learner. In other words, I retain things through visual memory. This can be extremely useful in certain circumstances but a bugbear in others, and it is my belief that when it comes to learning languages the auditory learner has the edge. For a visual learner like me, a person who retains things better by sight than by ear, the only sure-fired way of retaining language, ie memorising vocabulary, is to write down the word in English and then visually, as well as audibly, memorise the phonetic version.
The visual language-learner at work
I have been told that I should listen to auditory recordings in Russian and watch more Russian films, films with subtitles, as an aid to learning, but so far, as well as eavesdropping on Russian conversations, I have attained little success.
Consequently, I now find myself in the peculiar position of being able to speak basic Russian better than I can understand basic Russian: ‘shtor?’ But one continues and perseveres.
One method of vocabulary expansion that is often ridiculed, but which in my case works, is to associate the sound of the Russian word I am learning with a word I know in English.
Here are some examples of words that I have learnt using the ‘association method’:
Ootoog (iron, as in clothes iron) think ‘YouTube’ Gavyadinner (meat), easy-peasy (Have yu dinner) ~ similar to Cockney rhyming slang Shootka (joke) (shoot yer) Paul (floor) I think of one of my favourite uncles Pay lee sauce (vacuum cleaner). I think ‘pay for your sauce’ and sometimes ‘Lea’ as in Lea and Perrins Simpatichnee (handsome). I pick up my smartarse phone, suck in my cheeks, angle my head, press the button and think “Me, Me, Me!” (In spite of the fact it’s not me at all.)
And then there is ‘morzhit bates’ (possibly). I’ll leave you to work out the word association for that one.
Learn to speak Russian using rude words
Go on, you are dying to ask: What about rude and impolite words?
According to language specialists, obscenities are the first words of any new language learnt. I bet you know all of those, Mick. Well, no, as it happens, I don’t. Although I have been told some of the mucky words in Russian, I haven’t taken enough interest in them to remember them with any degree of accuracy. This can only work in one’s favour, as by lacking usage confidence one is hardly likely to run the risk of bringing them into play.
All languages contain comparatively much longer words than the native language equivalents, and these can arrest the speed of learning: ‘Padbarroardock’ is a good example, the English equivalent of which is ‘chin’. Then there is ‘nearcartourrayear’, ‘some’; and ‘zharkvartayviushi’, which means ‘fascinating’, which is conveniently close to frustrating. The consolatory fact about long words is that once you have taken the trouble to learn them, they lodge themselves in your mind.
I find that the stress in most Russian words fall within the word exactly where in the English equivalent you would not expect it to be. For example, take the word ‘Bagati’ in Russian, meaning ‘rich’. My natural predilection is to place the stress on the first part of the word, ‘bag’, but in fact it should be at the end of the word, ‘ati’. Similarly with the word ‘savings’, ‘zbier rear zhen eeya’. Every part of my linguistic soul screams out to place the stress on ‘zbier’, but correct me if I am wrong, and I was, the stress occurs on ‘zhen’. Similar with the noun ‘woman’, ‘zhensheena’. Put the stress on ‘zhen’ and there’s nothing simpler, but shift it along to ‘sheena’, and the word becomes as difficult as the object that it references.
Learning to speak Russian, and to understand Russian when people (Ludi) speak to you, can be ‘troudnay’ (difficult/problematic) and very often ‘raz dra zha ushi’ (annoying) when the stress belies anticipation.
Given the assumed and more often than not justified complexity of language learning, it is not surprising that the language aids that people instinctively reach for are those which attach importance to the concepts of ‘fast’ and ‘easy’. The proliferation of technological language portals are still matched by a prodigious number of learn lingo fast books.
Forget them. Learn Russian in Five Minutes or Learn Russian Instantly Whilst Standing with Your Trousers Down on the Edge of the M25 may seem an appealing and credible way of doing it, but why would you, unless, of course, you happen to bear an uncanny resemblance to your worst best friend. For most people, excluding the most linguistically gifted, learning Russian is going to be hard graft. It takes perseverance, commitment and dedication. I haven’t a clue where these are coming from, perhaps they arrived in a boat at Dover, but I am grateful for their assistance.
Russian is a hard nut to crack (I’m talking about the language, but …). In fact, the only other language that might prove considerably more difficult for English people to learn has to be American. This is especially true whenever Democrats open their mouths. They just never seem to make sense. So, if you are English and off to America remember to take your translation app. And if you are English and off to Russia, remember what I have told you.
Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Kanapinis (dark)
Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad
30 January 2024 ~ Kanapinis Dark in Kaliningrad How Good is It?
Leonard Cohen named his valedictory album You want it darker. Certainly, there were two periods in my own life when I wanted nothing more. The darkness of the two epochs were not exclusive to themselves, they commingled with each other, but the impulse to which they responded rose to prominence at separate times and the realm of human existence in which they dwelt could not be more distinct, or instinctively categorical, for one had to do with thought and feeling, the other with carnal desire.
As for the first, my predilections were helped not a little by the dulcet tones and soul-venting lyrics that Mr Cohen excelled in, but the inspirational spring that fed the river of melancholia arose from the deep and dark Romanticism of the celebrated American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The second instance I will leave unread, preferring for the moment to consign it to the incubation of your fetid and, I suspect, already bated penchant for perversion, and whilst you are trying to work it out, we will think of and also drink another outstanding beer, one that is dark but sweet not bitter.
Kanapinis Dark, easier to drink than to say!
The beer in question, and there is no question in my mind that in the land of beautiful beers it is the half-sister of Aphrodite (clue!), is the dark and dusky version of a Lithuanian beer whose unalloyed and succulent pleasures I sought to describe in my last review. I refer, of course, to that wonderful brew Kanapinis (light).
Kanapinis Dark in Kaliningrad How Good is It?
Santana Abraxas sang, “I’ve got a black magic woman” (clue!); Leslie Phillips, that smooth, saucy old English philanderer of the British silver screen, was forever forgetting the Black Tower (clue!) and forgetting to put his trousers on; the Rolling Stones told loyal fans they wanted to ‘paint it black’ (clue!); Deep Purple rocked ‘Black Night’ (clue!); Black Sabbath were black by name and also black by nature (clue!); and in the blackout during the war to numerous men-starved English women Americans came as Errol Flynn and left as Bertold Weisner (clue!).
Kanapinis dark is one of those brews that contains no additives. Water, caramel, barley malt, hops and beer yeast, that’s what’s in it. The brewers, Aukštaitijos Bravorai, have remained faithful to the traditional brewing method for many years, honouring the original recipe, open fermentation and a lengthy and assiduously monitored maturation process.
The Kanapinis siblings, the pale and the black, remind me of black and tan, not the one you can’t say in Ireland but the one you can make in a glass. They co-exist as though in the unification of innate quality, they are irredeemably colour blind, as though no one or the other vie to be thought of as anything more, and thought about together, as a lovely potable, quite inseparable, palate-tactile portable pair.
Taking the top off a Kanapinis ~ and remember, Kanapinis has one of those lightning toggle tops otherwise known as a Quillfeldt after the excellent chap who invented it ~ the air apparent is aerosoled with a sweet and musky smell, an enticing natural blend infused with heady caramels subtly tinctured with flavoursome malts, and when the beer pours into the glass it does so with a rich, a prepossessing chocolate head, the sort of thing that would be hard to sip if you had recently taken to wearing an RAF moustache and had as yet to learn proficiency in how to manoeuvre it properly.
“Please excuse my presumption, sir, but do you possess a licence for that hairy thing above your top lip?”
Without a Freddie Mercury or anything of the like to impede your drinking progress, the frothing foam incurs no danger, and once you have taken the plunge and dived headlong right in there, having sampled (and thus pre-judging) the quality of its paler version, the first sip is exactly as you know it should be, and had no doubt it would be. It is as promising as it smells, as seductive in taste as it looks and as satisfying from fart to stinish as any beer that you’ve ever made love to, and you can’t say darker than that!
Kanapinis Dark in Kaliningrad How Good is It?
Frank Sinatra, I’m sure, would be monotoned pleased to hear you say that Kanapinis goes ‘all the way’. Still, there’s little to choose between the two sisters, as both are full-bodied brews, and if ever colour was not an issue, then here is the perfect example: Sup! Sup! Sup! Ahhh!
If I had to choose between light or dark, the choice would be a difficult one, but should you care to bank roll me to a bottle of the dark stuff, I would thankee most kindly, sir, and do my best to get stuck in.
Old beer drinkers never shrink (except on the worst occasions) when it comes to revealing their true colours.
BOX TICKER’S CORNER Name of Beer: Kanapinis (Dark) Brewer: Aukštaitijos Bravorai Where it is brewed: Lithuania Bottle capacity: 1litre Strength: 5.3% Price: It cost me about 288 roubles (£2.62) Appearance: Dark and charcoally Aroma: Musky malts and burnt caramel Taste: Yum Yum Fizz amplitude: 3/10 Label/Marketing: Pop Art/Cartoon Would you buy it again? And again
Beer rating
About the beer: Aukštaitijos Bravorai | Kanapinis The brewer’s website has this to say about Kanapinis dark:
“CANNABIS unfiltered dark beer: This beer is brewed using only natural ingredients ~ water, malt, hops and yeast. The combination of caramel malts used in the production of this beer gives this beer a rich ruby colour and a light burnt caramel bitterness.”
Wot other’s say [Comments on Kanapinis (dark) beer from the internet, unedited] 😑Taste is close to aroma, but with harsh yeasty note. [Comment: Yeasty note, yes; harsh, no]
😐Kanapinis Dark is, frankly, so-so. If you can still feel the taste in the first half of the sip, then there is practically nothing left of it. [Comment: A man with a rather peculiar tongue!]
16 January 2024 ~ Honey House Kaliningrad is the Bees Knees
Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow wrote the lyrics, and the Beatles commercialised it. It was called a Taste of Honey, and the memorable refrain went, “A taste of honey / A taste much sweeter than wine.”
Frank Sinatra got it right when he sang, “You can drink the water, but I will drink the wine.”
OK, so no contest between wine and honey and wine and water, but water is good for washing wine glasses and honey is delicious and, they say, extremely good for you, especially when it is not compared with wine but used as one of the main ingredients in the preparation of mead.
Honey House Kaliningrad
The Murd House, not to be confused with the English ‘Murder House’, roll out Vincent Price, is an excessively large, palatial and unmissably bright yellow-coloured mansion of a place, which, in spite of its flamboyance, is oddly concealed along an early twentieth century street in an erstwhile suburb of the East Prussian city of Königsberg.
There was a time that as big and as bright as the building is, it still achieved relative anonymity, due to its partly concealed location. For example, a mid-rise block of flats makes it virtually invisible to cars passing by on the main drag. Thankfully, about three years ago, some bright spark came up with the idea of pinning a large sign on a nearby fence with ‘Murd House’ written on it and an arrow pointing in the right direction, an initiative one hopes that has gone some way towards alleviating comparative obscurity.
In Russian the word ‘Murd’ means honey (There you are, you see, there is a connection!) In English, ‘Murd House’ becomes Honey House or the House of Honey.
Honey House Kaliningrad
Whilst in itself vast, the Baroque pastiche that is the Honey House would dwarf a good sized supermarket, and whilst I have no idea what goes on in the majority of the building, I do know, as I have used it often, that secreted at a corner of this extraordinary building sits one of the best stocked honey shops in Kaliningrad.
Kaliningrad’s central market is hard to beat for almost everything, and that includes honey. It has a spacious and brand-spanking-new food hall that is exclusively given over to many different types of honey, sold in many different sized tubs. But the Honey House’s diminutive size is nothing if not deceptive. This small shop stocks an unbelievably exciting range of honey. Consider this, if you will: Acacia Honey, Mountain Honey, Yellow Sweet Clover Honey, several varieties of Buckwheat Honey. And these are just a small sample of the different kinds of honey offered by the Honey House, either scooped into tubs at your behest or sold in prepacked jars. How do those clever bees manage it!
The products purveyed by the Honey House are not confined to different flavoured honey, it also sells chocolate, confectionary, breakfast cereals, honey straws, biscuits, cosmetics and a whole lot more, all rich in the magic versatility of one of the healthiest natural substances known to man, honey.
Not that alcohol holds any interest to me, I’m strictly sarsaparilla, but the Honey House even purveys an alcohol-infused beverage simply known as Honey Drink, which to you and me is mead. Have I tried it? Have I ever put on a pair of shoes?
Why don’t you put on yours and buzz off down to the Honey House.
The Honey House The House of Honey/Honey House/Murd House (take your pick) began life in 2000, the objective being to popularise beekeeping in the Kaliningrad region. Initially, the mainstay of the enterprise was to provide beekeeping farms with equipment, medications and breeding material.
Today, the Honey House is a bio-shop, which means that it only sells natural products. Thus, products bearing the ‘Slavyansky Medovar’ trademark guarantee consistently high production standards and tasty food from natural ingredients.
Also available from the Honey House: Bee-keeping equipment Medications for bee keeping Bee-keeping clothing Hives and components
and:
Fragrances for candles Candle-making moulds Candle extinguishers
The main thing:
House of Honey Ulitsa Nekrasova 18А, Kaliningrad Kaliningrad Oblast, 236016
The Baucenter: If you don’t find it there, you won’t find it anywhere!
4 January 2024 ~ Baucenter Kaliningrad DIY Store With So Much More
I wouldn’t like to give the wrong impression, the wrong impression being that beer plays a disproportionate part in helping me to decide the topics of my blog posts. (Perish the thought, old chap.) Take this post, for example, is it about a pub, is it about a bar, is it about a bottle? No, this post is about a shop, a very large shop, which in Kaliningrad ~ where tradesmen are few and far between, and where, it would seem, the majority consider themselves DIY experts, which, without putting too fine a point on it, they most certainly are not ~ is a veritable institution.
The shop in question is a humongous retail store known as the Baucenter. According to one of my brothers, “It’s bloody handsome. It sells everything!” Admittedly, and you’ve probably spotted this yourselves, some hyperbole is creeping in here. For example, it doesn’t, in case you are wondering, sell beer (shame!), but it does sell everything anyone could wish for if you are into Do It Yourself.
I’m not ~ not, that is, into Do It Yourself. I am rather more into SDIFM (Someone Doing It For Me), but as tradesmen are few and far between (Have you ever experienced déjà vu?), it is still incumbent on one to purchase whatever materials and tools are required for someone to do the job for you.
Baucenter Kaliningrad
The Baucenter (I believe there are three in Kaliningrad. I told you DIY is big business here.) is not close to us, but I kinda like the bus trip, as it enables me to contemplate the various bars on route, purely, you understand, as each of them contain the sorts of things that I like, such as chairs, lights, windows etc. The Baucenter has all of these and a whole lot more besides, and although the store is vast, it is well laid out ~ everything in numbered isles ~ and the stock so well displayed that once you’ve got your bearings and have passed your navigation exam, off you go with your basket, feeling rather smug if you know exactly where you are going and in the event that you don’t, as enthralled as any explorer can be.
The Baucenter advertises itself as ‘everything for construction, renovation and garden’.
“You don’t say!”
“I do!”
Jewson may think it’s ‘got the Jewson lot’, but the Baucenter’s got more, by a long chalk.
“Excuse me, I wonder if you can help me?”
“I shouldn’t think so for one minute. You look as if you are beyond help.”
“I’m looking for a long chalk.”
“Ah, I see, that will be Isle number 69.”
There, what did I tell you: They’ve got the Baucenter lot!
Tools, light bulbs, wallpaper, paint, screws, nuts, bolts, carpets, curtains, toilets, patio surfacing, garden ornaments, garden tools, garden fences, garden everything, stuff you need to build barbecues with, stuff you need when constructing saunas, doors to put in door holes and the frames to go round the holes and doors, lamps ~ tall, short, squat, long, silly and not-so-silly … as long as the name’s not beer, you name it, they’ve got it! Or let me put it another way, you would not want to be tasked with making an inventory of this store!
Excuse me, do you sell toilets?Don’t forget to wash your hands!
One thing that has emerged from my brief list, which causes me more problems than anything else whenever I go hardware shopping, is not that the Baucenter doesn’t sell beer, but that it does sell light bulbs, which is good if you want a light bulb. However, I am old enough to remember the time when all you needed to know about buying a light bulb was the wattage of the bulb. Nowadays, there are so many different kinds of bulbs, such a vast array of different shapes, styles and energy types ~ traditional filament, energy saving, LED ~ and new units of energy measurement that it is all too easy to be lulled into a sense of false security and then end up in the lighting isle looking perplexed and bamboozled. Watts! Lumens! BT! Bugger! Yet fear not thee who feel flummoxed! A helpful Baucenter assistant is never too far away when you need to be helped and assisted.
Now that you have replaced the lightbulb that you brought to the centre for comparison with several assorted bulbs, no one the same as the other, and your shopping basket is burgeoning, it’s time to take care of your tum. No trip to the Baucenter could ever be called complete without stopping off at its excellent café for a bite to eat and drink. Did I say drink? Yes, as in cups of tea and coffee, or maybe fruit juice or a glass of still water. What do you think I meant?
The Baucenter café is a proper café, as in an honest to goodness cafeteria. It ‘aint fancy, nor does it need to be. With their tools a-swinging in their Baucenter bags, Do It Yourself kind of people want no-nonsense up-front nourishment, and they want it for the knock-down price of a packet of ordinary paintbrushes!
After the repast is over, novices like me are inducted into DIY, the first lesson being to collect the used crocks from the table and walk them to the tray cart on the opposite side of the room.
That’s easily done, unless you are raving drunk, and of course you’d never be that whilst shopping in the Baucenter, because the Baucenter has security guards with jackets saying ‘Baucenter’ on them.
More difficult than used crocks and Baucenter security men is being vegetarian whilst being in Kaliningrad. However, wherever I go to eat, I invariably manage to find beer something minus meat, and the Baucenter café is no exception. The last time I went there, I had some tasty salads, mashed potatoes, two different kinds of cakes for desert and a large cup of coffee. It did not cost me much, under a tenner in fact, and the quality-to-price ratio left me rather chuffed.
As logical as day follows night, toilets have their respective place in the consumption and ingestion chain and suffice it to say that the Baucenter has them. They are handy for, but not limited to, hardware hauling handymen and anyone else taken short or acting in a pre-planned way before embarking on the long journey home. Hey, don’t forget your DIY sack!
Do we have to fit our own cubicle?
I am not a great fan of shopping, but like a lot of things I’m not crazy about, I do it. I am no fan of DIY and cannot imagine how anyone can be: ‘Horses for courses’, as they say. But when I’m not beerlay (that’s the phonetic spelling of Russian for poor, just in case you were wondering), an afternoon at the Beercenter, I mean Baucenter, is as good a place bar none to spend a pleasant afternoon and in the process walk away, having first paid, of course (remember those men in their Baucenter jackets!), with everything you could possibly need to complete that job in hand. Now, where did I put that bottle opener?
Rummaging in the Polish Revision Centre 16 November 2024 ~Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But? The answer to the question is ‘yes’. Yes, it is possible to access Kaliningrad at the Polish-Kaliningrad border and vice-versa. The only caveat is that before you go, stock up on patience. Not too many months back, the bus… Read more: Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?
It turns out that Joe was not such a bad guy after all. He served a useful purpose in keeping Donald’s seat warm for him. 7 November 2024 ~ Welcome Back President Trump to the White House I don’t often cry Hallelujah, at least not first thing in the morning, but 6th November was an… Read more: Welcome Back President Trump to the White House
They said it would happen, and it has 4 November 2024 ~ Kaliningrad flea market has moved to a new location The Kaliningrad flea market that has occupied the pavement area close to the Central Market, and in more recent years spilled over onto a ribbon of disused ground bordering the moat of the Wrangel… Read more: Kaliningrad flea market has moved to a new location
Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: 387 Osobaya Varka Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad 31 October 2024 ~ 387 Osobaya Varka beer in Kaliningrad good or not? Have you ever wondered why Baltika Breweries number their beers instead of giving them a name, for example Russian Sausage or… Read more: 387 Osobaya Varka beer in Kaliningrad good or not?
Over the wire the buzz word is Telegraph 25 October 2024 ~ Telegraph Restaurant Zelenogradsk Wired for Quality “It’s all so confusing,” so says a friend of mine and quite often. He’s a scientist, now retired, so he should know. And he’s referring to life. When I echo his sentiments, “It’s all so confusing,” he… Read more: Telegraph Restaurant Zelenogradsk Wired for Quality
Have you heard the one about the expat Englishman at the Russian doctor’s?
15 December 2023 ~ Kaliningrad’s Healthcare System Compared to the UK’s
The majority of us climb the hill if not exactly with ease, then at least with a sense of relative complacency. It is only when we pass our peak and go rattling off down the other side, with bits flying off us on the way, that healthcare, and quality of healthcare, begins to figure more prominently in our lives. Accessibility, efficacy (and ‘if I go into hospital will I come out alive?), take on greater meaning when we are over the hill, or, to paraphrase a friend who has just turned 76, when “we spend more time at hospital than we did in the past.”
I was hardly surprised, therefore, that on letting the cat out of the bag back in 2018, ie the cat called Moving to Russia, one of the top 10 questions directed at me was, “What’s the health service like out there?”
It was a valid question and one that only now I feel I have a worthy answer for.
Kaliningrad’s Healthcare System
It was December 2018, and we had just left England bound for Kaliningrad. I had a huge travelling case crammed with winter clothing and was carrying one other weight: I was feeling under the weather. The thought flashed through my mind that I must be coming down with something, and sure enough, within forty-eight hours of our arrival, a right old snot of a cold developed. I searched around for someone to blame, as you do, and homed in on a friend who had exhibited signs of a sniffle but removed him from my suspect list almost as soon as I put him there, noting wryly that he was the type that would give you nothing and then invoice for it later.
Over the next couple of days, the ambient temperature continued to fall, whilst my body temperature continued to rise, and it wasn’t long before I found that I was incubating one of the most distressing respiratory illnesses that I had experienced in a long, long while. It should be noted that the symptoms to which I refer occurred pre-coronavirus, so although I was uncomfortable, I was not unduly concerned.
Three or four more days passed, and my health continued to deteriorate. Now it was getting serious. I had just arrived in my favourite city and should have been skiing from bar to bar, not holed up in a hotel room playing master of ceremonies to my own snot fest. None of it was good and eventually, against my biased judgement, I had to give in and go to the doctors.
Kaliningrad’s Healthcare System Compared to the UK’s
There was no messing. In England I had grown used to having to fight to get a doctor’s appointment. The UK surgery where I had been registered subscribed to a policy whereby on no account should prospective patients gain access to a GP easily, at all or ever. Sore throat or ‘knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door’, you had three options: (1) claw out of your sick bed ready to phone the surgery at 8am sharp (On your marks, get set, go!!) whereupon nine times out of ten the line was engaged; (2) book an appointment via internet access, which again necessitated a countdown procedure, commencing at 8pm sharp. Note that within the space of two minutes all the appointments for the following day were gone, your doctor of choice was not on the list, and if you wanted to book in advance, your next appointment would be three weeks minimum; and option (3) physically turn out of bed and drag your sad and sorry carcass up the road to the surgery.
Have you been waiting long to see the doctor, Mr Hart?
With the last option being the only real option, it was imperative that you were outside the doctors by a quarter to eight in the morning, since any later than that, the queue, whatever the weather, would be 15 deep or more (pretty grim stuff if you happened to have a leg complaint or are practically on your death bed). Oddly enough, this option almost always resulted in doctor availability, completely contradicting the ‘no appointments slots left’ message routinely rolled out on the ironically named Patient Internet Access. Before proceeding, however, I feel obliged to add that this process had a strong inherent dissuasion factor: (a) the reception staff were incredibly rude, and (b) you were required to state very loudly at the reception window what it is that is wrong with you.
“So, what is the matter with you, then!?”
“I’ve got a pain in my lower abdomen.”
“Speak up!”
More quiet than before: “I’ve, er, got a pain in my lower abdomen.”
Someone behind you, way back in the queue: “His balls hurt!”
So much for patient confidentiality.
It’s rather like the post office experience:
Lady behind the counter: “What is in the packet?” Loud voice; queue of 20 people behind you and getting longer every minute.
“Er, I’d rather not say. It’s confidential.”
“You must say. It’s the rules!”
“Mumble, mumble …”
“Speak up!”
Very loud voice: “A selection of dildos, an inflatable doll and a hundred extra large condoms.” (Admittedly, the ‘extra large’ bit was gilding the willy somewhat.)
This is not something I do at the post office regularly, you understand, only when I’m in need of a different kind of entertainment.
Kaliningrad’s Healthcare
OK, so, what’s it like getting to see a quack in Kaliningrad? I hear you impatiently say.
Before I proceed to whisper these facts in your ear, let me at once clarify that I was not accessing the state healthcare service. I was going down the private route. This is what I found.
There is no GP practice as such, at least not in the sense of a gatekeeper. Whilst I had a very good GP and an extremely patient one at that in England, there are reasons to suspect that in the UK one of the GP’s most important roles is to obstruct you from seeing a specialist. And, of course, for a very good reason ~ the good old NHS is buckling under the strain of an ever-rising population, more and more of which needs access to its over-stretched services.
In Kaliningrad, you self-refer, or rather refer by recommendation. Thus, as I was suffering from a respiratory problem, my first port of call was a specialist in this field.
Having decided who I needed to see in terms of which medical discipline, all I had to do was telephone the clinic of my choice ~ yes, telephone and speak to a real person! We did this, were answered immediately and an appointment was made for the following day.
To ensure that I arrived on time for the 10am appointment, I took a taxi. The medical establishment to which we were taken looked neither like a typical UK doctor’s surgery or hospital. It was a fairly non-descript building, possibly Königsbergian, set back from the road in its own yard and surrounded by a high and rather wanting wall.
The reception area was small, the staff, three in all, standing not sitting behind a tall counter. My wife checked me in, whilst I sat on a bench restyling my footwear with a pair of those delightful blue plastic shoe covers. Once on, we were off, but not into a large waiting room as in the UK, off along a maze of narrow corridors, containing doors with sequential numbers. On reaching the numbered door behind which my doctor lurked, we took a seat outside.
Waiting time to see the doctor was no more than 10 minutes. About seven minutes elapsed, and we were on.
The doctor was female (90% in Russia are), middle-aged, wearing a white coat and rather more officious than most British doctors. As my command of the Russian language is only applaudable when the Russian people to whom I am speaking have consumed copious amounts of vodka, my wife did the talking ~ she usually does. The doctor listened attentively, fired off half a dozen questions and ~ here’s something that you do not see any longer in the UK ~ wrote down my responses on a sheet of paper. Out came the stethoscope and there I was, shirt up, breathing in and out.
On completion of the examination, the doctor sat down, took a deep breath and delivered the verdict. Olga translated as the monologue proceeded.
“It’s bad.”
“It’s very bad.”
“The doctor cannot be sure, but there is a possibility that you have pneumonia.”
“This could be very serious.”
“The doctor recommends that you have a chest x-ray to see if you have pneumonia.”
I sat in silence, thinking that all the pneumonia cases that I had ever witnessed had been in Hollywood films, such as Gone With The Wind. (Was this film sponsored by Gaviscon? If it was, the sequel would have been, Wind Gone and With It The Money.) In such films as these, pneumonia patients were hot and sweaty, feverish, confined to their beds and in a right old ‘two and eight’. The thought of it made me cough.
Meanwhile, the doctor had produced a blue lined and letter-headed piece of A5 paper and was writing, what exactly? It looked like War & Peace, but it turned out to be a prescription.
Kaliningrad ~ a Haven of Chemists
The Aptika (dispensing chemists) was just on the corner (every corner, in fact). I had a list of pills, potions and embrocations as long as my, let’s see, ahh yes, as long as my arm. Talk about kill or cure. And these medicines were not cheap! It’s a good job that I hadn’t gone to the doctor with a case of bad arm, or else I could never have pushed them home in the wheelbarrow made for the purpose.
I am not a pill popper, in fact, I try to avoid them like the plague, but I was losing valuable beer time, so on this occasion I sank the pills and within a week, I was on the road to recovery, and within a fortnight off to the bar. I never condescended to undergo the chest x-ray to determine whether or not I had contracted pneumonia, as x-rays are like pills to me ~ I don’t go a lot on them ~ and, in my judgement, whatever it was that was ailing me (and it wasn’t ale), the symptoms were not pneumonic. The end for me did not seem nigh; but for my cold it certainly was.
About three months later I was off to the doctors again. I usually need a Dr fix every two months or so. This time it was for something different; something more sinister.
Our appointment was at the same place, the admin procedure was the same, but the doctor was a specialist in a different field. He was an amiable fellow with a pleasant personality, but, once again, when it came to the diagnosis, and indeed the prognosis, out came the black cap.
“It’s very serious,” my wife barked. “I told him [the doctor] you won’t take what he prescribes, and he said that if you do not that will be my problem, as I will be the one nursing you at the end …”
I must confess that I left the clinic and headed towards the aptika under such a preponderous gloom cloud that I couldn’t have felt more despondent had I been walking arm in arm with the Grim Reaper himself. A wheelbarrow full of medications later and my wallet 100 quid lighter, I felt like the Reaper had mugged me. And, no, much to the chagrin of my good lady wife, I did not take the medications, as research advised against it.
Two weeks later, in response to the same illness with which I had presented to the doctor, I elected to undergo an MRI scan. The appointment was made, and I was admitted within a week. Admittedly, the scan was undertaken at a very funny time of day, 11pm at night, but all it took to get an appointment was one quick phone call and 40 quid from my wallet. The results were handed to me twenty minutes after the test, both in hardcopy and electronic disk format, together with recommendations as to which specialist(s) should be consulted.
Summing up, therefore. From my own experiences with the Russian healthcare sector, I would say that ease of access gets ten out of ten. All you have to do is pick up the phone and make an appointment. What Bliss! I am old enough to remember a time when this is all you had to do to get an appointment in England. The phone call took less than a couple of minutes, and I was in to see a specialist the very next day. Cost £10-£15.
I am not so enthusiastic about the prescription ethos. In England, doctors routinely send you home with the simple directive to take Paracetamol or Gaviscon. Here, in Kaliningrad, you are sent to the nearest aptika to buy shares in several pharmaceutical companies. Both approaches have their shortcomings: go home and take paracetamol for a week and come back if you are not cured involves another round of appointment roulette and, most likely, considerable worry, or you might just go and peg-it!; head to the chemists and buy a hundredweight of pills severely robs your pocket, threatens to give you a hernia and is liable to scare you to death.
But where I believe healthcare provision really loses out in Kaliningrad to its UK counterpart is in what used to be quaintly (and suspiciously) known as ‘the doctor’s bedside manner’. (When I was a boy, our British doctor was known by the sobriquet ‘Grabem’ ~ work it out for yourself!)
In the main, British GPs and NHS staff, from top downwards, are friendly, considerate, relaxed, reassuring and embody the true spirit of compassion and goodwill ~ obviously, there are exceptions. In Kaliningrad, an old-fashioned brusqueness prevails, no quarter is given and sensibilities are none too high on the pecking order. So be advised, you may go to the doctors with hope but may well return believing it’s hopeless!
Once again, however, one needs to be careful about over-generalising. In the course of my illness regime, I was introduced to two wonderful specialists here in Kaliningrad, whose down-to-earth attitude and amiability dovetailed reassuringly with their holistic efficiency ~ their trained ability to assess your symptoms within the parameters of their own specialism and, where need be, to recommend other fields of follow-up specialisation.
On the diagnostic front, access to private healthcare in Kaliningrad is reassuringly swift, and throughout the various procedures to which I subjected myself, I felt that I was in good hands and have no gripes about the level of efficiency or efficacy of outcome. The clinics that I attended were smart and clean, the attitude officious but professional and the time for which the appointment was made was the time the appointment took place. No overburdened waiting rooms; no running impossibly, annoyingly, frustratingly nerve-rackingly and, arguably, dangerously late.
I suppose at the end of the day, one needs to be philosophical about healthcare wherever it may be: for whether its Dr Death or Dr Grabem, one paracetamol or several crates, where medicine is concerned the lottery rule applies: you pays your money and you makes your choice! Conveniently for me, I was happy with the choices made.
Feature image: Mick Hart wearing silly mask. At this clinic I decided to try ultrasound. I have to say that, without wanting to give the impression that I am an ultrasound addict, the going over was very thorough and the lady ultrasound doctor very nice!
Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad
20 November 2023 ~ Kanapinis (Cannabis) Beer in Kaliningrad is it good?
Kanapinis: This is one of those beers which if you are English and linguistically challenged will be difficult to get your mouth around. Let’s just say by this I mean canapés, and say no more about it.
Whilst Kanapinis’ cannabis-hemp connection cannot fail amongst certain circles to attract (not that I am suggesting foul play by advertising), this beer has three things going for it before you even think of whapping it down your neck. For starters, it’s got bottle, and the bottle is made of glass. It also has a resealable Quillfeldt stopper (as featured in my previous post Butauty) and a label that could take first prize at any pagan festival.
“Plastic coat and plastic hat, and you think you know where it’s at,” sang Frank Zappa. Poor old plastic, destined to travel through life second class. But let’s be Frank about it, Frank, ‘better than glass my arse’, no plastic isn’t and never will be. You certainly got that right! Best beer is best drunk from glass glasses and out of bottles made of glass. Tins are also crap.
The Quillfeldt stopper is what it is: one of those simple but oh so very practical inventions that looks as good as it gets and couldn’t really get much better even if it wanted to. Glass beer bottles in a litre size complete with Quillfeldt stoppers make the urge to save the bottles virtually irresistible. It’s a great way (if you are short of ways) of cluttering up your house. Note: These bottles will come in handy even if you never use them.
The olfactory clues as to the nature and taste composition of Kanapinis do not do the beer half as much justice as they ought. Not that from the bottle the aroma of the contents can be said to be in anyway dour or as dull as dishwater (are we talking Baltika 3?) or by any stretch of the connoisseur’s thirsty, impatient imagination unpleasant, indeed quite the contrary, the nostrils positively swoon at the subtle shades of bright and smoky, the happy hoppy, the secret scents and the affably aromatic, but subtle is the word and complex is the next one. We’ll get to that in a minute.
In the glass, the decanted beer assumes a smoky amber appearance and comes with a big creamy head. Once poured and given room to breathe, the initial aroma transfigures itself, becoming progressively less like barley and more like a fragrant perfume, not Brute or High Karate or any of that flared-trousers stuff but an exclusively minted, quality Versace.
The exact composition as detected by the nose remains elusive, but drinking is not about sniffing. If it was, the health-conscious caveat added to beer-bottle labels by seemingly indulgent, public-spirited brewers would hardly exhort their customers to play the game and ‘drink sensibly’, as the doing of such a curious thing would have obvious negative impacts on brewery profits. No, the label would instead advise you to sniff the beer with care.
But let’s be done at once with matters of the nose and get down to the business of carefree drinking!
First, let me assure you that the Kanapinis’ head sits there proudly where it is poured at the top of the glass. It does not wassail away like someone who has vowed that they will love you for eternity but as soon as your back is turned they’ve gone. In other words, the Kanapinis’ head has a certain respectful staying power. It does not go just like that, no matter how much you fool yourself that you would rather expect it to do so.
As you drink this beer, the loyal head clings firmly to the glass, like that special someone you should have clung to in the days before you realised that you were anything else but Love’s Young Dream. But these things invariably happen, and in the world of beery beverages we call this phenomenon not a bitch but by her name, which is lacing.
Kanapinis (Cannabis) Beer in Kaliningrad
As the brew goes down, without unnecessary recourse to rude expressions such as brewer’s droop, it is the fruity innuendos, saucy herbal asides and various suggestive digestive delights that service your longing palate.
The experience is an holistic one: a blend of soft and easy, a tincture of this and that. It’s that mouthwash you almost bought from Aldi but then thought better of it, or that wine you were made to taste by a bunch of pretentious farts, who wouldn’t know the difference between Schrader Cellars Double Diamond Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon and a glass of Andrews Liver Salts (Would that be ‘Andrews’ as in ‘Eamon?’). ‘Spit it out! I should cocoa ~ not!’
Once Kanapinis has gone, it hasn’t. Lacing still clings to your glass, and beyond the climactic finish, which is enough to make your toes curl, the aromatic aftermath is as sweet as the milf next door.
One pint of Kanapinis is nearly never enough. It’s wildly better than sex, with no refractory period. And you never have to worry about it living up to your expectations because, just like playing solitaire, you can cheat as much as you like.
Kanapinis (Cannabis) Beer in Kaliningrad
You’ve got to hand it to the brewers, whether they like it or not, Kanapinis is a babe of a beer. A double-page spread in a paunchy world where beers build better bodies, and you don’t have to switch the light off in order to enjoy it. A word of warning, however, both to the sceptical and the uninitiated who are apt to read the wrong kinds of things and believe what they read is gospel: watch out for those beer reviews that should be taken with a pinch of salt or a glass of Eamon Andrews. Downright obscene it would be, if on consummating Kanapinis, you complained about her virtues and the value you never got for your money. This is not a beer to take home to your mother, but you have to admit its got style.
Kanapinis is habit-forming, but at least it is a natural one. If you don’t come back for more, then there must be something wrong with you. Please to remember the age-old motto, not coming back for more often offends the Lady. I think the someone who coined this phrase was a fan of Margaret Thatcher?
BOX TICKER’S CORNER Name of Beer: Kanapinis Brewer: Aukštaitijos Bravorai Where it is brewed: Lithuania Bottle capacity: 1litre Strength: 5.1% Price: It cost me about 288 roubles (£2.62) Appearance: Hazy-daisy amber Aroma: Beer bitter with subtle aromatic hints Taste: An encyclopaedic experience Fizz amplitude: 4/10 Label/Marketing: You wouldn’t want him looking over your shoulder Would you buy it again? Just try and stop me, pal!!
Beer rating
About the brewery and the beer: Aukštaitijos Bravorai | Kanapinis The brewer’s website has this to say about Kanapinis light:
“Cannabis, Unfiltered light beer: Beer is brewed according to the classic brewing technology. Natural raw materials, open fermentation and long and careful aging give this beer a mild frozen taste. The barley malt in its composition gives the beer a light amber colour.”
And this to say about their range of beers:
“Each beer recipe is exclusive, with a real story and an authentic composition. The bravors of Aukštaitija produce beer, which dates back to the 1750s. The recipe for one of the brewed beers came from Germany back in the last century, which today is included in the Culinary Heritage Foundation.”
Comment: I would venture to suggest that to look for a better way of enjoying history other than by quaffing it in the form of an authentic, tested-by-time, celebrated historic brew would be a completely pointless object.
Wot other’s say [Comments on Kanapinis (Cannabis) beer from the internet, unedited] 😑Hardly tangy, spicy in taste…but overall rather bland [Comment: This bloke obviously has taste-bud problems.]
😐Slightly sweet, reminiscent of honey, and very drinkable. It could just be a little spicier [Comment: OK, so make with the chili sauce!]
😁Stonkingly good beer! [Comment: Alright, I admit, it was me who said that.]
😐Very unusual beer, smells of honey, but not too sweet, very drinkable, delicious! The only drawback is a bit too little carbonation*. Can I drink more of this? [Comment: Well, if you can’t, pass me the bottle!]
The autumns of our years leaf everything to our imaginations
15 November 2023~ Kaliningrad in Autumn Leaves it Out
You’ve heard the one, ‘Bringing in the sheaves’, but here, in Kaliningrad, at this time of year, it’s more a case of cleaning up the leaves.
I love autumn, it is by far the most favourite season in my romantic calendar. To enjoy it to its utmost and garner from it the utmost joy, you really must locate a tree, or better trees in plural, and cuddle up beneath them. Leaves in autumn (as I wrote in an earlier post) are one of Kaliningrad’s municipal treasures.
Kaliningrad is a green city, haven’t I told you so already. Its tree population is quite prodigious: many streets are lined with them, many gardens full of them, many parks play host to them and the city in itself, in its large and spacious capacity, is endowed with small spinneys and woods, none of which are treeless. In fact, as strange as it may seem, none of Kaliningrad’s woodland is short of a tree or two. I cannot recall a single occasion whilst walking through the wooded areas availed of by the city, when I could not find a tree. Thus, when the time eventually comes, as come around it must, for the leaves to eventually twig-it, they’ll be sure to let you know.
Recently, however, Kaliningrad has entered the phase when it best at worst resembles Britain. In Britain some blame it on ‘global warming’ (they usually look and sound like parrots), others on globalist bullshit (They are quickly labelled conspiracy theorists and sectioned under the Mental Health Act for being too perspicacious.(Hysterical Whitehall laughter!)).
Whatever the explanation, it has all gone damp and soggy when previously it was crisp and dry. All it took in those conditions was a light to moderate breeze and leaves were swirling from the trees like proverbial pennies from heaven. (It’s good that leaves aren’t feminine pink, for when outed by the tree it would be difficult not to compare them to confetti at a gay pride wedding. (“Oooh, now, just listen to him. Who does he think he isn’t!”)
Kaliningrad in autumn
One day these leaves line the trees like a coat of many colours, the next they lay like a carpet, or like Sir Walter Raleigh’s autumnal cloak, thick and deep and predominantly yellow, on lawn, verge, road, cobbles, on pavements where there are some and on pavements where there aren’t.
The affect of this time of month on Kaliningrad’s leafy parts is to transform it into a dense yellow snowstorm, which on closer inspection at ground level reveals a colour composition of varying yellow hues interspersed with auburn, browns and intricate shades of red.
If autumnal colours do something to you, if they reach the parts others cannot, if in the changing fate of leaves you find all that your heart desires and more than you thought you could ever deserve, then Kaliningrad in autumn is the place you should have gone to when you had the chance.
If, on the other hand, the sight of leaves makes you incurably phobic, then your relief will be as keenly felt as my infatuation for the leaf collectors when they hit the streets to engage in their yearly task, which by no means insurmountable is none the less redoubtable, of lifting and shifting piles of leaves before buckets of snow plummet down on top of them, not on them you understand, but on top of the fallen leaves.
Hanging, floating, whirling, twirling, falling and settling autumn leaves possess a poetic beauty but come the damp and the snow, they can overnight turn slippery, ‘mighty slippery’ I might say, but I’d only say it in an Old West accent and when I’m wearing my cowboy suit.
I don’t expect you to go so far, to visualise this scene, a scene like that is nobody’s business, but please do take a moment to gander at the lovely photos of Kaliningrad’s autumn leaves:
Thank you for travelling Autumn Post, the next stop will be Christmas.
