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.
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.
Kaliningrad’s Konig Power had the pleasure of Mick Hart listening, dancing, and drinking to their Deep Purple tribute. How did they rate his performance?
12 November 2023 ~ Konig Power Russia’s Ultimate Tribute to Deep Purple
I’ve learnt the hard way never to expect too much (Out of life, Mick? Please let me finish.) from tribute bands.
I learnt this lesson in particular during my Rushden Bowls Club years. Not that I have ever played bowls, mind, even if by age I was qualified then and am more-so qualified now. For us, the Rushden Bowls Club was a handy venue from which to run antique auctions and, occasionally, 1940s’ concerts and dances. However, since the club also functioned as an entertainments hosting centre, we were sometimes in the right place at the right time to catch several tribute band performances.
Needless to say, the professional quality of each band veered from downright dandy to downright dastardly. When they were good, they were good, and when they were bad, they were very, very bad.
Sadly, one or two ‘sank beneath the water like a stone’, and whilst this did not happen often, when it did it had you asking, “Why did I spend good money to listen to a bunch of wannabees butcher the songs of my favourite band, when I might just have easily stayed at home and listened to the real thing courtesy of YouTube?”
The answer to that rhetorical question is that the ‘real thing’ on YouTube is not the real live thing, and when the real live thing is not available, we go for the next best live thing, which, in case you haven’t guessed, is the tribute band.
And so, we come to a recent event, not staged at the Rushden Bowls Club or anywhere vaguely near it, but at Mr Smirnov’s Badger Club tucked away on the Kaliningrad outskirts. Would admission be dependent on the wearing of badger-head codpieces?
Konig Power Russia’s Ultimate Tribute to Deep Purple
The night in question was the 4th of November; the tribute band in question was Konig Power and the band they were representing was Deep Purple.
As all you know-it-alls know, Deep Purple is an English rock band formed in the late 1960s. Together with British bands Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, they made a name for themselves as the ‘Holy Trinity of hard rock and metal bands”. Deep Purple started out as a psychedelic/progressive rock band, but later moved out and moved into hard rock and some say heavy metal. In its lifetime, the band has undergone numerous line-up changes and nuanced shifts in its musical style but has always maintained its place at the summit. The recipient of numerous accolades and coveted music awards, including, after an uphill struggle (which some believe was motivated by institutional cronyism) induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Deep Purple, like their ageing peers Mick Jagger and his Rolling Stones, may not be as young as they used to be, but the pioneers of heavy rock continue to shine the light for new wave bands to follow.
A bit of heavy rock trivia Deep Purple toured Russia on a number of occasions. It did so from 1996, and in February 2008 appeared in concert at the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow.
During the 1970s (My, doesn’t that sound a long while ago!), when heavy rock was in its infancy, I cannot claim to have been a celebrant of it. I was certainly into heavy rock, as I was working in demolition, demolishing disused U.S. aerodromes built in England during the war, and I was also into heavy metal, as I was selling it on the side.
However, at some point during my early teens I turned away from commercial pop, having stumbled upon what is known today as psychedelic and progressive rock.
Bands like Deep Purple, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, featured on the periphery of my new frontier in music, but my inclinations ran more to the likes of Pink Floyd (strictly in their earliest incarnation), Emerson, Lake and Palmer and other truly progressive bands. Then, in 1971, a close friend and collaborator pulled out of his record collection a white album with nothing on the cover but a facsimile handwritten scrawl.
The artist’s name and the name of his band sounded rather silly (which appealed to me immensely), and I certainly had no knowledge of them. Had I missed them on Top of the Pops? That album was the Fillmore East. It was recorded live at the Fillmore in June 1971, and the band that was playing that venue was Frank Zappa and his Mothers of Invention.
I played the album and was immediately hooked. I hadn’t heard anything like it, because there had never been anything like it, and there’s never been anything like it since. Having played it more than sufficiently to drive my parents to distraction and annoy the neighbours no end, I then raced out and bought, in rapid succession, Freak Out, 200 Motels, We’re Only in it for the Money, Chunga’s Revenge and another half-dozen Zappa albums at £2.20 a pop from Peterborough’s Woolworths. It was an Overnight Sensation; Zappa had converted and, some admonishingly said, thoroughly perverted me.
So, onto this recent tribute concert, where I was going not, as I have intimated, as a dyed-in-the-wool Deep Purple fan but as an open-minded listener with a knowledge of and interest in heavy rock and heavy metal music.
The night before the gig, I had a nocturnal gig of my own ~ insomnia, which ended in a dose of Nytol. Throughout the day of the concert, I was not up too much. It was all I could do to scan one of my old hand-written diaries, the 1976 edition, for storage in the ‘cloud’. It is an ongoing and laborious task, scanning the pages of diaries (I am sure you do it all of the time.) but the upside of it is, it does not entail much mental effort. So far, I have scanned diaries spanning the years 1971 to 1976; only 25 years to go before I catch up with the time when I swapped my pen for a keyboard.
The point is, just in case you think I’ve forgotten what the point is, that my insomnia had left me with a not unusually dull and heavy background headache, which Nytol had exacerbated: just the thing one needs, I thought, when attending a heavy rock concert! But, to quote my old friend Frank, “I was born to have adventure …” So off we went, headache and all.
On our way to the Badger Club, we stopped off at a nearby bar where I sunk a pint of beer. It seemed to do the trick. Doesn’t it always? I cannot for the life of me begin to understand how non-drinkers get over their headaches!
Konig Power
The Deep Purple tribute band that we would witness this evening goes by the name of Konig Power. The line-up consists of: Yuri Koenig, vocals; Viktor Markov, guitar, solo and backing vocals; Dmitry Isakov, bass guitar; Alexander Nazarov, keyboards; and Alexander Kazbanov, drums.
Yuri Koenig, lead singer and founder of the band, may be Russian but he sings his Deep Purple cover songs in perfect English. Before launching into his act, Yuri came to our table and in conversation revealed the sixteen or seventeen tracks that the band would be playing this evening. They must have been among Deep Purple’s most famous hits for, with one or two exceptions, I seemed to know them all.
During our conversation, Yuri revealed that as well as Deep Purple, he was a lifelong fan of the Beatles. This did not surprise me any, as the greater percentage of Russian folk over a certain age seem to have a perennial soft-spot for the mop-top band from Liverpool.
My sister was a Beatlemania victim. I suppose in the Beatles’ hey days it was hard to be anything else. Youth culture at the time was simplistically split into two cult camps: you either went with the Beatles or favoured the Rolling Stones. I leant towards the Stones, but my favourite ‘commercial’ rock band of that era was neither of the big two, it was the third spoke in the music scene’s wheel, the one and only Kinks, and out of that 60s/70s trio, it remains so to this day.
None of the groups that I have just mentioned fall into the generic category occupied by Deep Purple.
Deep Purple’s music is heavy rock, and if any of you reading this are unsure as to what that is, ~ maybe because you have suffered the inconvenience of having been born too late, when there is little more to listen to than rap-crap mediocrity ~ it is heavy and it rocks.
The opening chords of Konig Power left no doubt in anyone’s mind what brand of music it was. The ‘heavy’ passed like a shockwave through our bodies and the building in its entirety actually, physically rocked.
Indeed, so heavy, strident, loud and utterly surprising was the initial amplification that had my badger’s head codpiece not been properly secured by a pair of lady’s suspenders, I would have run the very real risk of losing it. It could have shot right off! As it was, I discretely adjusted it just in time to hear Yuri cry what he had no need to cry, “I want to smash this wall!” He very nearly succeeded, with the help of my flying codpiece.
My codpiece was not the only victim of the band’s explosive intro. The dramatic opening chord seemed also to have blown away Smirnov’s leather outfit, for, having put away his pipe ~ I didn’t know he smoked one? ~ he appeared from the back rooms of his TARDIS looking every bit the caveman in a short-sleeved furry waistcoat open from chest to midriff. Aleks is one of those alpha guys. He has a hairy chest. My shirt was well done up.
The first track of the evening was Deep Purple’s signature tune Smoke on the Water, based on the 1971 fire at Montreux Casino*.
Understandably, it is a powerful song, requiring a lot of clout from the vocalist, and for guitarist Dmitry Isakov a tightly scripted performance to live up to a guitar riff which has gone down in rock history as one of its most memorable.
*Do you not believe in coincidences? Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water song is reputed to have been inspired by the burning of Montreux Casino in 1971. My favourite band is The Mothers of Invention. My favourite album is The Mothers of Invention live at the Fillmore East, recorded in 1971. The casino burnt down as a result of a Mothers of Invention fan firing a flair gun during a Mother’s of Invention concert. I wasn’t there. I have an alibi. On the night in question, I was sitting quietly at home playing roulette and blackjack whilst listening to my Fillmore East album. I think I was wearing flared trousers and smoking a cigar.
This, then, was the moment of truth. It was the first track of the evening. Deep Purple’s headline song, the one that would sort the tribute men from the boys.
Success! I am pleased and relieved to report; Bravo!; and a standing ovation! Konig Power had not disappointed. We could settle in for the rest of the evening. Yes, I will have a glass of vodka.
It has to be said that lead singer Yuri Koenig excelled himself. He has a good, strong, voice, with a flexible range and tempo and had no difficulty in oscillating between the low growling guttural notes and clean, high-pitched screams which characterises the Deep Purple sound.
A vital clue as to how he reaches those high notes could, I quietly ruminated, be the very tight trousers that he was wearing. They looked like a pair once owned by the Bee Gees. I didn’t say a word. However, you, being less diplomatic than I, might have been tempted to say, “Pardon me for asking, but were you ever awarded the Badger’s Head Codpiece with Two Golden Globes?” I’m rather glad that you were not there.
Guitarists, Dmitry Isakov and Viktor Markov gave dazzling displays of nimble fingers, which were expressively more than capable of drawing perfect musicianship from the instruments they were wielding. I tried to work out how they did it, how they were doing it so well and doing it so rapturously, but just like seasoned magicians with professional cardsharp skills, if it wasn’t simply down to their fingers, it must have been up their sleeves. Their extraordinary and excellent playing hit the spot like it ought and certainly contributed to ‘smashing’ Yuri’s wall, as though smashing walls to them was second nature.
A heavy rock group without drums a-rockin’ is almost as inconceivable as a globalist without tentacles. Manning the drums this evening was Alexander Kazbanov, who effortlessly, or so it seemed, brought it all together in an assured style and with a classic sense of timekeeping that his alter ego, Ian Paice, could only have applauded.
Whether his keyboards colleague, Alexander Nazarov, wanted to or did distort the sound of the organ he was playing in emulation of his Deep Purple counterpart, the legendary Jon Lord, is not for a novice like me to say, but the rhythm he produced rode along with the heavy rock beat without becoming lost in it, either utterly or partially, adding, not subtracting, and holding its own quite comfortably within the epicentre of the storm of sound.
In fact, there was nothing to complain about in the band’s rendition of the band they loved to play, and nothing by way of syncopation that failed to fit the tribute bill.
Whilst Konig Power paid homage in the best and most professional way to every Deep Purple song to which they treated us, by far the most accomplished in my opinion was the last song of the evening, a reprise of Deep Purple’s signature tune, namely Smoke on the Water. Already sung and sung well, beyond the level of prosaic competency, the striking difference between the earlier rendition and this, the evening’s sign-off track, was the well-appointed inclusion of Mick Hart guesting on chorus vocals.
Although it could be argued that Konig Power had no need to add this particular cherry to the icing on their cake, all I can say in response to that is stand by Wembley Stadium, and yes, if they ask me nicely, I’ll sponsor a toilet door . I’ll even throw in a photo of me as well.
You know, it’s true what they say about fame: it can quickly go to your badger’s head!
Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad
6 November 2023 ~ Butauty Beer in Kaliningrad How Good is It?
Quillfeldt! No, it’s not the name of a beer and neither is it a term of abuse. It is in fact the name of a gentleman, Charles de Quillfeldt, to be precise, the inventor of the ‘flip top’ or ‘lightening toggle’ bottle stopper, whose name is eponymous with his marvellous creation.
Qillfeldt’s bottle closure system consists of a hinged wire frame attached to a stopper which, being harnessed to the bottle neck, allows it to be removed and replaced with ease and relative swiftness. (Just the job in a thirst emergency.) Since the stopper is attached to the bottle, it is impossible to misplace it, enabling the bottle to be opened and closed at will, a thoughtful contraption and that’s a fact, although in my experience a quality bottled beer once opened will never have need to be sealed again.
Butauty Beer in Kaliningrad
Butauty beer, by Lithuanian brewers Vilniaus alus, has such a top, or should I say had, as recent information discloses, without revealing why, that production of this beer has ceased. That being noted, however, as recently as last week I discovered a shelf full of Butauty in one of Kaliningrad’s Victoria supermarkets, so either someone is telling porkies, or the beer displayed is remnant stock.
Nevertheless, as I drank it, liked it and also made notes about it back in 2022, I shall now proceed to review it, even if it has become just an affectionate bittersweet memory.
It isn’t, not bittersweet that is. It has a slightly bitter twang, but overlaying that a predominantly burnt, smoky, caramel flavour, slightly aromatic, one might even venture to say subtly aromatic, with a deep and generous peaty aroma.
When my Quillfeldt flew off, a bit like my toupee did last summer, as I was racing along in an open-topped car, the aroma genie popped out as if it was old Jack from his box, and started into shouting up my nostrils, “Get a load of this! It’s deep and richly peaty!”
And isn’t it just the truth.
Butauty Beer in Kaliningrad
In the bottle, the beer looks as black as your hat, or most parts of South London, but once you’ve outed it into your glass, it could be any one or other of fifty shades of grey.
Butauty gives good head, the sort of rich, frothing, foaming head that they used to like up North in England before the Daleks invaded the area and everything went south ~ although it didn’t help them any. But like a lot of endangered English traditions, the head shows little resolve. It fizzles, farts and splutters and by the time you’ve come back with your crisps, it’s as shockingly gone as a case of white flight.
I, personally and in particular, have never cared much for a big creamy head. As far as I am concerned, beer can be as flat as a triple ‘A’, as long as it retains its zest and unique flavour. There’s nothing much flat that I can’t handle, although I don’t care much for the Fens. Mind you, with its rich peaty smell and Fen-like hue, Butauty beer, at 5.5%, has an earthiness about it that would fable well in the Cambridgeshire Badlands, ‘Ay up, and Jip Oh!’, except, of course, it hails ~ or did hail ~ from Lithuanian brewers, Vilniaus alas ~ sorry Vilniaus alus (with a four-letter word like ‘alus’, it could have been far worse!).
Among Butauty’s internet reviews, many are rather scathing. I just don’t get it (You’re not the only one! Have you any suggestions?). And, if what is written is not a black lie, and the beer is no longer produced, no one will be getting it.
I, for one, and some others I imagine, can honestly say that I like this beer. It smells like good beer should smell and is right tasty, I’ll tell you that!
Should the rumour of its demise be credible, it will indeed be a sorry day for beer connoisseurs wherever they are, and yet we must take heart, for there is consolation in everything: as Bogart once famously said, “We’ll always have Quillfeldt.”
BOX TICKER’S CORNER Name of Beer: Butauty Brewer: Vilniaus alus Where it is brewed: Vilnius, Lithuania Bottle capacity: 1litre Strength: 5.5% Price: It cost me about 280 roubles [in 2022] [Note: recent supermarket price is 490 roubles, £4.30] Appearance: Dark Aroma: Caramel and peat Taste: Complex taste of all things dark and beautiful Fizz amplitude: 4/10 Label/Marketing: Olde Worlde Parchment Would you buy it again? If they ever start producing it again, anytime
BEER RATING:
About the brewery: Vilniaus alus Vilniaus alus’s claim to fame is that it is the only brewery of beer and natural drinks in Vilnius. The brewery is proud to assert that no chemical additives are used in their beers, guaranteeing quality products wholesome in natural ingredients. Both bottled and draft beers are produced, and the company exports to Europe and to the USA. Vilniaus alus
Wot other’s say [Comments on Butauty from the internet, unedited] 😊Caramel bitterness, like a pleasant surprise, Doesn’t taste bitter, but pleases with its taste, like a little whim
😒Butter, caramel, diacetyl. Powdery mouthfeel. Nutty with a bitter note. But destroyed by rancid butter.
1 November 2023 ~ Kaliningrad Gothic in the Chimney Sweep’s House
There’s no spires, towers or turrets silhouetted against a full-moon sky above an impossibly craggy, precipitous cliff top, no sinister Baron Frankenstein or bat-metamorphosising sharp-toothed count, no film-set outsized lightning rod rising from the roof poised for that life-giving thunderbolt to kick-start the borrowed heart and incite the cadaverous limbs of a grizzly patchwork embryo ~ at least, I don’t believe there is. But remembering where we are, within the eternal shadow of German Königsberg, there’s more than a whiff of the Hoffmannesque both in Aleks Smirnov’s chimney sweep image, as fabled in German history, and his Badger Club/studio complex.
The Gothicism that forms the basis of Mr Smirnov’s public image (some would say his soul) and suffuses his club and art is a meeting place of invocations, each containing the traceable elements of folklore, legend, superstition, witchcraft, dark-side sorcery, imaginative tall-tale flights and dream-like childhood fantasy.
His grotesque artistic compositions, sometimes risibly ironic, often tormented and twisted, always enigmatic, are an intercopulation of various Gothic sub-genres that attain apotheosis in the legend of the Green Man and the anything-goes enchanted forest.
Aleks Smirnov’s world, let us coyly qualify that and say Aleks Smirnov’s ‘artistic world’, is a meeting of the ways; a rum place wherein the fantastic, unsettling otherness as explored in TV programmes like the 1960s’ Twilight Zone, 1970s’ Thriller and in fictional tales that you may have heard of, featuring bespectacled Harry What’s-His-Face, come together with Freudian fantasies to hold each other as if they are one.
Kaliningrad Gothic
It is not by chance or accident that Alex’s art is skewed by snatches or glimpses of something half-seen, sometimes almost invisible. For example, wall plaques of barely discernible faces blurring into and partially erased by stylised foliate overlays; mythological creatures, devoid of detailed features, ill-defined in form, swooping bat-like from daubed textured ceilings; the cruelly twisted disfigured face masks that impel you to put them on but more quickly to take them off; the sack-cloth and ashes hessian gowns, lightly touched by tapestry and the heavier hand of superstition that dwells in ancient lore and in Little Red Riding Hood subterfuges, which help to conveniently explain away the dangers that lurk in dense, dark forests in terms of ghosties and goblins; the clumsily grandiose over-the-rainbow other-world helmets and repertory theatre gilded crowns ~ indeed, everything you’d expect to find in a parallel world of magic and sorcery, you’ll find in the House of Smirnov.
And yet, viewed from another angle (and there are plenty of those in Smirnov’s art) could they be distorting props taken from a surrealist film set, or things of which we never speak but which, both in our sleeping and waking hours, exists in each and all of our minds? Like the mirror of life itself, the shapes that we are permitted to see in Mr Smirnov’s visions are a cradle to the grave experience where “more of madness, more of sin and horrors the soul of the plot”.
But the madness, if it exists, is not opaque. The House of Smirnov has many mirrors. And the sin is hardly original: pleasure is what pleasure does and has been doing since time immemorial. Like everything in the Chimney Sweep’s lair, it may be in your face, but you can only ever really see it through the spectacles of your senses. It is a kind of delicious confinement and is all the more enticing for it!
As for horror, if it exists, then this is the vaguest face of all. Now you see it; now you don’t. It is easy to look in the mirror when you’ve prepared yourself to see someone else, but which side of the mirror is throwing the reflection? As with E.A. Poe’s mysterious Usher, the House of Alex Smirnov, could well be Smirnov himself.
Kaliningrad Gothic in the Chimney Sweep’s House
Personality is everywhere, and it runs through almost everything. Like a phantasmagorical current it links the disparate parts. Every shadowy, half-complete (or so we are led to believe), vague, ambiguous, ambivalent emblem, be it cast in the form of a bronze planished wall plaque, painting of a symbolic nature, surrealistic sculpture or just a gnarled, tormented, piece of driftwood rescued, sanctuarised and, once resuscitated, displayed in the most unaccountable place: never before has juxtaposition been so content and connected.
At first such apparitions appear disjointed but thematically and psychologically a river runs through it all. It is as naturally unnatural as nature itself is truly unnatural, but it carries you into the Green Man vortex as effortlessly as a nursery rhyme: ‘If you go down in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise’.
Obfuscating, sometimes suffocating, nature, whether human intrinsic or external organic, plays out its co-existence to interdependent extremes. It is the bogey man of sin, of guilt, stalking hapless generations trapped in the conscience forests of Nathaniel Hawthorn’s mind. It is the temptress lying in wait inside her soft, inviting, secret garden.
Kaliningrad Gothic
As in every game of chance, there is only one winner and that is the House, and this is no more certain than in the House that Aleks built. Whoever we may be and wherever we may be, victims are not spared, not even in Aleks’ toilet, especially not in Aleks’ toilet.
Draw back the crude and heavy, the clumsy wooden rustic bolt, pull back the fairy-tale door and off you go down Alice’s rabbit hole. It is not a WC, unless WC means Wonder Closet; it cannot be called a lavatory, more laboratory of thought; and it is anything but a rest room, a testing room, perhaps. In the strange, dramatic, dynamic department, an awful lot goes on in there, where functionally it shouldn’t.
Quiet in place but oppressively loud in colour, spacious but confining, placid but somehow caught in motion, the only way of escaping is to obey the laws of natural contractions. Relax. Take a deep breath and let them push you headlong into the magic of the sweet little garden that lives beneath the wash basin. This illuminated scene, seen through moulded windows, begs for someone to come inside. Could England’s Alnwick Garden ever be more beautiful, more graphically serene, more wantonly irresistible? Could it take you gently by the hand and lead you up the garden path as Aleks’ garden does?
Mr Smirnov is no mad scientist, and neither is he a bewinged count from an exotic fictious realm. He is a fabled German chimney sweep returned to Earth as artist. His residence and his club are not so much a turreted chateau or multi-faceted castle overlooking a bat-infested tarn but a playful topsy-turvy take on Germany’s Gingerbread House.
Seen from outside, preferably at night, when cold and invaded with rain, the arched and crooked windows filtering light through panes of contrasting hue call softly to your childhood memories the ghouls and goblins of the Brothers Grimm, whilst below in the cobbled courtyard, headless female mannequins dressed like predator tarts prowl the streets of your later life reminding you of all the places where you said you’ve never been.
The sinister woodland theme, wherein do dwell all kinds of elves and ghouls, replaces the streets beneath it. First, Aleks will put you in the club and then, if your luck is in, take you to places you’ve never been.
A tour of the chimney sweep’s backrooms, replete as they are with myriad props and costumes, all in form and nature an epitome of the bizarre and grotesque, is a Masque of the Red Death moment. Within these bewitching antechambers, space ought not be compromised but the walls have a habit of closing in and the light, which filters, falls and falters in the taints and tints of the backlit panes, formulates the kind of seduction that Mother Nature would never condone, least not without a spiritual condom.
In the company of sweeps and badgers, you are given the chance to be anyone, everyone if you so desire, even those in your wildest dreams who you never thought you would be, which includes yourself if you want it that badly. Remember that classic scene in Patrick McGoohan’s Prisoner: “We thought you would be happier as yourself …” It’s all part of the grand plan, the eternal trick, the fairy tale; the who is deluding who; the question where have I put myself? The self.
Aleks Chimney Sweep Smirnov’s self is who he would have you believe he is and who you want him to be. It really is nobody’s call but your own. However, accepting limitations, it is futile to look for Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker or any one of those Gothic guys and gals. He could never be that archetypal. And the place where he works, where he drinks, where he dreams is It. Here, there is no Baron Frankenstein, no graveyard afterlife embryo waiting perchance on that shard from the heavens to turn the crank on the sleeping heart, no long-toothed fiend in a bat-like cloak, no orgasmic sigh from the pit and the pendulum, but for all that Mr Smirnov isn’t and for all his art and habitat is, even with gaps, it’s Gothic.
Let’s call last orders, blow out the candles and say Amen to that.
10 August 2023 ~ Cultura Kaliningrad a World-Wide Beer Bonanza!
The beer reviews that I have written to my blog number in the region of twenty five. That I have managed to fit these in between drinking beer is astonishing, but somehow they have taken shape. In these reviews I have dealt exclusively with beers sold through supermarkets, predominantly in PET bottles in regulated volumes of 1.35 to 1.5 litres, but the fact that I have homed in on this category of beer does not mean that during the course of my beer-drinking lifestyle, I have not permitted myself the pleasure of quaffing offerings of a more specialised nature, beers which by their craft or import status are generally considered more exotic and, as a consequence, more expensive.
Thus, in addition to my reviews of the best and the worst of Kaliningrad’s ‘run of the mill’ bottled beer, I give you fair warning that I am now about to embark on the no less difficult appraisal of craft and speciality imported beers.
As in my last series of highly professional and sensible reviews, it is my intention to stick to beers purchased through supermarkets and/or specialist beer-selling outlets, in other words from what we call in England off-sales rather than licensed premises, such as bars, cafes, restaurants and hotels or, to be more precise, beers sold in bottles as distinct from barrel-stored, tap-dispensed beverages.
Whilst supermarkets and smaller shops in Kaliningrad may stock one or two more exotic brands of beers supplementary to their standard fare, such commodities are typically to be found in greater abundance and choice in specialist retail outlets. A number of such establishments abound in Kaliningrad, but one of the best by virtue of its diverse selection and quality has to be Cultura.
Cultura Kaliningrad
Cultura’s pedigree is accredited by discerning beer-buying and drinking afficionados, whose approving comments feature regularly on various beer-tickers’ websites.
Cultura is situated on one of Kaliningrad’s busy city thoroughfares, Prospekt Mira. As with many other shops in Kaliningrad, it is located on the ground floor of a three or four storey block of flats, whose size and scale dwarfs its presence and understates its potential. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the fact that seasoned beer drinkers are like seasoned hunters — they have a nose for their quarry — the shop and its myriad delights could easily be passed by. True, the Russian word for beer (peeva) is large enough not to be missed, but the back-to-basics look, which may or may not be designer inspirited, is a little too convincing when viewed against the backdrop of the tired old flats in which it is framed. However, first impressions can be deceptive, and don’t we drinkers know it, and any misgivings and apprehensions that may be unjustly inferred are swept away immediately once you have wassailed inside.
Cultura Kaliningrad
In fact, once inside Cultura one’s senses positively reel! The shop has an awful lot of beer, an awesome lot of different beers, and even after closing your eyes, opening them again, rubbing them and pinching yourself, the notion that you might have died and gone to beer-shop heaven is delightfully ineffaceable.
Cultura Kaliningrad
I am not much of a traveller, so Cultura is my compensation. Its beers, sourced from around the world, enable me to globe trot at will. I can be in Germany one minute and Belgium the next. I can even be back in Great Britain, no passport or visa required, all that is needed is cash and in the globalist era of touch-card technology even that is not an impediment ~ or so they would have us believe!
Cultura is like a library, and whilst not all drinkers are readers and not all readers are drinkers, who could resist working their way through the legion of beer-bottle labels that line Cultura’s shelves. Volumes and volumes of labels and each label speaking volumes; talk about spoilt for choice! Where on earth does one start?
A good starting point could be strength, country of origin, dark beer or hoppy light, bottle size and cost. Alternatively, you could invite your curiosity to take you where it will, which is more or less the path that I took. As I travelled around the world in my own inimitable way, marvelling at the exhibits, as unique and individual as anything in an art gallery, price became a factor, albeit a not defining one, in the process of selection.
Above: Mick Hart in Cultura: one photo was taken during the Plandemic; the other later. Bet you can’t guess which is which?!
Translating roubles into pounds based on the exchange rate on any given day is never easy; performing the calculation as an aid to purchasing beer is analogous to acrobatics, and whilst it may not, and often does not, provide the safety net you hope it will, price variations in Cultura are sufficiently dramatic to make falling back on this methodology an imperfect reassurance.
On my first visit to Cultura at the height of the Plandemic in November 2021, the exchange rate was such that it allowed me to cut some slack, and I was not particularly concerned about paying 350 to 400 roubles for a litre bottle of beer (then about £4.50) even though in those days the average price for a 1.5 litre bottle available from supermarkets was under £1.50. “Treat yourself!” I thought, and so I did.
Come 2023, however, I was less complacent. This was the time when the rouble was billed as the ‘best performing currency in the world’, thanks to the fiscal measures taken to equalise the impact of western sanctions. The resultant disparity in the price and value of craft and imported beers had me effectively sanction myself. Unlike the big sanctions, however, whose efficacy are questionable, my little, private sanctions were not so ill conceived that they would come back later to bite my arse; they were modest in proportion and tenable in their application, working on the kind of budget that the Bank of England can only dream of. Even so, speciality beers, particularly imported ones, have always come with a higher price tag wherever you might be domiciled, and those in Cultura are no exception. I will leave you to decide whether or not you would be prepared to pay £15 or more for a litre bottle of beer.
“Ay up, mother, I think it’s off to the working man’s club!” (Note: Working Men’s Clubs are no longer permissible in British society: (a) because we no longer have a ‘working class’ and Benefit Class does not sound near as 21st century as politicians would like, and (b) to have a man’s club or a man’s thing of any kind in the UK is impermissible under the ‘Everyone has to be Queer Act’ [source: Winky’s Guide to British Law by N.O. Balls])
That having been said, and I am sorry that it has been, but things do have a habit of popping out (when you least expect them to) [source When I Was Young by Y. Fronts], the price range in Cultura is flexible enough to ease the stays on your wallet without making you walk lop-sided. And once everything is paid for, it all fits snugly in a nice paper bag.
There are red flags and red lights: one is to a bull which the other is to need, and there are green lights that mean Go. Which is why I went to Cultura. No one should court seduction until it becomes a vice, but every once in a while passion needs an outing. Remember the words that your maiden aunt should have listened to but didn’t: ‘a little of what you fancy does you good!’
Cultura has a lot of that little and plenty more besides. You won’t be sorry you went there!
28 April 2023 ~ An Art to Brew Beer in Kaliningrad
Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)
Article 25: An Art to Brew
I bought this beer for two reasons: one, I liked the label; and two, I liked the dumpy bottle with a carrying handle attached to the top.
In order of attraction, the label appealed to me because it appeared to me to be something to do with steampunk. At the time I hadn’t got my glasses on and at the time I was more interested in getting something into a glass, preferably something called beer, and drinking it.
The steampunk allusion, which was also an illusion, was purely provided by pipework. It could have been a pipedream, after all steampunk is still a relatively young person’s predilection, but even without glasses and in my ardent desire to fill one, I could make out something that was illustrative of line-drawn plumbing, which was good enough for me.
The shape of the bottle with its plastic swing-tilt handle has two strings to its bow: novelty is never dull, and handles are good for carrying things with. So, I picked the bottle up by its handle, paid for it at checkout and out of the shop I went, all steampunked-up and ready to go.
At home, tucked away in my ‘never to grow up’ drinking den, my wife cleared up any pretensions I may have fostered about the nature of the illustrated label and also assisted me in interpreting what I was having trouble with: surely this beer that I had just bought whilst in a steampunking mood and carried home with the help of a novelty handle could really not be called ‘The Art of Brewing Czech Bar’?
Good Heavens! Whatever Next?
That’s easy. Next was getting it out of the bottle, into the glass and drinking it.
At last, it was where it should be. But first the aroma.
The beer had a bitter, hoppy smell, and I liked it.
I put my glasses on and looked at the glass. It was in there, alright, and it was giving me the three ‘Cs’: Crisp, Clear and Clean. It had poured with a big head but, being a modest kind of beer, became less big headed as each second past until effectively self-effacing itself.
The first taste proved to be not as bitter as I thought it would be. You could say that it erred more on the soft and mellow side ~ and that’s exactly what I am saying.
No one that I know of has ever ridiculed themselves by calling me a sweet man, either behind my back or in front of it, and I am not about to make the same mistake with this beer. What was sweet about it was that it was dry, not as old boots but pleasantly dry: it was the Hush Puppies of the 2020s, which is not as daft as you sound, at least not when you marry the concept to its leading attributes, which are, as I have noted, soft and mellow.
Are you familiar with the word ‘lacing’? No? Well, you haven’t read enough typically serious beer reviews, have you! But what the cliché doesn’t know the heart won’t grieve about, so we will have no more nonsense where that is concerned. And who cares anyway, if the foam from the beer sticks to the glass or not?
What is more significant is that the dry initial taste travels successfully through the finish and as for the aftertaste it is continuity all the way.
Let’s hear it from the brewers
“Beer varieties brewed under the Art of Brewing brand have a noble taste. [It is a] Golden lager, brewed according to the classic Czech recipe. [Its] bitter richness and pleasant sharpness in taste is achieved through the use of a special combination of hop varieties during brewing.”
The Brewers
Those nice chaps from the Trehsosensky Breweryare not not to be believed. In fact, having sampled other brews in their stable (What is the strangest place where you have drunk beer?) my verdict is that there is absolutely nothing deceitful, underhand or horrifyingly globalist in what the brewers have to say.
An Art to Brew Beer in Kaliningrad
I’ve read reviews about this beer which, although not exactly scathing, have taken a begrudging stance, implying that it is passable but dull. I do not agree. An Art to Brew Czech Bar stands head and shoulders above mediocrity and, whilst it may never take the crown from beers acknowledged universally to have travelled every road of excellence and made it to illustrious, it has enough going for it in singular taste and quality to nudge it around the bend into the aspirant class. Doubt what you hear? That’s odd, because I am typing this, not talking to you, but now I can tell you straight, you should road test one today!
😀TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS Name of Beer: An Art to Brew Czech Bar Brewer: Trehsosensky Brewery Where it is brewed: Ulyanovsk, Russia Bottle capacity: 1.3 litres Strength: 4.9% Price: It cost me about 137 roubles (£1.50) [at time of writing!] Appearance: Golden Aroma: Bitter and hoppy Taste: Dry, mellow with a delightful hint of bitterness Fizz amplitude: 4/10 Label/Marketing: Intriguing Would you buy it again? Anytime Marks out of 10: 8
*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.
31 March 2023 ~ Three Kaliningrad babushkas in a bread shop
On the subject of cakes and pastries, my wife popped into a bakery recently to avail herself of the delicacies there and whilst on the premises was witness to an altogether Russian experience, which reveals and underscores the generation gap.
Ahead of her in the shop were three babushkas who were each having difficulty deciding which loaves of bread to buy: plain white or dark and grainy.
The young man behind the counter, seeking to introduce some levity into the proceedings, cajoled his three stout customers with, “Come on ladies, whichever loaf you choose, I’ll throw in a strip show just for you.”
Three Kaliningrad babushkas in a bread shop
In the UK, no young man behind a bread shop counter, or anywhere else for that matter, would dare to put such temptation, however jocularly meant, in the way of ladies of a certain age for fear of being ravished.
My wife immediately responded to the young man’s offer with “That would be nice!” but the triumvirate was not amused. Far from incentivised, the ladies were clearly horrified. ‘If looks could kill!’ as the expression goes.
Nevertheless, the young man’s words did bring closure to the babushka’s indecisiveness, for grabbing the nearest loaves that they could lay their hands on, money quickly changed hands and with a mutual squaring of shoulders and unified snorting, they left the shop at a gallop.
Said the young shopkeeper to my wife, “Hmmm, that didn’t go down too well, did it!”
It was a pity, because he seemed to be a nice young man with a very fine line in understatement. Let’s hope that until he lands that job as a stripper, he will use his loaf more carefully!
Do you know? Do you know that the Russian word for ‘bread’ is ‘khleb’? Of course you do. Ok, so do you know that the favourite type of bread in Russia is said to be rye rather than wheat? You know that, too. What you don’t know, however, is that Yeast karavai, a round loaf beautifully decorated with ears of corn and foliate motifs, features in the wedding ceremony. Before the reception commences, the newly weds take turns to bite into the loaf. The size of each bite is then compared, and the one who has been judged as having taken the largest bite is duly pronounced the dominant partner from then on in the marriage. How’s that for deciding equality! Neat, nice, no questions asked. When the time came to enact this ritual at our wedding, the bite I took was so prodigious that had my glass of champagne not been placed fortuitously close at hand I could have choked in the process. Hence the expression in matters of matrimony, more perhaps than in anything else, be careful not to ‘bite off more than you can chew’.
A socio-cultural perspective on Russia’s cake habit contrasted and compared with and illuminated by one or two supplementary notes about having your cake and eating it in Great Britain
26 March 2023 ~ Russia’s Love of Cakes Differs from the UK’s
Cakes. I don’t imagine for one moment that when somebody in the West mentions Russia, cakes are the first thing that spring to mind. Equally, I’m willing to wager that the UK media has written precious little lately, or written little at all, about the magnificent variety of cakes in Russia and the widespread availability of them in spite of those silly old sanctions.
They certainly would never divulge that the super-abundance of cakes in Russia is part of a western plot organised and funded by the Sorryarse Open Cake Society to swamp the Federation with cakes similar to the way in which it is suffocating the western world with boat loads of useless migrants. I am not so sure about cake, but the spotted dick that they are creating is filling up with currants.
Whoa now! Hang on a minute! Blin, yolkee polkee and blaha mooha! How dare you lump our delicious Russian cakes in the same inflatable dinghy with a gaggle of grinning third-world freeloaders destined for 5-star hotels at the expense of the British taxpayer!
Sorry, I stand corrected and in the same breath exposed. It is true that I am no Don Juan in the sense of loving cakes. However, as one of the last of the few true Englishmen, I concede to enjoying a nice slice of cake whenever the mood so takes me and when the opportunity avails itself, regarding it as the perfect accompaniment to the English custom of afternoon tea.
All well and good, but neither affrontery apologised for nor my confessed willingness to embrace the iced cake rather than the swarthy migrant amounts to diddly-squat when it comes to explaining the cultural differences that set cake worship apart in Russia from the same proclivities in the UK.
Cakes are cancel proof
Cancel-proof, like most things pertaining to Russian culture, as the West is finding out and finding out the hard way, Russia’s love of cakes is in a sacrosanct league of its own. For example, it is not often, if indeed at all, that you will see men in the UK roaming around the streets with a big sticky cake in their hands. There is every possibility that you will see them holding another man’s hand, or, if you are really unlucky ~ or lucky if you are a touring photographer assigned to defining British culture ~ some other part of their brethren’s anatomy, but never a cake in hand. In the UK there seems to be an hypocritical subtext at work, an unspoken reservation which, ironically, can be taken to imply that even in these enlightened times cakes and men in public together is tantamount to poofterism. Alack a day, but there you have it.
Russia’s love of cakes differs from the UK’s
Having established that men publicly carrying cakes is just not British (but then what is and, more to the point, who is?), we arrive at a striking contrast. I’ve lost count of the number of times when entertaining at home (dispel all images of magic tricks, juggling and karaoke), that on opening the gate to greet our Russian guests, at least one man will be standing there with a large stodgy cake in his grasp. As for dining out, I have yet to go to a restaurant with my Russian friends where rounding off a meal without a sumptuous sweet, most of which resemble cakes drenched in cream and syrup, would turn an everyday event into something of a precedent. Perchance it ever occurs it would breach the unexpected like a hypersonic missile bursting through a dam. Cakes just don’t come in on a wing and a prayer in Russia; they are part of the national psyche, in which whim and caprice can play no part.
Cakes R Rus is a company yet to be incorporated. Why it has not been incorporated when cakes in Russia are so evidently popular remains an enigma and neither does it explain, incorporated or not, the never-to-be-answered question why in Russia are cakes so popular? It is a matter for conjecture that often what presents itself to us as at best half-baked turns out in the long run to be quite overdone. Not so with cakes. Cakes are interwoven into every Fair Isled fabric of daily, popular and expressive life. Judge this on the merit that there are almost as many sayings, comments and literary allusions to cakes as there are cakes themselves. We will come to that shortly.
Speaking from experience, all shops in Kaliningrad, that is to say all food shops ~ except the butchers, the fishmongers, the caviar emporium ~ well, you know what I mean, however small are guaranteed to stock one or two and even sometimes three fairly large round cakes, whilst supermarkets offer flotilla to armada capacity of rich, lavish, opulent and seductively sumptuous cake varieties, sufficient in type, taste, size and price to float everyone’s cake-craving boat.
For the love of cakes
In addition to these general outlets, Kaliningrad is no stranger to the specialist boaterie, sorry I meant to say bakery. There are any number of small independent bakeries (I won’t tell you how many as that would be telling.), but the most noticeable because prolific chain is undoubtedly Königsbäcker. Why not Kalininbacker? What a silly question.
Königsbäcker sells pastries, bakes and cakes, and many of its cakeries ~ sorry I meant to say bakeries ~ also have not-for-sale super-large black and white prints on their walls blown up from original photos of Königsberg as it used to be before the British and Soviets blew it up ~ cake shops and everything else. These images are so poignant that they are enough to make you want to buy double the amount of cakes that you would have bought had you not seen these pictures, just to get the placebo effect.
Now we have both stopped crying, I will try to explain how the perception of cakes in Russia differs to the perceived role that cakes play in modern British society and why; and in the course of doing so you may suspect that you have stumbled on a hint that enables you to answer the question, why in Russia are cakes so popular?
Exactly how the Russian cake mentality diverges from the English equivalent is not as subtle as you might first think. So, for all you cake afficionados out there, let me explain. Here goes!
First and foremost, bugger off The Great British Bakeoff, which was opium for the masses. Like coronavirus, which also kept people at home glued to the television, The Great British B!*off is simply the forerunner of something more dreadful to come, such as The Great British Bakeoff in the Nude and its sequel I’m A Cake Get me Out of Here now previewing on the Ashamed Channel.
The Great British Bakeoff lost all credibility for me when one of the female contestants was allegedly discovered substituting self-raising flour with Viagra. When the cake flopped, she was most disappointed; aren’t we all when cakes don’t rise. But her story had a happy ending, three to be precise, for when the show was over, after tea and cake with three of her male competitors, she left the studio a satisfied woman. So satisfied, in fact, that she continues to pay her BBC licence fee, even to this day!
Anyway, Great Bakeoffs or preferably no Great Bakeoffs, in my experience, the celebritising of cakes has very little impact on consumer purchasing habits. UKers may gasp in unison when confronted on the goggle box by Big Cake El Supremo, but it’s a different story altogether when you see them buying down Asda or Iceland. Small synthetic packet cakes are the type that Brits are likely to plump for, something cheap and abundant, over-stuffed with sugar and convenient enough to fit in one’s pocket. (Hey you, watch out! There’s a store detective about!).
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake baker’s man bake me a cake as fast as you can (The cherished belief that all bakers are highly motivated individuals lends itself to scrutiny)
It occurs to me (which is the get out clause to ‘it occurs to nobody else and why would it?’), that cakes in Russia are rather more special-occasion items than tear open a packet of Kipling’s as quickly as you like and let that be an end to it!
Kipling’s individual apple pies are not at all bad, although when the sell by date is infringed by disreputable store owners, and this happens more often than it should in the UK, especially in shops run by immigrants, the pastry tends to go dry and then falls in embarrassing flaky bits down the front of your jumper. In winter, when it may or may not be snowing, such things may pass unnoticed but once the Christmas jumper has been discarded and the dark nights have been replaced by the bright relentless spotlight of spring, the shards of pastry in which you are covered can begin to look like dandruff. Mr Kipling may very well make exceedingly crumbly cakes, but to stop yourself from being conned and from looking like a bit of a prick in a jumper covered in pastry, choose your cake stores with care and always check the sell-by-date if you have no other option ~ and options are getting fewer ~ than to buy from P. Akis Convenience Shores, many of which are concentrated in and around the Port of Dover.
Inspired by my last comment, I am tempted to ask, do you remember the 1970s’ individual fruit pie phenomenon, first square with a piece of grease-proof paper wrapped around them and then circular in their own tin-foil base? Tasty! But, alas, like most things in life, they tended to shrink as time went by. Any road, can apple pies truly be classed as cakes? I suppose they can if you drop the word ‘pie’ and substitute it for ‘cake’, and am I stalling because I have bitten off more than I can chew in my self-appointed role as Anglo-Russian cakeologist?
Russia’s love of cakes is holistic
As I said (I hope you’ve been paying attention!), cakes in Russia are rather more special occasion cakes than tear open a packet of Kipling’s as quickly as you like and let that be an end to it. Kipling’s individual apple … (ah, we’ve done that).
Moving on: I am not suggesting that they, Russian cakes, are strictly reserved for births, weddings and funerals, but they do come bearing people, noticeably to home get-togethers, private parties, social gatherings and such like. They also occupy pride of place among boxes of chocolates and flowers as a way of saying thank you to someone who has rendered a kindness to another mortal soul or who has performed some official function above and beyond the call of duty.
In these contexts, presentation shares equal importance with noshability, which possibly explains why the appearance of Russian cakes, with their white-iced coverings, frothy cream crowns and candy sequined and fruit-festooned adornments, make our traditional English jam and cream sponges look like poor relations; same bourgeoise boat perhaps but not at all on the upper-deck level as their ostentatious Russian counterparts. Sigh, how ironically times can change and with them cakes as well!
But let’s not leave it here! Whilst we, the English cannot compete with glitz, there is still something to be said for our good old-fashioned sponge cake, something that wants to make you sing not ‘There will always be an England’, because it’s much too late for that, but ‘There will always be a sponge cake’. There is something solid, enduring, traditional and no-nonsense about plain, old English sponge cakes; something wonderfully neo-imperial, boldly neo-colonial, something so 1940s’ stiff-upper lip that frankly I am astonished that these thoroughly English cakes have not been singled out by ‘take a knee’ cancel-culturists and cast like so many heritage statuesover walls and into ponds with the blessing of the judiciary. Is it too soon to feel mildly complacent?
A socio-cultural perspective on cakes
The socio-cultural and historic significance of cakes may strike you as more than a mouthful, but history is replete with examples where the icing on the cake is the role of the cake itself. Spectacles such as birds flying out of giant cakes has been going on since the time of ancient Rome (not now, of course, because of animal rights laws) and scantily clad frosted women have been leaping out of artificial cakes since the 19th century (not so much these days because of the feminist movement). I am perfectly aware of the existence of the Cambridge Stool Chart, but tell me is there a Cambridge Movement Chart as well?
And you thought they were just coming in by dinghies!!
Literary cake tropes have fared much better than their visual counterparts. Boris Johnson (who had a cake named after him in Kyiv no less ~ where else?), borrowed and modified the well-known phrase ‘Have our cake and eat it’ in his bid to convince democracy of the benefits of Brexit. What he forgot to tell us was that behind the scenes the British and French governments had arranged for a migrant shuttle service ~ full coming, empty returning ~ thus ensuring that after Brexit the cake would be ‘had’ alright, had and eaten by others, nibbled away like vermin at cheese, leaving only the crumbs for the British.
Slightly more famous than Boris Johnson but not, as far as I am aware, cake enriched by name is Mary Antionette. She is credited with saying ‘Let them eat cake!’, and although she probably said nothing of the sort, her disregard or misperception of the plight of her country’s poor is nowhere near as offensive as the Conservative party’s debasing betrayal of Britain’s Brexit electorate.
Boris ‘Cake’ Johnson, sometimes referred to as ‘that Big Cream Puff’, is not alone among the star-spangled luminaries of showbusiness who have had honorary cakes named after them. Cake-named celebrities include Elvis Presley and also a number of Russian personalities such as the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova and the first human space traveller Yuri Gagarin, both of whom the West tried to cancel just because their cakes were better than the one that was baked for Boris in Kyiv according to Biden’s recipe (that’s Biden as in empty chef’s hat not as in Master Baker). My question is, isn’t it about time that someone in Russia named a cake after my favourite crooner Kobzon?
Whist I wait for this honour to be bestowed, we will hold our collective breath in anticipation of Jimmy Saville, Gary Glitter and also Adolf Hitler, oh and don’t forget our Tony ~ Tony ‘Iraq’ Blair ~ duly having cakes named after their very illustrious personages.
And what is so wrong about that? A good many famous people and not so famous places have had cakes named after them. The most obvious in the person category being Mrs Sponge, who lent her name to the sponge cake. It’s fact! Her first name was Victoria. She lived at 65 Coronation Crescent, Corby. (Source: Alfred ‘Dicky’ Bird)
Another famous namesake cake is the Battenberg, named after Prince Cake, and in the towns and locale category, that is to say places that have given their names to cakes, we have the English Eccles cake, named after Scunthorpe, obviously, and the Sad cake named after Wellingborough. It’s a ‘going there thing’: so don’t!
The metropolis has its own cake, historically known as the White Iced Empire but renamed in more recent years, if not entirely rewritten, as Black Forest Ghetto. Chocolate Woke, as it is colloquially known, is also sometimes referred to as the Liberal Upside Down cake. It is often confused with the Fruit-Bottom cake which, though not all that it is cracked up to be, sells like proverbial hot cracks during Londonistan’s Gay Pride month. If you have the extreme good fortune to be in the UK capital during that festive month, do make sure to skip lickety-split down to London’s Soho, the capital’s LGBTQ geographical and moral-less centre, and treat yourself whilst there to a slice of the famous Navy Cake from Hello Sailor’s bun shop or a ‘once tried never forgotten’ Golden Rivet Muffin from the café El Bandido’s.
All of this is a very long way from Kaliningrad, I am pleased to say, and everybody else who lives there is also pleased to say. May it long remain that way.
Meanwhile, whilst you are waiting to have a cake named after you, if there is anything in this treatise on Russian and British cake ethics which you believe I haven’t covered, if you really feel that you must, jot down the one or two points that you think I might have missed and then consign your trunk of comments care of the cake in MacArthur Park . After all, ‘It took so long to bake it …’
A piece of trivia for you: Did you know that Kaliningrad does not have a Soho? That’s right, no Soho, but it does have a Bow-Wow, that is ‘dugs that bark like buggery’ (copyright expression, currently on loan from my Uncle Son).
Vintage sponge cake: I found this image at <a href=”https://freevintageillustrations.com/vintage-sponge-cake-illustration/?utm_source=freevintageillustrations&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=downloadbox”>Free Vintage Illustrations</a> / https://freevintageillustrations.com/vintage-sponge-cake-illustration/
Nursery Rhyme Baker’s Man: I found this image at <a href=”https://freevintageillustrations.com/pat-a-cake-nursery-rhyme-illustration/?utm_source=freevintageillustrations&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=downloadbox”>Free Vintage Illustrations</a> / https://freevintageillustrations.com/pat-a-cake-nursery-rhyme-illustration/
Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)
Article 24: Taurus
Oh, come on! Even those of you who are far too rational to have any truck with mystic nonsense know that Taurus is an astrological sign and, for what it’s worth, the second astrological sign in the modern zodiac. No, not the Ford Zodiac. Who remembers those long bench seats and that tricky column gear stick?!
The zodiac sign for Taurus is the bull. Zodiac people are said to be hard-headed, down-to-earth, tenacious, reliable, loyal, and sensual. I wonder if the latter quality is why so many wear the cuckold’s horns?
Reviewing Taurus Beer in Kaliningrad
So, this beer that I am reviewing today, this pilsner, is named after the second sign of the zodiac. It has a bull’s head on the label, so it must be so, but we won’t know if the label stands for zodiac sign or something else until we attempt to drink it. Well, they ~ the brewers and distributors ~ are hardly likely to adorn the bottle with a hefty pile of bull droppings, are they?
Now, I’m not a pilsner man … blah … blah … blah …. Yes, you’ve heard it all before, but that does not mean that I am not afraid to try it. I once tried a liberal girlfriend. At least, I think she was a girl? Maybe, she was a feminist.
There are some out there who say yes, but … and they don’t get any further because they are drinking a good strong ale, but others say a pilsner is a pilsner is a pilsner, and most of them are me. But what the tongue doesn’t taste the tum can’t grieve about, so whilst you can’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs (why would she want to?), you can occasionally, on a hot afternoon, get a real-ale drinker to forget his religion and sip an ice-cold lager.
And if that lager is pilsner, make sure that it is ice cold, or it could taste like the bull I am hoping this pilsner will not be.
So, off we go with the top and up to the nostrils: ‘Dull, sour smell’ ~ make a note of that.
I pour it into the glass, and it looks light. I am relieved about that; don’t want to be asking, what did you do with the water that you washed the bull’s hind quarters with?
I sip it; I taste it; I swig it: Dull metallic taste. “Just as I thought, Watson!”
“Well, you silly bugger Holmes, why on earth did you buy it?”
“Why, because I have this ‘Year of the Bull’ tea towel, which I knew would make for a very interesting photograph even if the bull’s head attachment makes it a very inconvenient tea towel.”
“What a load of bullocks!” In the farmer’s field opposite. {Watson is looking out of the window into the farmer’s field opposite.}
The strength of the beer is not OTT. It weighs in at a very respectable 4.6%, which in the hereabouts, Kaliningrad, would be seen as lightweight but in the UK regarded as A-OK. For example, a matador could drink it and still not be incapable of waving his little red handkerchief.
As with many lagers, iced over from the fridge as if imported from a Siberian winter, pilsner is nothing to do with taste but all to do with coldness and getting it down your throat, hence the expression ‘Lager Louts’. Obviously, no regard for taste and quality equals no regard for decorum.
Drinking Taurus Beer in Kaliningrad
Some pilsner lagers evade the spell checker and by the time you have finished drinking them, let alone writing about them, they have turned into something else. I am relieved to say, however, that Taurus does qualify as a pilsner, not a pisner. It has all the ~ we won’t say qualities, but we will allow ourselves to use the word usefulness ~ of an alcoholic drink that comes in handy on a hot sweaty day.
And that was the penultimate sentence, which leaves you wondering how exactly, given the Taurus-bull connection, I resisted including a word like bullshit.
😀TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS Name of Beer: Taurus Brewer: Kalnapilis Brewery Where it is brewed: Panevėžys, Lithuania Bottle capacity: 1 litre Strength: 4.6% Price: It cost me about 127 roubles (£1.38) [at time of writing!] Appearance: Light Aroma: Dull, sour Taste: Typical pilsner Fizz amplitude: 4/10 Label/Marketing: A load of bull Would you buy it again? Hmm, debateable … Marks out of 10: 4.5
*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.
