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.
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.
Published: 24 February 2023 ~ Made in Kaliningrad Exclusive Badger Underpants
I can honestly say, hand on heart, that I have never had the urge to focus on a gentleman’s underpants, for whatever the reason and whatever that reason may be. Even my interest in vintage clothes has not yet impelled me to research or wear undergarments that could be described as anything more than wholesomely traditional.
Now, what have I done with my badger?
For this reason and this reason alone, it is with curiosity regarding your reaction that I place before you photographic evidence of a truly remarkable pair of pants, the beastly likes of which I have never beheld before.
No, your eyes do not deceive. You are actually witnessing what in all likelihood may well be the world’s one and only pair of pants with a badger’s head for its codpiece. You have to admit, ladies, unless you have lived a far more adventurous life than your neighbour’s suspect, that it’s not every day that you come across a man with a badger concealed in his underpants!
Modelling the animal-lover’s pants that he designed himself is the inimitable Aleksandr ‘Chimney Sweep’ Smirnov of Badger’s Club fame (see earlier post). Not that he feels the need to defend his creation, in fact he’s rather proud of it, but if he did, he could argue that if the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes (RAOB) can adopt a buffalo’s head as their fraternal motif then why not a badger’s head for Kaliningrad’s Badger Club?
Quite so, but whilst the Buffs, as the RAOB are colloquially known, display their animal namesake on blazer pocket patches, lapel badges and so on, there cannot be many among their number who have, or who are willing to admit they have, buffalo horns in their underpants.
The question is, will this example open the floodgates for variant animal codpieces, such as goats, pussies, kippers, beavers, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, absolute impossibilities, moles, rabbits and unicorns?
The eel or elephant’s trunk might be overstretching it a bit, and really gilding the willy (Gates’ spellchecker is too ‘inclusive’ for its own good) would be the python or green anaconda, and should your reputation not extend to the American Eagle, and naturally Biden’s doesn’t, you could always hedge your bets ~ remember, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush ~ and settle instead for a Jenny Wren. The possibilities are endless (no pun intended).
On the subject of all things compromising, imagine an irate country gentleman of the shooting, hunting and fishing fraternity, catching his wife in flagrante and promptly shooting her lover who happened at the time to be wearing a pair of badger-head pants. Could such a man resist having the pants he had bagged stuffed and mounted on his living-room wall? Probably not. But in the same way that one swallow doesn’t make an Ann Summers, a one-night stand is nothing to boast of. In order to add more trophies, the wife would need to horn her skills and train herself to become a much more prolific hunter. What animal rights activists will make of all this, your guess is as good as mine, but as most of them are meat-eaters, which makes them also hypocrites, whatever they think is irrelevant anyway.
It is a sobering thought, however, that should such bestial practices be performed on British soil, you could in theory run foul of the law and be brought before the beak for violating legislation under the 1992 Protection of Badgers Act. (How this came about was that back in 1992 a lot of English country gentlemen apparently began to exhibit the embarrassing evening-dress tendency of loading their pants with badgers, and urban liberals did not like it, since they had failed to think of it first. Their reaction was similar to the way they reacted to the first female UK prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the first prime minister ‘of colour’, Rishi Soonout, since in both of these woke respects the Tories beat them to it. The last vestige of hope for liberals now is that they install in Number 10 something veiled from head to toe and of dubious gender extraction that claims itself to be both feminist and lesbian. I think I’d rather vote for a pair of badger underpants.
At the risk of sounding too liberal for my own good and becoming as a result a source of inflammation for my conscience, I hear myself philosophising what goes on in one’s underpants is entirely one’s own affair, subject to the qualification that it does not offend to any degree a reasonable sense of personal dignity. It should be noted that in the UK it is an offence at common law to outrage public decency, although to succeed in this worthy cause the act must be committed at such a time and in such a place that at least two members of the public ~ two or more ~ must have gathered there to witness it. English law is most precise on this point* {*The Ethnic Minorities Guide to Flashing, Vol 45,756, 2022; Dover Publishing Unlimited}
For example, The Royal Antediluvian Order of Flashers’ Charter and Code of Conduct calls upon its members to expose themselves only in those locations where the audience is guaranteed to be no less than 2 and no more than 10, coupled with an exit strategy of an unapprehendable nature. The problems that this poses for the mathematically challenged, especially those who can’t read the language, possibly explains why newly arrived ethnic flashers, defined as those who docked in the UK 25 years ago and who are longing to be deported because they are tired of living in free hotels, choose to go it alone. Whilst none of these have been spotted actually wearing a badger, there have, however, been rumours of acts involving goats.
We would like to assure the public that where such incidents do occur they are rare and we also keep them secret and that the wearing of pants of an animal orientation can lay no claim to mainstream practice, although who can say without convictions when fads and fashion may take a turn for the worse and lead us up the woodland path?
Made in Kaliningrad Exclusive Badger Underpants
Take Y-fronts, for example, once the must-have accessory for people from all walks of life, perhaps including Jimmy Saville, but which to the entitled youth of today are as passé as flared trousers and as offensive in their non-mediocrity as the shimmering outsized shoulder boards worn by Gary Glitter.
Whilst such exclusive examples possess an underlying value of no small proportion, we must be careful not to suggest or infer that the wearing of strange underpants is the sole province of much-loved celebrities. For whom amongst us can claim without fear of contradiction and more of rank hypocrisy that we have not, at one time worn, myself of course excluded, pants which, though not deserving of the epithet shameful, have filled our introspective moments with disquieting thoughts of daring-do verging on impropriety?
Speak for yourself is your first reaction, but for the same reason that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, neither should people who wear glass underpants throw them, nor, I might add, should the latter attempt to go horse riding.
At times like these, befuddled and confused, I often defer to my brother’s opinion. “What do you think of the badger’s head pants?” I asked.
Studying the photo provided, I heard him mutter something, which may or may not have been, ‘where does he find those horny women?’ And then I thought I heard him say something about it could be worse, that at least it was only a badger’s head and not a full-sized badger standing proud and erect on its hind legs.
The motto of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes is ‘No Man is at all Times Wise’ (Latin: Nemo Mortalium Omnibus Horis Sapit). I wonder what the Latin is for ‘No Man is at all Times Wise when it comes to the Choice of his Underpants’?
Please note: No badgers were harmed in the making of these underpants, but one or two were extremely embarrassed.
Illustrations of classical architecture attempting to convey the innate quality and time-honoured grandeur that we associate with ancient Rome, together with heraldic symbols are not necessarily the certified hallmark of either a good or barely drinkable beer that we might be beguiled into thinking it is. And thus, we have a case in point: Hemeukoe Pils.
The packaging of Hemeukoe (Nemetskoe) Pils reminds me of a house I know in Northamptonshire made singularly unmissable by a pair of concrete horse’s heads squatting on its gate posts. Are such embellishments an admission of, or indeed an admission to, the aristocracy of quality? No, and they never have been. But from their ostentatiousness you do get a whiff of something else.
That whiff, once the top has been removed from the Hemeukoe Pils’ bottle, reminds me of a lot of things, none of which belongs to beer. I am not going to tell you what it is exactly, because exactly doesn’t come into it, but try to imagine something pungent strained through a pair of unwashed gym shorts.
Urban gentlemen of the road, those who doss down on the forecourts of London’s mainline stations, could feasibly conclude that the smell is not unlike that damp sheet of cardboard they rescued from Asda’s bin last month and on which they have slept every night since.
The smell improves in the glass but doesn’t become a bouquet of roses. It is rather like opening the window of a sleep-in-late hormonal teenager’s bedroom. And that’s as good as it gets.
Hemeukoe Beer in Kaliningrad
It does say ‘Pils’ on the bottle, but very soon I got to thinking that perhaps they spelt it wrong, when what they intended to print was not exactly ‘Pils’ but ‘Really Peculiar’.
Ambiguity in the smell was repeated in the colour. At arms length, it looked yellow and slightly hazy in the glass, but on closer inspection neither here nor there nor even anywhere. It was as it was and what that was, was strictly not what I thought it would be: Pils.
The colour was like nothing I had ever seen; the taste like nothing I have ever tasted, wished I hadn’t and would never want to again. In both respects, it even excelled the Baltika 3 taste problem. And that ~ as The Velvelettes once warbled ~ is ‘really saying something’!
Sweet and buttery with a chemical twist, the latter usurping the former and occupying the aftertaste like 1940s’ Germans in Paris, this was my first taste of Hemeukoe Pils; was it trying to tell me something?
For a moment I thought that this something had something to do with identity and was something to do with Kvas, but before I could completely trash the dynastic reputation of a soft drink which in Russia is regarded as a national institution, the taste had turned to strong, rank tea, heavy on the tannin.
Hemeukoe Beer in Kaliningrad
Whatever you may say about its taste, there is a lot going on in Hemeukoe. It is just not going on in a very complementary or remotely satisfactory way.
There is an ascending scale of sourness in the aftertaste, which in its unexceptional way hangs on the back of your throat and leaves you wondering, anxiously, whether come the morrow, you will still be on good terms with your digestive system and bowels.
It was late at night when I was drinking Hemeukoe. It was the only beer that I had in the house, so even had I spotted the clue secreted in its name ~ Hemeukoe ~ the anagram would not have, could not have, saved me from indulging in what was without exaggeration quite simply the most appalling brew I have ever had the misfortune to sabotage my vitals with, and one which I ardently hope I will never experience again.
I am tempted to say that you could do worse if offered a glass of this than to politely refuse and remain an onlooker. Never mind the prejudiced cliché that innocent bystanders always get hurt, refusing to drink Hemeukoe Pils might well just prove to be the exception to the rule.
A friend of mine who considers himself to be something of an expert where beer is concerned disputes the taxonomy of Hemeukoe Pils, claiming that HP is not so much a beer as an alcoholic infusion, and it is this that makes it taste like nothing on Earth and more like something imported from the planets Heavy and Oily.
Even without empirical evidence I might be inclined to agree, but I was busy jotting the name of the beer onto a piece of paper and committing it to memory in order to ensure that even if my life depended on it, I would never make the mistake of buying Hemeukoe Pils again.
TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS Name of Beer: Hemeukoe Pils (Nemetskoe ot Bochkarev (German from Bochkarev) Brewer: Heineken Where it is brewed: Saint Petersburg Bottle capacity: 1.35 litre Strength: 4.7% Price: It cost me about 137 roubles (£1.54) [at time of writing!] Appearance: A washy brown colour Aroma: It doesn’t smell like beer Taste: It doesn’t taste like beer Fizz amplitude: 4/10 Label/Marketing: Bold to the point of misleading Would you buy it again? Read the review! Marks out of 10: 2
*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.
Published: 25 January 2023 ~ Kaliningrad and things that go clank in the night
From the same wonderful chap who brought you Kaliningrad’s midnight leaf suckers (that wonderful chap is me, by the way, just in case you failed to recognise me by the accuracy of the description), we have something at 2am …?
I was just off into slumberland, lulled into this blissful state, which is an exotic and privileged condition for a confirmed and inveterate insomniac, by a series of smiles set in motion by a composition of novel remarks discovered in the perusal of a news report on Yandex.
In this report*, the Press Secretary of the President of Russia, Dmitry Peskov, was responding to the head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky (you know him, he’s the man with whiskers who perpetually wears a green T-shirt) who said, when addressing the World Economic Forum (you know them, the Davos cartel, a super-rich globalist gang obsessed with resetting the world for their benefit at everyone else’s expense), that he doubted the existence of Vladimir Putin. Peskov replied: “It is clear that purely psychologically, Mr Zelensky would prefer that neither Russia nor Putin exist, but the sooner [that] he realizes ~ the sooner the Ukrainian regime realizes ~ that Russia and Putin are and will be, the better for … Ukraine.”
As a roll-call of ghastly phantom-like images, including Tony Blair, Bill Gates, George Soros and other nightmare villains, such as might have been applicably cast in the 1970s’ pot-boiling series the Hammer House of Horror, slipped mercifully from my mind, I was suddenly dragged, hauled out as it were, from the luxury of impending sleep into a yet to be expunged existence, where the Davos set still are but hopefully soon will not be, by disturbing sounds in the street of an incomprehensible nature.
Kaliningrad and things that go clank in the night
It is a selfish but incontrovertible fact that people in my age group can afford to entertain, with less regret than the young, sounds that could be mistaken for a global nuclear incident, but the sounds outside my window seeming rather less than might be imagined for an event on such a scale, had more to do with engines running, metal wotnots clanging together and men calling out to each other in a distinctly blokey and workman-like fashion.
Whatever was occurring it could not be truthfully said to be keeping me awake, as I had mislaid the art and science of sleeping many years ago. No, it was the presence of these perplexing sounds at this fairy-tale-time of the morning that had me all agog.
It was not very long before fantasy overtook me ~ you know how it is in the early hours ~ suggesting I believe that in response to my recent post on pavements some receptive spark in authority acting on the hint had decided to ship the requisite materials needed for renovation, and that even as we slept ~ and even whilst some of us didn’t ~ shipments of hardcore and other materials ferried in by moonlight were being deposited on the grassy knoll in the centre of the street.
This theory had a near-firm basis in a previous early-morning chorus of indefinable noises, the source of which it transpired was a working party busily engaged in the not unreasonable occupation of vacuum-cleaning the grass gone midnight.
The fallen leaves of autumn having been whisked away, it was a small step for an imagination accustomed to leaps of fancy to envision the wartime bunker lurking below the knoll earmarked for refurbishment, contingent on the unlikely event that should the sirens go off all would never hear them, because someone up our street delights in keeping a witless dog that hardly ever stops barking.
Unable to contain myself, and my curiosity, any longer, I slid out from my bed and made my way to the window. I had it in my hand, my camera, and you’ll never give me credit for it, but with it, it was I that took this unreasonably awful photo, which ~ and you’ll have to take my word for this~ shows two or several men mingling with the morning shadows at a time when every abnormal person, those without guilty consciences, are snoring and farting deep in their sleep; they were busy, were these men, busy thrusting big thick pipes down drainholes, sucking stuff out with gusto as if their very jobs depended on it. Yes, there they were, I am tempted to say, waking up the entire street, but that would be a fallacy, as often there is that shitty dog (with an owner whose name must be Mutton Jeff) that barks and barks and barks and barks. And if you can sleep through that, then presumably you’ll sleep through anything: “Did you hear that siren?” Woof! “Did you hear that burglar?” Woof! Did you hear that …? What? Woof! … Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof! What did you say? I said “Woof”!
I consider it fortunate that I’m an insomniac, or I could have trouble falling asleep.
Pleased to look out the window and see things going on which in my youth, that is my very young youth, would fill me with fascination ~ drain suckers, dustbin men, bucket men, tarmac gangs ~ oh, and Robert Brothers’ Circus’ lorries cavalcading for winter quarters ~ I crawled back into the pit, thinking now that I know what it is they are up to should I block out those naughty men’s sounds by recourse to soothing ‘White Noise’ (and just how racist is that!), but before you could say ‘you’re a strange bugger’ and before I could ‘take a knee’, I had bucked the insomnia trend. I was slipping faster than soap on ice into a hallelujah dream fest, a film noir, They Worked by Night! starring noises of a nocturnal nature, hundreds of Königsberg manhole* covers and the gangs of men who go around in the dark lifting those covers up when we are fast asleep or, when we are not, we should be. What more can we say at the end of the day than bring on the ZZZ…
**Manhole: This is one of those words that we need to be particularly careful of when sycophantically brown-nosing woke in an absurd aberration for gender inclusiveness.
Published: 15 December 2022 ~ Kaliningrad Pavements Pave the Way for the Better
Tratooraree, said Mick in his bestest Russian. Nobody quite understood him, but that’s the story of his life, so he pressed on regardless, translating the word into English, “Pavements!” he said, triumphantly, and everyone went back to sleep.
No one talks pavements in the UK, after all pavements, and the conditions of them, are one of the reasons why we pay our council tax. They are lumped together with such essential but taken-for-granted services as emptying our bins, clearing litter from the streets (although the council rarely get round to this) and policing by consent (ie you and the police agree that when you are mugged or have your house burgled the police will give you a crime number and that anything that you say, meaning ‘mean tweets’ on Twatter, will be taken down, twisted round and used in evidence against you). Council tax, the get-out-clause for Maggie Thatcher’s controversial poll tax, has risen so high in Britain in recent years that it represents a second mortgage, so Brits expect to see as much done as is civically possible in return for the confiscation of their hard-earned cash, and that, amongst other things, takes care of pavements.
In Kaliningrad pavements are, or can be, a controversial subject* and one that has persistently percolated to the top of the restoration agenda since the dissolution of the USSR.
When does our street get its much needed and long overdue pavement renovation? ~ is not something that residents of Kaliningrad discuss on a daily basis, but it does come up in conversation, occasionally, from time to time.
When I say, ‘our street’, I use the term to imply a general anxiety and impatience amongst those residents who live in certain areas where pavement reform sits at the top of their collective bucket list as distinct from the pavement up ‘our street’, meaning the street in which we specifically live. And yet, to coin a phrase, if ‘the cap fits …’.
My wife asked someone about the situation regarding ‘our’ pavement and was told that it was not likely to happen this year, but maybe next year. Her inquiry was made in 2021, when next year was 2022 (It would be funny if it was 2023, wouldn’t it?) but next year has almost gone. I know this because when I first began to write this post snow was falling but not in sufficient quantities to entirely exorcise the pavement problem, but snow is now falling snow on snow and ‘what the eye don’t see, the heart don’t grieve about’.
For people like me, who have the ability and choreographic instincts of Fred Astaire (Mum, who’s he talking about?), the pavement problem, though not in itself altogether inconsequential, has me reach out sympathetically to others who are more affected by the inconvenience and its negative impact.
From my window, which I look out from, from time to time ~ they are good for that, aren’t they? ~ I watch the world go by, and in the process typically think to myself, how on earth is that young couple going to pilot that pram of theirs across the assault course which now confronts them? Wheels are good but tank tracks would be better. And then there’s the senior citizens, of which I count myself one, many of whom avoid the path and take to the cobbles instead. Königsberg’s road cobbles may also not be an easy terrain, but at least to trip is a trip into history.
Kaliningrad pavements
Whilst the pavement can be treacherous, especially on the way back from the bar late at night, and especially where lack of light adds to the problem, I have got round this one, partially by memorising the pavement on both sides of the street. I am not going to go so far as to say that ‘I know this pavement like the back of my hand’, because the last time I heard that expression it was back in 1983 on a dark and dank November evening when fate was in a playful mood.
At the time, we were flying along the country roads at 80 miles an hour in my Ford Cortina when, replying to an admonition from me, my brother, who was driving, said: “Ahh, you worry so much. I know this road like the back of my hand!”
It would seem, however that his hand did not have a sharp bend at the bottom of a hill and a tight grass verge on either side, which, when clipped at the speed we were doing, sent us spinning backwards through the hedge, left us hanging momentarily, headlights pointing towards the sky, and then brought us down like a spinning top bluntly to rest in a wet ploughed field.
Whilst there’s little fear of a similar thing happening as I traverse Kaliningrad’s pavements at considerably less speed in my Wrangler boots, I have been known to work up a good head of steam when steering a course to the local shop to replenish my beer supplies.
To be fair, the pavement on the left side of our street is not that unnegotiable until, that is, you reach the point where it meets the junction. Here there is an interesting piece that looks lunar in its construction, or do I mean destruction? By the way that’s lunar, with the stress on ‘ar’ in Russian. ‘We interrupt this discussion on pavements to bring you a surreptitious lesson on stress in the Russian language’. No stress and no sweat with this moon, however, because I know this patch of the lunar landscape well, yet woe betide you if you don’t, because it is precisely at this spot that in the absence of adequate street lighting the dark side of the moon begins.
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for children.”
I remember (Oh lord, there he goes, reminiscing again!), when we returned to Kaliningrad in the winter of 2018. At that time, we were renting a flat in the Kaliningrad district close to the radio mast. Believe you me, the radio mast is something you cannot miss; a welcome beacon on a stormy night to guide you safely home after one to many in the Francis Drake.
We were walking back one evening, the radio mast towering above us in all its multicoloured splendour, my wife grumbling about the state of the pavement, the deep pits and iced-over puddles, when Victor Ryabinin, whose company we were in, showed us, with characteristic insouciance, how literally one can get round this problem. “Like this!” he said, with a giggle. And he hopped and skipped and jumped, still laughing, first around the one obstacle and then around or over the next, treating them all as lightly as if they were nothing more than mirages.
With his usual gift for doing so, Victor had taken an everyday problem and made a moral out of it, namely that there’s more in life to worry about than pavements or more to life than pavements to worry about or, as Leonard Cohen put it, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in …” {Leonard Cohen’s Anthem: let’s dedicate it to Victor’s pofik!}
Kaliningrad Pavements
The pavement in our street on the opposite side of the road earns itself the reputation of being an obstacle course of sorts and, therefore, compared with its parallel relation, demanding of greater navigation skills and sense of co-ordination. Once again, for some unknown reason, the most challenging aspect of it lies at the end of the street closer to the junction. Some way from this, it is mainly earthen, then tarmacadam before becoming, albeit briefly, spanking new and modern.
Incongruously, but only in looks not reason, this updated portion of pavement made from very nice decorative blocks has been laid down privately, and at personal expense, by the owner of a large house ~ impressively designed as a mediaeval fortress ~ for the express purpose of aiding both the ingress and egress of his personal vehicles and also, and understandably, as an improvement to the appearance of the frontage of his property.
Whenever I arrive at this particular section of pavement, the thought that I am about to walk across it christens me with guilt. I feel intuitively that I ought to change my boots for my carpet slippers or, at the very least, pay a toll for the privilege of crossing. Now then, now then, don’t go putting ideas into certain people’s heads!
Unfortunately, however, after this magic carpet ride, it’s downhill all the way. The configuration of a worn and rutted entrance to a private commercial carpark, not much more than hardcore in construction, pocked with serious cavities and craters on either side, which in the rainy season fill with water, makes for a treacherous path indeed. But force of habit and the challenge that it presents has, over a period of time, deluded me into thinking that I can almost walk on water, using the stepping-stone techniques learnt when we were children for crossing fords and streams.
Knowledge is king, as they say (who does?) and as with everything in life the difference between a safe passage and one you should not have attempted (there’s a lot of those in Brixton) is knowing where to put your foot without putting your foot inadvertently in it (innit, man!).
Where’s Sir Walter Ralegh with his cloak when you need him?
As a not-too-young person, whenever I return from the shop with five pints of beer and a tomato, I pick and mix my pavements ~ sometimes hopping on this one, sometimes skipping on that, sometimes weaving around that section, sometimes straddling this, just as Victor taught me or rather like the tightrope walker at Robert Brothers’ Circus that I almost but never eventually became.
I go to these lengths because (a) it tests my memory (which is important as you get older, for you would not want to run the risk of forgetting what you went to the shop for: “Sorry, dear, I forgot the tomato.”); and (c) (having problems remembering the alphabet), it helps in honing the essential skills of balance and agility.
You might think that the topic of this post is right up my street, and you’d be right, but there’s a good chance that if you live in Kaliningrad, you are streets ahead of me, for this city has some wonderful streets, many with wonderful pavements, and with pavements that as each year passes are clearly on the mend.
In step with everything …
But if the pavements on your street are still waiting on the waiting list, console yourself with the image of how things used to be! Those of you who are old enough should be able to cast your mind back to earlier times, when the mean streets of Kaliningrad were very mean indeed!.
Way back when, in the formative years of the 21st century, a pastime that I quickly cultivated whenever I visited Kaliningrad was to watch the women as they walked by. For purely scientific purposes naturally, I observed the tall, leggy women in short skirts and six-inch stilettos teetering precariously ~ but never tripping, mind! ~ strut their stuff as confidently as any model on the catwalk could across the pits, crevices and uneven ground where, prior to perestroika, Kaliningrad’s pavements once would have been but sadly were no more.
It may come as a surprise to you, but I never tired of watching these ladies; I suppose because they were so adept.
But times, as they say, have changed: the skirts are not so short, the heels are not so high and the pavements, though not as exciting, have attained for the greater part an air of respectability and those that haven’t are getting there! Sigh, progress can be a lot like love: it depends on the beholder.
Former posts What I like about Kaliningrad Our friend, the late Victor Ryabinin, used to refer to Kaliningrad and its surrounding territory as ‘this special place’, and I am with him on that. Whether it is because I see Kaliningrad through his eyes and feel it through his heart, I cannot rightly say. Certainly, his outlook and philosophy on life influenced me and my intuition bears his signature, but I rather imagine that he perceived in me from the earliest time of our friendship something of a kindred spirit, someone who shared his sensibility for the fascination of this ‘special place’.
Why I left the UK and moved to Kaliningrad I did not decide to leave the UK and give up the country where I was born and everything I had ever known simply because it would furnish me with a first-class opportunity to laugh at the way the UK media brainwashes people.
A kind, charming, thought-provoking and sentimental animation
Published: 2 December 2022 ~ Hedgehog in the Fog seen in Kaliningrad
Before setting off to London/Bedford England last month, we were walking back from a coffee in the café gardens (Soul Garden) by the Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, when we were thrilled to discover that some artistic person or other had painted the perfect impression of the star (Yorshik) from the famous 1970s’ animation, Hedgehog in the Fog. Normally, or abnormally, depending upon your personal prejudice, I am unable to accept painted or spray-canned text or images plastered on public or private property as anything else but what it truly is ~ a brazen example of vandalism. But, as with most things in life, exceptions to the rule exist, and this, I have to admit, is as true of graffiti as it is of anything else, providing that you want it to be.
Hedgehog in the Fog is a highly acclaimed Soviet-Russian multiple award-winning animated film. It was written by Sergei Grigoryevich Kozlov [Серге́й Григо́рьевич Козло́в] and animated and directed by Yuri Norstein [Ю́рий Норште́йн]. It is both an animation and intellectual masterpiece, capable of myriad interpretations, but whose ultimate message is as simple as it is sublime as is it sentimental: that we all need someone in this world with whom we can count the stars.
Once seen never forgotten, the majority of Russians would recognise Yorshik’s likeness instantly, certainly as unmistakeably as they would the stars of such classic Soviet films as Irony of Fate and Office Romance.
The portrait was also discovered and recognised by Kaliningrad’s administration department, and before we left for England, I caught sight of a media report in which the administration was asking the public to cast their vote ~ with the proviso that the paint used was harmless to the tree ~ on whether the image should be removed or be allowed to remain.
Since I have not walked that part of Kaliningrad recently, I have no idea what the fate of Yorshik might be, although I for one would hope that when the votes were counted, they favoured Yorshik’s continued presence.
Not only does the composition capture Yorshik’s appearance perfectly, but the artist has also located him within a beautiful blue graduated background, where he shares space romantically with twinkling stars and fairies.
Whether Yorshik has survived or not, if the artist would like to contact me, I have a canvas, an interior wall, which is just crying out for this work of art to be replicated!
Hedgehog in the Fog (Yorshik) painted on a tree in Kaliningrad
Hedgehog in the Fog is a Soviet-Russian animated film about a hedgehog (Yorshik) who sets off on foot to visit his friend, a bear cub (Meeshka), and finds himself lost in the fog. As in folklore, fairy tales and fantasy and in Gothic and psychological suspense genres, fog as a literary/cinematographic device is typically employed in the film to deviate objective reality, turning the world as we know it ~ or think we do! ~ into a claustrophobic and distorted realm where the heightened possibility of supernatural occurrences amplifies the vicissitudes encountered in everyday life.
In this state of altered consciousness, Yorshik’s imagination supersedes logic, creating a new and unnerving reality in which, for example, an owl and white horse ~ one commonplace the other rare but possible ~ take on puzzling and sinister shades of meaning.
When Yorshik stumbles into the river he assumes that he will drown, but carried along by the current he relaxes into his situation, resigning himself to the journey wherever it may take him.
His ordeal culminates when a mysterious submersible benefactor, a ‘Someone’ as the subtitles tells us, lifts him onto his back and conveys him safely to the water’s edge.
Once on dry land, Yorshik hears his friend, Meeshka, calling out to him through the fog and by following the direction of his friend’s cries the two are at last united.
Hedgehog in the Fog is a simple story, but one which arguably manages to achieve what no other comparable animation has in its simultaneous creation of an atmosphere of dread tempered by quiescence. The kinetic tempo has a lot to do with this, as does the steady, hushed and neutral tone of the omniscient narrator, but the fundamental appeal of the film and the extent to which it engages us lies in its ‘seen through the eyes of a child’s perspective’, its lilting dream-like quality and its effortless ability to invoke and mirror the childhood world which we all once inhabited, with its troublesome symbols and shadows, its half-open doors to what, where and who, its many unanswered questions and its never completely understood what may lie within and beyond.
In following the classic tradition of all that is best in fantasy motion pictures ~ The Haunting (original version), Night of the Hunter and, with one or two exceptions, the complete canon of Hitchcock’s works ~ the key to Hedgehog in the Fog’s allure is that just below the surface of fairy tale enchantment it taps profoundly and incisively into our childhood psyche.
It calls upon the fog and the river for their habitual literary symbolism: the first for its incarnation of a supernatural milieu where anything is possible, the second for its depiction of life as a predetermined current against whose superior will we are powerless to resist, and it besets the journey with downstream dangers, credible menace, innate fears and the almost tangible presence of death. All the things that we learn about living as we are hurried along by the current of life.
The still frames from Hedgehog in the Fog are every bit as resoundingly emotive as the narrative in flux. Single static images such as the looming face of the owl, the white horse, apparition-like and luminescent, the bewildered expression on Yorshik’s face and, most memorable of all, the concluding frames of the film where the re-united Yorshik and Meeshka sit on the log together, with their jam, tea and samovar and the scent from the burning juniper twigs, counting the stars in the heavens, are each and every one blissfully indelible.
Hedgehog in the Fog works, even for we adults, not only because the artwork, the cinematography, pace and timbre are as spot on as they can be, but because the overarching feel of the film is unashamedly affectionate and applaudably sentimental.
However unnerving the fog may be, the narrator takes us by the hand and, like the dreamy river of life upon which the hapless Yorshik floats, albeit with philosophical tranquility, he leads us reassuringly from opening credits to heartfelt conclusion.
If you have the samovar, the juniper twigs and the raspberry jam, all you need to count the stars ~ as the stars are always above you ~ is the log on which to sit and that special someone next to you for whom those stars shine as brightly and mean the same to them as they do for you.
