Category Archives: Kaliningrad: Mick Hart’s Diary

Kaliningrad Vintage Car Rally 2021

I don’t want to boast, but we came second and were a whisker away from first!

Published: 31 May 2021

We had just left a bumpy, pot-holed back road and re-joined the main highway. Our driver throttled back. “In a modern car such bends are OK,” he said, “but in this car, which is tall, it could be dangerous, yes, dangerous. It is a tall car, you see, and could easily …”

He paused as we took the sharp bend.

“… easily turn over.”

The car in question was a 1956 GAZ-M20 Pobeda. It had column gears, a front bench seat, split (two-part) windscreen, wood-effect trims, a large working clock, indicator button at the top centre of the dash, small side vent windows on the front passenger doors, and sun-filtering fold-down eye-shields. It had an owner-driver called Yury Grozmani and also inside of it myself and my wife, Olga.

The reason we were in it, sailing along, watching the clock studiously and glued to a sheath of navigation charts was that we were taking part in the Auto Retro Club Kaliningrad’s first regional vintage car rally.

Kaliningrad Vintage Car Rally 2021

We had rolled off the start line, an elevated vehicle platform, at precisely 13.21. The carefully estimated time of our journey from start to finish was one hour ten minutes, no more, no less, from the front of Königsberg Cathedral to Gvardeysk. The rally was timed, literally, to the very second. There were two checkpoints on the way and arrival at these checkpoints must coincide exactly with the designated ETA. If you were running behind time, you had to put your foot down; if you were ahead of yourself, you needed to take your foot off the gas and dawdle.

Yury was driving, I was the navigator and Olga became the impromptu time co-pilot, confirming joint readings of the time we were making each step of the way from her mobile phone.

For anyone who has even an elementary understanding and command of map reading, navigating would have been a doddle, and even I, who had neither of these propensities, had no difficulty in making the connection between the bold, line-drawn symbols in boxes and the landmarks and directions that they represented.

The navigation charts had been planned with simplicity in mind so that any fool could use them. Each page contained a three-column grid dissected horizontally at regular intervals. The first column provided an estimate of the time it should take from the start line to reach a certain navigation point, the second column a simple but clear illustration of the turning or lane to take and the third column any additional information that may be useful, ie name on signpost.

Kaliningrad Vintage Car Rally 2021 navigation charts

I soon got the hang of this as any fool would; shame it was not the same when it came to timing. Neither Olga nor I have any maths’ trophies, not even booby prizes, and from first shout we were all out of kilter with the timing requirement. The ETA at the first checkpoint was 31 minutes, and we were having difficulty calculating where that put us on the clock. After showing ourselves up, Yury stepped in, and we both agreed that he was right, even if we did not really know if he was or not.

Mick Hart, Olga Hart & Yury Grozmani in 1956 Pobeda car, Kaliningrad — **Olga Hart, Mick Hart & Yury Grozmani in Yury’s 1956 Soviet Pobeda ~ Kaliningrad Vintage Car Rally 2021**

Traffic was not particularly heavy in Kaliningrad today. We had a few anxious moments as we turned off one main road onto another, particularly in the vicinity of Kaliningrad’s World Cup football stadium, but once out onto the open road, the Pobeda sailed along like the class car that it was meant to be.

We checked our time and found that despite a relatively hunky-dory take-off, we were several minutes behind schedule. Yury put his foot down. We checked our time a few minutes later and found that whilst we were going faster, time was overtaking us. And then came the back road leading to the first checkpoint.

The Pobeda rolled off the production line in 1946 and underwent a series of improvements over the next three years. Among the improved, 1949 Pobeda’s selling points was its ‘suspension for all terrains’, and on this stretch of road Yury put it to the test. The 64-year-old car took it in its stride, the suspension and spongey bench seats proving more than a match for the bounce algorithm, allowing us to enjoy a particularly attractive recluse of land, steeped in hills, hollows, lakes and old German rustic buildings

Suddenly, the first checkpoint loomed into sight. Guess what? We were 60 seconds ahead of schedule! Yury remained unphased; with the tempo of a seasoned Foxtrotter he eased the throttle back and landed us right on the button.

Checked in at the checkpoint, off we went again.

Another argument ensued as to how long we had before we were scheduled to arrive at the next checkpoint. Something was wrong somewhere. But I refuse to say who it was who was more wrong than anybody else! It transpired that there was a meagre seven minutes between the first and second checkpoints, which was a little mean as it gave us no time to relax.

We thought we were behind time, when in fact we were in front.

Kaliningrad Vintage Car Rally 2021. Dashboard 1956 Pobeda.

Just ahead of us were the two Volgas that had left Königsberg before us. They had both turned off the road, presumably because they, too, were ahead of schedule but, on seeing us, pulled out in front.

The second checkpoint required driving into a yard, marking one’s card and then driving out again. The car in front took a wide turn and Yury swooped in, cutting it up at the checkpoint. I am sure it was taken in good part, even though a lot of hooter-blaring ensued.

We roared off again, with about 25 minutes to go to reach the finishing line in Gvardeysk.

Kaliningrad Vintage Car Rally 2021

Gvardeysk is a small town with a large public square, making it perfect for events of the kind taking place today. We were last here with my younger brother in summer 2019, again with the Auto Retro Club, but on this occasion for the international Golden Shadow of Königsberg festival.

Olga and I like this town. It is well laid out, has a balanced proportion of German and Soviet ancestry, some fine old Gothic buildings, museums, a specialist cheese shop par excellence and an interesting walk along the side of the river.

Today, we had literally lost no time in getting here and had to fall back to lose a few minutes before rolling up on the town square to the razzmatazz of cheering crowds, music and more cameras than Kodak.

As soon as we arrived, a young lady presented Olga and I with a present. It was a large, and I mean large, disc-shaped apricot jam cake, freshly baked and still warm from the oven. Such kind gestures do not go unnoticed.

Mick Hart presented with a large cake in Gvardeysk, Kaliningrad Oblast. — **Yury Grozmani & Mick Hart with a large cake in Gvardeysk ~ Kaliningrad Vintage Car Rally 2021**

This is the age of the smartphone, Facebook and the image blitzkrieg, and needless to say there was no limit to the rounds of photographs taken, first on one person’s camera and then on another’s, then with these people and next with those. Olga and I had made the effort to dust off some vintage clothes, so this was another reason for having it large with the paparazzi.

We did find time to slip away, however.

May 2021: Vintage cars of the Auto Retro Club Kaliningrad line up in Guardesque. — **Soviet vintage cars line up in Gvardeysk ~ Kaliningrad Vintage Car Rally 2021**

The first stop was the public conveniences. I am strange, so I love using the loos here. It is a real Soviet experience: down the narrow flight of stairs, pay the babushka sitting at the counter at the bottom and then turn right into the homemade throne room. I cannot imagine any trip to Gvardeysk without using, or at the very least, visiting the lavs.

It was now time for a relaxing stroll around town, see the sites, visit the cheese shop and sit in the old courtyard of the cat sanctuary to have a bite to eat, whilst admiring the cat illustrations and old German feel of this sequestered place.

We had more free time at our disposable than we first imagined, so I also treated myself to an ice cream, a CCCP no less! (which is USSR to you).

More photos were waiting for us when we arrived back at the square. It was here that a young woman asked if she could have a picture taken with us. It turned out that she had a good command of English, and in the process of chatting she revealed that her ambition was to go to America. When my wife asked why, she thought, and then said: “The American Dream”. We said nothing. I could hear Leonard Cohen saying, “But you don’t want to lie, not to the young”. Anyway, this young woman must have been either extremely discerning or should have gone to Specsavers, as she said that I looked ‘handsome’. Was my wife jealous? Amused, I thought!

Before we left Königsberg Cathedral, Yury had raised a red flag by telling us that his car was having problems with the cooling system, but so far, so good: no need to top up with water. Just before we left the finishing line, he did, however, top up the tank with fuel, and I was intrigued to see that he could check how much was in the tank using a small dipstick located in the boot. Please refrain from the obvious joke; I was standing three feet away.

We left Gvardeysk as a cavalcade, with a police escort from the square to the town limit and to a fanfare even more enthusiastic than the one that had greeted us. Vintage cars seem to have that effect upon people, evoking respect, affection and enjoyment. Many people stand on the side of the road taking photos on their phones and making videos; people in cars toot their horns and wave as you pass by. It is all good stuff!

Today, on the return journey to Kaliningrad, we were pulling into Valdau Castle, the drive to which runs parallel with the main highway, and as we folded back upon ourselves, facing the way from which we had travelled, we were treated to a most magnificent sight, that of the club’s cars forming a long uninterrupted procession, the polished chrome and paintwork glistening in the afternoon sunlight and the car flags bearing the club’s name and logo fluttering resplendently in the breeze.

Regrettably, Valdau Castle would only be a pit stop today, but no sooner had we crossed the threshold into the grounds than I felt that ‘portal into the past’ sensation. So profound, exhilarating and organic it was that this familiar call from bygone days could not go unanswered for long. Olga was of the same mind, for she expressed dismay when she discovered that there was no time today to investigate the grounds and property further. “We will be back!” she asserted to whomever it was who was listening to her, going on to grumble about me to Yury for ‘never wanting to go anywhere … just sit in the churdak and write”. As a man to whom writing was not unfamiliar, I knew he would only empathise.

Vintage Soviet cars, 29 May 2021, Valdau Castle, Kaliningrad Oblast — **Cars of the Auto Retro Car Club Kaliningrad at Valdau Castle ~ Kaliningrad Vintage Car Rally 2021**

The grounds to the front of Valdau Castle are not as one might expect, vast, in fact they are copse-like, forming a central island of trees and grass, with one road in and out and a path on the opposite side. The approach widens at the front of the building, and as the cars filed into this wider area one by one and very slowly, a group of five ladies who were lined up in the castle’s doorway were cheering, waving and laughing as each car made its debut. This jolly group were dressed one and all dirndl style and played their part so convincingly and with such perspicacity to the scene in which they were cast that no one, but no one, was able to assume a contradictory attitude. As each car turned the corner, the occupants were smitten with the sincerity of this greeting. It lit faces up as though someone had turned them into human lanterns. Nobody, nobody that is except the president of the club, Arthur, who was dashing up and down trying to fit too many cars into not enough space and only just succeeding, went uninitiated; the conviviality was infectious and spread like emotional wildfire. Even the imposing Gothic building could not feign disapproval. There was so much of everything bright and cheerful, including more than a touch, and in all the right places, of Moll Flanders’ better attributes.

Staff in traditional German costume cheer on vintage Soviet cars at Valdau Castle, Kaliningrad Oblast — **Greetings from Valdau Castle ~ Kaliningrad Vintage Car Rally 2021**

Mick Hart & Olga Hart at Valdau Castle, 29 May 2021 — **Mick Hart & Olga Hart with staff of Valdau Castle 29 May 2021**

From the castle the line of cars broke up as each took its preferred route back to Königsberg Cathedral, but met again at the Cathedral entrance to an applause and welcome fit for conquering heroes.

On landing, there was time enough to buy a snack from one of the food outlets and a coffee and relax on one of the wooden benches in the best patch of sun you could find, after which it was time for the moment of truth. Who had matched the rally clock, completed the course as specified and attained one of the first three positions.

There were three main trophies for the first three contestants, together with smaller cups and certificates for those who did not do as well as they would have liked but were gratefully acknowledged for their participation. We came second place, being only one second out from coming first.

Once our status had been announced, we hopped back into the Pobeda and Yury, deftly and at speed, whipped the motor up onto the elevated car ramp after a fashion that I could only dream of aspiring to.

It was trophy winners’ acceptance time and speeches.

This was not an easy task for me to accomplish. Apart from being the only Anglichanin in the race, I was not about to inflict, either upon the crowd facing me or upon myself, my incomparable Russian. This meant that I would have to address the crowds in English. I am sure that there must have been one or two people in the facing throng who knew what I was talking about. There was my wife, for example, who never knows what I am talking about, so why should she start now? And anyway, after I had concluded my few words, Yury rendered a brief translation.

It had been a long day, a rewarding day, a different day. There is, as they say, a first time for everything, and we had enjoyed this first time immensely!

Kaliningrad Vintage Car Rally 2021: Yury Grozmarni & Mick Hart receiving a rally award — **Mick Hart & Yury Grozmani receiving a trophy at the Kaliningrad Retro Car Rally 29 May 2021**

More about Auto Retro Club Kaliningrad
Auto Retro Club Kaliningrad 2021 Calendar
Fort XI Kaliningrad Hosts Retro Car Club Day
See 1930s’ Buick at Fort XI Kaliningrad

I Have Had my Covid Vaccine!

I Have Had My Covid Vaccine ~ so many times that I’ve lost count

Published: 28 May 2021

These are the coronavirus vaccine statistics from ourworldindata.org as of 25 May 2021 (not easy to see from this screen grab, but you get the picture):

😉The Covid-19 Vaccine Race from Gaydock Park🤞

Never before in the history of transmissible disease have governments embarked upon and pushed an agenda like this one. But is that agenda honourable or there is a subtext to it that neoliberal global politicians, Big Tech and Big Pharma are exploiting for their own elitist ends?

Coronavirus has polarised the world. There are those who believe everything they are told by the powers that be, and in the process seem to have resigned themselves to a lifetime of lockdowns, mask-wearing, new strains, mutations and an ever-expanding cycle of vaccinations, and those that suspect that as nothing about coronavirus and, more to the point, coronavirus restrictions appear to add up, then someone must be up to something ~ and up to something on a global scale.

The UK is a perfect example of this polarity, divided as it is by those who are falling over themselves in the panic to get the vaccine ~ the same group of people that advocate enforced lockdown and mask wearing ~ and those whose distrust of the establishment’s official vaccination line is only exceeded by their utter contempt for the WHO.

The West’s liberal-controlled media routinely rounds up all coronavirus sceptics and labels and thus discredits them as conspiracy theorists. But what if they are? In the words of Joseph Heller, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”

The ‘we don’t trust them as far as we could throw them’ camp entertain myriad theories, which when gathered up coalesce into one or another of the big three. These three theories have one thing in common, which is that the perpetrators of the biggest hoax in history are neoliberal globalists. The three scenarios play out like this:

1. Coronavirus restrictions, particularly lockdowns, mandatory mask-wearing and state-enforced mass vaccination programmes are a covert way of reconditioning the collective mind, controlling the masses by fear in preparation for something worse to come. That worse being the neoliberal New World Order.

2. Both the virus and the vaccine are man-made entities (Sorry, let’s be woke here, I mean person-made entries. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, so who knows what ‘it’ and ‘others’ can unleash!). Both have the capacity to liquidate, and both have a job to do, which is to reset the world’s population, in other words, to cull.

3. The vaccine is a long-term project which will inevitably pour endless amounts of wealth into the globalist’s coffers through the symbiotic relationship between Big Pharma and the neoliberal mega-rich. Yes, the vaccine may be free now, but as mutations and new strains emerge requiring, so we will be told, new or modified vaccines, someone will have to pay ~ and that will be you and me.

For the sake of argument, let us play devil’s advocate and say that the endgame involves elements of all three scenarios but, neoliberal globalists being what they are, money must figure first and last, so is it proposition number three on which we need to focus, or is all of it just tabloid pie in the sky?

Responsibility for the propagation of distrust, its entrenchment and the vast number of citizens throughout the world who are either unsure of the vaccine or vow they will never accept it, lies in the contradictory messages with which the public has been bombarded since day one of coronavirus. Making sense of it is like trying to put together a sabotaged jigsaw puzzle, the vital pieces of which are missing: nothing fits, nothing adds up and very little is logical.

At the centre of this programme of obscurantism is the liberal media and at the epicentre the liberal-oriented social media, which, instead of upholding free speech, the number-one tenet of democracy, have decided ~ inspired and emboldened by its track record for crucifying dissenters on the altar of censorship ~ to persecute anyone and everyone who dares to contest, question or doubt the rubber-stamped version of coronavirus.

Now, I do not have a Twitter account or Facebook account for obvious reasons, but I hear tell that if you post anything on Facebook that calls into question the official coronavirus narrative, especially as it pertains to vaccination, first your post is blocked and then you are ‘politely’ redirected to a source of information that purports to tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But whose truth is it?

I am also told by those who use Facebook and other liberal-orchestrated social media sites that if you post anything that challenges pro-lockdown, pro-mask wearing, pro-vaccine enforcement, you run the risk of being banned from such sites for a month or in severe cases, for example if your argument is too cogent or too plausible, face permanent exile, destined to live out the rest of your unliked days in a social media wasteland every bit as dire as the ironic political wilderness into which Enoch Powell was cast when he told the truth about immigration.

The reality is that apart from liberals, nobody trusts Big Tech. Why should they, when it is the same mega-corporations prohibiting alternative viewpoints on coronavirus that routinely censor and remove the numerous accounts of those who dare to expound the cultural and moral tragedy of state-sponsored social and gender engineering programmes? And don’t forget that this is the same Big Tech that banned the President of the United States and attempted to atom bomb Parler, an alternative social media platform for those who mainstream social media have arbitrarily deplatformed.

The EDL, Britain First, Paul Joseph Watson, Katie Hopkins, Tommy Robinson, all enemies of the neoliberal state, wear the same badge of honour: they have all been banned from either Facebook, Twitter or both, as have a good many other ‘ordinary’ people. According to the social media monopolisers, these individuals and/or groups are guilty of using their squeaky-clean sites to incite racial hatred, religious hatred and call it what you like. But the truth is that this arbitrary definition is a convenient way of silencing anyone who dares to question, contradict, make a stand against or even invite discussion on subjects that run counter to the liberal-left’s world view and to its global aspirations.

And it does not matter how cogent the argument is or by whom it is addressed ~ acclaimed scientists, long-serving public health officials, eminent virologists and so on, are summarily struck down for speaking out against coronavirus protocols which, in their opinion, have a scientific margin of error that render them at best questionable or at worst not fit for purpose. Woe betide you if you post the views of these renegades on Facebook!

These distinguished dissenters ~ doctors, professors, scientists and so forth ~ who, it would seem, have nothing better to do than to incite the ire of the powerful and the media megalomaniacs, are summarily dismissed by the same as misinformation peddlers. Some of these eminent personages question the shaky empirical foundation on which mass vaccination is based; others claim that vaccines are already causing significant harm and that there is evidence of deaths directly linked to the vaccine, but, as any search on Google will confirm, absolute proof of such does not exist [as of 25 May 2021]. All media-owned signposts point in the same direction.

Now, I am not a Facebook subscriber (I wonder why?) but I have been told that pricks ~ people who have had the vaccine ~ have been cajoled and coerced by Facebook to wear their vaccination status with pride. Apparently, once you have been vaccinated, you can change your Facebook profile image using a ‘I have had my vaccination’ template, a circular frame surrounding your mug for all the world to see.

Is it my imagination, or do some of these silly little roundels come complete with frames in limp-wristed rainbow colours? Hmm, when I see such things, I am put in mind of that excellent Orwellian TV programme The Prisoner, in which a spy who has resigned from his post is gassed, abducted and wakes up in a terrifying fantasy world known as The Village, a high-tech concentration camp masquerading as a utopian democracy (sound familiar?).

In this happy realm of many nationalities, the good citizens, those who have been brainwashed and soul-destroyed, do everything they are told to do and say everything they are told to say. They are deliriously model citizens, who, deprived of free will and no longer capable of independent thought, literally dance to their masters’ tune wearing rainbow-coloured clothes whilst toting rainbow-coloured umbrellas (It certainly was a programme ahead of its time!).

I have nothing against taking the vaccine myself, in spite of the fact that I would never allow the likes of Facebook or Twitter to manoeuvre me into taking it and provided that I am not forced to take it under duress and threat of not being able to travel, not being able to get a job, not being able to visit a pub, in fact, not being able to do anything or go anywhere without my vaccine passport. All this smacks of a cheap protection racket: Buy our Brand or else!

But the last mistake I would want to make was to discover all too late that between them they have murdered me and, in the process, have conned me into celebrating the fact that not only was I stupid enough to have bought the lies they sold me but that they have also had my leg up to such an extent that they had me advertise my gullibility in a circular social media frame surrounded by rainbow colours ~ the final insult!

If I was Facebook inclined, I personally would not entertain such a frame. It is not nearly woke enough for my liking, and until they include a clenched BLM fist, preferably certified by Sadiq Kahn, if I were you, I would refuse to use one, at least until you are sure that you have been well and truly exploited.

At the end of the day, it is not up to social media or governments to force you to have something stuck in your arm or anywhere else for that matter, especially when it bypasses the usual strict requirements for vaccine testing and approval and even more especially when Big Pharma, Big Tech and ultimately Big Brother have a get-out clause in the small print which exonerates them from any blame or compensatory comeback in the ‘unlikely’ event that it all goes terribly wrong.

To conclude with the inconclusive, I will leave you in the safe hands of Facebook’s Mr Zuckerberg and his team. Ruminate on their words and then ask yourself the question: are these the words of humanitarians, or is something else at work?

“These new policies will help us continue to take aggressive action against misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines. We will begin enforcing this policy immediately, with a particular focus on Pages, groups and accounts that violate these rules, and we’ll continue to expand our enforcement over the coming weeks. Groups, Pages and accounts on Facebook and Instagram …” ~ source: An Update on Our Work to Keep People Informed and Limit Misinformation About COVID-19, published by Facebook, 16 April 2020 [my highlights]

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) response to Facebook & other social media censorship:
Covid-19: Who fact checks health and science on Facebook? | The BMJ

At the close of this article, I have provided three or four links to alternative views: Are these the words of crackpots or of well-informed and enlightened people who genuinely fear for our future and are attempting to shine a light to avert us from the very dark place to which we are being taken?

How will history judge our shepherds? Will they be praised and exonerated as the angels of our salvation, or eventually tried Nuremberg style for crimes against humanity?

Living through history is certainly not the same as reflecting on it, but these must be interesting times indeed for those out there in the future to whom Facebook and its kind are just amusing anachronisms, a spent and obsolescent force harking back to the days when Big Tech, in its naivety and arrogance, mistook its short-lived era for the promise of eternity. I wonder what lessons the new generations have learnt from our coronavirus ‘conspiracy’ era, and what they will do to prevent it from ever occurring again.

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Alternative Views on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Media Censorship & Why {don’t take their word for it ~ draw your own conclusions!}

Why are we being censored? ~ Professor Dolores Cahill
Dr Reiner Fuellmich, international lawyer has all the evidence that pandemic is crime (rumble.com)
Did some scientists use ‘scare tactics’ during lockdown? – YouTube

Disclaimer: No animals were harmed in the making of this post, but we are sorry if we have insulted them.

Image credits:
Sheep face: https://pixabay.com/photos/sheep-animals-cute-nature-3727049/
Donkey face: Gilles Rolland-Monnet on Unsplash; https://unsplash.com/photos/Y-gQdCSvMbo
Halo emoji: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/piqKy7qi9.htm
Middle finger: Jonny Doomsday; https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Man-in-suit-showing-middle-finger/6429.html
Parrot: Christopher Alvarenga on Unsplash; https://unsplash.com/s/photos/parrot

Kaliningrad Street Food Festival a Cathedral of Taste

Food festival in the grounds of Königsberg Cathedral

Published: 17 May 2021 ~ Kaliningrad Street Food Festival

On 9^th May, after honouring Victory Day by paying our respects at the Mass Grave of Soviet Soldiers and the Monument to 1200 Guardsmen, we were driven by our hosts, Arthur and Inara, to the street food fair, held this Easter in the sculptured parkland and cobbled grounds of Königsberg Cathedral.

Kneiphof Island, as this area was once known and now more commonly referred to as Kant’s Island for the very good reason that it is the historic resting place of the great German philosopher Kant with whose name it is eponymous, has undergone a series of successful gentrification programmes over the past few years, making its long, broad thoroughfare, which stretches from the Trestle Bridge on one side to Honeymoon Bridge on the other, the perfect place for cultural events.

Tourists and the majority of Kaliningradians approve but, as in every sphere of life, pleasing all of the people all of the time is as unobtainable as the Holy Grail, and the food fair, as well as other events held in this vicinity, is not without detractors, its critics arguing that the proximity of the cathedral and the hallowed ground on which it stands should prohibit such acts of sacrilege.

I personally do not hold with this. Reincarnation, as in the case of Königsberg Cathedral as much as in any other, is about breathing new life into something that would otherwise cease to exist, and the historical Phoenix that Königsberg Cathedral most assuredly is, is a good enough argument in my books for holding events nearby that celebrate life and, whilst I myself do not go in for Facebook snapshots of plates of grub, most people would agree that food and drink plays a not insignificant part in celebrating life or is, at the very least, a rather indispensable ingredient of it ~ something very much up there with oxygen and sunlight.

Thus, silently mediating between the cultural polemics by which my actions were guided, I was able to wend my way without a sullied conscience, heading towards the food fair by way of the riverside walk that fronts Kaliningrad’s ‘Fishing Village’ ~ an attractive architectural fantasy of swish hotels and well-appointed restaurants that has nothing to do with fishing but a lot to do with tourism.

Kaliningrad Street Food Festival

Someone, I believe it was my wife, suggested that we rest our weary bones at one of the outside tables and take light refreshment before going on to the fair. This was an odd idea considering that over the other side of Honeymoon Bridge there was about forty or fifty food stalls. But wives, as you know, know best …

Mick Hart & Olga Hart at the Fishing Village, Kaliningrad — **Kaliningrad Fishing Village ~ on our way to Kaliningrad Street Food Festival**

The first mistake was quickly followed by the second, which was that the spot we had chosen was firmly in the shade and subject to strong gusts of wind; the second mistake was the restaurant/café itself. Foodwise, it had not been a good choice, even for snack standards, although I did enjoy my pint of Leffe!

You might infer that having crossed Honeymoon Bridge we would be plunged into the troubled world of real life, but this was not the case.

Mick Hart with Inara Honeymoon Bridge Kaliningrad — Mick Hart with Inara: Honeymoon Bridge,Kaliningrad

Königsberg's New Synagogue — Mick Hart with Inara: Honeymoon Bridge,Kaliningrad

The continuous row of brightly coloured stalls and milling crowds was a sight for sore self-isolating eyes, a coronavirus-contagious nightmare for your mask-wearing six-foot distancers, but for me, today, a much-needed carnival atmosphere ~ a cornucopia of pleasing sights, foot-tapping sounds and sizzling smells ~ or, as I put it earlier, a celebration of life.

A giant radio at Königsberg Food Festval

Kaliningrad Street Food Festival

The pink stalls with their colourful, whacky wallpapered fronts, looked well in the sunlit environs, with the hefty walls of Königsberg Cathedral acting as their backdrop. There was food galore, which was not a bad thing for a food festival, but this being Russia it was a foregone conclusion that most of it would be meaty. For vegetarians such as myself, options are rather limited.

Unphased, since I am a ‘baked beans on toast’ sort of person anyway, there was nothing for it but to turn my attention to the beer they had on offer.

Stall at Kaliningrad Street Food Festival

Old Brick Pub Kaliningrad Street Food Festival

Olga discovered one stall selling warm beer; not warm as in ‘Ugh my beer is warm’ (an ironic grumble in England where everyone seems to have forgotten that beer is supposed to be served at room temperature), but warm in the sense of heated. Being nothing but adventurous ~ where beer is concerned, that is ~ I sampled some of this, and I must admit that, contrary to my bigotry, I found it remarkably palatable.

Mick Hart Kaliningrad enjoying special warmed beer — **Mick Hart samples heated beer at Königsberg Cathedral Food Fair**

At the corner of the pedestrian walk where the cobbled street widens to form the plaza at the front of the cathedral, a group of vintage vehicles were on display, among which was our friend’s, Arthur’s, Volga.

Mick Hart with the Auto Retro Club Kaliningrad Königsberg Cathedral

Speciality warm beer, vintage cars, good company & Königsberg Cathedral: Food Festival Kaliningrad 2021

To the right, the one-time silver refreshment caravan in the shape of an American diner has been replaced by a permanent parade of gift and refreshment cubicles and even a proper restaurant. Again, some people criticise, but I like them. They reflect Königsberg Cathedral’s increasing popularity as a tourist destination and are just enough and not too much.

At this point in the cathedral grounds the land rises, and it is necessary to climb a brief flight of steps to ascend to the higher and wider concourse, on either side of which today food stalls took pride of place.

The variety of food on offer was really quite astonishing, so much so that you would have to be suffering from indigestion, experiencing an attack of consummate vegetarianism, or just being rather peculiar should you not be able to find yourself something to sink your choppers into.

As I fall into at least one of those compromised categories, I continued to stay on the beer, which, like its solid counterpart, offered incomparable sustenance of a most diverse and most diverting kind.

All of a sudden standing went out of fashion. It was fortunate, therefore, that the municipal makeover of our immediate vicinity had pre-empted this condition, a contingency not found wanting in the number, style and seating capacity of the scrolled and slat-back benches dotted around the park.

Being difficult as well as vegetarian ~ same thing? ~ I immediately ignored these, and we eventually came to rest on the well-thought-out and positioned wooden steps that aligns the seated with the magnificent facade of Königsberg Cathedral.

Mick Hart, Olga hart and friend Arthur on steps front of Königsberg Cathedral — **Mick Hart & Olga with Arthur (feeding himself) on the steps in front of Königsberg Cathedral (May 2021)**

From this spot we refused to move (OK, I refused to move) for the rest of the afternoon, with the exception of forays for food and beer ~ Oh, and Olga’s impulse purchase of a silver and amber ring (good job my beer requirement was not overstretching our budget!)

Said Olga, whilst we were sitting where we were sitting: Have you noticed how the front of Königsberg Cathedral has an unreal aspect about it? It has an ethereality, a lightness that most ecclesiastical buildings do not possess. Cathedrals in general have a formal and officiating presence, commanding deep and unquestionable reverence, but this cathedral seems to hang in the air ~ to float. Now remember, it was Olga saying this and not my beer, but was it the beer that made me respond that it looked from our perspective as if the cathedral could have been drawn on the natural canvas donated by this calm and relaxing day by our friend and artist Victor Ryabinin?

Some things you can never be sure of and others even less so, but one thing we agreed on was that Kaliningrad’s food festival had given us plenty of food for thought.

9th May Kaliningrad Victory Day 2021

Kaliningrad Honours its Veterans

Published: 14 May 2021

9 May Victory Day 2021, and in Kaliningrad, as in the rest of Russia, young and old turned out in thousands to pay their respect to their forebears ~ those who survived and those who died in the awesome and bloody struggle to deliver their country from Nazi tyranny and to honour the inestimable contribution made by the Soviet Union to the defeat of Hitler’s Third Reich.

Last year Victory Day was a rather muted affair owing to coronavirus, but this year Russia’s second most important holiday after Easter was firmly back on track, led by the traditional Victory Day parade in Moscow and marked elsewhere throughout the country with celebrations and remembrance services.

9th May Kaliningrad Victory Day 2021

At 12pm, Olga and I rendezvoused with our friends, Arthur and Inara, at the Home for Veterans on Komsomolskaya Street, Kaliningrad, a large complex of buildings which, as the name suggests, provides homes to veterans who no longer have kinfolk to support them.

Although the service is a private affair, held behind closed gates, it was still possible to see something of the formal ceremony and the cadets of various denominations who took part in acknowledging the debt that is owed to one of the most remarkable generations in modern history.

Cadets in Kaliningrad Victory Day 2021 — Cadets at the Home for Veterans

Cadets Victory Day Kaliningrad 2021 — Cadets at the Home for Veterans

From the Home for Veterans, we walked the short distance to the Мass Grave of Soviet Soldiers and placed red roses on the eternal-flame-lit monument, before driving to the city’s foremost WWII remembrance site, the Monument to 1200 Guardsmen, an impressive obelisk and statue-flanked shrine to the soldiers of the 11th Army who died in the assault on Königsberg.

9th May Kaliningrad Victory Day 2021 — **Mass Grave of Soviet Soldiers**

Mick Hart & Olga Hart Victory Day Kaliningrad 9th May 2021 — **Mick & Olga Hart placing flowers at the Mass Grave of Soviet Soldiers, 9 May 2021**

9th May 2021 Kaliningrad: British & US flags fly with Soviet flags — **Russians do not seem to have the same problem that Brits and Yanks have**
**when it comes to remembering** **their allies!**

Victory Park, an elaborate, grassed, landscaped area criss-crossed with winding pathways and studded with series of steps, lies at the foot of the Monument to 1200 Guardsmen. Today, it was a sea of people, many of which were family groups, proudly carrying the national flag, and also in many cases the flag of the USSR, along with placard-mounted portraits of their relatives who had taken part in the battle of Königsberg or the wider conflict.

Russians carry portraits of war veterans in Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad Russians carrying photos of war veterans

As well as photographs, flags and flowers, numerous participants wore medals and many more were wearing the black and orange striped Georgian ribbon, one of Russia’s most powerful symbols of national pride and patriotism. Some children were dressed in the type of military uniform that their grandparents would have worn during WWII, or, as the Russian’s refer to it, the Great Patriotic War, and both children and adults alike had in some instances donned the Soviet army side-cap, the olive-green pilotka, with its red or green-painted Soviet star badge.

Russians wearing the George Ribbon as a mark of Victory Day respect 2021

Olga Hart & friend Inara place roses at Soviet war monument 9 May 2021 — **Olga Hart & Inara place roses at a monument in Victory Park, Kaliningrad** (9 May 2021)

Sadly, but inevitably, with each passing year the veteran population diminishes, but today we were fortunate to meet a 91-year-old lady veteran, who had braved the crowds and temperamental weather to attend the annual ceremony.

WWII Lady Veteran Kaliningrad Victory Day

During the Second World War, she had contributed to the war effort by providing vital work in the Soviet munition factories. Today, she wore her medals with pride.

Her husband had been amongst those Soviet regiments that had fought their way across the East Prussian region, a punishing military campaign that had culminated in a ferocious artillery assault on Königsberg followed by gruelling street-by-street close-quarter combat in and out of the web of ruins.

One of the lady’s granddaughters, who spoke perfect English, told me that in recognition of her grandfather’s bravery during the Königsberg campaign, not only had he been highly decorated but also a street had been named after him in one of the region’s outlying towns.

It was an honour and privilege to have met and talked with this veteran and her family today and to have had the opportunity to witness such a profound and open expression of respect and patriotism here in Kaliningrad extending across the entire generational spectrum.

Monument to 1200 Guardsmen, Kaliningrad, Victory Day 2021

Spring Brings People Out in Kaliningrad

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 394 [12 April 2021]
And what has all this got to do with coronavirus and self-isolation?

Published: 12 April 2021 ~ Spring Brings People Out in Kaliningrad

With the temperature shooting up to a ‘very nice spring day’ 18 degrees, my wife, Olga, had no difficulty persuading me to walk to the central market with her, even though I had consumed four or five refreshing pints of vaccine the previous evening.

As we left the house for the cobbled streets of Königsberg, the birds were singing and, if the neighbours two houses away would only fit their dog with a silencer, we would possibly have heard them.

After a long, hard winter it was delicious to be able to walk down the quiet backstreets, stopping now and again to have a good old gawp, which you do as you get older, at the splendid German houses that line this particular route.

The last time I did something like this in the UK, an elderly lady appeared on the doorstep of her house and asked if we were ‘casing the joint’. My brother replied that we were admiring the architecture, that we only robbed places at night and was she at home this evening?

No such awkward questions were fired at us today, and all we had to contend with was blue snowdrops, lots of them, inside and outside of gardens looking extremely pretty.

Spring brings people out in Kaliningrad

Our route to the city market took us along the lakeside (pond side, if you are a Königsbergian purist). The sun, warmth and dry weather had brought the good citizens of Kaliningrad out in droves, and Olga, who is a staunch anti-mask wearer, was happy to observe that the majority of the populace had exchanged their ‘muzzles’ for happy smiles and the priceless humanity of unfettered facial expression.

Youth Park ~ the city’s amusement park ~ was in full swing, and the children’s play area on the bank of the lake was packed to the gills with happy cavorting children, the skateboarding and roller-blading enclosure was by no means idle and in the nearby exercise arena a man was obviously so grateful not to be in lockdown that it was all he could do not to stand on his head.

Just as I had hoped, the good weather had also brought out the traders and selling public at the city’s flea market, a junk addicts paradise, which should it exist in boot fair-obsessed Britain, that is before the Covid curfews and restrictions, it would be absolutely mobbed.

Serviced by a parking lane that backs onto a stretch of pavement located just before the pedestrianised avenue that leads to the market proper, the pitches, stalls and blankets of this collectors’ cornucopia fan out across the hills and hollows beneath the trees of a long, broad bank, an erstwhile rampart that follows the line of the moat opposite one of Königsberg’s distinctive red-brick forts. This bank can be a muddy Somme when it rains but was thankfully dry today.

I stopped for a while to lust over the dug-up medals and badges that had once ennobled the members of Hitler’s Third Reich, but before I could commit myself to spending more cash than I should, Olga had steered me off, away from the trader community into the general public bargain zone, and before long was trying on a jacket suspended from a tree, urged on by a stout babushka keen to make a sale, whose many other clothing wares were spread across the ground on top of several covers.

The coat was either too small or too big, so this turned out to be a no-sale, but by the time we had traversed the length of the bank, running the gauntlet of the numerous sellers, where once we had no bags we now were carrying four.

Within these bags nestled two interesting bottles, both harking back to the days when this city was Königsberg: one bearing the city’s original name and the other purchased because of its unusual triangular shape and Bakelite top. As with many bottles produced at the turn of the twentieth century and, indeed, throughout the years leading to World War II, both of these bottles were attractively embossed with script, typically identifying either the contents, manufacturer and location of the business and very often all three.

Spring Brings People Out in Kaliningrad — **Mick Hart with bottle ~ unusual in that it does not contain beer**

As a former dealer in items of antiquity, my interest in these humble retail and household products had diminished over the years, simply because in the course of my work I handled so many of them, but my passion for these relics of social history had recently been rekindled when, emerging from a tour of Königsberg Cathedral, our host and friend Vladimir Chilikin introduced us to a purveyor of vintage bottles who was selling his wares on the bridge nearby. Life without junk is at least three things: impossible, unlivable and uncluttered. So, my wife, sympathetic to and an accomplice in my addiction, decided that she would treat me to a Königsberg souvenir, and now you can no longer say that I haven’t got the bottle.

On the subject of old and interesting, we had left home this morning not purely to stretch our legs but to collect a piece of vintage embroidery that someone was framing for us. Unfortunately, the framing shop was closed, but no matter, this simply meant that we would not have so much to carry as we made our way to Flame, our pre-Covid watering hole, situated in front of the lake.

Although the thought of a lunchtime aperitif, a liquid one, did cross my mind ~ junk and beer go so well together ~ I exercised restraint. One should be wise at my age (cough), and besides, when we returned home, I had the final pages of a dissertation to edit.

Spring brings people out in Kaliningrad

We had gone to Flame expecting to find that the outside seating had been reinstated, but it was obviously deemed too early in the year for this, so if we wanted to eat outside we would have to find a bench. We could have eaten inside, but distancing and the heartbreaking avoidance of restaurants and bars continues to be our enduring concession to coronavirus caution.

We found some unoccupied seating on the circular paved area that fronts the newly opened swimming pool and sauna, which is anchored off the side of the lake. It is a curious affair: a T-shaped, lightweight structure fitted with a central dome consisting of stretched fabric or vinyl over triangulated sections of tubular steel.

As Flame was as busy as it had been in the pre-coro era, our takeaway lunch would take 20 to 30 minutes to arrive, which was no hardship. Whilst waiting, we had two cups of excellent coffee and just chilled out, or should that be in today’s favourable temperatures warmed up?

Mick Hart & Olga Hart, Kaliningrad 2021 — **Mick Hart & Olga Hart, Kaliningrad April 2021**

The easy-listening jazz wafting from Flame’s external hi-fi speakers, complemented the meditative mood. Whenever I hear it, I am filled with wonder. Who is it who plugs Flame into the 1970s? I half expect Jim Rockford of 1970s’ Rockford Files fame to come strolling round the corner. Hi Jim!

It was a beautiful atmosphere on the lake front today. The droves had almost turned into a crowd, and everyone walked, talked and behaved as people do when spring first arrives. You can sense it ~ that one long collective sigh of relief: winter is rolling over at last.

We stayed put on our hospitable bench for a good forty minutes. Opposite, three girls were sketching and painting. Whenever I see people painting or drawing in Königsberg, I cannot help but see and feel the presence of Victor Ryabinin.

On walking back homeward we stopped in an area where the lakeside path expands to look and listen for a while to a couple of young musicians playing saxophones. The music they were playing captured and inspired the harmonics of the occasion in this favourite location of ours, on this soft, tranquil, kind and contemplative day.

Running out of kitchen cabinets in the UK

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 365 [14 March 2021]
Anniversary of self-isolating in Kaliningrad

Congratulations to who, exactly? To WHO? Today marks my first anniversary of self-imposed self-isolation ~ of sorts. Three hundred and sixty-five days of watching where I go and who is standing three hundred and sixty degrees front, sides and back of me. Have I passed the test? And, if so, for whom and for what? And what should my reward be? A diploma in philanthropic consideration for my fellow man (no sexism intended) or a degree with honours in credulous compliance. Let History be my judge! And, of course, be yours as well!

Quite frankly, apart from this milestone, there is not a great deal to report about coronavirus here in Kaliningrad, Russia, certainly not about lockdown as there isn’t one. Everything in Kaliningrad appears to be functioning as normal and the only concession that I can see to coronavirus is the mask-wearing thing. And even then, I have noticed that the percentage of people wearing muzzles, as my wife refers to them, has diminished in the past few weeks.

A mask-wearing enforcement policy continues to operate on public transport, as I witnessed a couple of days ago, when a thoroughly inebriated fellow, who had been celebrating International Women’s Day (no gender discrimination here in Russia!), refused to put on his mask whilst travelling by bus. The young bus conductor did his level best to prosecute the law thanklessly handed down to him, but vodka is a wily opponent and the recalcitrant drunk would eventually fall off at the stop of his choice, still maskless but no less gracious, for even in his triumph of the common man over authority he chose not to stick up an offensive finger but holding up two thumbs saluted International Women’s Day as the bus full of masks roared off.

Running out of kitchen cabinets in the UK

Whilst almost everybody that I have spoken to here in Russia are of one mind: they consider lockdown to be a step too far, I cannot help but feel that Western governments do not approve. Not that anybody here cares a fig about them, but it is a point of interest that whatever the West prescribes the presumption is that the world should follow, even if its example runs counter to the common good. But that is the way that global liberalism works: in their language it is ‘intervention’ but you naughty cynics might want to refer to it as globalist interference. In the UK, it is not enough to say, “We don’t do lockdown!” because you have no choice. And even were you to add, “because there is no real proof that lockdown really works, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it does more harm than good”, you still do lockdown because this, presumably, is the democratic way?

It is the epitome of irony that given the official mortality figures for coronavirus in the UK, lockdown has become, at least for liberals, not just a law but a religion ~ Woe betide anybody who questions its logic or the controversial efficacy of sticking a piece of cloth on your face.

Western authorities are sensitive to the fact that many of the methods chosen to combat coronavirus have no empirical evidence with which to back them up, which accounts for their pique when other countries try different approaches that are no less effective than their draconian measures and arguably equal or better.

Thus, we find in the world’s press recently an unsavoury little piece in which it is claimed that the coronavirus situation here in Kaliningrad is far in excess of what it is claimed to be.

The article to which I refer was published by a media enterprise which checks out on mediabiasfactcheck as ‘Left’:

“These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward liberal causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage liberal causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy.”

This is the same media source which suppressed information about the coronavirus situation becoming so appalling in the UK that the Co-op was running short of coffins.

I can report that I have been in touch with one of my brothers, who is a carpenter and cabinet maker by trade, and he has verified this shortage. Apparently, a UK government department asked him to convert the fitted kitchens, which he has been making in his living room, into caskets. Lockdown prohibits him from using his workshop so he has to work from home, and anyway because of lockdown no one has jobs and cannot afford to buy kitchens. As he has not sold anything for 12 months, he is only too keen to comply, but I am yet to be convinced that a send-off in a converted kitchen cupboard made from MDF complete with plastic handles will ever catch on. No doubt we shall hear more in due course from the reliable leftist media source that I mention in this article. (I have withheld the name of the media outlet so as to protect the gullible.)

These are the coronavirus case figures for Kaliningrad, 14 March 2021, since the beginning of the pandemic*:
29,294 cases of coronavirus identified in the region
26,863 people have recovered
328 deaths.

*Source: https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/94160-za-sutki-v-kaliningradskoj-oblasti-ot-koronavirusa-umerli-pyat-pacientov [accessed 14 March 2021]

Feature image attribution: Lynn Greyling. https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=84918&picture=cupboard-with-old-iron-amp-kettles

Moving to Russia from the UK

Why I left the UK and moved to Kaliningrad

Published: 20 February 2021

I was sitting in the office of our antique shop. It was a bright, sunny afternoon one Saturday in June. A couple whom we knew as being members of the 1940s’ crowd had just parked their 1935 vehicle on the small forecourt out front. I greeted them as they entered the shop, and they said to me, in a disappointed tone, “We have just heard that the shop is closing; that you are selling up and moving.”

I replied in the affirmative.

After saying how much they would miss the shop and us (which was nice of them), they enquired where I was moving to. Over the past six months I had become an expert at answering this question. Turning away to place an advertisement on the shop’s ad board, I casually replied, “Russia.”

Nine times out of ten, on hearing this, the astounded party would cry: “Russia!”. And some even fell back a few paces, as if thrown from the bombshell I had just dropped.

On this occasion I was deprived of my fun, as the people concerned turned out to be the one in ten: they expressed no astonishment on learning that I was planning to leave ‘our wonderful democracy’, in fact they empathised with me, sounding envious that I was ‘getting out whilst I can’, and saying “we don’t blame you” and “we would like to do the same.”

Mick Hart & Olga Hart in their Vintage & Antiques Emporium — **Mick Hart & Olga Hart in the Vintage & Antiques Emporium**

But 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.

It is true that my wife is Russian, and some people when apprised of this fact took it for granted that this is why I wanted to move to Russia, the logic being that had my wife been Martian I would want to move to Mars or, even more irrational, had my wife come from Wisbech I would want to move to the Fens. She hadn’t, and I didn’t, and I wouldn’t. Would you?

There was, of course, a bit more to it than that.

Moving to Russia from the UK

My wife, Olga, moved to England in 2001. In Russia she had been a qualified teacher of English with 10 years’ teaching experience, but as we know, or are led to believe, educational standards in the UK are far superior than those in any other country, so her qualifications and teaching experience was immediately rendered null and void.

Being a worker not a shirker, within two days of arriving in England, Olga set out to find gainful employment, no matter what it was, and after a couple of weeks managed to obtain the envious position of waitress at d’Parys Hotel in Bedford. Not bad, we thought: from qualified teacher with 10 years’ experience to table servant in two weeks: Welcome to the UK!

Nevertheless, it was a job — a thankless job. No sooner had she started than she fell foul of a bossy young lady with a rank inferiority complex and seriously challenged people skills, whom I would eventually christen ‘Fat Arse’ ~ for reasons that would be quite apparent to you had you been acquainted with her ~ and by extension (heaven forbid!) d’Parys then became known to us and our close circle of friends as DeFatties.

Incidentally, this rebranding of the hotel almost caught us out when my seven-year-old stepson, who liked to be taken to d’Parys for chicken nuggets and chips, blurted out one Sunday afternoon, “I like it here in DeFatties!!”

“DeFatties?” asked Olga’s bemused manager.

“Er yes,”I quickly replied, “Daniel calls it that because I always say that we are off to d’Parys for chicken nuggets and fatty fries, instead of saying chips, and although he’s doing well with his English, he does tend to confuse his words a little.”

But I digress.

During this period of her induction into the side of British life which immigrants rarely anticipate, Olga did manage to find temporary work with an agency that needed tutors with foreign language skills to act as a guide and mentor for overseas students. She juggled both jobs and eventually migrated her waitress skills to what was then d’Parys’ sister enterprise, The Embankment Hotel in Bedford.

The Embankment Hotel, Bedford, UK (December 2019)

Whilst labouring here, in addition to working towards her UK Citizenship ‘exams’, she was also studying for a postgraduate degree at Luton University, and in the meantime landed her first education post in the UK as an advisory teacher for EMASS (Ethnic Minority Achievement Support Service).

This meant that she would have to give up her job in the hotel trade, an outcome which my stepson Daniel heartily disapproved of. His mother becoming a ‘teacher’ was a definite step down from hotel waitressing, with its chicken nuggets, fatty fries and often free ice cream.

Although the EMASS job was a demanding one, Olga enjoyed it. As she said later, she felt as if she was actually doing some good and although it was not that well paid, most importantly, she liked the staff and got on well with her boss.

It was about this time, as Olga passed her QTS (Qualified Teaching Status) exams, that I asked her, whilst she still had chance to change her mind, was being a full-time teacher really what she wanted? I had visited a couple of schools in Kaliningrad, Russia: once to collect Daniel from primary school and, on another occasion, to pick up some documents from the Russian equivalent of a UK comprehensive. On both visits I had been struck by how well behaved and polite the children and students were and how attentive and orderly they were in class compared to their British counterparts.

I was not without experience of what British schools were like. I had a near brush with school culture when I left university. Not having the faintest idea of what I wanted to do in life, I fell prey to what in those days was standard career’s advice, which was to dragoon you into teaching. Reluctantly, I went through the motions, which included three-days’ ‘teaching observation’ at a school of one’s choice ~ I chose The Ferrers School, in Higham Ferrers, Northants*.

This brief introduction was enough to convince me that by not pursuing it further I would escape a career worse than death, and that, remember, was back in the 80s, when although British schools and life in Britain generally was all going terribly wrong at least it had not gone so utterly wrong as to be irredeemable.

But, in spite of all my remonstrations to the opposite, Olga ignored my pleas, held her course and set sail into the Poe-like maelstrom of UK education, reasoning that this was her job, this is what she had been trained for and this is what she wanted to do. Besides, she enjoyed teaching and enjoyed being a teacher.

UK schools like Poe's Maelstrom — Illustration for Edgar Allan Poes’ A Descent into the Maelstrom by Harry Clarke
(Attribution: Harry Clarke, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Soon after qualifying she landed a job at the now no-longer-in-existence Harrowden Middle School, Bedford, and soon after that she stopped enjoying teaching and stopped enjoying being a teacher. This was the UK: being a teacher in the UK was nothing like being a teacher back home in her native country, Russia.

There are so many accounts that I could narrate to you about my wife’s experiences as a teacher in the UK, but I will leave that for a later post. Suffice it to say, it was every bit as bad as I had described it and worse, and it was no coincidence that the first school at which she worked, Harrowden, soon earnt itself the sobriquet of ‘Harrowing’.

If you are familiar to any degree with the UK education system you will not consider it to radical of me to say that UK schools and universities are little more than political indoctrination factories. The educational equivalent of ‘from the cradle to the grave’, but in this instance from primary school to university, the principal function of the education system is to inculcate, without fear of question or second thought, the dubious doctrines of so-called liberal progressiveness, particularly with regard to socially engineered and politically correct enforced multiculturalism and, in more recent years, gender engineering.

PC brainwashing in the UK ~ why Moving to Russia from the UK was a good idea

This, let us refer to it as political paedophilia, filters down from the top, through the career school heads and the ultra-left liberal staff to be consolidated by the biased nature of the texts and writers studied and reinforced by a daily helping of liberal-leftism from the BBC.

At the time that Olga was teaching, the BBC was head-over-orgasm in a tawdry sycophantic fantasy with Barack Obama, pulling out all the stops to cast him in the unlikely role of the Patron Saint of Democracy. When he was ousted in 2017, Trump was immediately framed as Bogeyman Number Two, just behind Vladimir Putin. Although Olga was unwilling to take an active part in this political grooming of youth ~ and refused to point blank ~ she had to endure considerable bullying before her case was heard, viz that she was there to teach English not enforce political views and corrupt the minds of the young.

Be careful whose sweeties they are and who you accept them from!

There are many other problems associated with working as a teacher in the UK, such as inflated bureaucracy, unnecessary paperwork, unpaid overtime etc, but these ills are universal to a good many other jobs and professions. However, one that is exclusive to teaching, and which stems from the same invasive fungus root of ‘liberal progressiveness’, is the continual round of daily abuse that teachers have to contend with both from feral pupils and their belligerent parents.

Every single day in my building, there are egregious acts of student misconduct going unchecked. Teachers are losing hope that things will ever get better, and we are tired. We are expected to be therapists, social workers, substitute parents, punching bags, and outlets for student rage and verbal abuse. Teaching is only a small percentage of what we do anymore.
Extract from Letter from Teacher – Dear JCPS

Once again, I do not intend to expatiate on this here but will leave that subject for a later and more detailed post on the parlous state of the UK’s education system, in which I shall provide specific examples of incidents that my wife experienced whilst teaching.

After 20 years on the frontline of Britain’s schools, my wife had had enough. It was time to call it a day ~ get out. In many ways, this was a great pity, as teaching had been her life. In the UK, in addition to her teaching qualification, she attended and successfully completed many professional development courses and received numerous compliments and accolades from the heads of the institutions in which she had taught, from members of the teaching staff and also from pupils.

Mrs Hart thank you for being a fabulous teacher. Englishman in Kaliningrad. — **The rewarding element of teaching ~ so sad that UK’s schools are the victim of a pernicious ideology**

Throughout her career, she had seen many teachers come and go, both long serving and new: some who had been ‘dreaming of escape’ for years and just could not take it anymore; others, fresh from college, who lasted less than a week before making the brave but timely decision to embark on a different career.

As if an Orwellian education system, lunatic skewed political correctness and state-sponsored delinquency was not enough, another baptism of western malfeasance awaited my wife.

In the time that she had been resident in England there had been several anti-Russian campaigns prosecuted in the extreme by the UK’s media, but in her last three years of living there the establishment and its media’s attempts to trash all things Russian and stir up rampant Russophobia had gone into overdrive, having obviously been prioritised by those who control our governments.

It was no coincidence then, and it is no coincidence now, that the anti-Russian Blitzkrieg had been launched at a time when both the British and American public’s trust in the neoliberal way had resoundingly hit the skids. The last thing that an imploding democracy needs is its 5-year cross-tickers looking elsewhere for the national, traditional values that no longer exist in their own back yard. And UK politicians would do well to remember that making history is a considerably less stable proposition than valuing and celebrating history, not to mention rewriting it or simply giving it away.

Moving to Russia from the UK to escape political correctness

At last, incensed by the liberal propaganda machine and suffocating political correctness, Olga broached the subject to me of getting out ~ of leaving the country.

So, did I agree to go just because I am a fine husband and devoted to my wife? It would be so easy at this point to say yes, and by doing so pedestal myself as a martyr to feelings other than my own, but the truth is that it took almost three years before I, too, decided that I had had enough of the liberal canker that was so malevolently blighting the land that I loved. English born and bred, a legacy Briton with roots ~ my grandmother’s brother fought and died for his country in the First World War; my two uncles also fought in the Second World War, and my father’s brother, who was a Major in the Second World War, was awarded the Military Cross (M.C.) posthumously) ~ it should not have been an easy decision to make, and it wasn’t.

In the interim, whilst I was weighing my decision, I used to joke that the next time I went on holiday to Kaliningrad I would ask for political asylum on the grounds that I could no longer live under the oppressive liberal yoke: open borders, anti-social behaviour, ethnic-linked but never officially admitted-to crimes, increased internet censorship, and all the other politically correct baggage ~ the petty, ridiculous, meaningless stuff that is blown out of all proportion and which saturates our daily life, such as should we have a female Dr Who? how many women are there in the UK’s board rooms? not enough black actors on television, should same sex couples be allowed to adopt children, LGBT issues, gender issues, race issues and aarrrrggghhh!!

And then comes Brexit, with its liberal-motivated back-stabbing, double dealing, wriggling, writhing shiftiness and utter contempt for democracy — the liberal leavers screaming (and don’t they just!) that we must have a ‘people’s vote’ in the name of democracy when by the democratic process that is exactly what we had, it was called a referendum. (Apropos of this, it amused me recently to see the headline in one of the UK’s extreme left newspapers which claimed that if Trump was not impeached it would be a ‘threat to democracy’. Talk about ironic!)

Even though Democracy ~ battered, bloody, tarnished, sullied, bribed, threatened and subjected to all manner of shameful legal illegalities ~ would eventually break free from its criminal leave abductors, thanks primarily to Nigel Farage, by now my mind was made up. We were sailing on a cultural Titanic. It was time to leave the sinking ship

There were some who asked, “Why not got to Spain?” and “Why not go to France”. I suspect my reply was somewhat too obtuse for them: “The EU ~ NGOs ~ Merkel”.

And now, when fellow Brits ask me ‘do I like living in Russia?’ I play their game. Knowing what they want to hear, I reply, in a suitably pained tone: “Why did I do it …?” And as a triumphant smile begins to dawn on their faces, before they can say I told you so I quickly conclude my statement with, “ … leave it so long, I mean. I should have moved ten years’ ago!”

Next (when I have time to write in between beers) ‘What I like about life in Kaliningrad’

I found time: What I like about Kaliningrad!

**All you need is a a way-back machine to be proud to live in Britain again!**

*Note: My school observation took place in the 1980s, so I am not qualified to comment on The Ferrers School today.

Image attributions:
Brainwash tap:
https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Danger—brainwashing/71010.html
Ghoul with sweeties bag:
http://clipart-library.com/img/1687772.png
No to political correctness:
Wikipedista DeeMusil, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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Russia aims for pre-Covid Near Normality

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 333 [10 February 2021]
or Russia’s Near Normal vs the West’s New Normal

Published: 10 February 2021 ~ Russia aims for pre-Covid Near Normality

There are a few weeks to go yet before I can legitimately celebrate my first Covid self-isolation anniversary, but as that peculiar milestone approaches there are other positives that merit raising a glass or two.

Top of the pops must be the worldwide thumbs up for Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine. Following news of its approval by one of the UK’s most prestigious medical journals, the Lancet, begrudgingly the West’s media has been forced to concede that Sputnik V flew first past the finishing post in their international vaccine race, proving against all odds that the classic adage ‘who dares wins’ is still the winning formula.

The ‘bugger, we got it wrong’ factor is almost palpable in hindsight, as the great bastions (I think that’s the right word?) of the neoliberal press twist and turn within themselves to corkscrew a last derogative spin out of what remains of their discredited cynicism, and inevitably in the process come away from it all looking and sounding rather mardy.

With the EU let down somewhat embarrassingly by a vaccine supply bottleneck and other problems with its two main vaccines, one developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, and another by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, let’s hope that neoliberal globalist politics will not get in the way should Angela Merkel’s welcome mat need to be rolled out quickly for Sputnik V. After all, the international nature of a pandemic requires international co-operation.

Pre-Covid Near Normality

Another reason for celebration, but one tempered by caution and common sense, is the understanding that daily coronavirus cases in Russia are down 50 per cent from their peak in mid-December 2020*. With infection numbers said to be travelling in the right direction, downwards, it would appear that in some parts of the country steps are being taken to relax coronavirus restrictions*, a move which represents an entirely different approach to the ‘no light at the end of the tunnel’ endless lockdown scenarios with which my family, friends and the rest of the nation are faced in embattled Britain.

In Moscow, limitations on opening times of pubs, restaurants and clubs are due to be removed (I should say so!), and full-time teaching in universities is to be resumed.

Cheering news for those who have been staunch and consistent critics of the efficacy of masking-up is that based on evidence of increasing immunity the days of mandatory face masks might soon be over in Russia. And not before time.

Recently, I was pulled up by a tram conductress ~ one of those large redoubtable babushkas ~ for being maskless on public transport. I had not forgotten to wear my mask, and neither was I making a formal protest; the face towel had simply chosen to leap from my pocket as I was boarding the tram. I did try to improvise by wrapping my scarf around my mush, but this stout defender of rules are rules was not the sort to take prisoners. Fortunately for me, my wife procured a spare mask from her handbag and honour was seen to be done ~ in other words, I narrowly escaped the humiliation of having my maskless arse kicked off the tram.

Had this happened it would have been a grave injustice, as I, for one, have found wearing a mask to be particularly useful recently, possibly not as a hedge against catching coronavirus but most definitely as an effective face glove, as temperatures in Kaliningrad plummet to minus 20. If the weather carries on like this debunking global warming, I will have no choice but to snip off the fur-lined flaps from the sides of my spare ushanka (hat) and attach two bits of elastic to them.

However, whilst we wait for this to happen, here is a quick recap of the latest response to coronavirus as reported in Russian media:

🤞There is hope in the air that soon we might all be enjoying more air as part of nationwide demasking.

🤞As there are no strict lockdowns in Russia, they will not be lifted, but spirits may still be lifted by relaxing what restrictions there are.

🤞Normal service is beginning to be resumed in the nation’s universities and, most importantly, in the bars, clubs and restaurants.

😁Sputnik V gets 10 out of 10 in the International Vaccine Race and quick to criticise critics 10 out of 10 for egg on their face. And doesn’t it serve them right!

*Sources
https://www.rt.com/russia/513951-measures-pandemic-slowly-receding/
https://www.rt.com/russia/514381-face-masks-ban-possible-lift/

Awesome Königsberg Cathedral Organ Concerts

Culture on a cold evening

Published: 8 February 2021 ~ Awesome Königsberg Cathedral Organ Concerts

We recently received a kind invitation to attend an organ concert at Königsberg Cathedral. This was the first time that I had been to a concert there, and I was keen to discover if the sound of the cathedral’s pipe organ was as impressive as it looked.

With temperatures outside falling to as low as -17 degrees, we were surprised, happily surprised, to discover that in spite of the capacious size of the cathedral it was warm and comfortable. For a cathedral that had been reduced to a shell in the Second World War by RAF bombing and subsequently and painstakingly restored, the atmosphere and ambience is superb. Lighting is important in any environment, but particularly so in exhibition and concert halls, and here it cannot be faulted.

The colonnades, sturdy walls and Gothic vaulted ceiling served the acoustics well, the hard surfaces reflecting the quieter notes distinctly and the deeper tones with generous resonance. The organ rolled, rumbled and reverberated, the multiple dense sounds thundering spectacularly from numerous points within the buildings chambers.

I will admit that I am not much of an opera aficionado, but on this occasion I felt that the dulcet tones of the singer complimented and contrasted perfectly with the rich and varied tones of the pipe organ.

At the close of the concert, we chose to walk around the back of the cathedral, past Kant’s tomb. My wife, Olga, rightly commented that here, outside and within the cathedral, you can still feel the spirit of the city of Königsberg.

This was so true, and I felt rather guilty that I had not visited the cathedral more frequently since moving to Kaliningrad.

I confess that since the death of our friend Victor Ryabinin in the summer of 2019, I have been purposefully avoiding the cathedral and the surrounding area. The cathedral and Kneiphof island are only a stone’s throw away from Victor Ryabinin’s former art studio and as such constituted the epicentre of his cultural and historical world. There were so many memories that I did not want to face, and so many more, like this evening’s, which he may once have been a part of but now never will ~ at least in person.

But you cannot hide forever, and I was glad that I had agreed to go to the concert.

Even in the falling temperatures and with noses like beetroots, Olga managed to snap off some photos of the cathedral on a cold winter’s night, which capture the magical quality of the external lighting and how it is used to imaginative effect.

Brrrr: It was time to rattle back home on the number 5 tram and, once indoors, make with the cognac!

Königsberg Cathedral Organ Concerts:
Königsberg Cathedral website: http://sobor39.ru/

Concert details for 6th February 2021

Titular organist of the Cathedral, laureate of international competitions, Mansur Yusupov

Soloist of the Kaliningrad Regional Philharmonic, laureate of international competitions, Anahit Mkrtchyan (soprano)

Music and song featured works from the following composers:

A. Vivaldi
A. Scarlatti
G. F. Handel
J. Pergolesi
J. S. Bach
V. Gomez
M. Lawrence,
A. Babajanyan

It Always Snows in Russia!

… and sometimes it doesn’t

Published: 22 January 2021 ~ It always snows in Russia

Before moving here, whenever I mentioned to a fellow Brit that I was visiting Kaliningrad, I would be asked, “Where’s that?” As soon as I had educated them geographically, among the predictable responses based on prejudice and cliché, an old stalwart was, “Russa! Brrr, it’s cold out there …”

Try as I might to explain to them that since Kaliningrad was the westernmost point of Russia the climate was not that much different to the UK’s, the stock images of frozen rivers, ushanka hats, voluminous fur coats and, of course, snow ~ lots and lots of snow ~ proved impossible to shovel away.

It always snows in Russia!

When I first came to Kaliningrad in winter 2000, there was snow, and lots of it (see Kaliningrad First Impression), and I do recall seeing a tower-mounted digital thermometer somewhere in the city giving a temperature reading of minus 27 degrees. Harbouring the same stereotypical notions of Russia’s salient attributes, this first encounter pleased me no end, providing me with photographic evidence to confirm what Brits had always known, that Russia was cold and that it snowed a lot.

There was more snow to Russify my experience when I travelled to Kaliningrad in 2002. We entered the exclave via Lithuania, where it was also snowing heavily, and the journey by train across the snow-bound wastelands was all that the heart could desire.

This stereotype was to melt away, however, in the winter of 2004. This was the year that a new-found friend of ours looking for adventure and a woman, decided to accompany us on our Christmas trip to Kaliningrad. He knew that it was cold (it’s cold out there in Russia), and his knowledge had been bolstered by the tales that I had told and the photographs that I had shown him. He was excited, and set about preparing himself for Siberia, buying up large stocks of woolies, U.S. military surplus coats and the all-important long johns. His suitcases were fat and heavy.

Who said that it always snows in Russia?

Not disappointed, in the first three days of our arriving in Kaliningrad, the temperature had dropped well below those in the England we had left and, more importantly, there was snow, lots of swirling snow. And then, quiet suddenly, the mercury shot up the thermometer tube, the snow melted, the rain came, and it stayed that way for a month. As I believe I have said before, there is a world of difference between Kaliningrad in the winter rain and Kaliningrad in the snow. Those who live here will know what I mean.

Last year, winter 2019-2020, was like everything else that year, miserable. It was, literally, wishy washy: a winter of muck and puddles.

So, how refreshing this winter to see some snow. It has not been that heavy, but it has been persistent and cold enough for successive falls to settle and to transform the city and regional landscape into a childhood memory of how winters used to be.

Oh, but it’s alright for me, or so my critics tell me. I don’t have to go anywhere. I don’t have to scrape the ice and snow off the car in the morning and then brave the roads on my way to work. On the contrary, I can sit at home, look out of the window and admire the Christmas-card view. And they are right. But I am unrepentant and remain that way. There have to be some advantages in getting starry, and this is one of the few.

Come rain, snow, hail or shine my wife goes out whatever, and this is as it should be. Someone has to do the shopping. And she also has to obtain those much-needed photos for Arsebook, which I can then requisition and use here for my blog.

Russia! It always snow there!

To bring things up to date, for the past several days or more it has been snowing lightly, and today, at the time of writing, it was at it again. Temperatures are low enough to ensure that what comes down stays put; just enough for picturesque, but not enough for concern.

This morning, the scene at the back of the house through the patio door was wonderful. It had snowed quite a lot during the night and the rooftops of the old German houses all had snow on them, some in total, some in places, and the fruit trees had become crystalline, petrified, the smaller branches and twigs very nearly pure white and the trunks and boughs though not completely covered with snow were artistically contrasted by what had collected upon them.

Our pear tree was the most wonderous thing. One side of the trunk was peppered with a white drift of snow and the rest, the smaller branches and twigs, coated into nobly clumps, so that taken as a whole it resembled a giant cauliflower. The rest of the garden had all but disappeared, replaced by a smooth white plateau, except for the Buddha, and he was wearing a snow-white hat in the unmistakeable shape of a British policeman’s helmet. Wherever did he get it from?

Kaliningrad Buddha wearing a snow hat. It always snows in Russia! — No he is not a silly Buddha!

Later, as I was stood in the kitchen making a cup of tea, my eyes caught movement and lots of it through the gap between two houses, which for most of the year is obscured by leaves and foliage. All I could see was different coloured objects darting hither and thither, and then it dawned on me that without the obstructing verdure the small park across the road was visible and what I was witnessing was the congregation of numerous families, mothers with their children, and that the different coloured objects, some zipping across the plateau and others sailing down the banks from every conceivable angle, were children on their sledges.

Children sledging. It always snows in Russia! — **Children on sledges, Kaliningrad, Russia, January 2021**

Olga, who walked through the city centre yesterday, said how delightful it was to see children with their parents playing snowballs and whooshing about on sledges. It was a good old-fashioned traditional family sight, and it reminded her of her youth. It reminded me of mine as well. Whenever there was snow, which became less and less frequent in England as the years rolled by, we children would hammer each other with snowballs. We also had a sledge, a one-of-its-kind made from the light alloy parts of a scrapped Flying Fortress, a B17 bomber, salvaged from Polebrook’s United States’ wartime aerodrome. What happened to this culturally interesting and nowadays valuable item? One of my brothers, with considerably less acumen than myself for the singularity of historical artefacts, deciding that he would clean out one of the family barns after a forty-year hiatus, skipped the sledge and kept the junk. Oh, don’t worry, we take every opportunity to remind him of his folly, in no uncertain terms.

From the kitchen to the living room, looking out of the window at the Konigsberg house opposite that has never had anything done to it at least since perestroika, I noted that the two toilets lying in the back garden ~ where else? ~ had become snow toilets, a rare sight indeed, but not as exclusive or controversial as the giant phallus, complete with two enormous snowballs, that some imaginative and enterprising young men would erect a day or two later somewhere in Kaliningrad.

This made the news, and, of course, Facebook. Personally, we had a bit of fun with this, by which I mean we conducted an experiment. Olga posted the media story to Facebook, and then we sat back ready to compare the different reactions from Russian commentators and those in Britland. As we anticipated, the Russian response was one of condemnation and disgust, whilst the Brits reacted in a flamboyant spirit that ranged from artistic criticism to unbridled glee.

Me? I just felt sorry for the virtue of virgin snow, but I consoled myself with the thought that outside of our circle something like this would never be condoned in the UK for fear that it would offend the delicate sensibilities of feminists, race-grievance wardens and the entire woke community: a giant phallus made of snow! Sexist! Racist!

Snowballs!