Category Archives: VISITOR’S GUIDE to KALININGRAD

Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?

Rummaging in the Polish Revision Centre

16 November 2024 ~Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?

The answer to the question is ‘yes’. Yes, it is possible to access Kaliningrad at the Polish-Kaliningrad border and vice-versa. The only caveat is that before you go, stock up on patience.

Not too many months back, the bus from Kaliningrad going to Gdansk was held up at the Polish border for as long as it took to miss a flight at Gdansk ~ a plane-missing seven hours in fact. Whilst this particular case may be the exception to the rule, lengthy delays are not, and in response to this and other inconveniences generally assumed unnecessary, and some infer deliberately obstructive, a petition has been launched, which you, dear reader, can access here: Against the intolerable conditions on the Russian-Polish border (Kaliningrad)! {Note: to read this in English, you will need to click on ‘Translate’ and change the language from German into English.}

Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?

Not all border crossings are as bad as the last one you experienced, but some can sometimes be worse, and some can be worse but interesting. Take a crossing I made earlier this year, for example.

We cleared the formalities at the Russian border without let or hinderance and trundled off with great expectations, fifteen of us in all, onto Polish territory.

There were no other vehicles in transit, only our bus, and the usual procedures went smoothly enough. We were gawped at, our credentials were examined, we had our mugshots taken (again!) and, after 30 minutes, we were back on the bus.

We took our seats; brum, brum (that’s the sound of the bus starting up); and off we went.

Traditionally, this is the point on the journey when, with the inquisition over, the invisible stays shared by all release themselves collectively, letting relaxation spill palpably out in a sigh-giving rush of relief. The advent of this release is customarily celebrated by proper professional travellers in possession of proper professional travelling cases with a dignified mass unzipping, whilst those of us who own neither proper cases nor dignified travelling standards have to be content with rustling through our carrier bags. The end result is the same, however, stress being given the elbow, it’s time for comfort eating.

Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open?

I had just begun to tuck into my penultimate cheese sandwich when, ay up mother!; what’s going on? Instead of hitting the open road, our bus was being siphoned off into a fenced and gated compound.

“Ay up?” I thought again. Well, you would think that, wouldn’t you.

I cannot say for certain whether it was my fault or not. Perhaps I want to believe it was for the sake of an impudent ego. But the question kept repeating itself: Were we locked away inside this compound, sitting in front of this big, this bland, this ominous, non-descript building because of something I said?

When the clam-faced female in the Polish border office fired “Cigarettes? Alcohol?” at me, my facetious reply had been, “Yes please?” And then when she did not get the joke (What joke exactly would that be?) and barked the questions again, I had waived them away with an Englishness, simpering yet polite, which Leslie Phillips would have been proud of, but possibly she was not.

Alcohol and tobacco. Mick Hart declares nothing at the Russian-Polish border

Cigarettes? Alcohol? Never touch the stuff!!

Whoever was or was not to blame, there we sat on the bus, and we sat there for a bad 10 minutes, us and this dull, brick, window-less building.

There was something about our situation and the building confronting us that nudged my imagination.

‘Work sets you free’. No, the sign at the entrance to the compound did not state that, but what exactly did ‘Revision Centre’ mean?

The bland building gave nothing away. Indeed, there is nothing much more to say about its external aspect, except that high upon the roof it had a prominent funnel-shaped air vent.

I could not see clearly as the sun was in my eyes, but I am almost willing to swear on anything other than a stack of beer bottles that for one second I saw, or bore the conviction that I saw, poised at the mouth of the air vent, the shadows of two men. They were crouching down at the sides of the vent, leaning in towards it, and each had something in their hands, something that looked like canisters. I had just begun to focus on the labels of these canisters when a shard of light leapt out of the sun temporarily blinding me. Through the eclipsing halo that followed, and with the bus now moving in reverse and altering my perspective, the words on the label were reduced to a blur, and all that I could make of them was a capital ‘Z’ at one end and a capital ‘B’ at the other.

How to Get to Kaliningrad from UK – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Our bus had not entered the building by the floor-to-apex roller door in front of which we had initially parked. It had taxied around to the back of the building, where it slowly disappeared through a similar portal at that end. Creeping at a snail’s pace, it inched its way gradually in, permitting me to regard at will the character of the chamber into which we were being swallowed. We were saying goodbye to the outside world; one hoped temporarily.

We were passing into an alley, just the right width for the size of the bus. To the left of us was a platform, solid, broad and deep, not unlike one you would loiter upon whilst waiting for a train. It was not the height of the vehicle’s windows, but just a little below it.

At the back of this platform at regular intervals were two or three large doors. They were big doors, metal doors, with handles of such prodigious proportions that the only way to open them would surely be to enlist the brawn of two thick Polish men with arms that did not fit. In a corner close by the doors stood a bag that seemed familiar. It looked like one I had seen before on the lorry of KG Smith & Son, Northamptonshire’s premiere coal merchants.

Until now the bus had been trickling forward, but it suddenly drew to a shuddering halt. The driver got up from his seat, made an announcement I did not catch and opened the doors of the vehicle. Before you could say Polish sausage, especially before you could say it in Polish, a man in paramilitary uniform had bounded up the steps and standing at the front of the bus, all officious-like ~ did I hear someone say ‘full of piss and importance’? ~ was presumably ordering us all to get off. Simultaneously, a larger man armed with a big black dog had stationed himself strategically next to the door at the side of the bus, from which the young and old, couples ~ some with children, two or three middle-aged gents and a peculiar sort of Englishman with a grey and straggly beard were struggling to alight laden down with their bags and chattels.

The platform to which this innocuous group had descended was considerably narrower than that on the opposite side. Folk were bumping into each other as, ‘Roust! Roust! Schnell! Schnell!’, they were ordered to take their travelling bags from the hold beneath the bus.

Nobody quite seemed to know what it was that was expected of them. A big man, looking not unlike Hermann Goering’s brother, had already started rummaging through one of the passenger’s bags. He had the item perched on a table placed at the side of the wall and was going through the contents as if he was pulling the entrails out of a late-for-Christmas turkey. He looked much more like a TV villain than a man with respect for the public.

Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open. Yes, but watch out for the Polish caveman!

Hermann’s brother had a very loud voice, which he used to good effect. Stopping in mid-rummage, with his hands inside some lady’s lingerie, he bellowed at the meek, the innocent and inoffensive, over whom he lauded ultimate power and whose only crime today was that they wanted to get from A to B. Obediently, one by one, they fell silently in line.

During this demonstration of ‘I’m a man in a uniform’, two other guards had joined the jamboree: a flint-eyed woman in a boiler suit spoilt by its insignia, and one of those strutting cockerel types: ‘I’ve got tattoos on my neck, and I’ve come to throw my weight about’.

The carnival commenced: The man who had the sniffer dog was sniffing; the cockerel was in and out of the bus as if someone had knocked him off his perch; the flint-eyed thing was glaring, ‘Look at those eyes! Those eyes! Those eyes!’; and the mountain man with a skinhead haircut who went by the name of Hermann’s Brother was rifling through one’s personals as if he was mixing cement.

His brawny arms were in there, his paddle hands a-swirling. He had obviously learnt his cultured trade from washing his pants in a tub.

Fortunately for me, no such ignominy would besmirch my person. I was, as they say, travelling light. I only had a carrier bag, in which I had placed my laptop and the sad remains of a pack-up meal prepared for me by my wife.

Most of what had been packed for me, I had already scoffed. All that remained was a lonely sandwich, lolling half in and half out of one of those thin plastic boxes routinely used in supermarkets for the display and sale of cakes.

Although I was not in the least bit hungry, having eaten just minutes before, the thought of the Polish strangler rinsing his mitts about my sandwich, spurred me into action. Better to eat the sandwich now than have it used like a paper towel hanging next to the gents’ urinals. The problem was that fatty arms was getting through those bags like Joe Stink from the Secret Service, and the combination of cheese and bread being not the easiest thing to masticate resulted in a situation of alarming prematurity, an unfortunate occurrence which is not entirely limited to such incidental matters as love, life and death but also, or so it would seem, the crucial business of crossing borders.

Thus, when the big you-know-what turned to me and barked, “Cigarettes? Alcohol?”, it was an effort of no small magnitude for me to reply, “Yes please”.

He glared at me contemptuously ~ well can you blame him really ~ and pulling his girt big shoulders back in a show of manly authority (he had done the same with the 80-year-old standing frail and tired in front of me) said slowly and precisely, “We will wait until you have stopped eating, then you and I will talk!”

““Oh, really, what about?” I spluttered, choking on my sandwich. “The weather? Football? Religion? Politics? ~ er, no, anything but politics.”

The sandwich safely swallowed, he sang the refrain again: “Cigarettes?” and “Alcohol?”

Do you know what I think? I think that he was asking me whether I had such items concealed about my person or stashed inside my laptop. When I answered in the negative, first he looked suspicious then profoundly disappointed.

I took a swig of mineral water. He probably thought the alcohol was hidden in that bottle ~ as if! ~ and that I had hurriedly eaten the cigarettes between two slices of bread. Whatever it was he didn’t know, and I think it was a lot, he was not a happy man, which is hardly surprising really, looking and acting the way he did. But he wasn’t finished yet.

He glanced furtively down at my little one ~ I mean at the bag that I was carrying ~ and a tiny ray of hope shone briefly through his cold pork pies, though it was tinged with disbelief by the answer he anticipated but did not want to hear.

“No big baggage?” he asked.

I could, of course, have just said ‘no’, thus putting him out of his misery, but Bernard Manning answered for me, “Just the wife,” said Bernard, “and she’s at home at present.”

Hermann Rummage pursed his lips, shuffled, scowled and then dismissed me. I climbed back onto the bus.

Ten minutes later, no contraband having been found, we were out on the open road again, steaming towards Gdansk: the young and the old, couples ~ some with children, two or three middle-aged gents and a peculiar sort of Englishman with a grey and straggly beard.

Those lovely chaps at the Polish border, I mused, stood more chance of finding a rational thought in a liberal’s head than illicit fags and booze on the God-fearing lot on this bus, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it. Who of us can say with any degree of certainty what goes on in the cranky minds of liberals?

Yet the trees were green, the sky was blue, and every cloud has a silver lining: after all, we hadn’t been gassed, just inconvenienced and harassed.

It was just another sourpuss day at Checkpoint Proper Charlie.

How to Get to Kaliningrad from UK – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Image attributions
Outline of a building: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Outline-vector-of-a-house/3503.html
Moonshiner: https://loc.getarchive.net/media/effects
Caveman statue: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/free-download.php?image=caveman-statue&id=161215
Hearts: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Hearts-for-Mom/8942.html

Copyright © 2018-2024 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Kaliningrad flea market has moved to a new location

They said it would happen, and it has

4 November 2024 ~ Kaliningrad flea market has moved to a new location

The Kaliningrad flea market that has occupied the pavement area close to the Central Market, and in more recent years spilled over onto a ribbon of disused ground bordering the moat of the Wrangel Tower, has officially moved.

For me, as I dare say for many, the relocation of this sprawling and excitingly chaotic masterpiece of antiques, collectables, curios and junk, marks the end of an era. Not that we did not know that it was coming; plans to move the market on have been in the pipeline for years. Indeed, I wrote about the proposal in a 2022 blog post: What makes Kaliningrad Flea Market a Junk Buyer’s Paradise?

Kaliningrad flea market moves to a new location

We all know that nothing stays the same forever; Königsberg can testify to that. Nevertheless, knowing that change is imminent rarely compensates when it comes to pass.

There will be some, of course, who will breath a sigh of relief that most days, but on a Saturday in particular, they will at last be able to stroll without let or hindrance along the sidewalk next to the Wrangel Tower instead of running a zigzag gauntlet through sandwiched lines of dealers’ stalls agog with curious clutter-buggers.

I, for one, however, will miss the incipient urge whenever I visit the city’s Central Market (food market) to detour to the ‘junk’ stalls to see what they have on offer that I cannot live without, such as an old tin bucket, for example.

Mick Hasrt with his tin bucket bought from Kaliningrad flea market

There have been occasions when travelling by bus on route to somewhere else that I have accidentally alighted at the flea market. Of course, I have only gone to look, not to buy. So imagine how surprised I have been on arriving home to discover that whilst I was only looking a Soviet belt, a Königsberg ashtray, a kitsch ornament and an old German helmet have somehow jumped into my shopping bag.

Kaliningrad flea market has moved

I have not yet had the chance to work out which bus route one should take to get to the market’s new location. Gaidara Street 8 is its new address; a piece of land, I am told, that lies opposite the bridge on the way to Sovetsky Prospekt.

At the time of writing (4 November 2024), the market is not yet functioning. By all accounts, the site is vast, but a great deal needs to be done to bring it up to snuff, to make it seller- and buyer-friendly. News is, however, according to the market organisers, that the site will be ready and the market up and running in a matter of days not weeks.

Now, where did I put my Kaliningrad map? What have I done with my bucket?

Telegraph in Svetlogorsk Good Coffee Unique Art

On route to originality

14 October 2024 ~ Telegraph in Svetlogorsk Good Coffee Unique Art

Contrary to received wisdom, it is not always necessary or indeed advisable for travellers to stick to the beaten track. Verily, by doing so the chances of missing out on some hidden cultural gem or other, or hitherto unencountered esoteric and unusual experience are magnified manyfold.

Indubitably, there are some parts of the world, some sinister and dubious places, where keeping to the beaten track is less a question of tourism than an action guided by common sense in the interests of survival.

Take London, for example, that patchwork quilt of small towns wherein no boundaries lie. One minute you, the traveller, can almost believe what the travel guides tell you, that London is, indeed, one of the world’s most civilised cities, the next, because you strayed from the beaten track, that you are up S*it Creek without a paddle in the Black Hole of Calcutta. Is it Africa or Pakistan? No point leaving the beaten track to be beaten in your tracks. Best to beat a hasty retreat.

Telegraph in Svetlogorsk

Enrichments of this nature do not apply, thank goodness, to a small secluded backstreet in the seaside town of Svetlogorsk on Russia’s Baltic Coast. Not officially known as ‘Off the Beaten Track’, Street Ostrovskogo (‘Off the Beaten Track’ is easier to say) is a quaint, leafy, meandering avenue that wends its way from Street Oktyabr’skaya (it’s easier just to say ‘Off the ‘Beaten Track’).

In Svetlogorsk, the streets run off from a large, open public space in the centre of the town, which, during clement months, overflow with tourist’s eagerly taking advantage of the outside drinking and eating areas. One of the streets that travels from this lively, bustling hub is Ulitsa Oktyabr’skaya. It is the street you will need to walk to get you to the Telegraph café.

The route is a rewarding one. It takes you past a Svetlogorsk landmark, the 1908 Art Nouveau water tower, past the town’s pretty Larch Park with its copy of Hermann Brachert’s ‘Water Carrier’ sculpture ~ the original is in the Brachert Museum ~ past my favourite and recently renovated neo-Gothic house and onto the Hartman Hotel.

To say that you cannot miss Ulitsa Ostrovskogo would be a silly thing to say, because if your sense of direction is anything like mine … Sorry? Oh, it isn’t. Well then just look for a clothes shop on your right. You won’t be able to miss it, because your sense of direction is better than mine and also because in the summer months some of its garments are hung outside in order to make the shop more visible, and besides it is located within one of those charming old German edifices that have at their gable end an all-in-one veranda-balcony glazed and enclosed in wood. This then is the junction at which you turn for Telegraph. This is the end of the beaten track.

Halfway along this quiet backwater, at the point where streets meet chevron-fashion, stand a permanent cluster of wooden market stalls. These are something you cannot miss also, especially those with roofs, which give them the quaint appearance of modest garden summer houses. Here, artisans working in various materials ~ leather, metalware and ceramics ~ together with artists of paint and palette, regularly gather to sell their goods. The range and novelty of their handmade products really are surprising and the quality of them consistently high.

Olga Hart & Lilya Bogatko in Svetlogorsk

Olga Hart with Pavel Timofeev in Svetlogorsk

Lilya Bogatko with Olga Hart selling designer ceramics in Svetlogorsk

The location of these stalls could not be better placed, since a little further on the left-hand side, you have reached your destination ~ Svetlogorsk’s former telegraph building, resurrected in recent years as an outlet for arts and crafts, as a coffee shop and art gallery.

Telegraph in Svetlogorsk

In addition to selling coffee of various kinds~ and very good they are too! ~ Telegraph deals in assorted teas, other delicious drinks, a seductive range of desserts, irresistable homemade cakes and pastries you’ll want to leave home for. It is also a cornucopia of distinctive handcrafted wares, including vintage and designer clothes, prints, postcards, vinyl records, decorative items for the home, and original works from local artists.

Its comfy settee and low-slung armchairs, into which one’s body readily sinks, plus the light and airy but cozy ambience, make for a very pleasant environment in which to relax, unwind and shop. If you cannot find a gift in here, something special to treat yourself with or a Baltic souvenir, then there’s definitely something wrong with you.

Interior view of Svetlogorsk Telegraph art cafe

An introduction to two of Telegraph’s artists

https://vk.com/album55604070_101203993
Lilya Bogatko works in the field of applied arts, designing and decorating ceramic goods with stylised naturalistic images. She prefers to work in monochrome, consigning her line-drawn black motifs to high opacity white grounds on tableware and ornaments. Her distinctive illustrations, many of which have a gentle charm that could grace a children’s storybook, possess an ethereal quality. Indeed, a fair proportion of her subjects, be they man or beast, float above the earth; they take to the air with wings. When her subjects are not animals, real or mythological, or people literally raised to a higher level of spirituality ~ have wings will fly ~ her stock-in-trade motifs are replications of Kaliningrad landmarks, such as the now defunct and liquidated former House of Soviets, the refurbished Zalivino lighthouse overlooking the water’s edge of the Curonian Lagoon and Königsberg Cathedral.

Based in St Petersburg, Lilya is a regular visitor to Kaliningrad and the Kaliningrad region, from which she derives inspiration and consolidates her sales outlets.

https://vk.com/album-30057230_195486413
Pavel Timofeev has an arts and crafts workshop at Telegraph in Svetlogorsk, where he produces, among other things, leather purses and wallets, men’s and women’s leather bracelets with inscriptions on request, ornamented key rings and a range of fashion jewellery.

His speciality is selling watches with watch-face customisation. The face design can be made to order, with the option of a leather strap in traditional classic or novel styles. The straps can also be personalised.

For examples of Pavel’s watches, please refer to the carousel that appears below this profile:

The room opposite Telegraph’s ‘sitting room’ is its designated art gallery, a well-lit exhibition space with enough wall and floor capacity to showcase umpteen works of local artists. On the occasion of my visit, the art form most conspicuous was assemblages ~ 3D compositions created by taking disparate pieces of whatever it is the artist has scavenged and then arranging or assembling them on a backboard of some description so that the configuration that ensues presents itself as a pictorial image or, from impressions of the whole or its parts, invites interpretation.

Art exhibition assemblages Telegraph Svetlogorsk

Victor Ryabinin, our artist friend from Königsberg, was the man who introduced me to assemblages. His interest in the potential of this technique as a medium for symbolism had him unearthing whatever he could from the remains of Königsberg’s past and putting the pieces together so as to excite in the observer a quest to uncover meaning, either the artist’s or their own.

Since Victor was profoundly immersed in and also profoundly disturbed by the eradication of Königsberg, the assemblages that he built from the remnants of destruction often convey a personal sense of irredeemable loss, an inescapable sadness, a wistful but unrequited need for a less tragic end to the city in which he loved to live and which he loved. Victor travelled outside of Königsberg more often and further than Immanuel Kant, but he possibly left it less than Kant or anyone else for that matter.

By contrast, the assemblages gathered together under Telegraph’s roof evinced none of this solemnity. They danced a confident riot of bright, effusive colours, orchestrating lively, often comic, images and energising expressive shapes, some fondly reminiscent of the enchanting kind of illustrations adorning the pages of story books beloved of old-time children, others cleverly more obtuse or playfully cryptographic.

A coloiurful and fun assemblage for sale at Telegraph in Svetlogorsk

In vivacity of colour and their three-dimensional character the assemblages reminded me of the kind of shop-front sign boards popular in the Edwardian era, and there was much at work in their composition to insinuate a vintage charm. But the incorporation of parts taken from obsolete engines, metal handles, steel rivets, goggles and the like, plus paraphernalia of various kinds possessing mechanical provenance and rigged to suggest articulation, disclosed a contemporary steampunk influence. Intriguing, all bewitching and also fun to boot, take any one of these assemblages, hang them in your home and if until now you have felt that your home lacked a conversation piece, trust me when I tell you that this omission has been rectified.

Rock music guitar player assemblage at Telegraph in Svetlogorsk

In the Svetlogorsk we know today, cafes, bars and restaurants and places of interest to view and visit exist in appreciable numbers, but every once in a while one stands out in the crowd: Telegraph is that one.

It may have exchanged its wires and needles for coffee and for art, but the function of the historic building as a centre of communication lives on in its role as a meeting place, and the message that it telegraphs couldn’t be more accommodating: Sit a while, relax, enjoy a beverage and a piece of cake and let your sensibilities flow with the positive vibes that emanate from all that you see and all that you feel around you and from what can be bought and taken home, because the chances are that whatever it is that tickles your fancy in Telegraph, you will never find another like it; the chances are it will be unique.

After browsing, binging, basking and borrowing (borrowing from your friends to pay for the coffee and art, “I’ll see you alright, later …”), especially on those days when the craft-sellers’ stalls are active, when you finally head off home, you will say to yourself with satisfaction, what an enjoyable day I have had. I am so pleased to have visited Telegraph, and it’s all because of that Mick Hart, urging us to get up off of our … ah … to get off of the beaten track.

Telegraph ~ as described on Telegraph’s VK site:
https://vk.com/telegraph39

Telegraph ~ social and cultural space of Svetlogorsk.

Telegraph is a public and cultural space (a centre of urban communities), created by city residents for city residents.

We do not have a director, but we have a working group. We are a community of participants with common goals and values.

Telegraph is located on Ostrovskogo Street in house No. 3 (next to the Post Office).

There are four spaces here:

– a coffee shop (here you can try aromatic fresh coffee)
– a living room with an exhibition of works by craftsmen (you can buy local handmade souvenirs)
– a gallery (local artists hold exhibitions here)
– workshops (pottery and carpentry)
– a terrace and a lawn with the longest bench in the city.

Our space regularly hosts meetings of various communities. Any participant can propose an idea for their own project and find like-minded people who will provide the necessary support.

Telegraph exists outside of politics, outside of religion. We are open to new acquaintances/initiatives.

The Telegraph project team deals with city projects and development issues.

Co-working ‘Thoughts’ (Aptechnaya, 10); keys from the barista in the coffee shop; additional conditions by phone +79114839050

We look forward to your visit.

Hotel Mercure Gdansk reasons to stay there!

Hotel Mercure Gdansk a Welcome Oasis

23 June 2024 ~ Hotel Mercure Gdansk reasons to stay there!

You may recall, if you were listening to me (“Now, pay attention, as I will be asking questions later!” ) that returning from the UK to Kaliningrad, I made the fatal mistake of booking via Booking.com the apartment Tawerna Rybaki in Old Town Gdansk. To all extents and purposes, the apartment never existed, and I was left on the streets of Gdansk, me and my faithful laptop, with nowhere to lay my head for the night.

The subsequent hunt for alternative accommodation was a long and arduous one, eventually culminating, not before time, at Gdansk’s Mercure Hotel.

Although I appreciate that my positive affirmation of the Mercure’s finer points may be tinged by the fact that at the time I was desperate and ‘any port in a storm’ had become my alma mater (original use of the term), in reviewing the Mercure Hotel, I have attempted to put the object of my misfortunes, the bogus Rybaki apartment, as far behind me as I can and write with objectivity.

So, here we go: My first reaction to the Mercure was “Oh, it’s a tower block”; my second, “It looks a tad upmarket for a chap who just wants a bed for the night”; my third, “Bugger this for a game of soldiers, I have been walking around for hours. I need to book in somewhere and head off to a bar!”

Getting the feel of the place

On the other side of its perpetual revolving door, the Mercure’s interior is TARDISial. It’s grand, it’s palatial, it’s swish, say your senses, but once you have checked in and taken a second look your senses qualify your first impression with ‘it is also rather passe’.

The lobby, indeed the Mercure in its entirety, has a distinctly 1980s’ look and a period feel to go with it. It is not faded and jaded, on the contrary, the hotel could not be more 1980s than if it was still the 1980s. And yet, it is not unfair to say that the swish has lost its swashbuckle.

Nevertheless, there is enough of the right thing going on in its aircraft hangar interior to strike the gong of plush. The vast space is broken down into open-plan units: seating areas with big, spongey recliners, coffee-table resting points, unusual modernist sculptures, a shimmering shiny floor, downlighters, uplighters, pendulous globular basket lampshades, and, ah yes, at the back of the room, that all-important traveller’s requisite the hotel lounge and bar. Don’t leave home without one!

It had been a long day for me when I booked in to the Mercure, and I was dying to use the loo, so I was not entirely enamoured when I was given a plastic card instead of a good old-fashioned key. First off, I shoved it in the hole, and it did not work the lift; then I nipped quickly off to the toilet, and it did not work the toilet lock, then when I rushed up to my room in it went and opened the door, ruining whatever chance I had of changing my pants and complaining. Just in the nick of plastic-card time!

My opinion of the interior downstairs décor, that it was 1980s, was given a serious leg up when the lift went ching on the hotel’s sixth floor. In contrast to the capacious lobby, the sixth-floor landing and long, long corridor was a little Alice in Wonderland. I felt as if I had sipped from Alice’s ‘Drink Me!’ bottle, and now my head was touching the ceiling.

The imposing and all-suffusing chocolate browns of the carpet, which match the tones of the doors, the walls and the ceiling, and which are brought into intimate proximity thanks to the carpet’s thick and heavy mercurial globular patterns and their blotting paper absorption of the well-intentioned low-lit lighting, has 1980s stamped right through them like a piece of seaside rock, and the rooms, or at least my room, completed that turn of the retro page.

Turning back the page need not be disagreeable if, like me, you find that direction infinitely more appealing than moving with the times. Thus, although the tones of the hotel room, at least the room in which I was staying, followed the lead of the communal areas in their 1980s’ love of chocolate, the amenities therein neither added to nor subtracted from the context of backdated.

There was everything you would expect to get from a hotel of this scale and calibre. It came in spades and with enough variation to seduce you into believing that it offered more than you had expected and all with an extra air of luxury tinged with a personal touch.

The lighting alone was sufficient to do this to you. Ambient lighting, lighting for reading, mood lighting, soft lighting and lighting to get you in the mood ~ multiple combinations of it and all at the flick of a switch ~ or two.

Not the Hotel California, hence no mirrors on the ceiling, for which I was truly grateful. For I would not wish to inflict on myself a view of myself like that first thing in the morning! But the room did have its fair share of mirrors, including, above the convenient desk, a nice, big, long, rectangular one, which looks a bit like a telly? I could not tell you for certain as I have not used one for years.

The seating was also variegated to suit every type and class of bum. And there was an adequate wardrobe with sliding doors and adequate chests with sliding drawers. And a bed with a firm and comfortable mattress, on which to sleep and what have you.

The 1980s was not so primitive as to exclude the presence of an ensuite bathroom, and neither, I am glad to report, was my 21^st century room. It had a credible bath and shower room and even contained a toilet, which was just as well in the circumstances, as a tower-block hotel with a lavvy out back in the yard would be mighty inconvenient.

Ah, excuse me, I almost forgot, there was also a safe to put things in, if only you knew how to use it (I believe you put your bits inside, then close the door and lock it Mick.) (Quite so.), and the room comes equipped with its very own window, which is useful for letting in natural light, which if there was no window, you would need to bring your own natural light, and, of course, when letting in light and even when it is not, the window comes in handy when you get the urge to look out of it.

I am not about to pretend that the view from my window was actually inspiring, but equally shall not argue that it was not. As the photograph below reveals, the view does capture Gdansk; the new Gdansk and the old.

View from hotel window at the Mercure, Gdansk

Excited by the red-brick church, you swear on a pint of good beer that as soon as you have unpacked your things, attended dutifully to your reasonable ablutions and put on a different cravat, you will point your brogues decisively in the direction that you want to go and permit them to carry you off towards the architectural/historic masterpiece that those ever-inventive Poles did christen the Old Town.

Unfortunately, however, although the Mercure Hotel is devilishly close for on-foot types to the town’s historic quarter, my shoes belong to an era, as I do myself, in which modern navigation aids play no understandable part.

I could have asked the way of course, but that would have been too easy and obviously much too sensible, and so, of course, I didn’t. I simply relied on my sense of direction, and for once I got it right.

This is something else that speaks in Mercure’s favour. If, like me, never becoming a navigator was one of the most applaudable things you did in your life, then the Mercure should appeal to you. Its name emblazoned in bright white light at the very top of its tower acts like a lighthouse beacon. It can be seen from many points of the compass and therefore can be used in co-operation with other landmarks to guide you safely home in the unlikely event you have drunk too much after a night on the town.

Mercure Gdansk the name acts as a navigational beacon

In summarising my Mercure experience, I would say “a solid hotel ~ rock solid”. Comfortable, appealing ~ in a slightly old-fashioned sort of way ~ and supremely atmospheric, it effortlessly brings together the feel of a hotel somewhere above its station with a kindly welcome that is home-from-home. The bar, my natural habitat, has that cushty, big upmarket hotel, relaxing, come-hither air. You just order yourself a drink and sink yourself carefree into its soft and sumptuous seats. The staff are as pleasant as they are helpful; the service cannot be faulted. Everything around you is as easy on the eye as it is upon the senses, which is quite an achievement in itself as the hotel contains some visual surprises. And in its relativity to Gdansk’s Old Town and to the central railway station, if any hotel deserves the accolade of being well-appointed then that hotel is the Mercure.

I know and I do appreciate that on that fateful day when I first laid eyes upon it, the Mercure appeared on my troubled horizon like an oasis in a desert of lies and deceit, but be that as it may, from any objective viewpoint, the Mercure delivers the goods and with it value for money. What else would you expect? It is not for nothing that it derives its name from the Roman God of Travellers!

The main thing

Hotel Mercure Gdańsk Stare Miasto
Jana Heweliusza 22, 80-890 Gdańsk, Poland

Tel: +48 58 321 00 00
Website: Mercure Gdańsk

Streetmap: Mercure Gdańsk

Life in Kaliningrad through the lens of a camera

A few snapshots from my Kaliningrad album

22 May 2024 ~ Life in Kaliningrad through the lens of a camera

They could be curated, they could be aggregated, but I suspect that they are a random collection of photographs, some more recent than others, taken in and of Kaliningrad. Judge for yourselves.

Life in Kaliningrad

Above: Trams {Click on images to enlarge}
The new and the old ~ and I am not referring to myself. Here am I riding one of Kaliningrad’s latest trams. They are smooth and swish, and you can buy your ticket using touch-card technology. The old trams, c1970s (second photograph), good looks, as far as I am concerned. For me, these two-carriage ‘biscuit tins’ have classic kudos. I love the sounds and the movements they make. I even love the metal seats. Whenever I use these trams, our old friend Victor Ryabinin comes to mind. I can see him now, holding onto the rail at the back of the tram, observing life, as artists do, through the tram’s rear window. Rear Window! That’s a good name for a film.

Mick Hart and Olga Hart at Kaliningrad vintage car show 2019

Above: 2019 Golden Shadow of Königsberg
When things were different, and they often are, the Auto Retro Club Kaliningrad held an international and classic car show. The photo of me in a wide-brimmed trilby (a Fedora) was taken in what was that year (2019) the main arena for car competitions, the carpark of the King’s Residence, Kaliningrad’s most elaborate family leisure centre and restaurant complex. (Tweed jacket courtesy of Mr Wilcox)

Mick Hart in front of Kaliningrad's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

Orthodox Christian Cathedral Kaliningrad
The photograph of yours truly was taken in March of this year (2024) in Victory Square in front of The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Kaliningrad. In days of yore, meaning the early 2000s, this spot was dominated by a large bronze statue of Lenin, since removed to another quarter of the town. With the construction of the cathedral, the centre of Kaliningrad moved from Königsberg’s cultural and spiritual centre, directly in front of the Kaliningrad Hotel, to where it is today. In Königsberg’s days, the area known as Victory Square and everything beyond lay outside the city’s defensive walls. (Yes, I know, from a compositional perspective, it would have been much better had I stood so that I was centred in the photograph in line with the door. It annoys me as well!)

Königsberg relics at fleamarket in Kaliningrad

< Left: Königsberg Relics
A lot of Königsberg was blown into bits and pieces during World War Two, so it is hardly surprising that bits and pieces of its past keep turning up, and a good place to find them ~ in fact the best ~ is at Kaliningrad’s flea market, just to one side of the city’s central market. This photo illustrates why I love this market so much.

Below: QR Code Checkers
Here’s a blast from the past ~ and let’s sincerely hope that it remains that way. Here we have QR Code Checking Officers on duty during the Coronavirus era, not letting anybody inside the cathedral unless they had a QR code proving they had been ‘jabbed’. Looking back on this sinister period of history makes walking in and out of doorways unchallenged instantly gratifying.

Life in Kaliningrad

QR Code checkers monitor access to Kaliningrad Cathedral in the Coronavirus year of 2021

Kaliningrad Botanical Gardens: an autumnal scene of the lake

Above: Kaliningrad Botanical Gardens
Unlike many cities, you do not have to travel far in Kaliningrad to enjoy nature in its natural habitat. This photograph captures the tranquility of the lake in Kaliningrad’s Botanical Gardens. It was taken in autumn 2023.

Above: Kaliningrad Sculptures {Click on images to enlarge}
Kaliningrad is renowned for its sculptures: Schiller, Kant, Lenin and the composition of two fighting bison to name but four. They may possess an attitude of assumed permanence thanks to who and what they are, but this distinction should not cancel out the ephemeral and the esoteric. This purple faceted moggy was last seen sitting statuesque outside Kaliningrad’s latest shopping centre in the central market district, and it is not everyday you will see an updated Russian samovar sitting on top of an oil drum in the grounds of Königsberg Cathedral.

Life in Kaliningrad: Three iconic buildings in Kaliningrad, but the House of Soviets is no more ...

Above: House of Soviets
A poignant picture of the House of Soviets framed between the hotel and restaurant buildings of Kaliningrad’s Fishing Village and the reconstructed ‘New Synagogue’ c.2023. Stand in the same spot today where the photograph was taken to appreciate the laws of transience by which our lives are governed.

Above: CCCP (that’s USSR to you)
As you know, because it’s general knowledge, there’s no time like the past, which is why as a collector of what’s left of it, I was thrilled to discover on a hot day in ’22 an ice cream with an historical theme. After chilling out on it, I was able to say with impunity, “ I enjoyed the USSR”.

Above: Sunny Day in Youth Park {Click on images to enlarge}
They say that ‘youth is wasted on the young’, but whenever I stroll through Kaliningrad’s Youth Park, I put this prejudice behind me and think instead ‘young at heart’. Some would say, ‘never grown up!’ I vow one day that I will attempt to complete every adult ride in the park in series. Until that day dawns, I will continue to enjoy those days when the park is less rumbustious. At the time these photos were taken (May 2024), I was more than happy simply to purchase a cup of specialty tea and sit and drink it on a park bench. The park attendants were filling the planters with flowers, and the sun had got its hat on.

Königsberg villa in modern-day Kaliningrad

Above: Königsberg Villas
It is hardly surprising that when residents of Moscow, Siberia and other far-flung places across this huge territory that is Russia, visit Kaliningrad, they fall in love with the city. Kaliningrad, in all its many and diverse facets, is, by virtue of its Prussian-Russian history, a unique experience, central to which is its surviving German buildings. Contrary to the belief that all of Königsberg was raised to the ground during WWII, many splendid, curious and fine examples of architectural merit are extant, and it is not always necessary to adopt a ‘seek and ye shall find’ approach. In the districts of Amalienau and Maraunenhof, for example, almost every street contains something of architectural significance, and some streets have enough large houses and grand villas on them to make even the most abstemious ashamed of their secret envy.

Above: Contrasting Scenes of Kaliningrad {Click on images to enlarge}
Two cityscape views: one taken from a high-rise flat complex; the other from a balcony (May 2024), to coincide with the first blooms of spring.

Craft Garage Kaliningrad a Pit Stop for Good Beer

Arty Crafty it is and all the better for it!

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

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

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

Craft Garage Kaliningrad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mick Hart & Inara outside Craft Garage in Kaliningrad

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro in the House of Soviets

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro with a Heart of Gold

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

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

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

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

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

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mick Hart and Inara at Bar Sovetov in Kaliningrad

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

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

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

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad

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

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

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

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

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

The main thing:

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

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

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

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

Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad

Good beer in a vintage-inspired bar

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

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

Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad

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

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

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

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

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

Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad

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

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

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

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

Bars to like

The Yeltsin
Pub Crawl around Kaliningrad
The London Pub
The Dreadnought
Sir Francis Drake
True Bar

Patisson Markt Restaurant Kaliningrad Good Value

Light, bright and affordable ~ Pattison Markt

24 February 2024 ~ Patisson Markt Restaurant Kaliningrad Good Value

It’s one of two buildings that flank the entrance to what was once Königsberg Zoo, now the Kaliningrad Zoopark. Once upon a time, it was an old eatery with a distinctly Soviet feel. In 2004, I nicknamed it the Restaurant of Many Menus, for just that reason. In one would go and out would come the menus, several at least, weighty tomes, impressively, if not dauntingly, cram-packed with a plethora of traditional Russian dishes, all for one and one for all unashamedly non-vegetarian.

Not so today. Gone are the leatherette bound-in-brown gastronomical bibles, replaced by simple card menus that are pretty and neat by design and eclectic in their choice of nosh. Attractive in themselves, they are by no means incipiently necessary, since Patisson Markt operates on the self-service principal. All you have to do is skim your pre-selected tray along the polished metallic surface of the long zig-zagging shelf and construct a meal of your choosing from the many and varied selections of food displayed in the glass-fronted cabinets.

Above: The long serving counter cuts a dash of its own; a glass and metal complement to the unadorned concrete ceiling, all agog with pipes and wires, as if plaster board and trunking have yet to be invented.

The long zig-zag cafeteria counter offers a mouth-watering selection of savoury dishes, with more than enough vegetarian options to placate the non-meat palate. As a lover of simple food, it is not often that I can say that I was impressed with what was on offer, but here I most assuredly was.
That’s me saying that …

As might be supposed, meat and fish are everywhere, but Kaliningrad has at last come of age, and there are easily more than enough food variants not containing animal parts to placate and delight the fragile sensibilities of the staunchest vegetarian. As far as I am aware, this is as true of the sweets as it is of the savoury dishes. To my knowledge, none of the ice creams, tartlets, cakes, pastries and anything delicatessen are made with pork or beef, so if sweet-toothed things turn you on, Patisson Markt should flick your switch.

The carousel below provides a tantalising exposition of the delicious variety of food on offer at Kaliningrad’s Patisson Markt.

Patisson Markt Restaurant

This welcoming restaurant next to the zoo has come a long way since it was something entirely different. Various tweaks over the years, followed by a redefining makeover, have transformed a restaurant which was perfect for its time, including its bulky menus and traditional Russian grub, into bright and breezy, hip and buffet, thanks mainly to a design initiative that cunningly unites the naturalistic world around an alfresco dining experience.

Roof decoration restaurant near Kaliningrad Zo

I spy whilst eating apple pie (yum), an unusual-looking roof roundel. Whatever it is and whatever it may have been, it visually consolidates the foliate theme, that of nature’s outside in.

The naturalistic elements feeding this idea are simple but effective. Take open-ended, cubicle-type, high-standing shelving units, some made of wood others from ebonised steel, fill the compartments with logs cut to order, add convincing imitation ferns, plants and jars of pickles and arrange them in such a way so that each distils its own space from the generic space it occupies.

Screening technique Patisson Markt Restaurant, Kaliningrad

In any other interior context, the long and angular servery would focalise the content of the room, but hived off behind a light-blue-painted screen with pockets of shelving modules and open louvre window shades, it melts into the background, letting the props and various artifices manage mood and atmosphere.

Above: Louvre screen and windows … I’ve seen this done in the Kavkaz Restaurant: the knowing that you are inside but the feeling you could be outside. The blinds and trellised glass windows add an imaginative touch.

The open plan but cleverly screened nature of the long room together with its floor to ceiling windows, pleasantly partner to give a sense of bright and airy that is just seclusive enough to create the illusion of private dining without the feeling of being hemmed in. I don’t have to tell you how well it works, as I have told you that already.

Former restaurant area of Kaliningrad restaurant by the zoo

The immediate room from the entrance lobby is the one where the former restaurant plied its trade. However, its ‘old-fashioned dine in secret whilst feeling uneasily bourgeoise’ has since been consigned to history, and I am perhaps the only one who remembers its enclosure and secretly mourns the loss of its War and Peace style menus, which have faded into obscurity long ago with my youth.

Nevertheless, of the two dining areas it is still the least ethereal. The luxury of light and bright resides in the long extension or knocked-through room on the other side of the building, which, through the conceits that I have described, bring the outdoors indoors, making the restaurant summer in summer and keeping it summer in winter.

Patisson Markt Restaurant

Patisson Markt is light on your senses and also light on your pocket. It is a ‘something for everyone’ place, even for a plain-and-simple-food man like myself, and for those with more discerning tastebuds there is plenty more besides, all with taste and quality but not at the price of a trip to the moon.

The main thing

Patisson Markt
Prospekt Mira, 26, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, 236022

Tel: +7 981 476 48 23

Opening times
Friday & Saturday 9am to 12am
Sunday to Thursday 9am to 11pm

And you should try these whilst you’re at it?

Mama Mia Restaurant
There are pre-set lunches at a very good price. I had Greek salad, soup and pizza accompanied by cranberry juice.
Café Seagull by the Lake
Café Seagull is an excellent place for simply relaxing. The terrace and the restaurant windows look out over Kaliningrad’s ‘pond’. The cuisine, both in terms of presentation and taste, received top marks and the service could not be faulted.
Balt Restaurant (Zelenogradsk)
Recommend the Balt? I’d buy it if I could!
Soul Garden (café garden complex)
If you don’t go there, you’ll never know what you’ve missed! It’s unusual, and the view is well worth viewing.

Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, new Garden Cafés

Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, garden cafés replace Prichal Restaurant

Updated: 13 January 2024 | First published: 15 September 2022 ~ Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, new Garden Cafés

A few moments ago, you said in your bestist Russian, ‘Short pashalta’ (bill please), hopefully paid when you got it and have just legitimately left the Seagull by the Lake café, which was the subject of one of my earlier reviews. Turning right, you are now strolling along the side of the Upper Pond opposite a cobbled Königsberg street in the direction of Youth Park.

If you keep walking, you will arrive at a point where the presence of a fenced garden reduces the pavement to a narrow strip. Pedestrian activity is fairly busy here, and as the walled and railing boundary to your left, hedged in with dense confers, prohibits leeway, in order to make headway you will have to play kerb-hop, which is like kerb-crawling but without the fringe benefits.

When the walled and confer garden slips away, at the point where the pavement widens, you would, had you been walking here in the spring of 2022, have found yourself confronted by a disused café/restaurant, a rectangular slab of a building, covered all over in wave-like crustations, one corner surmounted by a metallic lighthouse, another by Captain Ahab, as I saw fit to anoint him, looking proudly over the rails of his elevated quarter deck with a massive globe, the world, at his feet.

**Captain Ahab aloft the old Prichal Restaurant // Demolition in progress 2022**

**Before demolition commenced // Roofless in September 2022**

Forever curious and not a cat, I wondered in my previous post on Ahab, whatever would become of him and the gardens that he presided over. Both the marine-themed café/restaurant and its gardens had been sinking steadily, year on year, into dismal destitution. Decay had moved in where trade had left off, and decay, dreariness and impending doom were the avatar of its fate.

The oriental garden went West first (every pun intended). The reed-thatched roofs turned green and mouldy, fell in upon themselves and then collapsed. The shrubs and bushes, once the beneficiaries of a culture of assiduity, exploited the dearth of supervision and in its absence had reverted, like children bestowed with too many rights and a woeful lack of moral guidance, to the clarion call of the wild.

And yet, even at its height, when all in the garden was rosy and the restaurant to which it belonged, although a most peculiar spectacle, was not quite the eyesore it eventually became, to contemplate the whole with anything else but regret was a feat so tremendously difficult that it challenged you to do so in contradiction of every tenet you had ever considered complied with good taste.

Indeed, if an oriental garden overlooking a man-made pond, which once belonged to the German city of Königsberg in what used to be East Prussia but now is Russian Kaliningrad, set against the side of a curious but somewhat tawdry building, which would look decidedly more at home in an amusement park on the north coast of England, failed to provoke the question WTF is going on? ~ then you might as well give up entirely, welcome the immigrant boats at Dover and, Heaven forbid that you could be so reckless, put your faith in the Labour party. On the other hand, with a little charitable latitude of thought, there is room for the hypothesis that having sailed the seven seas, Captain Ahab, believing by appearances that he must be off the coast of China, decided to drop anchor.

Former Prichal Resturant, Upper Pond, Kaliningrad — **It looks like Chinagrad?**

Not that it matters a fig. The garden, with its reed-thatched gazebos, which went the way of neglect ahead of Ahab’s building, possessed a certain twee appeal, and there was unity of composition in the design of the man-made structures, the choice of materials used, the natural blending of bushes and shrubs and the seemingly inorganic, but actually carefully planned arrangement, by which each and all of its components had been scrupulously laid down.

Then ~ I believe it may have been early in 2021 ~ a large tree came crashing down in the wind, smashing its way through the wall and railings. And the garden once so cultivated, so trimmed, so neat and expressly inviting was reduced from what many believed to be an object of mastered near perfection to the most inexpressible mess.

In the twelve months before Ahab and his Mablethorpe arcade hit the demolition skids, the beautiful gardens that were, but which, alas and wistfully, entered the realm of no more and never will be again, began to be ruthlessly cleared, and as the sounds of chain saws died away, replaced by the rhythm of hammers and the high-speed whines of angle grinders, it was clear to the not-so-innocent bystander, me, who was gawping there and quite on purpose, that alterations were underway.

Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, garden cafes. Soul Garden. — **Roadside view of garden, September 2022**

Gardens Kaliningrad Upper Pond cafe: Soul Garden — **The garden as it appeared in September 2022**

garden pond next to Upper Pond, Kaliningrad — **Pond in the garden next to Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, September 2022**

Terrace Upper Pond cafes Kaliningrad — **Small terrace, work still in progress, Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, September 2022**

Even as a passer-by, I saw shrubs being pruned, new vegetation planted, pavements taking shape, and two large and rather bland slope-roofed garden sheds rising above the perimeter, and, at the centre of all this make-good mayhem, Patrick McGoohan’s (The Prisoner’s) dome, or so I was pleased to fancy, only to be brought down to Earth with the phlegmatic explanation that the dome was an igloo geodesic constructed around a stainless-steel frame comprising triangular sections which supported a membrane of stretched PVC. Just as I said, The Prisoner’s dome, the home of the New Number Two (Didn’t see Rover, however?).

Dome Upper Pond, Kaliningrad Kaliningrad, Soul Garden

Hello, Hello, Hello and what do we have here?

The Phoenix that has arisen from the ashes is quite unlike anything that I have ever beheld. To say that there ‘aint no rhyme or reason in it’ is not necessarily pejorative. You see you’ve got these two big wooden sheds, one selling snacks and coffee and the other with a floor to ceiling plate-glass window through which youngsters sit a-gawping; a large geodesic igloo thingy; a piazza with tables and chairs; two small elevated terraces snug-fit to the lake side; and a long lake-facing and canopy-covered seating area, providing space for several groups sitting on low divans, each around their own personal coffee table.

The latter seating area is a peach; the haunt of the delectable; mainly affluent trophy girls who ostentatiously flaunt themselves by sharing the pipes of their hookahs.

Hookahs: everyone should try one!

These single or multi-stemmed smoking instruments, which cool and vaporise tobacco smoke prior to inhalation by passing it through a water reservoir, were better known to the pioneers of 20th century hipster fashion by the nickname hubbly bubbly pipes.

During the swinging sixties, hubbly bubblies were chiefly associated with the facilitation of opium consumption (naughty!); today, they are the limelighters for a new generation of fadists, some young, some not-so-young, but agelessly would-be trendy (Some believe just by smoking the hookah they qualify for this perfumed club.). They puff away conspicuously on these rather flamboyant instruments, using highly scented shisha tobacco (different flavoured molasses). Now, throw arty-farty lighting into the mix and the smoke exhaled appears to change colour. Wow, even more people will see you! And don’t you look extra cool!

Health experts disagree. Forever seeming to forget that life is bad for your health and is never almost but always fatal, they share no interest at all in egocentric fashion, routinely condemning the hookah as just another sure-fired way of inviting lethal respiratory problems to call time prematurely on an existence already imperilled and grievously overtaxed by vice. What a hookahless bunch of killjoys!

The Mercure from the terrace

On my first visit to this wonderous place, where one can eat, drink, relax, gaze out over the pond and attach one’s self to a hookah or two, it seemed as if whoever had thought of it had forgotten to give it a name. I therefore decided to christen it the Discombobulated Gardens? But since that ambiguous day in 2022, I have learnt that it goes by the name Soul Garden.

On my first and subsequent visits to Soul Garden, I gave the hookers a miss, content to sit back on the terrace, staring out and into the pond at the bold, mirrored and distant reflection of the irradiated Mercure Hotel, whose trademark zig-zag luminosity levitates in a limbo state high upon the Kaliningrad skyline, also hanging motionlessly within the depths and darkness of the pond’s expanse, achieving what we have yet to accomplish, where we like to say we never can be ~ in two places at once.

From the vantage point that the gardens offer, this view across the pond, particularly on a warm summer’s evening, is positively captivating, but with the summer of 2022 (and now 2023) as gone as Captain Ahab, you’ll have to take my word on this.

Mercure Hotel vew from cafe garden Kaliningrad — **View from completed garden terrace across the Upper Pond; Mercure Hotel in the distance**

Hotel Mercure Kaliningrad reflected in Upper Pond

During my premiere visit to Soul Garden, the view from the pond side had been so mesmerising that I almost failed to notice that in the time it took to order a beer and have it brought to my table, my hands had grown considerably larger. This Soul Garden phenomenon was explained to me by the waitress. Don’t worry, she reassured me, the reason why your appendages suddenly look much more impressive than they actually are in real life is that the glass in which your beer is served is less than the usual half litre.

Now, I am not suggesting that smaller glasses are indicative of sharp practice; I was just a little surprised, that’s all, what with my hands growing larger and my glass getting shorter, but there really is no need for alarm. Verily, all of Kaliningrad’s bars and restaurants clearly state the volumes in which their beer is served, it is clearly marked in the drinks’ menu. But should the need ever arise, don’t be afraid to ask: “Please could you show me your glass!” I am sure the staff will be most obliging.

In summing up, what I used to like to think of as a place called Something Gardens, but which I now know is Soul Garden, the word intriguing must be applied.

Like me, you’ll be intrigued by the layout and facilities as well as by the name, and you’ll also be intrigued by what they have planned for Ahab’s building. Like the gardens before they had soul, the carcass of the former construction is borderline identity crisis. Since the first stages of partial demolition, in which its tower, globe and ship, and come the day Captain Ahab, were mysteriously wafted away, throughout 2023 the shell of the building has sat on the banks of the pond teasing us one and all with its day-by-day month-on-month suspended animation.

Perhaps this is the reason the captain slung his hook: whilst he had no objection to Moby Dick, he foresaw in Jonah’s whale a completely different kettle of fish. But until the day dawns when all is revealed, it’s premonition to the starboard bow! Barrelman to the crow’s nest, and steady as she goes!

Wooden cafes Kaliningrad garden Upper Pond

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