Zelenogradsk ~ streets ahead with imaginative decorations
Published: 10 January 2023 ~ Zelenogradsk Christmas Decorations Win First Prize
In the UK, the festive season is well and truly over. Unless you had a better time than most, the last remnants of the New Year’s Eve hangover will have sailed way into the ether, along with the memories you cannot remember and those you wish to forget. But here, in Russia, the festive holidays do not peter out until the morn of the 15th of January. This is because the Russian Orthodox Church follows the old Julian Calendar and not the Gregorian one, so, although some religious denominations still celebrate Christmas day on the 25th December and the big festive night for Russians is the same as that for the Scotties, New Year’s Eve, Russians also celebrate Orthodox Christmas on the 7th January and Orthodox New Year’s Eve on the 14th January. That’s an awful lot of celebrations in one month, but it does mean that the municipal decorations remain intact until the middle of January.
Zelenogradsk Christmas Decorations Win First Prize
Bearing this in mind, I took a trip to the Baltic seaside resort of Zelenogradsk on the 9th of January to shiver in front of the sea and say hello to what are without question the most inspiring display of Christmas decorations this side of the Russian border.
I have no idea whether Kaliningrad holds a Best Decorated Christmas Street in the Region competition, but if it did, the main street of Zelenogradsk would win hands down. Words like magical and enchanting easily spring to mind, along with novel, imaginative and even bizarre!
This year I took my camera along with me and, although the snaps that I have taken do not do the panoply near enough justice, they do manage to give an idea of the thought and effort that each shop, café, bar, restaurant, etc put into producing the best expression of Christmas joy. They certainly make my Christmas baubles look pathetic in comparison, even when lit with flashing lights.
Which of the Christmas ensembles along Zelenogradsk High Street would I nominate for first prize? That’s a tough ‘un’. I’ll leave it to you to decide.
A summer’s day on Svetlogorsk prom (where there is a lift)
Published: 25 August 2022 ~ Whenever I need a lift, I go to Svetlogorsk
Look! Is that really me sitting outside a café bar in Svetlogorsk gazing out across the sea! I wouldn’t want you to get the erroneous impression that I have a peculiar Freudian obsession with lift shafts, but here I am back in Svetlogorsk again checking up on what has happened or not, as the case may be, along the prom extension of the Svetlogorsk coastline, at the base of Novyy Promenad lift. Perhaps I am just sitting there for the convenience of the location, enjoying respite and inertia and the pleasure of drinking beer. Will we ever know? And will the world stop turning if we don’t?
Approaching the lift on the uplands, we walked through the landscaped grounds of Yantar Hall, described by tour guides as a ‘modern multifunctional cultural centre’, a place where bold futuristic design meets pretty silver-birch woodland. What a juxtaposition! I cannot recall what was here two decades ago when I first came to Svetlogorsk. “Bugger all!” my brother cries. For once, he could be right. But we won’t split hairs about it, if only because as one gets older one tends to becomes more follically challenged. However, we will politely venture that a percentage of the ground requisitioned for this ambitious development consisted of hard-surfaced tennis courts and more of the woodland that surrounds it today. Should I be wrong, excuse me. (I know you often do …)
On a warm summer’s day, although the streets of Svetlogorsk are not exactly teaming with people, give or take several score more than there was twenty years ago, charting one’s course to the lift via the grounds of Yantar Hall is to court serenity. You mind knows and so does your soul that you are walking in step with nature, heading towards the sea.
It does not take long, in fact a surprisingly short duration, for new buildings to make their peace with Nature. Already, the headland entrance to the lift has begun the process of blending, or perhaps for the sake of accuracy we should say that the environment into which it intruded no longer baulks at its presence
The plate glass wall that perimeterises the outdoor viewing area and stops you from travelling down to the prom without the aid of the lift, could make you feel a little queer if heights are not your thing, but if you are feeling queer and heights don’t bother you, don’t fret, the only thing you need worry about is that there is something wrong with your gender. Viewed from a different perspective, from the crest of the bank to the ground below and out across the sea, it is the perfect place for people, who have forgotten to bring a cameraman with them, to take those all-important filtered selfies to post on social media. A picture is worth a thousand words, make no mistake about that, possibly more if you care to count them.
The view from the gallery inside the building, looking down on the construction site that hugs the coastline below, revealed within visible limits no dramatic alterations since my last reconnaissance. That luxurious premier apartment overlooking the sea has yet to box the space that it has been allocated, but I am sure that it is out there somewhere, somewhere in the future, complete and enviably occupied.
For the time being, however, I would have to be content with commenting on such changes that had occurred, and which could be seen and appreciated once we reached ground level.
Whenever I need a lift, I go to Svetlogorsk
The first appreciable development was the opening of a café bar at the front of the lift’s terminus, facing the prom and the sea. It did not take long to leave me here to enjoy a beer, or two, whilst my fully aquatic wife flirted with the Baltic.
The small forecourt at the front of the café is demarcated inside a rectangle of black metal planters, which would ‘good looks’ (as my wife used to say, until I put her right) as screening for a home patio. Craning over the top of the planters, I was able to observe that the adjoining area containing the retro fast-food vans, which had acquired two more in my absence and was beginning to look like a diner-vans’ colony, was also territorially enclosed with planters, but ones that resembled tubs on wheels. Their portability opened up all sorts of possibilities for mobile garden planning (see, my time as an editor on Successful Gardening was not entirely wasted), failing which they could be exploited as excellent roving ice buckets, eminently suitable for large-scale soirées or adventurous garden parties. They would also make good kiddie buggies into which to throw your children and tank around the lawn or, exclusively for my wife, a customised nomadic swimming pool. I could take one of these buckets on wheels, roll it under the apple tree, fill it full of water and my wife could go and sit in it. And I, of course, could take photos of her that she could then post to VK.
When my water-winged wife got out of the sea, any chance that I may have had to impress her with my notions were lost to a flurry of praise of how wonderful it was to swim and commune with ‘beautiful nature’. Now she was imploring me to take photographs of the ‘amazing’ sunset. Cuh!
Keeping my plans for the planters secret, I finished my second pint and fortified in stereo walked over to the sea wall not to take photos of sunsets but of the lift and its immediate surroundings from the perspective of the front elevation. Hmm, perhaps I do have a lift shaft fetish? But that is by the by. If I had not pursued my inclinations, I would not have been any the wiser that above the café where I had been sitting a restaurant had been installed. By no means the largest restaurant that the world has ever known, it does have long, broad windows through which you can gaze at the briny.
Eventually, I did take that picture of the sunset over the Baltic Sea and in doing so discovered an excellent example of utilitarianism that either had not been where it is now when I last leant on the wall or if it was, I had not been paying attention. Every three or four feet or more flat surfaced wooden rectangles, approximately one foot in width and two feet in length (I am an ardent supporter of the old imperial system ~ it really does make life just that little bit less simple) had been bolted along the top of the wall, creating, in effect, handy little table tops on which to stand your sundries. A man standing next to me placed his can of beer on one. What a good idea!
How well these table tops will hold up when the summer weather turns dramatically to winter is a point I wished you had not raised. Perhaps they are detachable? No matter, I am so taken with the concept of them that should they float or fly away I will return with one of my own.
Making off in the direction of the older promenade, where one would have been when Svetlogorsk was Rauschen, nothing leapt out at me like a mugger in Brixton to alert me to something that I may not have seen already. But when we reached the giant sun dial, the starting point of the old prom, sheets of corrugated tin barring further access reminded me of an article that I had read in the local news about future reconstruction work to the resort’s historic esplanade. That future was obviously now.
Not meaning to imply by the word ‘historic’ that the in-situ esplanade is the one that Germans once strolled along, most likely not even the foundations on which it stands is of German origin, nevertheless its Soviet heritage must retain nostalgic value for others not just me, but me included since I have sauntered along it many times over the past 20 years.
Following the diversionary tactics of other pedestrians, we ended up on a hard-surfaced path hidden inside the bushes, running parallel to the promenade, that I had forgotten had ever existed, and it was from this path and the bushes lining it that I was able to take a photo of the old prom (see above) looking rather sad and forlorn in its decommissioned condition. Whether the whole kaboodle is to be replaced or the framework preserved and a new plateau raised above and around the existing structure, your guess is as good as mine. But lured by my illicit love ~ my affair with Svetlogosrk lift shaft ~ I am bound to find out sooner or later. When I do, I’ll let you know.
Fishdorf Country Guest Complex, Kaliningrad region, Russia
Published: 22 July 2022 ~ A day out at Fishdorf Country Guest Complex
In my last post about Matrosovo, we entered the village together, passing a pretty old German house and some rather malodorous cows (no problem, if like me, you are an afficionado of country smells!) and glancing warily at the high tin fence on the other side of the road, which has something inflatable thrust high above it, we rolled on, on our car wheels, until shortly confronting a T-junction. Here, I took you right; now I take you left.
Before doing so your attention will have been drawn to an interesting feature on your right. There, standing in what I can only imagine in Soviet times was a mown and tended green, but now badly in need of a lawnsman, is a typical example of socialist realism from the collective-identity genre: a statue, striking in colour and pose, of a fisherman and his son.
Small riverside communities such as Matrosovo would once have been greatly reliant upon the role that fishing played in guaranteeing livelihoods, and statues such as these, as well as performing an ideological function, were a way of saying thank you.
Above: Madam, kindly unhand that fisherman!
Across the way, by the side of the river, sits a typical Soviet children’s playground, with all facilities preserved and functioning ~ a marvellous sight to behold ~ and immediately left a municipal building, once the village shop, then and more recently, but now abandoned, the village’s House of Culture.
The road ahead, left at the T-junction, has nothing in common with the road leading into it, except, of course, it is also a road. The dirt-covered rubble track suddenly changes to new block paving, on either side of which stands modern buildings and proper fencing. I mean by proper fencing, not ugly sheets of tin but fences made from real brick piers inlaid with panels of wood, and the buildings that accompany them solid-state buildings of consequence.
A day out at Fishdorf Country Guest Complex
On the right is a restaurant with private carpark, whose grounds lead down to the river’s edge. It has a spacious veranda made of wooden decking and, closer to the waterside, rusticated bench seats with built-in tables for two, purposefully made and conveniently positioned for patrons to sit and gaze idly across the rippling river at the attractive commune of houses nestled on the opposite bank. The perfect place on a hot summer’s day for sitting, staring and eating ice cream.
Next door is an establishment designed for people in mind who do not abide by the maxim that if God had meant for us to swim (or do anything else in or on water), he would have given us gills. Here, all sorts of water-borne craft, including tandem canoes and sapboards, are available for hire, but if it is something bigger that floats your boat, there are always things you can row and even a canopied catamaran that will romp you along the river whilst you sit there for a fee in the smug and requited pose of completely paid-up passenger.
Above: Things to go floating about the river on
The establishment next door to the establishment next door is presently under construction. Perhaps it will be a bingo hall, or am I thinking Hunstanton? But next door to that, looking handsome, refined and sophisticated (Shame on you, you thought I was going to say me!), stands the eminently functional Fishdorf restaurant, which is almost immediately across the road from its namesake the Fishdorf Hotel.
Above: The self-explanatory Fishdorf Restaurant
Both buildings, the restaurant and hotel, are built in a charming, modern, East Prussian style. The Fishdorf restaurant boasts extended eaves, half-timber decoration, ‘distressed’ brickwork and lots of natural wood embellishments. The main building, the Fishdorf Hotel, is distinguished by the presence of a giant illustration on its gable end of a fisherman of old, suitably endowed with clay pipe, neckerchief, a pair of rolled-up wellies and carrying a whopping great fish. The ‘aged’ brickwork around the doors and windows, which cut a dashing contrast with the white and textured walls, is another memorable Fishdorf signature.
At the side of the hotel and prior to its reception area there is a large rolling gate, which would appear to conceal the hotel carpark, but in fact conceals a whole lot more. A suitable cliché at this point would be that it opens onto another world, the pertinence of which can be better understood by recourse to my previous post regarding Matrosovo village. For this particular roller gate does not just give access to the hotel carpark but access to the surprisingly ‘off the beaten track’, and all the more astounding for it, Fishdorf recreation park or, to revert to its official name, as noted on its website, the Country Guest Complex Fishdorf.
A family-oriented retreat
In trying to describe what Fishdorf is, apart from and in addition to a hotel and a restaurant, I run shy from using a word like ‘complex’, although Fishdorf use it themselves. I hesitate to use this word for fear of evoking impressions of spirographical mental states and complicated things devised from cold mathematical precision, since Fishdorf’s realm of influence is rooted in the natural world and the only precision one can accuse it of is the skilful manner in which its grounds and facilities have been mapped out to produce a certain appealing something that respectively lies between the ordered elegance and intrinsic sublimity of the formal and natural garden.
So, how does one sum up Fishdorf? What shall we say it is, exactly? We could try: A family-oriented retreat, secluded and steeped in nature, combining the best in formal and natural landscaping, where both guests and day visitors alike can enjoy a variety of outside leisure pursuits and other diverse recreations. Yes, I think I can live with that.
Fishdorf park
The extensive area that the park takes in is designed around two large and interconnecting ponds (don’t think village ponds, think lakes!), stocked with extroverts ~ both fish and frogs ~ which are either leaping out of the water and going splosh at regular intervals or putting in guest appearances and going croak whilst sitting on leaves. (I’ll leave you to work out which one is doing which.). At the centre of these two ponds, dividing it geometrically, is a pretty, single-span bridge of the arched, romantic kind, and around the ponds on every side the lawns trimmed to perfection are sprinkled with plants, shrubs, bushes and trees, intersected by meandering pathways and punctuated with globe lights.
Already you should detect that Fishdorf is an environment in which Mother Nature is everywhere and everywhere in excelsior. She graciuosly presides over a spacious open-air schema where wood is what it always is, versatile and wonderful, and used in so many different and in so many more inventive ways.
Above: Mick Hart on a garden swing ~ wood you believe it!
A day out at Fishdorf for lovers of wood
Garden swings with bench seats hewn out of solid tree trunks, their frameworks assembled from the curving boughs of trees, are studied by wooden toadstools peeping out of the long, trained grass, each stem of each toadstool carved with faces from folklore. Dotted here and there and sometimes assembled in communes, the alternative answer to a hotel room takes the form of standalone chalets, attractive little retreats successfully given the log-cabin treatment. To ensure exclusivity is complemented by privacy, rustic fencing, skilfully put together by weaving tall, thin, branches into a vertical plane and by using slightly thicker branches for horizontal stabilisation, screens and beautifies in one fell swoop.
Above: Cabins well-appointed
Above: Picturesque log-cabin accommodation
The visual affect is so thoroughly pleasing that you make a mental note that when you get home you’ll build one yourself and you’ll also include the wood-panelled gates, as you rather like the serpentine arch and find the naïve motifs with which the gates are illustrated seductively quaint, cute and engaging, perceiving something in them, indeed in the whole composition, that you faintly recognise long ago as lying between the covers of the books that you read in your childhood.
A day out at Fishdorf Country Guest Complex
By the side of a nearby pond, much smaller and more secluded than the two that share the bridge, an open-ended gazebo beckons. Unsullied by professionalism, or clever and artful in this suggestion, the wood used in its making looks as though it could have been cut and taken from the forest nearby and then brought together to form the function that it now fulfils using nothing but an artisan’s eye and the skills of one of those men of whom we have heard it said, much too often for comfort, ‘he can turn his hand to anything’ ~ don’t you just love such people!
In the same vicinity as the log gazebo an elongated wooden barrel, big enough to get inside, makes me think of Beer. But this is no beer barrel, mores the pity. It is in fact a barrel-shaped sauna in which, if you like it steamy, you can tarry at your leisure, perhaps between gruelling sessions swinging around on the tennis courts or charging about on the football pitches, which are visible from this point on the other side of the lawn.
If I was sauna inclined, which I am not, I would have jumped into the barrel and sweated it out, but I didn’t. However, had I for once been less than predictable, at least in matters like these, the incident may have passed without comment, considering that minutes before, estranging herself from maturity, Olga had shown little restraint in hopping inside a funnel-shaped object, made, of course, from wood, and holding a twig-ended broomstick retained by this odd receptacle, declared herself to be that infamous mythical figure from the annals of Russian folklore, Baba Yaga, the witch. Had my name been Bernard Manning, the impetuosity of this performance would not have left me stuck for words, but I decided not to become him today presuming for my impertinence that the broomstick could take off in a hurry and could get stuck right up … in the clouds.
Above: Olga Hart on her broomstick
One thing I can say is that I never knew until I came to Fishdorf how hungry wood could make you, and it had the same effect upon me. Whilst I presume that Fishdorf’s salient restaurant is the one across the road from the Fishdorf Hotel, on the other side of the roller gate, within the grounds of the park itself there is a second restaurant, plus a cafeteria à la carte, the latter cunningly equipped with a canopy-covered dining area designed to outwit the weather should it begin to act unseasonable.
It was here, overlooking a neat and expansive lawn, that I had my mid-morning snack and (sssh, please don’t tell anybody) an alcohol-free beer ~ well it was an extremely warm day and even though the sun was considerably over the yard arm … but why should I explain to you?!
Above: Non-alcohol beer on a hot day
For those who like it hot, and may or may not have issues drinking beer that is alcohol free, Fishdorf has extensive sauna and various hot bath facilities. For those who like to chill out, it has a combined poolside and children’s recreation area, where adults can recline on the recliners meant for reclining on and children can amuse themselves by flying up and down on any one of a number of colourful bouncy castles or for higher and more exciting plunges take a turn or two on the stupendous Aqua Park waterchute. (You may recall, gentle reader, my mentioning of something large and inflatable towering over a tall metal fence in my previous post on Matrosovo village; was this the item in question? Indeed, the very same.)
Above: Very large, indeed
As a river runs through it, the village of Matrosovo that is, there are any number of ways that a person can take to the water but, if like me, the only volume of water that you can cope with comfortably is enough to balance your whisky glass, you could do considerably worse than book yourselves a table on Fishdorf’s riverside dining area, which I believe is part of the restaurant ‘Cheshuya’, as described on Fishdorf’s website.
Country Guest Complex Fishdorf
Here, when all around you are clamouring to live the life of a fish, you can annoy your company by saying ‘I don’t do water myself’, and then watch from the comfort of your riverside table them doing something that you don’t do whilst you do something you do: I have it on good authority ~ the best authority, my own ~ that Cheshuya serves a very nice pint. So, let’s have a toast to the Fishdorf restaurant, one to the Country Guest Complex Fishdorf and also, whilst we’re at it, to Matrosovo itself.
Essential details:
Country Guest Complex ‘Fishdorf’ 238634, Kaliningrad Region, Polessky District, Matrosovo Village, 21 Levoberezhnaya Street
Room tariffs (Details can be found on Fishdorf’s website)
Prices per day vary according to the type and location of the accommodation required, which includes traditional hotel rooms, chalets and buildings capable of occupying multiple numbers of guests.
Services A full and detailed breakdown of costs for all amenities offered at the park both for residential guests and day visitors can be found on the park’s website. These include: Spa, Bath & Aqua Zone; River Vehicles (Kayak, Canoe, Catamaran, Boat, Sapboard); Adult and Children’s Bikes; Games (Virtual Reality & Air Hockey); Children’s Vehicular Amusements (eg, Electric Car, Electric Scooter); Fishing Permits and Bait; Gazebos (priced according to size and location).
Restaurants There are two restaurants listed on the website, Restaurant ‘Gans & Beer’ and Cheshuya Restaurant. The first has a banquet hall that will accommodate 150 people; the second can hold 45 people and is well-appointed with a veranda overlooking the river.
The menu is available through the park’s website.
Entertainment The many and varied entertainments offered at the park are covered on its website, including the Aqua Park, The Club (which has billiard and pool tables); the Bath Barrel Sauna, etc. For comprehensive details, see the park’s website.
Matrosovo Village Matrososvo village, charming and sequestered, nestles beside Matrosovka River. It is also the astutely chosen location of the Country Guest Complex ‘Fishdorf’.
Angel Park Hotel The Angel Park Hotel, Kaliningrad region, is a gift from the people of its past, an unaffected rural retreat that breathes new life into a timeless realm where history and the natural landscape flow together like the rivers that run through it.
Zalivino Lightouse The restored lighthouse on the shore of the Curonian Lagoon is a singular maritime experience. Imagine what life was like as a lighthouse keeper in the early twentieth century and enjoy the coastal views from the lighthouse lamp room and platform.
Fort Dönhoff Fort XI (Fort Dönhoff) is one of Königsberg’s 19th century fortresses, part of the former city’s monolithic defence system. Vast, intricate and painstakingly restored, it is a must for anyone fascinated by military history generally and by Königsberg specifically.
Polessk Brewery Lovingly restored, Polessk Brewery is one of the region’s historic treasures. Even if you are not a beer fanatic (is their such a specimen?) you cannot help but be enthralled by the neoGothic architecture and the German and Soviet timeline of this splendid and remarkable edifice.
or how we got there and how interesting it was when we did
Published: 11 July 2022 ~ On the Polessk Canal Road to Matrosovo Kaliningrad
Out on the single-track road that runs along the canal from Polessk to wherever it was we were heading, there’s a sense of going somewhere, which is good enough in itself. The canal, which links the rivers Deyma and Nemunas, provides a mostly parallel route to that place where, when we eventually got out of the car, I would call our destination.
The narrow road, no doubt constructed on the canal’s one-time tow path, is a cambersome experience, dipping, rolling and bowling along. The route takes in vast tracts of overgrown land which, at this time of year, is fifty shades of green, or even more, across and through which the Polessk Canal holds a straight and steady course.
Dotted along both sides of this sweeping tract of water, stand, in varying degrees of stability, old German cottages, typically composed as single-storey abodes but with attic space more than sufficient for filling up with all sorts of things.
On the Polessk Canal road to Matrosovo Kaliningrad
The canal road is like all roads of this nature, unambiguously elevated, and often the humble cottages built on the opposite bank to the water’s edge lie at a lower level. Those homes that abut the road are so close to it that an occupant stepping outside could in any unguarded moment find themselves swept away or knocked for six by a passing vehicle. The cottages in the hollow, in the cut below the bank, are exempt from this particular problem but arguably not from others; they can be so tightly sandwiched against the edge of the road that their windows are nearly contiguous.
They made stout hinges those Germans did!
At this time of year, the trees, wild bushes and virile foliage are so profusely laden with leaves ~ embracing, entwining and intimately enmeshed ~ that the houses seem to lose their way. It is not unusual, for example, to see entire portions of house appropriated by nature, swallowed up by all manner of creeping and climbing plants, whilst small trees and saplings jostling for space in front of the windows lead one to conclude that for all its idyllic rusticity subtract the picturesque and what you are probably left with is a multitude of sins, ranging from light-deprived interiors to issues with rising damp.
For the traveller, however, bouncing and bounding along without a care in the world, such phenomena, where they may or conversely may not exist, are of little or trifling consequence. One of the joys of travelling this road by car is that the presence of such houses often makes themselves known to you when you least expect them. The point at which two walls meet (the right angle of a cottage) can lean out from the natural shrubbery where nothing is, or seemed to be, only a moment before, followed quickly by a gable end and then the building in its entirety; only sometimes it does not, as you see as much and no more as the foliage permits.
A good many of these cottages are in states of disrepair that border on amazing qualities of things that refuse to fall down, their ability to remain standing testifying to construction techniques of old, where the need for durability and ‘everlasting’ strength are indubitably all that they should be.
The unifying deterioration is one, however, that could be remedied without considerable outlay, this is to say where painted walls have turned blotchy and brown with age and in some places on higher and lower planes where the substrate screed has fallen away, leaving irregular patches of brickwork exposed to view and the elements. In some instances, however, the pan-tiled or asbestos roofs have given up the ghost: rafters have resigned and the lot has sunk and plummeted inwards. This is not to say the ‘whole lot’. Indeed, the greater proportion of any one structure may have generally held its own against the concerted depletions inflicted by time, weathering, neglect and despair, thus rendering what remains if not exactly practicable to live in notwithstanding liveable.
As this condition is one that marks the fate of detached premises, you can imagine how much more acute the situation can be with regard to the semi-detached, where one half is maintained and the other lies forgotten, even to the extent of appearing, or actually being, abandoned. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish which of the two applies.
An old German barn with some signs of ageing and later additions
We travelled the canal route twice over one weekend, enabling me to get a closer look at two buildings in particular. One, a property with torn sheets of polythene flapping from collapsed windows, surrounded by blistered brick and flaking woodwork and bound by a garden resembling that of my friend’s garden back in Bedfordshire, only revealed its occupied status when on the second day of passing a venerable old rustic gentleman, swarthy faced and of matted grey beard, pausing conveniently at his rusting gate to gawp at the awesome sight of a motorised carriage with us tearing past in it, inclined us to believe that here indeed was the owner.
The second of the two buildings that prompted further attention was one which did so on account of its size and shape and also in possessing something more substantial and aesthetic in its character. I stop short of pronouncing it grand, speculating that it may once have been a school or chapel, its cruciform outline and the series of arches framing its entrance suggestive of civic importance and lending to it an air that asserted a presence more commanding than most.
One suspects that the majority of the buildings that I have described are hand-me-downs from the Soviet era, gifted on by folk who had been given them themselves by power of the authorities after Königsberg and its outlying region fell in World War II; in other words, they are family homes passing along and down the generational chain.
Houses that overlook the canal do so from large picture windows and some from the envy-making platforms of dark-wood fretwork balconies
Of course, the picture that I have painted is only one half of the canvas. Although they would be considerably less shiny and new, considerably less conspicuous should they exist in a hypothetical exclusivity created by the absence of their impoverished German neighbours, accomplished restoration projects and executive-status mouth-watering newbuilds share the same verdant space along the quiet, sleepy, secluded banks of this reclusive strip of water.
Kempt and curated, the freshly seeded lawns, attractive outbuildings and accessory dwellings blend neatly with the master home, offering tantalising glimpses into near perfection. Houses that overlook the canal do so from large picture windows and some from the envy-making platforms of dark-wood fretwork balconies, and always these and lesser properties whose gardens touch the canal have a jetty of some description and a motorboat moored nearby.
Such houses stand out like a sign saying, “See what you can do, if you’ve got the lolly!” Let’s take a break and put that idea to music: Dr Feelgood As long as the price is right. “If you’ve got no bread, you’re as good as dead”; “If you’ve got no loot, you just can’t shoot”; “If you’ve got no cash, then you’ve gotta dash”.
Off to Matrosovo in the Kaliningrad region
At the risk or repeating myself, I will say again that out on the single road that runs along the canal from Polessk to wherever it was we were heading, there’s a sense of going somewhere, which is good enough in itself. I suppose it is a fait accompli that sooner or later the canal veers off and that when it does it takes with it the narrow track that was originally its in the first place.
The road continues, but now is wide enough to accommodate oncoming traffic with ease. The wheels dip and the suspension rocks across the slightly less than level tarmacadam but soon rumble and jog respectively as the relative smoothness is abruptly replaced by sequential concrete sections. This type of construction always puts me in mind of a certain approach road that may still exist, and which was certainly there in the 1970s, on the way to Norwich, although in this geographical neck of the woods a road consisting of concrete slabs would, I guess, have been laid back in Soviet times.
I cannot remember exactly whether the road changed before or after we crossed a broad sweep of rapid rippling water, which I presume is the Deyma River, but there is no forgetting the bridge. It is a heavy metal-plate affair, with the ability to pivot on a mechanical mechanism. Lower than the road it services, when vehicles pass over the access slope it throws them slightly off-balance producing at the same time a mildly alarming clunkety-clank, likewise at the opposite end when leaving. The bridge appears to be solid enough but could do with a coat of paint.
On and on and on and on and then hoving into view is the signpost for Matrosovo. So, could this be where we were going and had we now arrived?
Matrosovo Kaliningrad region
On entering the village Matrosovo to the right you will see a quite substantial, attractive German house. It has been professionally reroofed using either terracotta tiles or their modern metal equivalent. The gable end, the end that faces the road, has a chevroned woodwork finish, and the house stands in its own grounds amidst a very nice cottage garden. Just beyond it, by the side of a silted brook, is something rather more down to earth, meaning decidedly earthy. A patch of ground, grazed relentlessly into dust is home to some rather whiffy cows and chickens as well as the paraphernalia required for sustaining them, such as wooden shacks full of hay and, scattered about in no particular order, various metal feeding troughs, buckets and the like. Suddenly I was young again, back on the farm in my youth!
On the whole, Matrosovo village has stood the test of time.
And now for something completely different; for across the road from this veritable Ponderosa looms an abnormally high metal fence and poking out above it is a rare, colourful if not grotesque very large plastic what-have-you ~ an inflatable how’s your father? It most resembles a bouncy castle but if that is what it is, it must have been made for giants. Moving on, as we were, we can discuss this curious contraption and other astonishing Matrosovo things at a later and more convenient date in my follow-up post on Matrosovo Park.
The road, that by now has turned into a dusty hardcore track, wends along a little until it meets a junction. Here you have a choice, which is either left or right, as before you lies the wide, the deep and the rather fast-flowing Matrosovka River, the mouth of the Neman River, destination Curonian Lagoon.
There are such a lot of waterways, rivers and the like, criss-crossing in these here parts that it is hard to determine who is which, but if at this point in my post you were to drive straight on the name of the river would matter less than the sound of going plop and feeling incredibly wet.
Avoiding this fate by turning right we followed a twisting hardcore lane with buildings on either side; this comprising the greater part of Matrosovo village, a village that instinctively feels like one with a genuine East Prussian heritage. (You have no idea what one of them feels like? Then you have to visit Matrosovo.)
Into Matrosovo
On the whole, Matrosovo village has stood the test of time. Yes, there are modern renovations of older buildings that could have been more sensitively restored in order to vouchsafe original features as well as newbuilds recently landed from the planet Super Affluent, but by and large along this meandering lane the houses of Matrosovo have managed to escape the worst excesses of insensitivity during periods when conservation was as alien a concept as ridiculous things like women prime ministers.
Matrosovo Kaliningrad region
The German cottages of Matrosovo are predominantly wooden-clad structures. Detached or semi-detached each possesses bilateral features and a sense of uniformity in the relative space that they occupy, both vertically and horizontally, with one or two exceptions. Some are super-simple, standard pitched-roof jobs, their longest dimension aligned with the road but can be gable-end facing, a not unusual arrangement, in fact typical in this region but inversely so in England. Others, a little more posh, have a large, pitched dormer-style window intersecting geometrically, which, in the semi-detached variation, is the dividing point between the two properties.
Not all of the houses in Matrosovo conform to the wooden-clad principle, but plank cladding is certainly prevalent. Where it is employed, it is usual for the cladding to stand proud along the upper portion of these buildings, sometimes with no embellishment, in other words it starts as a plank and ends that way, but others are pointed, like the upturned staves of a traditional picket fence, or even nicely rounded so as to form a decorative apron.
Wooden cladding with ‘pie crust’ finish
Hardly any of these domiciles, whether partly hidden behind the trees or exposed to view, have escaped the make-do-and-mend and aesthetic-free philosophy of Soviet DIYers, who during the era of their tenure thought nothing of tacking a porch on here or amending a section of pan-tiled roofing there, usually from the loan of a ubiquitous piece of asbestos or by recourse to any number of unremarkable materials but admittedly novel techniques that may have conceivably rectified but certainly not improved, and yet when they are beheld today cannot fail to gratify with their touches of eccentricity and unique dedications to social history.
A number of these establishments are still endowed, if only just, with their original German barns. Here, in the former province of East Prussia, German barns can be as big as their imperialist ego or as small as there … (please send your answer to Mick Hart on a postcard). In Matrosovo, they are generally, and may I say delightfully, less alpha in their bearing, but notwithsatnding no less endowed with the universal characteristics of the whoppers you find elsewhere.
Former East Prussian German barns are built on the following principles: The lower parameters are composed of red brick, which make them solid, sturdy and handsome to say the least, but the upper sections are made of wood, simple wooden planks nailed to a framework of beams and supports. The roofs, which are pan-tiled, are heavy and seem to press down forcibly, much to the detriment of the load-bearing structure beneath, causing the wooden mass to assume a splayed or bowed effect. But without wishing to delve too deeply into principals of design that are better left to the experts or for you to research at your leisure (I shall be asking questions, later, children) a revisionary approach implies that perhaps these barns are made this way to spread the load as needed.
A buckling barn of typical German construction
If so, time, neglect and Soviet hap-hazardry has tested them to the limit. Many have succumbed to various states of collapse ~ roofs stoved inward, walls buckling, bits missing, doors as unhinged as Justin Turdeau, and even when this is not the rule but rather the exception, proletariat bodgery is written on almost every surviving quarter like a vandalistic antecedent to the gunge that liberals delude themselves is ‘street art’ but those who live in the real world routinely condemn as graffiti.
Notwithstanding, the buckling barns of imperialist Germany are inspirational remnant art-forms from the hands of Father Time meant to give living artists something bold to emulate. They are a concomitant of hieroglyphics each one firmly rooted in its era, each with a story to tell for those who know how to read them. And what they may have ceased to be from a utilitarian standpoint they more than make up for in visual delight and empathising Romanticism.
Matrosovo Kaliningrad region on the Deyma River
Along the side of the village riverbank, at the back of the houses and land adjoining, old boats can be found, some which with their happy occupants would have come whistling in to dock many years before but, for reasons we may never know, have whistled nowhere since. Lamentably becalmed, strangled by waterside plants and the encroaching branches of trees, their fading blue and yellow paintworks (they are invariably blue or yellow) and weather-cracked mouldering windscreens project on the first encounter a sad and silly impression. Wanted once, will they ever be wanted again? There they sit, like single mums abandonned (even bereft of benefits), dull and dowdy, water-logged, without engine and nowhere to go. No matter where in the world you trek, be it by river or sea, rest assured you will always find that old boat sitting somewhere: becalmed, sad, no longer needed, possibly taking in water, largely forlorn, resolutely forgotten.
Up the garden path
Gardens, unlike boats, are not so easily forgotten but, like most things known to man, you can either devote your life to them or live your life and let them live theirs. In Matrosovo both philosophies and the nuances that derive from them are open to conjecture. It all depends on how you like your gardens: traditional, cottage, formal, pre-planned, secret, maintained, natural, exotic or simply not at all. They are all here in Matrosovo.
Lovely wooden shutters and a nice garden
Reconditioned and new houses tend to go for reconditioned and new gardens. Many contain supplementary/ancillary buildings and seem to go on forever. They remind me of our cat: they have been tended, pampered, revitalised, put down to new grass (even our cat has grass) and may contain a pond or two or a stream that runs gently through them embroidered by trees large and mature that attest to a natural border. (My word, that’s some cat you’ve got there, Mick!)
Yet Spick and Span is but one short band on the overall garden spectrum. Others have become repositories of overspill modernity, among which, and noticeably, is the human compulsion not to recycle when one can simply discard. Old tin buckets, fridges, enamel bowls and any number of garden implements and ornamental wares that have ceased for some reason or other to provide either the useful or novelty value for which they were intended, peep sleepily out from behind clumps of yellow dandelions, play hide and seek in the long wild grass or prop themselves up wearily against the separating sides and quiescent, weed-fringed borders of geriatric sheds that have seen it all and more and may just go on seeing it when we have long since gone.
Heaven forbid, however, that you would find anything of this nature in the exalted gardens of immaculate conception. But don’t worry; it does forbid. Not that the shuffling, folding, falling sheds complain. Like old folks that have been leaving home since the day that they were born but never got further than the garden gate and will never go anywhere now, except in one direction, they belong to a realm of static contentment upon which no amount of the present has neither the will nor authority to intrude.
On a hotter than usual summer’s day this then is the village of Matrosovo, offering all that the senses could wish for ~ a time-honoured rustic seclusiveness on the balmy banks of the Matrosovka River.
Next up: Would you Adam and Eve It ~ the contrast on the other side of the village! (Wait a mo, I’ve yet to write it …)
Waldau Castle and film noir go so well together, as actor Michail Gvozdenko demonstrates, that not being seen dead there would probably never occur to you.
Published: 24 May 2022 ~ Waldau Castle and film noir make a perfect partnership
On our last visit to Waldau Castle we had the pleasure of watching a 30-minute film noir, Agnes, set in 1940s’ Königsberg. Shot in the grounds of Königsberg Cathedral, in the East Prussian countryside and at Waldau castle, whilst the mood of the film and its retrospective authenticity owes a lot to the imaginative screenplay and the cinematographic convention of producing it in black and white, good casting throughout ensures that this silent intertitle movie delivers impact and holds one’s attention from the opening scenes to the end credits.
The plot goes something like this: Whilst walking, a young woman, Agnes, (actress Ekaterina Zuravleva) accidently drops a postcard informing her friend that she is content living with her rich aunt. A young chap picks the card up and reads it. Realising that the young woman comes from a rich family he returns the card to her, flirts and hands her his business card. He visits the castle several times where Agnes lives, but her austere aunt sees through the deception; she realises that the man’s intentions are not honourable; he is not in love but is after their money. Agnes, however, refuses to heed her aunt’s advice to stay away from the man. Driven to breaking point by her aunt’s controlling nature, a violent altercation occurs following which Agnes kills her aunt, takes her money and her jewellery and flees from the castle in the company of the man about whose perfidy she has been warned. On the way to the ‘promised land,’ the man kills her. He gives her a long red scarf to wear, which flows from the open car window and wraps itself around one of the wheels (an allusion to the death of Isadora Duncan, the 1920s’ American dancer). He places her body on the side of the road, is met by a female accomplice and they drive off together gloating over their ill-gotten gains. As they do so, they appear to be planning another hoax, which may be why there is talk of a possible sequel.
Waldau Castle and film noir make a perfect partnership
Not unlike the male lead, the scheming opportunist who wheedles his way into the life of the young woman, I, seeing an opportunity to have my photograph taken with Michail Gvozdenko, the lead male actor, was happy to pose with him next to a film publicity poster. You might infer that I would have been a lot happier had I been standing next to the actresses in real life, but if horses were wishes beggars would ride. As it was, I was pleased to ‘get in on the act’: any man who can wear a trilby in such a way that he would pass unnoticed on a 1940s’ street is someone whom we should all stand next to, at least once in our modern and sadly less elegant lives.
Michail Gvozdenko did an excellent job of convincing us, in or out of trilby, that have Hanomag will seduce. Whether this is true or not you will have to ask the actor, as the Hanomag car that features in the film, which, incidentally, has original Königsberg credentials, is owned by the actor himself. Of course, it does help if you are smooth, suave and sophisticated and always carry a business card!
Some of the costumes and props used in the film are on display at Waldau Castle, together with the medieval-style wall bed in which the deluded and cheated Agnes bumps off her aunt before being heartlessly despatched herself. That’s no way to treat an antique wall bed even less so an ailing aunt, regardless of her readily purloinable fortune. As for the death of Agnes (sigh!), as Leonard Cohen would say, “I came so far for beauty, I left so much behind”.
Published: 20 May 2022 ~ Waldau Castle Revisited and the Case of Asparagus Soup
The grass verges on either side of the drive leading to the entrance of Waldau Castle were awash with cars and on the other side of the striped checkpoint-style gate, the type much-loved in spy thrillers, twenty or thirty more people across a broad age spectrum were swarming about the grounds busy digging, sweeping, carrying and wheeling things. The place was a hive of activity.
Looking down from an air balloon or, if you prefer, a magic carpet, you might conceive that you had inadvertently dropped something and, in the process, disturbed an ant’s nest, but back on terra firma disturbance played no part. Waldau Castle has a way, a mystical way, of gently absorbing everything, even a milling crowd, into the matrix of its historical presence and making it indistinguishable from the permeating status quo.
A day of impressions at Waldau Castle
I looked up at the castle windows, at the old and the new. Since we were last here, Mr Sorokin had been busy replacing, renovating and making good the neglect of years. The windows looked down back at me, the protective polythene sheets where glazing was waiting to be installed moving slowly back and forth in the breeze, emitting little sighs, not of impatience but studied contentment.
Later, over a large cup of delicious asparagus soup and a plate of hot potatoes, Arthur Eagle would say, as he observed the Waldau edifice thoughtfully, that there was enough work to do here to keep the Sorokin family occupied for the rest of their natural lives. He paused, before adding quietly, “And beyond …”
Although I had only been inside Waldau Castle once before, the act of returning was like embracing an old friend. Inside the hall and main room (I gather that there once would have been a dividing wall to the left.), I had a feeling ~ not the admission to a museum feeling, but the warmth of being genuinely welcomed into someone’s home.
Perhaps the answer to the phenomenon lies in the 1972 Christmas ghost story The Stone Tape, which explores the theory that hard objects, such as stones and rocks, are capable of storing sensory information that can be intuitively retrieved and played back by those who are predisposed mentally and emotionally to metaphysical energies, except that in the case of Waldau Castle the reciprocity is resoundingly positive.
Waldau Castle has been around for 750 years and in the duration of its existence the castle’s physical structure has undergone changes too multitudinous and too far-reaching for precise computation, but stand alone in any one of its atmospheric rooms, its long concealed back corridor or upon the steps of its well-trodden and foot-worn staircase and place your hand upon the gnarled but solid brickwork and, should you be that way inclined, you will feel the lives of the people that dwelt within these walls and those like us who have passed this way.
On our previous visit, we were limited to the three main rooms that form the order of the front of the castle, but today we could stray without let or hinderance through and under the carved wooden screen into the long, wide, servants corridor that runs the length of the building and which would at one time presumably have contained interconnecting doors to each of the three main chambers.
Extremely spacious in all dimensions and with windows looking out upon, over and across the meadows that fall away at the back of the castle, windows that replicate those at the front, their deep horizontal V-shaped openings cut into sturdy walls two metres or more in depth, this secluded, secreted once functional passage had in its resting life become an avenue of thought.
Against its back walls stood two ancient window frames, pitched Gothic with pierced tracery, thoroughly weathered and eaten away in places by wood parasites and mould spores, but for all that in remarkable shape and solid for their age.
Besides them, nearby, a modern facsimile of these venerable frames, craftsman carved and assembled to form a replica so exact that only age could tell the difference, invoked the question was this the flexible and tailored handiwork of Mr Sorokin, the head of the resident household of Waldau Castle’s curators and conserverationists? I also wondered if it had been his hand to which the refectory table on the second floor owed its incarnation.
The intricately woven mediaeval tapestries that hang within the corridor as they do in the castle’s front-facing rooms have not been sewn together by Mr Sorokin, they are bought in; but they are made to order to Sorokin specifications, made in the 21st century until they enter Waldau Castle whereupon they assume a sense of belonging as old and as accommodating as the fabric of the building itself.
These exquisitely fashioned and illustrated tapestries complement the suits of armour, heraldic devices, Baroque cabinets, heavy Renaissance revivalist furniture and stylised bass-relief plaques, regaling one’s senses with impressions of the past and resurrecting an exotic world lost to us in time in which people of wealth and influence lived out their privileged lives in envied baronial splendour. A lot of imaginative thought lends itself to cultivation when standing almost solitarily inside the walls of a castle’s passageway.
Waldau Castle Revisited and the Case of Asparagus Soup
It is from this passageway that access to the castle’s second floor presents itself. The staircase is enclosed behind a set of double doors, but these were open today revealing what in bygone times would undoubtedly have been a stairway and stairwell of most imposing character.
You rang m’lud, or is that Bela Lugosi?
The broad steps worn and contorted by the mechanics of innumerable shoes and the feet of those no longer with us require some contemplation; they are potent symbols left behind by the people of the past who will never walk these stairs again, at least in mortal form, and are reminders to us all, all who are able to see them, of the immortality each of us lack. Is this vanishing so unutterably sad or a continual source of wonder?
The first landing, before the stairs turns back upon itself, sits on a level some 30 feet or more below the ceiling. There is no stair rail, just a solid wall of brick, capped, where it has survived, with a coping stone of triangular profile. The second-floor landing, which is effectively part of the upper passageway retracing the one below, provides a better impression of the commodious dimensions and the roomy spaciousness which they bestow. It also gives visual ease to consideration of the gothic window inset high above the stairs, along whose base lies a small yet not unremarkable fragment of intricate relief work.
Somebody asked me if I thought that the cannon, strategically placed to the left at the top of the stairs, was an original, working implement of war. Let’s just say that on no account would I rush to put it to the test by attempting to fire a projectile from it!
The room at the end of the second-floor corridor, which is capaciousness enough to hold 40 people, or thereabouts, has, from the ceiling pendants to the dark wooden tables, been perfectly baronialised. This room would appear to function as a gathering place for groups in which to hold discussions, listen to talks or even watch a film, which is what we did today.
The 30-minute programme was the first part of a historic drama set in 1930s’ Königsberg, some scenes of which were filmed at Waldau Castle (more about this in the following post). As you will see from my photograph, with the lights down and candles lit, the room in question assumes an atmospheric quintessence. It is the sort of place where folk less cautious than myself might well be tempted to hold a séance. What an inducive but uneasy thought!
Waldau Castle Revisited and the Case of Asparagus Soup
It is now time to take a break from architectural pleasures and musings of a preternatural kind and reveal the link between Waldau Castle and the not so strange case of asparagus.
To us there was no abstruseness, in fact the connection was as clear as soup ~ asparagus soup to be precise ~ along with a plate of pizza and boiled potatoes. You see, as well as being the physical and spiritual saviours of Waldau Castle, the Sorokin family also do a nice line in home-grown asparagus, which was on the menu today free in the form of soup for the legion of willing helpers and to visitors such as ourselves. It was also on sale in the wholesome character of natural, freshly picked produce.
With the piping hot asparagus soup reaching the parts today that the sun, though bright and beautiful, had neglected, we were confluently treated to a demonstration of traditional Prussian dancing by a troupe of ladies dressed in Prussian costume.
Under this spell and the promise of the makings of a nutritional meal, once the soup and dancing was over, we filed one by one into the Sorokin house to purchase some of this lovely grub to take home with us.
As we walked back to the Volga, me with the sprig of asparagus in my hand, I thought I caught a glimpse of something, a shadow perhaps, or otherwise, momentarily flicker across the dusty kitchen windows of the ever-watchful Waldau Castle, but when I looked again there was no one and nothing there. This may have been cause for concern had not the sun at that deliberate moment deigned to appear from behind a cloud. Like a spotlight it shone on my garden vegetables, and it was this, I later reasoned, that accounted for the warmth in my heart with which I had come away. Farewell goodly Waldau Castle, until we meet again!
A carved plaque dedicated to, or even a coat of arms representing, Waldau Castle and the Sorokin family
Food for thought: It is food for thought to note that whilst Europe is busy plunging itself into the dark ages of genocidal witch hunts against Russian nationals everywhere, here in the Kaliningrad region no such prejudice and hatred proliferates. In humbling contrast to the devastation and destruction of monuments, bullying, intimidation, acts of violence to Russian citizens, expulsion of the creative and the cultured and the march to rewrite history to suit the figments of the West, Russians are going about their business, quietly and with exemplary composure, restoring, renovating and honouring Kaliningrad’s German and East Prussian past. Something for the West to watch and hopefully to learn from.
Furniture at Waldau Castle
Once a dealer in vintage and antiques, never more less so, which is beyond a reasonable doubt why wherever I go a-visiting, old stuff, including furniture, always catches my eye.
Not surprisingly, as Kaliningrad was once Königsberg, the capital city of East Prussia, real antique furniture and its reproduction equivalent reveals a regional market trend predominantly focused on German Baroque and Renaissance revival items. So, if you like your furniture heavy, dark and Gothic, with lots of rich carving, intricate mouldings, bold armorial and heraldic symbols then you will like what you will find.
You will also discover examples of original 1930s’ continental Art Deco, such as this buffet/tallboy or kitchen servery with its tell-tale Lucite handles.
Freddie Mercury off the chart in Russia’s Kaliningrad
Published: 6 May 2022 ~ Freddie Mercury Kaliningrad House is one in a million
Were you, or are you, a fan of Freddie Mercury? I cannot say that moustachioed Freddie or his band Queen did very much for me, although they did produce one or two memorable tracks. But something tells me that the owner of this property (see photos), not very inconspicuously tucked away in Russia’s Kaliningrad region’s countryside, has more than a passing admiration for the flamboyant singer songwriter, his unforgettable stage persona and outstanding vocal range.
Freddie Mercury Kaliningrad House
Bright pink with a stencilled silhouette of Freddie strutting his stuff, its not the sort of property that you might expect to find in, well almost anywhere really, but least of all in a small Russian hamlet.
My favourite musician, back ~ way back ~ in the progressive-rock era of my youth, was Frank Zappa and his innovative and rather unconventional band the Mothers of Invention.
Inspired by the Mercury tribute, I am trying to imagine the exterior makeover of our 18th century UK family home had I undertaken it using various artistic devices from some of Zappa’s zany album covers, perhaps a complete rendition of Freak Out! or the imagery used on the soundtrack album of Zappa’s surreal psychedelic and Freudian-infused musical monolith 200 Motels.
I am almost certain had I attempted such a profane project that the planning department of Northants County Council not to mention the parish council would have moved to have me committed, especially if there was a real danger that neither could make any money out of it.
However, in the case of Freddie House, it sort of grows on you, don’t you think?
The other advantage that the owner of this property has over us in Britland is that in the UK we would not be allowed to paint a Union Jack on the side of the house combined with Queen’s Crown motifs, for the very reasonable reason that it might offend minority imports. You have to admit, however, that the red, white and blue cuts a rather dashing figure! I think the Union Jack should be painted on every wall in the UK, particularly every wall in London!
In the Kaliningrad provinces, possibly an embryonic catalyst is at work, subliminally suggesting the constitution of an entire village exterior designed on the principle of tributes to favourite rock artists. Would Zappa have a hand in this, he could well have called it Tinsel Town.
Meanwhile, until that day which never may dawn, here’s looking at you Fred! 😊
Posts devoted to the Kaliningrad region, Russia, recent and not so …
It is also known for the Amber Legend, a novel and attractive restaurant cunningly constructed on a split-level plan.
Built on a fairly steep incline, the pavement entrance to Amber Legend accesses what is effectively the upper ground floor, while the doors at the rear of the building lead to the lower level.
Externally, the building is invested with more than a touch of the neoclassical. It follows a simple but imposing geometrical outline, with dominating rectangular upright supports, a balustrade balcony traversing the width of the building and a matching balustrade parapet. After an introduction of this calibre, anything less internally, both upper and lower level, would be disappointing, but happily this is not the case: aesthetic integrity and continuity are safely, indeed inspiringly, assured.
The question is, however, why did the proprietors of the Amber Legend not call their establishment ‘Blue Flag restaurant’, ‘good clean air’ or ‘split-level neoclassical eatery’? Why the ‘Amber’ and why the ‘Legend’?
There are two possible reasons, one lesser known to some and the other, one trusts, obvious to anyone who has frequented the restaurant in person. The first most conceivably has to do with Yantarny’s massive amber reserves. Approximately 90 per cent of the world’s amber resources are sitting in Yantarny. They are mined upon an industrial scale using the open-quarry method.
The second, inspired by the first, has visible connotations, since both the exterior and interior of the building are lavishly decorated with variegated stones of genuine polished amber. Inside the restaurant the precious ancient resin is taken to another level of artistic meritocracy, as richly inlaid amber panels of many different hues sharing geometrical space with amber art assemblages. (Thanks for the word, Vit!) vie for your attention.
There are amber trims to the seats; amber-studded back rests; inset amber wall plaques; the bar is adorned with amber; and the ceiling-suspended lamp shades, bowls of amber inlay, are interwoven tiffany style.
Of particular note are the broad wooden panels, chain-hoisted close to the ceiling, each containing a window of different coloured amber stones lamp-backed for illumination.
Confoundingly, when we visited the restaurant, it was during the daylight hours, so that although in the room’s darker recesses some of the lamps were lit, the full effect of the interplay between light source and amber creation was lost in the dilution of overpowering, brilliant sunlight. However, the upside to this was in the excuse that it presented, which was as good as any that I could invent, for returning on an evening to witness what most assuredly must be a lighting display of artistic splendour.
Another sphere of artistic splendour, according to my wife, who had dined at Amber Legend before, was lurking in the toilets, and this, she said, was something that I must see.
Amber Legend Yantarny legendary toilet
Now, contrary to what you may have been told, I am not in the habit, not even rarely, of taking a camera into the toilet, but called upon by my wife to do so, strictly on account of the brilliance of the interior décor, I cast caution to the wind, in a manner of speaking, and made an exception on this occasion. The result of this promiscuity is documented here in two revealing photographs, illustrating the continuation of the amber theme, both in the ornamentation surrounding the wash basins and, more spectacularly, in a glass-windowed chamber recessed within the toilet floor, where chunks of amber of novel shapes and some of prodigious proportions turn everyday humble toilet into a veritable natural history museum, even at the inconvenience of others wanting to use the convenience.
You may have liked the loo, but do you like the blue? In my humble opinion, the TARDIS-blue woodwork that repeats itself throughout the restaurant, including the toilet, creates the perfect frame for the amber displays. It is just neutral enough without subsiding into plain and functions as a recall feature of Amber Legend’s personalised style. I call the colour TARDIS blue because recognisably that is what it is, which is why I should imagine we chose this colour for our TARDIS, the one that we built at home. But then, I suppose, it is not that unusual; just the colour of choice for everyone’s TARDIS.
At this point I would normally add a footnote about the food, so why disappoint. But first a caveat. As you probably recall, whilst making allowances for having been called gormless ~ and who wouldn’t want to be, for it is such a lovely word ~ gourmet I am not. Beer needs volume; food needs volume. There is only one winner. But, when we visited Amber Legend I was feeling rather peckish, so I did partake of the pizza, which was pretty good as pizza goes. However, my fellow patrons, who needless to say were more adventurous in their choice of dishes than I, as most normal people appear to be, reliably informed me that their meals were most enjoyable. And I have no reason to doubt their sincerity.
The verdict is, therefore, that when visiting this coastal jewel in Kaliningrad region’s amber crown (remember the name, Yantarny) make sure your experience is complete: Discover the Amber Legend!
Essential details
Amber Legend 66A Sovetskaya Ulitsa Yantarny Kaliningrad Olblast Russia
Published: 27 April 2022 ~ By Volga to Yantarny Russian Easter and Beautiful Coast
Whilst the French were masochistically (or should that be Macronistically) condemning themselves to another five years of neoliberal arrogance in which cash is king but people and culture are, according to their president, there to be p_ _ _ _ d on, we, here, in Russia were celebrating one of the most important holidays in the Orthodox Christian Calendar, Easter ~ a time for observing sanctified traditions, passing those traditions on to the next generation and uniting family and friends.
Easter eggs play an essential role within the Christian ethos of this holiday, not the chocolate variety, but actual eggs, hard boiled and dyed typically red using onion skins. I recall one Easter in the UK when my wife Olga and her English class decorated hard-boiled eggs in a variety of elaborate and brightly coloured patterns; a labour of love no doubt but a formidable task no less. Nowadays, modern techniques make it possible to cheat just a little, using decorative highly coloured and often illustrated bands that once applied to the egg wrap themselves tightly around it.
Hand-painted or not, the eggs, which symbolise resurrection and new life, are blessed in the church and presented as gifts to relatives and friends. Other blessed Easter gifts include bought or home-made cakes and fortified Church wine. We received and gave such fare from and to our friends and neighbours.
The blessing of Easter Gifts in Kaliningrad 2022
By Volga to Yantarny Russian Easter and Beautiful Coast
On Easter Sunday, 24th April, our friends, Arthur and Inara, invited us to be driven in style in their 1970s’ Volga to the seaside resort of Yantarny.
Yantarny is much smaller and further away from Kaliningrad than the increasingly popular resorts of Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk. I had not been there since my brother visited Kaliningrad in May 2019.
As then, the weather today was superb ~ a gorgeous and perfect spring day ~ just right for lounging near the sea and taking snapshots.
If you go down to the woods today …
Since I was last in Yantarny, a number of municipal improvements had been made, and in the coastal woodland, a picturesque pre-sea descent, landscape-sensitive work of both a practical and embellishing nature abounded, including more woodland paths, eclectic artworks and non-obtrusive visitor facilities. One among these is the installation of a wooden-decked observatory, enabling unimpeded views across the white, sandy beach and rolling expanse of the Baltic.
Looking out across the Baltic Sea
On the coastline itself a series of attractive and much-needed chalet-style café’s interlinked by wooden platforms, each offering inspiring views of the sea, have been tastefully constructed, and it was in one of these that we would stop a while to take advantage of their hospitality.
Sitting outside beneath the shade of the broad eaves, I was befriended by the cafés’ resident stray. No, not that irritating and passively (if you are lucky) aggressive stereotype that blights the British pub and whom everyone tries to avoid, but an old moth-eared and fur-matted cat, slate-grey and socially promiscuous. He obliged me by sitting on my knee and then, after 10 minutes, possibly dissatisfied that no grub had come his way, decided to bite the hand that hadn’t fed him. Ahh well, I thought, if you can’t be bitten by a curmudgeonly old cat over the Easter weekend when can you be bitten by one?
Bitten or not, I was content. I had good friends, good beer, the gentle sound and sight of the sea and was suffused with such a sense of complete and utter relaxation that it seemed to transcend almost everything, even philosophical thought and the quiet reflection with which it is nurtured. Effort was redundant, and effort, for the moment, had been effortlessly put aside.
We ~ as I perceived a communion among all present not only within our small group ~ remained thus for some time, gazing out across a sea that seemed at peace with its gently rippling self as much as we were with ourselves.
We remained this way for over an hour until the sun, shimmering silver across a broad swathe of sea where the surface seemed nearly smooth, challenging the visibility of my 1940s’ sunglasses, prompted us with the realisation that the afternoon was giving away to evening and that we would have to make a move. Alas, the time had come, as it always does; and for all that we had put it on hold, the ebb and flow of our own tide eventually carried us back into town.
The departure was sweetened, however, by calling in for lunch at Yantarny’s Amber Restaurant. What a remarkable place! I think we’ll give it three exclamation marks ~ !!! If you are curious as to why they call it Amber Restaurant, there’s no perhaps about it, you simply need to visit.
Hopefully, I’ll write a little more about it at a later date. For now, however, let’s just say that if the combination of amber, atmosphere, good food and brilliant beverages is something that appeals to you, the Amber Restaurant is the place!!!! There, I’ve gone and given it four exclamation marks. See > Amber Legend Yantarny
Fed, beerified and tripping up the step as I left ~ I always do that, it’s not because I was squiffy ~ we walked the short distance to the local church.
In German times Yantarny Church was Lutherian. The restored church is now Orthodox, The Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, and belongs to the Kaliningrad diocese of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church. Mellow and mesmerising, it is difficult to imagine an environment more conducive to an appreciation of all that is dear ~ your loved ones, friends, the life you have lived and the current life you are living. Yantarny Church is not just for Easter, or any other special date on the religious calendar, it is an open sanctuary for thought and reflection, a quiet, hallowed place in which to take pause from the daily static of our estranging modern existence.
We had spent approximately three hours in Yantarny. It had been nowhere near enough and the need to return was incipient. I could definitely feel a weekend break coming on. But first there was the question of how we would leave today.
On emerging from the church, we discovered that Arthur had left the Volga lights switched on, which wasn’t so good for starting the engine. As ordered, I put my shoulder to the front of the big old car and gave it all that I could. Miraculously ~ you might say ~ the lovely old lump (not Arthur, I mean the car) fired up, and although praised for my efforts, and also praising myself, I was secretly reflecting on the mysterious ways in which things move, are moved and how they move us and the wonderful gift of having spent a perfect Easter day.
WWII Re-enactment at old German brewery in Polessk
Published: 27 January 2022 ~ Soviet Re-enactors take Polessk Brewery in WWII Battle
On 23 January 2022, the Polessk Brewery hosted a re-enactment of the battle for Labiau (Russian: Polessk), originally orchestrated as part of the Soviet East Prussian Offensive, which culminated in the surrender of Königsberg on 9 April 1945.
A better location for the re-enactment is hard to imagine. The grounds of the Polessk Brewery fall gently away from the foot of the brewery wall to the reed beds and banks of the River Deyma. Between the river and the brewery stands the solid remains of a reinforced concrete German gun emplacement . With the Soviet forces advancing from two separate points of the river, this genuine WWII obstacle provided the perfect place for the defending Germans to ‘dig in’ and attempt to repulse the invaders head on.
Germans (re-enactors) gather by the side of the ‘bunker’ before the battle commences #
As with English WWII re-enactment scenarios, attention to detail was paramount. Re-enactments have an entertainment value, but first and foremost they are educational, which is why their participants are known by the generic name of Living History Groups.
Re-enactors on both sides, those representing the German and Soviet forces, dress in authentic uniforms, each item of which, including field gear and insignia, is meticulously researched and worn in the way it would have been worn by serving members of each country’s armed forces during the Second World War.
Soviet re-enactors in authentic WWII Red Army gear #
The de-activated weapons carried and used by re-enactors are often not replicas but blank-firing originals, the cost of which is frequently more alarming than the sounds they make when discharging. The same goes for the rest of the entourage: uniforms, insignia and field gear come at a not inconsiderable price. Good reproductions, ie the sort sold through the militaria outlet Soldier of Fortune, can be expensive enough, but the real thing, especially the real Third Reich thing, can cost the proverbial arm and leg. (Sorry, perhaps not the nicest metaphor when used in conjunction with military re-enactment!) Nevertheless, at the end of the day, re-enactment is no different from any other leisure pursuit: in other words, it costs!
Soviet Re-enactors take Polessk Brewery in WWII Battle
Although the area covered by today’s Polessk re-enactment was extensive, spectator attendance was high and in order to ensure an advantageous viewing point it was necessary to arrive early and stake out your claim. Low ambient temperatures and snow on the ground did not seem to have deterred anyone, and with a fair proportion of Germans and Soviets wearing snow suits, the scene could not have been more suitably convincing.
Olga and I had chosen to stand at the lower end of the field, which gave us a pretty clear view of the start of the battle, with Soviet forces firing mortars at the entrenched Germans, followed by the infantry advancing slowly on both sides.
Small children had been warned that their ears would be subject to ‘loud bangs’, and although the reports of rifles and machine guns were bearable in the wide-open expanse in which they were discharged, no one was prepared for the heavy canon fire and punctuating pyrotechnics. As I wrote earlier, re-enactment is serious stuff!
As the Soviets advanced, Olga and I retreated to the interior of the brewery (well, I would, wouldn’t I!), where it was possible to witness the battle from an elevated perspective. If anything, the confrontation was more dramatic from this standpoint, since as well as the commanding view it gave us, the background commotion of battle emanating from a giant sound system placed at the side of the brewery wall rose tremulously from the ground below and rent the air asunder.
It was a nice touch at the close of the assault to see a triumphant Soviet soldier waving the Red Army victory flag from the stairwell window of the old Labiau brewery!
