Published: 31 January 2022 ~ All White in Kaliningrad More Snow on its Way!
For the past three or four days the rain has been teeming down here in Kaliningrad. It has washed away the snow and left the city and my shirt, which is hanging on the balcony railings, looking gloomy and bedraggled ~ as I wrote in a previous post, Kaliningrad is far from its best during a rainy winter season!
I also wrote in an earlier blog that ‘It always snows in Russia ~ and sometimes it doesn’t’. Such flippancy becomes me, but affirmation that all is still well can come from the strangest of sources. A few moments ago, I consulted the BBC weather forecast and contrary to my expectations of alighting upon something inexcusably liberal-left, such as for the next seven days it will be sunny over the English Channel, perfect weather conditions for the Royal Navy to taxi across more migrants, I was heartened to discover that more snow was making its way to Kaliningrad. Good, white snow!
The fall may not be sufficient to make hundreds of snow-Its but, as winter still holds illimitable dominion over the calendar, until such time as spring breaks a little more snow is unlikely to offend a conservative outlook on how the seasons should conduct themselves.
All White in Kaliningrad More Snow on its Way!
To tide us over, I have selected and posted here a number of what I consider to be atmospheric ‘Kaliningrad in the snow’ scenes taken just before Christmas 2021 and after Christmas in 2022.
Those of you who are still children at heart will feel the magic in what you see; those of you who have grown up too quickly, grown too old without realising it or just grown out of it, will be excused for thinking snowballs but pitied for a species of short-sightedness that any number of trips to Specsavers is unlikely to resolve.
Published: 4 October 2021 ~ Pondering on the future of Kaliningrad Pond
There are two lakes in Kaliningrad that are not lakes, they are in fact man-made water features and, as such, their real nomenclature is ‘pond’, even though rural English folk of a certain age will find it difficult and anomalous to reconcile such large expanses of water with their concept of a traditional pond, which used to be ~ as there are not many left now ~ a small, generally muddy-looking round thing sitting in a field or in the centre of a village ~ sometimes with ducks on top.
Pondering on the future of Kaliningrad Pond
Königsberg has two ponds, interconnecting: the Lower Pond is the oldest, believed to have been constructed in 1256, with the Upper Pond following in 1270.
The building that is the subject of my post today, must have appeared sometime in the early millennial years.
To say that the building was an odd fish to have been washed up on the side of this acute bend in the Upper Pond would be beyond the pale of understatement.
My first recollection of it was in 2015. We sat outside on a bright May morning, consuming a snack in the ornamental garden.
My first impression was that it looked like something that had sneaked out of a tired old British seaside resort, like Mablethorpe for example, and had taken root in this small corner of Russia on an even smaller corner of Königsberg’s Upper Pond in the dark depths of an unremarkable night.
From the water’s edge and the elevated pavement that runs along the pond’s borders, the front of the building is highly visible, since it occupies pride of place on a small but grandstanding eminence. Had it been built correctly, that is to say of the right materials and been less of a prefabbed rectangle, it may have added something exceptional to the attractiveness of the waterside scene instead of subtracting from it, but that opportunity has long since elapsed, and so here it stands today ~ at least for the moment but not perhaps for much longer, perhaps not even tomorrow.
Of no particular recommendation, all windows and block-like, but softened in summer by the trees that surround it, by the natural lie of the land and the happily gathering verdure, the front elevation of this building on a budget does not have much to offer and does not become particularly striking or even reasonably engaging until one turns the corner of the street, when then, and only then, does the full benefit of its maritime kitsch beguile one.
From this approach the building’s thematic premise offers itself for closer inspection. A man standing on a ship which is standing on the roof is an obvious place to start and might make sense if the restaurant on which they are anchored overlooked the Atlantic Ocean, but as the building does no such thing, it embroiders Königsberg’s pond, we will forego logic and place what faith we have left in the buoyancy ring of aesthetics.
At their lower level, the walls of the building are decorated with white and blue appliqués, which are clearly meant to resemble waves. The technique is replicated in the moulded bas relief of a wave-encompassed sailing ship that dominates the front-side wall and emerges again in the intertwining arabesque of mythical human forms set within trees of wave-like character, which flank an entrance aspirant to the essence of Art Deco.
Above the stylised wave formation, imitation wood cladding has been used to good effect to simulate the timbers of a 19th century sailing ship. These rise steadily upward to form the hull of the stern, which juts out jauntily at roof level from the corner of the building above the pavement and people walking. On the quarterdeck itself, his hands astride the rails, stands an effigy of a ship’s captain peering out to sea, except there is no sea to see, just trees, pavements, people and traffic and perhaps if he cranes to the left a little an inkling of Youth Park.
Beneath this surprisingly detailed mannequin, just above floor level, resting against the ship, sits a large terrestrial globe. That’s it, over there: underneath the parasol on top of the ice cream fridge!
The nautical theme travels on around to the back of the building where, on the corner opposite Captain Ahab, stood, until a few days ago, a silvered-metal and rivetted lighthouse, partly reclaimed by nature, who, over the period of desertion, had garbed it in a thick green mantle of all-enveloping, cascading ivy.
In Mablethorpe a building such as this would have gone down well amongst the amusement arcades, bingo halls, working men’s clubs, souvenir shops and candy floss emporiums, but here it looked a bit out of place. No, correction: it looked a lot out of place. To add to the ambiguous spectacle, the garden that belongs to it was once tasteful and rather twee. It consisted of four or five gazebos of differing shapes, with fretwork wooden walls and reed thatched roofs, tucked away and surrounded by exotic trees and shrubs that lent to the whole a secluded quality of oriental character.
Pondering on the future of Kaliningrad Pond
In May 2015, shortly after four of us had partaken of lunch in the gardens, these almost exquisite surroundings, through no fault of our own, closed, together with the establishment to which they had belonged, and remained closed, deteriorating month on month, year after year, persisting in that decline until something stirred in the garden this spring. That something was a chain saw. Trees and bushes were coming down and, swiftly with them, buildings.
Whilst the loss of the ornamental garden was a blow softened by the neglect and abandonment to which it had been subjected, what was destined to take its place prompted speculation. Presuming that the building would soon go the same way as its garden, I arrived at the conclusion that I ought to snap some pictures.
The photographs that illustrate this post were taken in the opening weeks of summer 2021 and later in September of the same year.
The garden as we knew it has, indeed, gone, to be replaced by? Well, you tell me. It all looks very functional, whatever that function is, but the organic nature of its predecessor, both regarding its planted ground and sequestered, blending buildings, is now nothing more than a pleasant memory, starkly superseded by what amounts to a bit of a mismatch.
The regeneration has already included the disappearance of the rooftop lighthouse. I always suspected it was a nuclear missile! And Captain Ahab, who still stares over the taffrail, looks decidedly nervous, as though he knows he is on the verge of losing his commission and having in the process his gimbals snatched away.
Witnessing what is happening up the garden path, the next question surely must be what is in store for the building? Will it be stripped of its nautical heritage and reclad as something more unfortunate? Or will it be knocked down? Will it rise again from the depth of demolition? And will it eventually be serving beer? Enjoy these historic photos and continue to watch this space!
When I was a nipper, I would like nothing more when we visited the seaside than spending my parents’ money on the funfair rides. Sea and sand are OK to look at, but I like water in tea, and I am no beach lizard.
If you live in or are visiting Kaliningrad, you can get your funfair fix at the Youth amusement park, which is a spacious and well-equipped amusement park across the road from the Upper Lake.
Recently, on my birthday, I was smitten by the regressive desire to go oscillating on the park’s big wheel. This is quite unlike me, as I gave up heights in preference for the sure-footedness of good old terra firma many moons ago. But it was my birthday, I had eaten an ice cream by the lake, and the wheel, which I had often regarded with curiosity whilst partaking of beer at the front of the Mercor Hotel, must have said something to me today like, “you’d better do it now, before you get too old!”
Kaliningrad Ferris wheel at Youth Park
I have never argued with a Ferris wheel before, have you? And today was no exception. But had I have been inclined to do so nothing would have come of it, because Kaliningrad’s big wheel is not one of those fast-moving fairground attractions where you sit with your friends suspended in chairs and when the wheel stops at the top your friend begins to rock it and is no longer your friend anymore, it is, in its construction and spirit of revolution, more akin to the London Eye ~ big, solid, friendly and sedate.
Nevertheless, at 50 metres it is high enough for me, and as we stood on the departure platform waiting for one of the empty cars to descend and allow us to board, I caught myself thinking yet again how unlike me this is, even on my birthday.
Kaliningrad Ferris Wheel at Youth Park
The cars roll around at a gentle pace but even so you clamber quickly aboard goaded to do so by the Imp of the Perverse who is whispering in your ear, “Quick, imagine your trouser leg getting caught on the edge of the car; how embarrassing that would be, to go hopping off towards the end of the platform!”
Mick Hart about to board Kaliningrad’s Ferris wheel
This thought, or thoughts similar, have you jumping aboard in no time. The car lurches and swings in response to your opposing momentum, but it is alright: the thing seems sturdy enough, and before you can say ‘motion sickness’ you have plonked yourself down on the bench seat.
Olga Hart not at all frightened on Kaliningrad’s Ferris wheel
The wheel’s cars are in fact quite spacious and would, I imagine, hold six people quite comfortably. The cars have glass doors, so you are fully enclosed, and the wide windows offer an awesome and spectacular view not just of Kaliningrad from an aerial perspective but of the steel lattice-work fabric, nuts, bolts and bearings from which the revolving contraption is made.
View of Kaliningrad’s Ferris wheel and Kaliningrad itself from one of the wheel’s cars
As we levelled out at a 45-degree angle to the ground, the angle of the dangle incidentally causing you to feel more vulnerable than when the car reaches the summit, this is when both the wheel’s superstructure and park layout below are at their most dramatic; and then, slowly, very slowly, as the car begins to rise, Kaliningrad in all its (as I have said before) green glory and contrasting urban extensiveness folds quietly out beneath you inciting a landmark-spotters epiphany.
Looking out across the once Königsberg district of Maraunenhof from Kaliningrad Ferris wheel
Away with apprehension and out with the camera, I get some fairly good shots of the wheel itself and some admiral ones of the city. Yes, the photographs would have been better had I come prepared with a proper camera instead of relying on the mobile phone’s, but spur of the moment decisions respect nothing but opportunism so, as I did not plan ahead, I have to be contented.
Kaliningrad Upper Lake
Kaliningrad boating lake
The view from the wheel’s highest point is nothing short of breathtaking, and for 200 rubles a ride (£1.99), presuming you do not own a microlight, this is the next best way to reach the dizzy heights, in other words to see the city of Kaliningrad as you have never seen it before.
Next on the bucket list is a spin on the wheel as dusk settles, when the wheel and the cityscape are bedecked with illumination.
Whereabouts
The Youth Park of Culture and Recreation is located in the Leningrad district of Kaliningrad at 3 Telman Street, opposite the Upper Lake.
It only seems five minutes ago that I was remarking on the welcome novelty of buds and leaves appearing on the Königsberg-Kaliningrad trees, and now here we are in September, the leaves turning brown and yellow and falling to the ground.
Early yesterday morning I was alerted to this fact by our cat, who jumped off the sideboard and scampered out of the room. Gin-Ginskey is extremely intrepid when it comes to hunting flies but anything that sounds like a vacuum cleaner is bound to send him dashing for cover, and in this instance the vacuum cleaner was of the large lorry variety, sucking up leaves from the old cobbled streets and pavements in front of our house.
Kaliningrad a green city adorned with flowers
In spring and summer Kaliningrad is one of the greenest cities imaginable, a feature which the art-historian Victor Ryabinin noted was not true of its predecessor Königsberg. In what was the Maraunenhof district of Königsberg and in other areas developed during the first years of the 20th century through to the 1920s, the streets are lined with Königsberg trees. Now they are old and gnarled, venerable survivors of a brutalised city, but back in the day when they were mere precocious saplings they would not have provided the streets of Königsberg with the leafy green vistas and avenues of which Kaliningrad is the fortunate benefactor.
Indeed, Kaliningrad is a city of green open spaces: along the banks of the Pregel river where warehouses once have stood, surrounding the cathedral on Kneiphof Island, around and in front of the House of Soviets, that most controversial of Kaliningrad’s structures, in the numerous grassed quadrangles between the flats, and around the banks and perimeter of the upper and lower ponds.
Three or four large public parks, each endowed with their own distinctive character, contribute copiously to the leafy green landscape, creating rural backwaters in the heart of the city, which in the spring and summer months form natural retreats from the relentless pace and energy of urban living.
Kaliningrad green & adorned with flowers
Kaliningrad in the kind seasons is also a city rich with blooms and flowers of seemingly endless variety. You will find them everywhere: in the enviable gardens of the Maraunenhof villas, along the banks of the river, in municipal planters and thoughtfully planted flower beds, in the small border gardens that front the old German flats and the cottage gardens lovingly planted and tended at the foot of the Khrushchev flats ~ these borders can be surprisingly large and full of the most eclectic variety of flowers and flora.
You will find flowers adorning balconies, in window boxes and hanging baskets, some so prodigiously and impressively arranged that they are left to spill over on their own accord or are trained to cascade imaginatively into the garden below.
Shrubs, bushes, silver birch, pine, all manner of fir trees ~ even blue ones! ~ are thrown into the mix. Evergreen hedgerows tower above and push their way through perimeter railings, forming dense thickets for garden privacy, whilst fences new and old act as impromptu trellis work for climbing plants of every denomination.
And even though Kaliningrad is a bustling modern city, one of its more appealing attributes to my mind is that here and there you can stumble upon curious pockets of wild naturalistic vegetation, small friendly jungles that turn otherwise neglected spaces and mundane objects into inherently picturesque compositions ~ an old garage door, for example, biffed and battered through age and use, transformed by climbing foliage into a quaint vignette of antiquity or a ropey looking fence entwined with vines instantly elevated to photographic status~ the very stuff that artists delight in for its authentic old-world charm.
Although, as summer retreats, the pines and firs will not forsake us, in a few weeks from now the deciduous varieties will lose their foliage, the scene will shift to winter and the built-on urban landscape will assert itself again.
Hopefully, however, our collection of photographs taken during the spring and summer months will remind you how blessed Kaliningrad is to possess such examples of nature’s beauty and will help to sustain and lift your spirits through the winter months to come.
Snowy scenes in Kaliningrad 2021/2022 Published: 31 January 2022 ~ All White in Kaliningrad More Snow on its Way! For the past three or four days the rain has been teeming down here in Kaliningrad. It has washed away the snow and left the city and my shirt, which is hanging on the balcony railings,… Read more: All White in Kaliningrad More Snow on its Way!
Captain sinks with his ship off Königsberg Pond Published: 4 October 2021 ~ Pondering on the future of Kaliningrad Pond There are two lakes in Kaliningrad that are not lakes, they are in fact man-made water features and, as such, their real nomenclature is ‘pond’, even though rural English folk of a certain age will… Read more: Pondering on the future of Kaliningrad Pond
Kaliningrad Ferris Wheel at Youth Park Published: 30 September 2020 When I was a nipper, I would like nothing more when we visited the seaside than spending my parents’ money on the funfair rides. Sea and sand are OK to look at, but I like water in tea, and I am no beach lizard. If… Read more: Kaliningrad Ferris Wheel at Youth Park
As summer fades … Published: 13 September 2020 It only seems five minutes ago that I was remarking on the welcome novelty of buds and leaves appearing on the Königsberg-Kaliningrad trees, and now here we are in September, the leaves turning brown and yellow and falling to the ground. Early yesterday morning I was alerted… Read more: Kaliningrad Green & Adorned with Flowers
No Laughing Matter! Continuing with our theme of Kaliningrad City of Contrasts, I was out walking the other day and I came across this rather splendiferous example. On one side of the road you have this spanking new block of flats; on the other, this rather sad and sorry ruined Königsberg cottage. Kaliningrad City of… Read more: Kaliningrad City of Contrasts
Continuing with our theme of Kaliningrad City of Contrasts, I was out walking the other day and I came across this rather splendiferous example.
On one side of the road you have this spanking new
block of flats; on the other, this rather sad and sorry ruined Königsberg
cottage.
This side
That side
Kaliningrad City of Contrasts
Could the latter be restored, I hear you say? Or, is
that just the sound of my own Romanticist fantasy ringing inside my head?
If I had a flat which faced the street in the new
apartment block pictured here, every day I looked out of my window and beheld
this ruined abode, I would be confronted with the question, is this building
restorable?
I would need you there to laugh at me.
But something has to be built on this site at some
time. So, let us rephrase the question: would it be possible to salvage
something from this former home and integrate it into a new build as a historic
feature?
You are laughing at me again!
But look at those marvelous chimney stacks, and is that an enamel sign peeping through the trees on the right-hand side? And who knows what may still be lurking on the inside under the debris? Perhaps one of those remarkable tiled Königsberg stoves; 1920s’ door handles; additions and renovations from the Soviet era. If nothing else, the red bricks have to be a reusable, recyclable commodity?
What’s that you say?
It would be easier to keep the curtains shut or buy a flat on the other side of the building.
February 8th 2020 was a big day in Kaliningrad, to be more precise, it was Big Sausage Day*. Reputedly, it is the day that the ladies of Kaliningrad walk around with smiles upon their faces and quite a lot of the men most sensibly stay at home (source: anonymous). But not me. Unfazed by the reports of a giant object of cylindrical length being disported on the open streets, I set out, in defiance of the Vegetarian Society, one day late as usual.
The Big Sausage fest has become so popular here in
recent years that it has undergone an extension, turning it effectively from a
Big Sausage Day into a Big Sausage Weekend. Unfortunately, the huge and
eponymous object makes its debut on Saturday morning. This year we had been
invited to attend on Sunday and last year both I and our invitee were too
hungover to attend. So, instead of reviewing how the Big Sausage went and where
it went, I am going to make a few comments instead on the much-vaunted subject
of ‘Kaliningrad: a place of contrasts’.
This expression is a stock-in-trade of most
travelogues where Kaliningrad is concerned, and why not? It is a good one. The
term is often applied to the striking and very often incongruous juxtaposition
of architectural forms here in Kaliningrad.
Kaliningrad architectural contrasts
The connection between a whopping great sausage and
architecture is not as obtuse as first it may seem. On the second day of this
weekend’s event, the Big Sausage, understandably exhausted from Saturday’s
exertions, goes into hiding, allowing the festivities to continue in a more
circumscribed place. The venue this year was in the paved area surrounding one
of Konigsberg’s restored monuments, the King’s Gate (more of which at another
time).
Königsberg ‘s KIng’s Gate & Kaliningrad’s Soviet flats ~ a City of contrasts. Notice the old tram tracks!
Kaliningrad King’s Gate
You can see from the photograph supplied, the red-brick Gothic structure of the King’s Gate in the foreground (photographed from the back) and there in the background a long row of 1970s’ Soviet-built flats. Needless to say, the world’s most renowned architects eschew these rather than applaud them, but, like them or not, they are all part and parcel of Königsberg-Kaliningrad’s diverse and rich history.
In my humble vegetarianskee opinion, these flats could be employed to good purpose this time next year. By attaching a giant inflatable sausage from the rooftops, running from one end to the other, the venue for Second Sausage Day would be unmissable and the advertising potential for certain types of products phenomenal. Food for thought?
A view of the King’s Gate from the rear surrounded by Big Sausage Day event stalls
*The Long Sausage holiday has a long tradition. The medieval holiday was first held in Königsberg in 1520. Königsberg’s butchers cooked 16 metre’s of sausage and carried it around the city. The participants then ate the sausage, drank beer and danced. Today, the people of Kaliningrad continue the old tradition and enjoy the holiday of old Königsberg .
