Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)
Article 17: Amstel Bier
Published: 21 November 2021 ~ Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad
So, if you don’t like pilsner what are you doing buying it? That’s easy. It was on special offer at my local supermarket, and as I am saving money to buy myself a ticket to Anywhere before the whole world is renamed Vaccination to make sense of the universality of the Vaccination Passport, at 90 roubles, less than a quid, as Abba used to say, ‘how could I resist you!’
Amstel Bier’s marketing strategy relies for its gravitas, if not its gravity, on that ubiquitous word of the beer-drinking world ‘premium’. Next to ‘love’, it is probably the most overused, abstruse, misunderstood and misappropriated word of all time. Although it occupies many a ‘premium’ slot, if not an entire chapter, in the Beer Posers’ Dictionary, it would not, in its day-to-day marketing application, be permitted as much as a footnote in the Dictionary of Truth (which is not published under licence to any of the Davos set).
Gold labels and award-winning medallions are often used in conjunction with the word ‘premium’, and it does not hurt any to lend to the product a date in antiquity, thus enabling it to draw from the not-so mythical notion that everything that was produced in the past that did not need a Vaccination Passport or be stamped with a QR code was quality or, to define ‘premium’, was of ‘superior quality’ ~ as was life itself ~ once. Thus, Amstel’s bottle incorporates the lot: the gold label, the word ‘premium’ and a date when the world was real ~ 1870.
The Carlsberg Company saw the funny side of this marketing coin many years ago. They flipped the irony of it into their award-winning marketing slogan, ‘Carlsberg, probably the best beer in the world,’ proving to the world that at least they could laugh up their sleeve, which is more than can be said for Watney’s, with it’s disingenuous, ‘Roll out Red Barrel, Let’s have a barrel of fun!’ ~ which drinking it was anything but.
When you see a product labelled in this way, especially a beer, the ‘premium’ promise first supposedly sells it to you and then, before you take the top off the bottle, influences your opinion, so that, unless you are really studying it, when swilling it back with your mates, this little gold word keeps ringing around your taste buds, going ‘Premium! [yum, yum] … Premium! [yum, yum]’.
Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad
With an introduction of this nature, you could easily jump to the wrong conclusion that I am now going to say that Amstel is crap, but that would be too easy.
Let’s take the top off first and check its ‘nose’, as the pretentious like to say.
My first reaction was to reach for my NHS Do-It-Yourself Coronavirus Testing Kit, because I couldn’t smell a thing. No, that’s not altogether true. I could smell something. I think it was a rat. I am not saying that the beer smelt like a rat, because I have never snorted rat. I use the term loosely, as I might, if I was a brewster, use the word ‘premium’. In other words, I could smell nothing, no rat no premium, and certainly nothing that could justify anything approaching the notion of ‘superior quality’.
I sniffed the top of the bottle with the cap off for such an inordinate length of time that Ginger, our cat, thought he must be missing out on something and tried to get in on the act. But after the briefest second, he walked away in disgust without so much as a ‘buy it again’ or just a ‘meeoww’ for that matter.
I didn’t want to end up with the bottle stuck to the end of my nose and be rushed off to hospital in one of those little white Russian ambulances with the siren blaring ‘snout stuck, snout stuck, snout stuck’, so I gave up after five minutes, concluding that I had detected a faint something or other, an intriguing cross, you might say, between musk and tinniness.
When I eventually poured it into my glass, I found myself staring at a pale amber liquid, with very little head, which, as soon as it saw me, made a fast exit. I think this is what is known in beer reviewers’ speak as ‘having two fingers’, or should that be giving two fingers?
Most people who occasionally drink pilsners but usually drink something else, tell me that pilsner appeals to their taste in summer because served cold ~ how else? ~ it is light, crisp and refreshing. From that statement, let us extrapolate the word ‘crisp’. Amstel Bier isn’t. No matter how you drink it ~ swig, gulp or roll it around your mouth ~ crispness doesn’t come into it, so, if that is what you are looking for, you won’t find it in Amstel. Make no mistake about that! (Oooh, he can be so manly when he talks about beer!)
However, Amstel is not without flavour: it is mellow, smooth, rounded and gives the lie to the notion that it is all about tininess and not about taste. Some beers, especially some lagers, go down like a lead weight, but the Amstel finish is not unpleasant. It doesn’t really justify the self-presumptuous handshake of the two chums on the front of the bottle leaning out of their stamps of approval ~ perhaps they have just been vaccinated and are about to open a Facebook account ~ but thin and wishy-washy beers never have an aftertaste (think Watney’s!), and this one certainly has.
In fact, Amstel has a two-phase aftertaste: the first is surprising and seems to hit the spot, but as it Victor Matures it does not so much as sock it to you as socks it to you. In Amstel’s defence, pilsners tend to do this to me generally, so it is by no means unique in this respect either, but in this particular case after five minutes had elapsed, I found myself looking for words to describe the after-aftertaste in my cockney rhyming slang almanac, where all I was able to find was something to do with Scotsmen.
I am not saying that Amstel needs to pull its socks up, as I hear tell that if it is not a popular lager on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall, the Greeks can’t get enough of it. This may have something to do with the fact that the Athenian Brewery in Greece is now owned by Heineken and as Heineken brew Amstel, well, work it out for yourself.
Amstel was originally brewed at the Amstel Brewery in Dutchland. It has a proud heritage, going back to 1870 (you can see the date on the Amstel bottles). However, it was taken over by Heineken International in 1968, who moved production of Amstel to their principal plant at Zoeterwoude in the Netherlands.
I am not sure whether the Chief Brewer, Jock Strap, still works for them or not.
😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS Name of Beer: Amstel Bier Brewer: Heineken Where it is brewed: Zoeterwoude, Netherlands Bottle capacity: 1.3 litre Strength: 4.1% Price: It cost me about 90 roubles (91 pence) Appearance: Pale-amber Aroma: Faint Taste: It does have some Fizz amplitude: 4/10 Label/Marketing: ‘Premium’ Would you buy it again? If the price is right! Marks out of 10: 4
*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.
In the grounds of the Polessk Brewery, Kaliningrad, Russia
Published: 15 November 2021 ~ WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement Polessk
In a post published on 8 November 2021, I wrote about the restoration of an old German brewery in the former German town of Labiau, now known as Polessk, located in the Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia.
The grounds of the Polessk brewery back onto the Deyma River (German: ‘Deime’). Contained within those grounds, facing the river, sits the dramatic remains of a wartime German gun emplacement.
Polessk WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement Kaliningradregion
This chunky, reinforced concrete, above-ground bunker or blockhouse, which ever description you prefer, is one of the few survivors of a battery of such emplacements, more than sixty in total, which formed an awesome line of defence along the Deyma River.
The emplacements date to the First World War but were recommissioned during the Second World War as part of the formidable East Prussian defence system constructed by the Germans in preparation for the Soviet invasion.
WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement, Polessk, Kaliningrad
According to what I have been told, after Königsberg fell to the Soviets in April 1945, the concrete fortifications along the Deyma were systematically obliterated in order to ensure that should the tide of military fortune ever be reversed they could not be employed again.
Relatively speaking, the surviving emplacement is in sound condition. Although the back has been taken out, the living quarters and the gunnery room are virtually unscathed, and the inside still retains the reassuring feeling of immense solidity. Cramped, some might think horribly, the bunkers were not completely devoid of some semblance, albeit slight, of ‘home comfort’. The existence of a metal flue shows that at least provision had been made for a source of warmth and possibly the means by which to make a brew and heat up food. The reinforced metal door to the combat room has gone, but the giant iron hinges on which it used to pivot remain intact as do other metal fixtures.
The gunners’ view from the front of the emplacement, which now faces the reed bed on the edge of the Deyma River, is, in every sense of the word, a commanding one. In theory it should have offered the bunker’s occupants a strategic advantage against any attack launched from across the water but as history has proved on many occasions the notion of an impregnable defence system is purely that ~ a notion.
View from the WWI/WWII German gun emplacement in the grounds of the restored German brewery in Polessk, RussiaPlan of the wartime gun emplacement in Polessk, Kaliningrad region, Russia, including medals awarded for Soviet bravery during the East Prussian campaign
History boards on and inside the emplacement detail its method of construction, describe its operational system and place its fortification principle in the wider military context of the WWII East Prussian campaign.
Mick Hart next to the history board in the WWI/WWII gun emplacement in Polessk, Kaliningrad region, Russia
So, when you visit Polessk Brewery stave off your irrepressible need to imbibe knowledge on beer production, and when brewing recommences your overpowering need to imbibe beer too, and take a few minutes or more to lap up the historic information and martial atmosphere redolent in and around this monumental defence post. It is an intriguing and poignant window upon German/Soviet military history.
History of Soviet military action in East Prussia and the former Labiau Brewery, now Polessk Brewery, which is undergoing restoration
Related Posts on WWII History of Königsberg (Kaliningrad)
Image attributions Königsberg in ruins as a result of Allied bombing. (Photo credit: Dylan Mohan Gray. (Public Domain)) German soldiers in trenches: (Photo credit: By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R98401 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5368820) Königsberg in ruins as a result of Allied bombing. (Photo credit: Dylan Mohan Gray. (Public Domain))
Updated 12 November 2021 / first published: 2 March 2020
In November 2019, we attended an art exhibition of a different kind, in which two art forms came together in a symbiotic visual aesthetic and chic utilitarianism. This exhibition, which incorporated paintings, sculptures and studio art pottery, used a neutral canvas, the novel form and proportions of which comprised a number of empty rooms in what was at that time an incomplete apartment block, except that is for one flat, where a unique and innovative makeover had achieved space-saving functionality but at no cost to style and novelty.
As with any art exhibition, the objective here was to bring works of art, and the artists who create them, into the public eye. The works displayed could be enjoyed for their cultural merit purely in the space and time that they occupy for the life of the exhibition or, if the beholder so desired, at their leisure privately and naturally for a price. However, and this is where the concept differs, once interest is stimulated it is hoped that potential art purchasers will experience a carry over into the functional realm of personalised living space where the wider appeal of lifestyle aesthetics prevail. All that is needed is vision, and, of course, the requisite roubles.
Clutter above minimalism
By no stretch of the imagination am I a man bowled over or easily swayed by modernism ~ contemporary that is ~ or by minimalism of any kind: give me a fussy, over-cluttered Victorian drawing room any day. However, I must have enjoyed the first exhibition, because I was looking forward to attending the second.
The previous venue had been a modern apartment block, whereas, in contrast, our invitation and curiosity took us this time to a wonderful Gothic building, somewhat jaded by the vicissitudes of time but to its melancholic benefit rather than its detriment.
Original Königsberg Gothic
Kaliningrad art exhibition
The exhibition was being held on the first floor of this not insubstantial building. We had encountered trouble in finding the building itself, so without prior instruction as to where we were to go and with no signs in evidence to point us in the right direction, it was more by chance than skill that we tried a door at the side of the building, thereto discovering a small narrow staircase which would lead us to our destination.
The one flight of stairs, screened off by a series of pink vertical rectangular struts, led us into a room which was a living work of modern art. It had what we will call the ‘Wow’ factor.
But first the exhibition itself.
Kaliningrad art exhibition
With the exception of three or four artworks that had been hung in the Wow room, most of the paintings were to be found literally strung out along both walls of a lengthy corridor. Others were exhibited in an adjoining room, and two more ~ old friends of ours from the previous exhibition ~ had been consigned to the far end of the corridor, a good choice as the black walls and black floor tiling flecked with tiny white fracturing ripples heightened the tension inherent in these works.
Dark Side in a dark gallery. (Artist anonymous)
Whilst the abstract paintings ~ total abstracts ~ suited the environment perfectly, my artistic and emotional prejudice steered me yet again into the arms of the painting after which we had lusted at the previous exhibition but sadly could not afford. This was the painting by Yri Bulechev. It is depicted here (see photograph below), along with its price tag of £2000.
Together,somewhere in the isthmus ~ love’s refuge between earth and sky. Artist Yri Bulechev
Perhaps if I volunteer to mix the paints for the
artist, he might be persuaded to give me a discount.
I used to be indecisive but now I’m not so sure
The ‘old friends’ to which I referred earlier, hanging on the appropriately dark wall, were works by an artist who, in keeping with the enigma of his/her art, we have not been able to identify. Once again, of all the artwork displayed here, their enigmatic quality took precedence, although, conversely, I was also attracted to the 1950s’ industrial scene, a painting in the realist mode of a Soviet factory or processing plant.
Industrialism vs LandscapeStudio Art Vases: natural and impressive
At the opposite end of the corridor to that where the enigma paintings hung was an impressive collection of large studio art pottery, floor-standing vases of prodigious proportions, staple must-have items back in the 1960s, statements then of contemporary modern chic, which today were completely in keeping with the décor of the reception room through which we had passed on our arrival. For whilst this room was the very epitome of contemporary modernism, there was no concealing the fact that certain crucial elements of its aesthetic composition owed their manifestation to the iconic preoccupations of 1960s’ designers and artists.
The stone sculpture of a man’s head and face possessed
no such subtle nuances. It was a strong face, an indomitable face, and as it
sat there on its plinth daring me to stare at it I was put in mind of tricky
situations encountered in my youth, mainly in public houses, which went
something along the lines of: “’ere mate, are you starin’ at me?!”.
This would seem as good a time as any to retreat from
the corridor into the Wow room.
First, I should explain that unlike the earlier exhibition this one was not being held in an empty apartment block but in a partly occupied suite of offices. On this occasion unchaperoned, the exact nature of the tie-in between art and interior design had not been explained to us, but I think we can assume that the logic behind it was that you too could have an office like this styled to your personal taste.
In this particular made-over office block the Wow room was the reception area. It was large, with a fairly long desk to the left of the pink-painted and glass-panelled entrance door and, to the right, a seating area for visitors, a place to unwind, eat snacks and drink coffee.
Feeling very receptive in the reception room
I still think that it would make a nice bar!
The furniture conformed to the modern predilection for non-conformity, ie an anthology of different furnishing styles. In the centre of the room the tables were round-topped, raised on slender pedestals and supported by circular bases. There was no mistaking their 1960s’ credentials. Fronting the reception desk, or counter, stood high square-section stools fitted with back rests, whilst a long light-timbered bench seat sprinkled with cushions and traversing one of the walls provided seating at a series of tables of typical square construction. But it was the chairs in the middle of the room that wrested continuity from divergence.
Chairs, but not as we know them
Made of a transparent acetate material, their pierced, convoluted and intertwined design virtually stole the show. However, there’s no business like show business and no show business without getting the lighting right. And here was the real show stealer. The lighting in this room was pure creative brilliance.
In reverse order of merit, the wall lights, ceiling lights and sconces in pierced and modern brass had obviously been purchased from Del and Rodders, but there gauche intrusiveness contributed an eccentric out-of-place rivalry to the blended effect achieved in the suspended hang ’em high and sling ’em low mid-20th century pendants, each one equipped with white, minimalist, cushion-shaped shades. One interesting divergence on this theme was the inclusion of a slightly different variety. It was a pendant lamp with the same long wire attachment but with a shade entirely composed of looped vinyl tubes.
Staying with the suspension theme, the lights above the bar (sorry, my mind must be wandering, I meant reception desk) were plain enough, with their straight glass shades, but something odd was going on here because each light appeared to contain three overlapping bulbs of different colours, whilst, in point of fact, although each fitting contained a different coloured bulb, each pendant only had room for one bulb. On reflection, I was glad that the reception desk was not a bar!
You look pierced!
Nothing much needs to be said about the beam-suspended spot bars focused upon the wall-strung paintings, except that they did their job, but the real feather in the lighting cap, the unproverbial pièce de résistance, was the violet light emanating from a complete wall of corrugated vinyl, similar in its ribbed construction to the translucent two-ply material favoured in this part of the world for screening on garden fences. At a guess, I would say that the light source contained within this material consists of coloured LED strips and that the intensity and suffusing quality is controlled by the filtration and the refractive mechanism exerted by the material’s density and the patterned texture upon its surface. I suppose you would agree?
Revolving in a violet haze
As an interesting and unusual light source, this lightweight wall is fascinating, but further joy is derivable from the central pivoting section, which fulfils the function of a revolving door. So super-sensitive is the mechanism that all it takes is the touch of a finger to set the door in motion, turning the whole partition around smoothly and quietly on its axis.
I know I have spent an inordinate number of words and time waxing lyrical about lighting, but, lest it should be underestimated, the golden rule is that no interior design work, whatever it is or wherever applied, will ever ‘cut the mustard’ without due regard for lighting. Mark my words, if the lighting is not right everything else will be wrong.
Reminding me of the traditional British telephone box
Leaving the lightshow behind, reluctantly, I crossed back into the corridor. I noticed that every door in the corridor was uniform, a light mat beige-brown framework infilled with fielded panels of vinyl. I like these doors, I thought, but I was not so sure old stone face did. He was looking at me again, so I shot a glance at the ceiling.
Ahh, yes, there it was, the exposed industrial look found in every restaurant, café, bar and office from here to the land of Nod. Discard the false ceiling, let the silver-tone ventilation tubes be proudly and unashamedly seen in all their heavy-weight glory, together with water pipes, electric cables and everything else that used to be hidden. But then as Henry Ford supposedly famously said, “If it ‘aint broke don’t fix it”, and it seems to work for everyone, for the time being at least.
Nothing to hideLadies & Gentlemen (It & Others?)
The last stop ~and it usually is ~ was the toilets. We
were not going there to review the interior décor, but we were compelled to do
so as an adjunct to the mission in hand. Our appraisal started with the toilet
doors themselves. There were three doors, turquoise with lattice-work surfaces,
strung out in sequence in the enigmatic-paintings’ section, where the walls and
the floor tiling were predominantly black.
On the other side of the toilet door, the marbling effect had turned to grey and white. The variegated tiles left the floor and travelled up the wall behind the toilet pan, where a small shelf above was dressed in small mosaic. The walls on either side were covered in an intriguing silver highlighted paper, the illustrated pattern on which was fish. I am not entirely convinced that I like the idea of fish swimming around in the toilet but at least to the best of my knowledge these fish were not piranhas.
The lavatory ~ hardly!
I came away from this event still wanting the paintings whose cost I could not justify but whose value I could not argue with. As for the idea of a 21st century office complete with touch-responsive revolving acetate screen emitting room-bathing violet light, this scenario most definitely appeals to my love of the unconventional, but to rubber-stamp the investment I feel that I need to become a lot more important than I am at present. You, no doubt, are in a different league. So go on, why not treat yourself? You know that you deserve it!
Essential Details:
Exhibition: ‘Картинный вопрос 2.0’
The exhibition is a joint offline project of the Centre of Communication Rezanium Tel: +79114679280 Web: www.rezanium.com
Project Organiser Natalya Stepanyuk, Exhibition Curator & Artist
Interior Design Anton Besonov
For more information, contact Natalya Stepanyuk Tel: +79062371001 Email: mail.artspace.gallery@gmail.com Email: stepanyuknm@gmail.com
Published: 8 November 2021 ~ Restoring the Polessk Brewery in the Kaliningrad Region
The former East Prussian province of Kaliningrad, known today as Kaliningrad Oblast, is a territory rich in history. It is a cultural treasure trove of historically overlooked, essentially undiscovered and time-abandoned places and buildings. Even if its immense restoration and development potential is realised, it is as yet largely untapped, waiting patiently for the overdue arrival of the curatorial entrepreneurs who will restore, rebuild and conserve it for generations to come.
Above:Labiau coat of arms
Among the many instances of this long-awaited rehabilitation is the small town of Polessk, known in German times as Labiau. Located approximately 50 kilometres northeast of Kaliningrad on a long, recently resurfaced, tract of road, Polessk debuts as a tired, run-down and struggling municipality. There are sporadic instances of once regal buildings and the two small municipal parks form welcome green oases, but mirages in an urban desert waiting with weary buildings for the miracle to come merely serve to ask the question when?
It is not just for any old reason that Lenin, standing alone on his plinth, looks out across the deserted concrete plateau where homage once was paid to him, preferring these days to fix his eyes on the waterways beyond rather than look behind and be reminded of Boris the proletariat bodger, with his concrete blocks, two sheets of asbestos and bucket of cement.
And yet you instinctively know, or feel, from the moment you cross the railway line, which is the threshold of the town, to the point at which you meet the canal and river, that this is a town that deserves much more, that it could be so much better!
The Deyma River, an offshoot of the Pregolya, and the Polessk Canal, which links the Pregolya and Neman Rivers, form a natural boundary at one end of the town as the railway does the other. To the north lies the 625-square-mile Curonian Lagoon, a haven of biodiversity and a coastal habitat of unaffected beauty. In essence, Polessk is a gateway to a multi-faceted cultural region steeped in historic significance, blessed with natural beauty and profusely invested with ecological importance.
It is also home to Labiau Castle, described on the internet as an ‘historical landmark’, but which in its present-day condition looks more like a beggar waiting for the feast than deserving of the grandiloquent title which speaks of better days. Alas, both castle and Lenin’s statue occupy the same proximity, somewhere in the space between the power and the dream.
The few who belong to the exclusive Polessk club, those who have actually visited the town and who may have even stepped inside of what remains of Labiau castle, are less likely to be aware of the presence of another historic building that is tucked away obscurely behind the backstreets of Polessk.
This building, a former German brewery of mid-nineteenth century origin, is currently the recipient of an ambitious restoration project that is rescuing it from oblivion and progressing its renaissance to a working brewery and museum.
Restoring the Polessk Brewery in the Kaliningrad Region
Invited to attend an open day and tour of the brewery, I felt particularly privileged. The excursion embodied three of my major interests and by default principal weaknesses: social history, historic architecture and ~ yes, you’ve guessed it ~ beer!
At the risk of repeating myself, Polessk is by no means a large town. Nevertheless, its compact nature does not make it any easier to locate the brewery, which is hidden away behind a cluster of average Soviet flats on an expanse of ground at the end of a side street.
These flats, or to be more precise, their blandness, do the brewery no disservice. By screening it from view they ensure that the first encounter with the building is considerably more dramatic than it otherwise would be.
Admittedly, whilst zig zagging between the flats, the sight of a balcony strung with socks and pants is, to put it mildly, a disarming one, but take heart! ~ just when it seems that all is lost, the scene suddenly opens up to reveal a view that is guaranteed to set the pulse racing of anyone who is infatuated with social and economic history.
There stands before you a wonderful Red Brick neo-Gothic edifice, astonishing in its turreted and towered simulation, atmospherically magnetic, beloved in recognition of the beer it must have produced and will, with a little bit more than a gentle nudge and a shove, soon be producing again.
Star-struck, I recall the profound reaction and words of my Uncle Son, who was a builder, when he first clapped eyes on Norwich Castle: “How did they get that ‘stun’ up there!” he said. And with the same degree of wonder, as I stared transfixed at the brewery’s magnitude, made all the more awesome by the thankful absence of the Soviet predilection for pre-cast concrete, I whispered to myself, “How did they get those bricks up there?”
At this moment, I was reflecting on the buildings pseudo-Gothic tower ~ one of the most awesome chimneys that I have ever encountered. Not that I am a stranger to tall chimneys, having lived in English counties where the skyline was dominated by rows of them belonging to the brickworks. But the brewery’s chimney, being rectangular rather than cylindrical in form, and its solitary presence, gives its ground-to-skyline taper a singularly novel and striking effect.
The dynamic of the front of the building depends for its impact on the complexity in shape, size and angularity of the contrasting component parts: the tall tapering chimney, the rectangular tower with its curious knop, currently under scaffolding, and the lower sloped-roof structures. The accentuated Gothic arches within which the windows are set and, in some instances, embroidered with decorative brickwork, possess a dramatic personality of their own but seen together their inverse graduation makes this already tall building seem loftier still.
The window configurations, concomitant decorative detail and structural elements project an industrial power that is best appreciated from the prospect of the end elevation (shame about that Soviet blockhouse knocked up at ground level in con blocks and cement) and from close and awe-struck scrutiny of the far side of the building. From this perspective the viewer receives a first-class rendition of the intrinsic importance of arches in Brick Gothic formations, here creating a dynamic uniformity in which contrast plays its subtle part across the horizontal plane and within the vertical sections.
If you look carefully at the photographs of what is effectively the back of the building you will see that approximately 50 per cent of its interior is already a beneficiary of restorative work. New double-glazed windows have taken the place of the old and through them a glimpse of smart walls and retro lighting emerges.
Arched configuration of windows , Polessk Brewery
The original entrance to the brewery appears to have been through one of two doors that open, front and back, into the same traversing corridor, but the restoration has seen fit to provide a grander approach, using a two-tiered wrought iron staircase that leads to large glass doors cunningly inserted into one of the first-floor window arches.
Entrance to Polessk Brewery
First impressions count, and the two that spring to mind on the other side of the front door is overwhelmingly spacious and infinitely solid. Next comes the detail, which feeds into the first two.
The ceiling and upper storeys of this vast reception room rest on a series of three double H-beams that span the room’s width. They are raised on prodigious, iron, load-bearing columns fastened where they meet with bold connection plates bolted one into the other. These, and the visible undersides of the H-beams that travel the length of the ceiling are finished in a suitably industrial-looking matt red-oxide paint. Between the sunken ceiling beams the intervening space is arched, each arch resembling the convex half of a separated tube, so that taken as a whole the ceiling adopts an undulating character, each lengthwise arch the equidistance of the other.
In one corner of the room, suspended from the ceiling, hangs a large triangular-shaped grain funnel, studded with rivets and finished in the same red-brown paint as the beams. Diametrically opposite, on the other side of the room, a giant wood-burning furnace is at work, roaring fiercely away. It is more than capable of keeping the vast room, already operating as a tourist information centre and ear-marked for expansion in this role, at a pleasurable ambient temperature.
Connoisseurs of nineteenth-century Brick Gothic architecture will enjoy the contrast in the construction principles and materials used on the first and second floors.
The second floor, which is accessed via a short, curved, boxed-in staircase, trades its metal industrial credentials for a more medieval wood construction, substituting the iron vertical supports of the preceding floor for great rectangular posts with offshoot branches to the beams that cross above them. No wonder then that the burly brewer who occupies the second floor is a larger than life-sized wooden carving!
On this floor, as with the previous one, there are a series of history boards, all of which are designed and presented to professional museum standards. Not that my elementary grasp of the written Russian language enabled me to educate myself as much as I would have liked, but I did glean some information both from the boards and from the various relics and artefacts scattered around the rooms.
The second storey also contains a large circular grain tank that would have fed into the hopper on the other side of the ceiling. This great metal tub studded with rivets is as impressive as it is solid as it is tactile!
A part-completed staircase and a large hole in the floor above provides an excellent viewing platform and vista from and through which to gaze up into the rafters. The beam construction is truly magnificent here and in remarkably good condition considering the age of the wood and the long period for which the building was unused, untended and deteriorating. I believe I am right in saying that when completed this section of the building is where the brewery museum will be housed.
Restoring the Polessk Brewery in the Kaliningrad Region
Although an attic-man myself, basements and cellars do possess a certain Jene sais quoi.
From an architectural and atmospheric standpoint, the cellars of 19th century breweries are fascinating places. It is in these underground chambers that the rather tedious task of throwing grain across the cellar floor with wooden shovels and then spreading it about with rakes was undertaken in the pursuit of procuring germination prior to drying and milling. The cellars of the Polessk brewery may not have been the most salubrious environment in which to work for long periods when the plant was up and running, but architecturally their vaulted ceilings are superb examples of mid-19th century Gothic style, a specific feature of which was the use of iron columns as opposed to stone or brick supports.
To access the cellar it is necessary to descend the lower half of the curved stairs that runs from the first to second floor. It brings you out into the corridor that I referred to earlier, which runs the width of the building. The corridor marks the point where one half of the building’s interior restoration nears completion and the other is work in progress. The ‘in progress’ 50 per cent gives an accurate idea of how much work has been accomplished so far and how much devotion, planning, blood, sweat, tears and sheer hard graft is yet to be undertaken before the standard of finish in this half of the building will equal that displayed in the other. Not so much as a round of applause, please, as a medal, I think, is needed!
Above: More work to be done. Any volunteers?!
History of Polessk Brewery
Anyone whose Russian is better than mine which, like 50% of the Polessk brewery, is every day ‘work in progress’ for me, should encounter little difficulty in harvesting all the detailed information that they could wish for about the history of the brewery, from its inception to the present day, from the biographical story boards distributed around the building. But to give you a leg up, here is a succinct outline of that history:
Labiau brewery, which changed names several times during its productive years, was founded and built in 1840 by oneAlbert Blankenstein. The business was a family-run concern and, after his father’s death, was inherited by Albert junior (as the Americans would say), who embarked on a complete reconstruction programme and thereafter increased the range and productivity of the plant’s output.
Soon the brewery was producing about 5,000 litres of beer a day, mostly dark lager but also a light variety known as Labian March Beer, as well as a selection of non-alcoholic beverages.
Unlike many other breweries in the region, Labiau brewery’s fate was not sealed by the outcome of the Second World War. The Soviets decided to restore, modernise it and leave the day-to-day creation of beer in the hands of a German brewer.
By February 1946, beer was flowing from the brewery again under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Novovi, its first Soviet director. By all accounts the colonel was a hard task master, who had no qualms about disciplining his workforce, the majority of which were German. Not only did he dismiss three Germans for skiving off work, but he also sent them up before a disciplinary tribunal.
Germans not dismissed and sent to disciplinary tribunals continued to work at the brewery until October 1948, when they became casualties of the mass expulsion of Germans from the region.
The last Soviet brewer to work at the plant was one Mikhail Myasoedov, who had learnt his trade since 1946 in breweries based in the Caucasus. As competent as he no doubt was, his tenure of the brewery was short lived. The post, which he took up in 1954, was, two years later, surplus to requirement owing to a large brewery opening in Kaliningrad. In consequence, lager production ceased in Polessk in 1957, although for a short while afterwards the plant continued to produce fruit juice drinks, lemonades and wines made from berries.
The man who is making it work
The inspiration and driving force behind the renovation and preservation of Labiau brewery is Alexander Natalich. Never forgetting that first impressions count and that the eyes are the windows to the soul, Alexander Natalich comes across as a man with a genuine love of history and a passion for his restoration project, in fact, his family’s restoration projects.
To date, the Natalich family have successfully restored a school in Ilyichevka, close to Polessk, a former Polessk printing house, which now serves as Alexander’s office, and a kindergarten, which its original owners abandoned before it could be completed. And now there is the brewery.
With a track record of this calibre, it is hardly surprising that Alexander is often asked whether his next project will be Labiau Castle, to which he wryly, but no doubt accurately, replies that what he has taken on so far could keep him occupied for the rest of his life.
The future of Polessk and the region
It may seem that Alexander and his family have cast themselves unofficially in the role of Polessk’s (Labiau’s) cultural saviours. If so, Alex has a good teacher. It was his mother, Inessa Savelyevna Natalich, who restored the old German school in the village of Ilyichevo, district of Polessk, to heritage standard. And whilst no one could blame her son for thinking that he will have his work cut out restoring the brewery, further light is shed on his ‘enough work to last me the rest of my life’ remark in that the brewery is seen as the focal point of a more extensive project, which encompasses turning the brewery grounds into parkland, cutting back the wetland reeds that are choking the Deyma River and opening up a boat station, the intention being to run a sight-seeing shuttle service to and from Zalivino Lighthouse, which is a renovation success story in its own right!
Epilogue
Intentionally or not, Alexander Natalich, his family and band of volunteers, are putting Polessk and its corner of the East Prussian region back on the historical map. There is incredible potential for sensitive tourism in Polessk, where history meets nature. Inessa Savelyevna Natalich’s German school, Alexander’s restored printing works and kindergarten, Labiau Castle, Lenin on his plinth, Eagle Bridge, river boat rides, Zalivino Lighthouse and enough natural coastline and man-made waterways to explore, enjoy, photograph, sketch and paint than I have drunk beer in a lifetime (I’ll have to think about that one!) ~ oh, and don’t forget the brewery. I can’t wait for it to open!
Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 608 [2 November 2021]
Published: 2 November 2021~Old Tin Buckets & QR Codes
So I said to my wife, “No, I don’t think so. I’ve got better things to do this morning.”
But she looked so disappointed that I relented, saying, five minutes later, “OK, I will walk with you to the market.”
“You don’t have to, unless you want to,” she quickly said ~ a little too quickly for my liking.
I know when I’m not wanted.
I remember hearing my mother and father quarreling when I was about six months old, blaming each other, arguing about whose fault it was. I have no idea what they were arguing about, but when I got to the age of five I suspected something was wrong when I came home from school one day and found some sandwiches, a bottle of pop and a map to Katmandu in a travelling bag on the doorstep.
Never one to take a hint, I knew that my wife really wanted me to walk to the market with her today, so I swiftly replied, “Well, if you really want me to come with you, I will.”
Apart from knowing when I’m not wanted ~ it gets easier as you get older ~ I needed to buy myself a new atchkee. No, not ‘latch key’. Atchkee is the phonetic spelling for spectacles in Russian. Isn’t my Russian improving! I am a two-pairs spectacles man. I like to have one pair so that I can find the other.
This was a great excuse for being a nuisance, so I got ready, tried not to look at the cat, who always looks sour at us when he sees that we are leaving the house, and off we went, on foot, to the central market.
“Ee by gum,” I might say, if I was from Up North in England, “but it were a grand day.” Here we were at the end of October, underneath a bright blue sky and the sun right up there where it is supposed to be.
We stopped off for a coffee at the top of the Lower Pond, risked the public Portaloos and then made our way to the market from there.
Being Saturday, and good weather, the second-hand and collectables market was in full swing.
When it was our business to buy and sell, we always had an excuse to buy, now all we could say was, ‘we’ll just have a quick look’. And then leave an hour later barely able to carry what we had bought.
Today was no exception. That’s willpower for you!
During the course of not buying anything we got to talking to one of the market men, who was not wrapping something up for us because we hadn’t just bought it.
“Good thing about outside markets,” said I, no doubt saying something entirely different in Russian, such as “Would you like me to pay twice as much for that item that we really should not be buying?” It must have been something like this, because when I checked he had short-changed us.
That sorted, I continued: “Good thing about outside markets, you don’t need ‘Oo Er’ codes.”
“QR codes!” my wife corrected me impatiently, as she bought herself a pair of boots that she didn’t need.
“QR codes!” repeated the market man solemnly, with a sorry shake of his head. “It’s bad business and bad for business. You can’t go anywhere without them now.”
“Niet!” I agreed, looking all proud at myself for saying it in such a Russian-sounding way, which enabled him to sneak in with, “But if you do not have a QR code, there is another way of getting access to bars, shops and restaurants.”
My ears pricked up at this intelligence, or was it because someone walking by had laughed, as if they knew what I didn’t?
I was too intrigued to be diverted: “How is that?” I asked
“Tin buckets!” replied the market man, with stabilised conviction.
“Tin, er …?”
“Like this!” the market man infilled.
And there, in front of me, where it hadn’t been a moment ago, was this large tin bucket.
Old fort, old fart & a tin bucket (thanks to my brother for this caption)
As tin buckets go, it was quite the bobby dazzler.
It was one of those vintage enamel jobs; a pale, in fact, with a cream exterior and a trim around the rim.
“If you don’t yet have your QR code,” the market man continued to solemnise, “all you need is a tin bucket and, as you say in England, Fanny’s your uncle.”
Well, there is nothing LGBTQITOTHER about that, I had to admit.
“OK,” I said curiously, “I’m listening.”
There was Olga in the background, sticking to her non-purchasing guns, busily buying something else.
“That’s it really. Just say at the door, ‘I haven’t received my QR codes yet, but I do have a tin bucket’.”
I am telling you this just in case you are wondering why I have photos in this post of me walking around Kaliningrad with an old tin bucket. (That’s not a nice thing to say about your wife!)
The next stop was the city’s central market, where I bought a pair of specs, better to see my tin bucket with.
I needed to confirm that I really had bought that old tin bucket and that it wasn’t, after all, a figment of my stupidity.
“Ahh, you are British!” the spectacle seller exclaimed.
“No, English,” I corrected him. “Anyone and everyone can be ‘British’. All you need is to arrive illegally on a small boat, and a couple of months later they give you a piece of paper with ‘you’re British’ written on it.”
Now I had my new specs on, I could see that approximately 75 per cent of the market had been rendered inoperable. Many of the shutters were down, and I could read the ‘closed’ signs that were Sellotaped to them, stating that they would remain closed for the ‘non-working week’. If coronavirus turned up here in the next seven days, it would be sorely disappointed.
Spot the old bucket
Nevertheless, by the time we had exited the market at the end where the spanking brand-new shopping centre has been built, my bucket was getting heavier.
I put it down for a rest, on the pavement, directly outside of the new shopping centre entrance, thus giving myself a commanding view of the row upon row of plate-glass doors, behind which sat shops that still had nothing inside of them. Obviously, no chances were being taken. Should the thousands of square metres of space remain empty, the risk of non-mask wearers and QR fiddlers entering the building would be considerably reduced. In addition, the spanking shopping-centre was surrounded by a large impenetrable fence, creating a 20 metre no-go zone between itself and the pavement. A red-brick fortress had also been built just across the road, so that any attempt to cross the minefield between the pavement and shopping centre, if not thwarted by the mines and patrolling Alsatian dogs, would be repelled by a volley of arrows, or something closely resembling them, fired from the slits in the fortress wall. In particularly demanding circumstances, for example when everything in the shops that had nothing in them was half price, thus attracting the crowds, I would have thought that backup, in the form of mobile dart vans stationed close to the entrance, would be advisable. But who am I to say? Confucius say, “Man with tin bucket talks out of his elbow!” Confusion says, “Man with elbow talks out of his tin buttock.” (The last sentence is sponsored by The Cryptogram and Sudoku Society.)
A lesser person would have been intimidated by fantasies of this nature, but not I. I had a tin bucket and, in case I haven’t divulged this already, that same tin bucket contained a green leather jacket, which I did not buy from the second-hand market, and a jar of homemade horseradish sauce, which I had not bought from the city market.
Old Tin Buckets & QR Codes
The bucket was as heavy as my heart as we parked ourselves on one of the seats outside a once-often visited watering hole, Flame. We were waiting for a taxi.
We had not long been sitting there, when I began to develop a jealousy complex. Staring back at us from the large glass windows were our own reflections. What were they doing in the bar without QR codes? It was then that I noticed that my reflection had an old tin bucket with him. What a coincidence, it was not dissimilar to mine. I recalled the wisdom of the man on the market who had sold me the bucket; his tale about old tin buckets having parity with QR codes for gaining access to cafes and restaurants.
However, before I could put his advice to the test, our taxi arrived. We said farewell to our reflections and hopped inside the vehicle. Our taxi driver, who was a stickler for rules, did insist that our bucket wear a mask for the duration of the journey. Stout fellow!
Although the taxi driver never asked, I was unable to say whether or not we managed to gain access to anywhere using our tin bucket in case the authorities find out and proceed to confiscate every tin bucket in Christendom.
The taxi driver did want to know what we were going to use that old tin bucket for, but I was not about to divulge my secret to him.
Give me a week two and I will divulge it to you. Although there will be a small charge for the privilege.
You can ‘read all about it!’ ~ as they say ~ in Mick Hart’s Guide to Homemade Vaccines.
