17 March 2025 ~ Art Depot Restaurant Kaliningrad is right on track
Of all the roles I have played, or wanted to play, I never considered myself to be a second Bruce Reynolds. But here I was, about to pull off in my mind the world’s Second Great Train Robbery.
Everything was set; planned to the very last detail. Nothing had been left to chance. The moment my accomplice hit the switch, the moment the lights went down, it would happen; unbeknown to and unseen by everyone, history would repeat itself. And when the lights came up again, as they would on cue, the train and its trucks would still be there, but as for its valuable cargo, all that would remain of that was the empty space where it once had been.
This was me then, watching intently as the train and its freight wagons loaded down with beers trundled past at eyebrow height, but with my mind at a lonely railway bridge tucked away in rural Buckinghamshire, which, in the summer of 1963, was about to enter the annals of criminal history.
When they finally caught up with Bruce Reynolds, they thought that they had collared the mastermind behind the most audacious heist of all time, but how mistaken they must have been. For had they got it right, I could hardly have been sitting here, in Kaliningrad’s Art Depot Beer Bar, free to monitor the freight cars of booze as they passed mesmerically before my eyes.
Art Depot Restaurant Kaliningrad is right on track
The less dramatic but no less novel circumstances in which I found myself was that of watching beer and other intoxicants being delivered to customers’ tables by way of a model train. Although it may seem that I am merely substituting a long-held boyhood fantasy for something from Alice in Wonderland, I am firmly back from both, biding my time in a world where the cliché ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ was beginning to make me wonder why my entire life had been challenged by a second-hand lie detector.
I was actually sitting beneath the Gothic-vaulted red-brick ceiling of a series of interconnecting catacombs. Whoops, there it goes again! My imagination wandering at will where it will wilfully wander. Not exactly catacombs, but a subterranean space occupied long ago by an elaborate network of beer cellars belonging to Ponart Brewery, which, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the largest brewery in Königsberg. This environment met my every requirement, blending the architectural style I love with social history, brewery history and my personal history of drinking beer.
And yet I had not imbibed sufficiently for me to invent the existence of a scaled-down railway that permitted drinks to be conveyed direct from bar to customer.
Art Depot Restaurant Kaliningrad
The train-delivery concept is as intriguing, as it is entertaining as it is educational. The train leaves Königsberg station, passes through the suburbs of Kaliningrad as they are today and from there heads out into the past across the Königsberg countryside.
To achieve this effect, models detailed in construction mark the route of the train and the settlements at which it stops, the old German names of which fastened to the wall, by corresponding to the booth-style seating, act like table numbers, enabling the bar staff to literally keep tabs on customers and their tariffs. The miniature version of Kaliningrad’s Central Station (once Königsberg Hauptbahnhof) from which the beer train leaves, stands proudly and unmistakeably, thanks to the accurate portrayal of its 1930s’ postmodern façade, at the point where all good beer journeys start, which is, of course, the bar.
To announce the departure of the train and the onset of one’s drinks, a bell is heard to ring, and the train carrying its valuable cargo steams urgently out of Central Station, travelling via Zelenogradsk ~ observable by its Ferris wheel ~ and off across East Prussia, except in this particular instance, it is charging along the side of the wall heading in one’s direction.
Being a beer and bar enthusiast but knowing nowt about model railways, except that they make good money at auction, I am unable to enlighten those who are interested in such things as to the track gauge of the railway, but presume that I can safely say that since the train is hauling lovely big pint glasses, the track width must be considerably larger than a Hornby Double O.
I bet that even Bruce Reynolds couldn’t have told you that.
The positioning of the bar’s booth seats at 90 degrees to the wall enables the train to divert to them as a full-sized locomotive would into a railway siding. The train and its precious cargo come to rest on a platform ramped up ‘viaduct’ style across the length of each table at a height above the seated occupants’ heads. This all goes to make the arrival of one’s eagerly awaited beverages infinitely more exciting, even, from the angle viewed, spectacular, the only drawback being that the supports on which the train track rests tend to get in visions way of normal social interaction with others in your group sitting on the opposite side of the table. This disadvantage, however, may be one concealing a hidden advantage, should, for example, the company you are in necessitate some subtle moves on the social evening’s chessboard, viz ‘Amanda Woke is a bit of a lefty, we’ll hide her behind that strut!’
The novelty of Art Depot Restaurant’s train network and the modern predilection for photographing everything, whether it moves or not, is not without an intrinsic risk, for should you be distracted and not act quickly enough to remove the cargo on arrival, the train can suddenly reverse, causing more than a mild hysteria as it makes off with your drinks back to the bar from whence it came.
It may strike you as rather odd that a beer bar housed in a former beer cellar located beneath a former brewery is not thematically predisposed to the matter of beer production, but the railway as a feature is not without connection both to the brewery itself and to the district in which the brewery stands.
A long while ago … and now
One hundred and seventy-five years ago, Ponart was little more than a village waiting to be subsumed by the expanding city of Königsberg. During this dynamic period, the district’s major employers were Schifferdecker’s Ponart Brewery and, from the 1860s to the 1900s, the Prussian Eastern Railway, which eventually came to be known as the Royal Prussian State Railways. The development of the railway system in East Prussia and Russia significantly impacted Königsberg’s commerce, stimulating demand for enlargement of the workforce.
The resultant influx of labourers generated a need for the provision of homes close to the industries the workforce would be servicing. The high-density living created by these converging influences can effectively be quantified from an observation of the housing stock type, which predominantly comprises three-storey flats built as a series of uniform terraces, and also from an estimation of the close proximity of the Pomart Brewery to the railway’s rolling-stock marshalling yard, which is crossable by a through-truss Bridge, acting as the gateway from the centre of the city to this erstwhile working-class neighbourhood.
So let that be a lesson to you!
If you think that a model train delivering beer to your table is a whimsy of a thing, it will do you no harm to know that at Art Depot Restaurant the railway theme ends not at your table but follows you into the toilets. Not the train itself, or the station master or the ticket collector, but piped noises you would expect to hear at a busy railway station.
Now, toilets are hallowed places with particular sounds of their own, so it is vitally disconcerting to hear the outside world inside of them; indeed extremely difficult when it’s “All aboard!” and the whistle blows to divorce yourself from the governing fantasy that you are actually in a station loo. Blast! I thought, having heard the whistle shrilling, the carriage doors slamming and the train a chuff, chuff, chuffing as it left without me down the tracks. I had only gone and missed the 8.30 to Nowhere! There was nothing more that I could do. Well, what else could I do? I would have to go back to the waiting room, sink another beer or two and hope that anyone watching me would mistake me for being anyone else but the man they thought I wasn’t: “That’s him! That’s not Bruce Reynolds!”
6 March 2025 ~ UK Zelensky Tour is a Charity Gala Performance
Having watched the spat in the White House recently, where Trump missed the opportunity to stick one on a man widely regarded as the world’s biggest scrounger but couldn’t really do such a thing whilst he was talking peace, I predicted that when the Great Z rolled into Britain, the Disunited Kingdom under the worst government since Noddy Blaire would really show us up. I hoped that this humiliation would not go further than a cuddle or two with Starmer, as cringing as that was, but no, we had to go the whole hog: a propagandist photoshoot with the King of England taking tea in the totally incompatible company of a T-shirt wearing erstwhile actor looking less like the person he is purported to be and more like one of those things ~ though considerably less well dressed ~ that keep rolling into Britain on the back of a rubber dinghy.
In a show of absolute disregard for the declining prosperity of the UK and as an insult to the intelligence of its populace (did I say intelligence?), its Davos-orchestrated media flooded airwaves, newspapers and the internet with a fulsome display of stage-managed rejoicing. With a single flick of the media switch almost every Brit in Hatebook land was once again changing their avatars and standing with Ukraine. Not that this has any significance, they would stand in a bucket of shit if that was where they were told to stand. Snap! Snap! went the whip: the Zelensky circus was back in town.
Even in these cash-strapped times, when the majority of Brits and even some migrants, but not the ones in 5-star hotels, cannot afford to heat their homes, Mr Starmer’s government, or rather the forces that control it, is pledging to donate an additional £2.26 billion to a conflict which the West should never have provoked and, as Trump is at pains to point out, if not soon brought to a halt could plausibly precipitate World War III.
In jingoistic and sanctimonious language reminiscent of that which, let’s hope not prophetically, heralded the dawn of the First World War, on the 1 March 2025 (it could be a day that will live in infamy), the UK Government issued this self-congratulatory statement, clearly intended to justify its phenomenal overspending folly whilst proclaiming itself to be the saviour of national security and the champion of democracy.
Rachel Reeves, christened by Katie Hopkins as ‘the woman with the Lego hairstyle’, and some other bod with a name that I cannot pronounce (whatever happened to Smith and Jones?), were poised to sign the grandiloquently titled Ukraine Bilateral Agreement.
Cutting through prose that reads like an extract from a classic Dad’s Army script (I mean, just look at it! I ask you!), the best of British from the worst of people is impressive but meretricious:
“A safe and secure Ukraine is a safe and secure United Kingdom. This funding will bolster Ukraine’s armed forces and will put Ukraine in the strongest possible position at a critical juncture in the war. [Fanfare of heraldic trumpets!!!]
“It comes as we have increased our defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, which will deliver the stability required to keep us safe and underpin economic growth.” ~ said Lego
What this bilateral agreement means is that instead of going for peace, Britain is going for broke. In order to keep the Zelensky show on the road and perpetuate the hostilities in Ukraine at any price, and that includes the cost in human terms, the UK Government is now pledging a whopping great £2.26 billion ‘loan’ on top of the £3 billion it already throws away each year (that’s where your tax money’s going) for Ukraine to spend on bombs and bullets. That’s an awful lot of money to give to a man with no dress sense; let’s hope he uses some of it to buy himself a suit.
[Quote:] “The Prime Minister has been clear that a strong Ukraine is vital to UK national security.” [Unquote].
How and also Why? After that statement from the PM, even those who didn’t regard him as a bit of a prat, because their fathers have always voted Labour, may hopefully have a change of heart.
Moving on swiftly from this stupendous tax on the UK’s coffers at a time when we can least afford it, the government statement is keen to head up the recently announced, but for some lefties controversial, increase in the UK defence budget.
“… to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, with an ambition to spend 3% of GDP on defence in the next parliament as economic and fiscal conditions allow.” ~ notice the qualification. Hand over your piggy banks, kids! Tax! Tax! Tax!
Let’s just pause for one brief moment and think this document through. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that a government, indeed successive UK governments, who do not give a flying fart about destroying the country they represent by endorsing and encouraging the immigrant invasion, should so solemnly be concerned with and so unswervingly devoted to the sovereignty of a country, I refer, of course, to Ukraine, which until social media exhorted Britain’s Arsebook sheep to change their pretty avatars, not one man Jack of them, or dinghy-arriving Abdul, knew Ukraine existed. According to popular rumour, neither did Liz Truss. Liz who? Allow me to jog your memory: She entered Number 10 like a queen and vanished like a magician’s assistant through the back of a magic box.
Trussed-up-like-a-Turkey had no idea where Ukraine is and, let’s be frank and honest, neither do 90 per cent of avatar-changing Brits. “Duh, let’s change our avatars. You click ‘Like’, I’ll click ‘Like’, we’ll all click ‘Like’ together.”
Giving billions of pounds a year to Mr Zelensky’s T-shirt fund has nothing to do with UK national security. We compromised that years ago when we opened the migrant floodgates, and what little we have left of it is being trampled underfoot by thousands of happy migrant feet that are wearing the welcome mat threadbare as our politically correct two-tier coppers bus them off to plush hotels.
The real threat in the UK to every man, woman and child and thus to national security is the one that nobody, except Reform, is willing to confront: catastrophic immigration. Thousands, literally thousands, of young men of fighting age, migrants from the third world, are languishing at the taxpayers’ expense in hotels and hostels up and down the country. Thanks to the loony left, bolstered by Brownshirt organisations that masquerade as equality heroes ~ who mentioned Antifa and Hope Not Hate? ~ but which are really infested with anarchists, hardly any of these aliens will be sent packing to whence they originally came. Hundreds of thousands of these lovely items are poised to be unleashed onto the wretched streets of Britain, ushering in a dark new age where holding hands and candle-lit vigils, already a British tradition, is steadily replacing all that our forbears worked for and all that they believed in: “Get your candle-lit vigil kits here!”
Of course, I could be wrong. The experiences of the past few years may be nothing at all to go by. They may simply want to hold hands with us and, like the Coke advert of old, sing in ‘Happy Harmony’.
In a further demonstration of liberal social media’s stranglehold on UK freedom of speech, Facebook, aka Hatebook, is quick to delete all and any comments that do not align themselves with the West’s ‘I stand with Ukraine’ narrative. The comments of attackers and haters are preserved in liberal vinegar; the comments of all who challenge them are swiftly siphoned away.
Two sides of the jolly old argument, ay chaps. “It is essential for democracy to listen to what other people are saying (Goodin, 2003).”
The Russian point of view: “We continue to operate on the premise that a truly just and durable peace is not possible unless the root causes of the Ukraine crisis are completely eliminated. The main ones among them include the West breaking its promises not to expand NATO and the alliance’s absorption of Europe’s entire geopolitical space all the way up to Russia’s borders, as well as the Kiev regime’s systematic elimination of everything Russian, including language, culture, and church, just like the German Nazis did in the past. The demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine, as well as recognition of existing realities on the ground remain Russia’s unchanged objectives. The sooner Kiev and the European capitals in question come to realise this, the closer to a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis we will be.” ~ Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s comment on Vladimir Zelensky’s voyage to Washington, D.C., 1 March 2025
The idea that the Western World’s survival hinges upon propping up the ultranational regime of Ukraine is a feebly spurious and egregious premise. The West’s proxy war with Russia has failed, so why continue the virtue signalling by showering Zelensky with false praise and filling the bottomless pit of his unaudited war chest. Bankrolling Zelensky is nothing more than a face-saving exercise, an immoral funding of loss of life destined to ensure that Ukraine ends up like a lunar landscape.
Instead of hoodwinking gullible Brits with jingoistic soundbites and huggy huggy Zelensky time ~ quick, let’s change our avatars ~ a responsible, grown-up government, if only we had such a thing, would admit that national security is a net-zero migration issue and would be doing all that it could to slam the porous borders shut and combat the hostile hoards that are already within our midst. After all, it is they that shipped them in; the indigenous British people never went online and ordered them from Amazon.
UK Zelensky Tour is a Charity Gala Performance
The only real potential threat that Britain faces today to its national security, indeed to its very existence, is the Trojan Horse of third-world migration. It is here, now; here and happening. An insidious ticking timebomb waiting to explode. All talk of old-style threats, of invasions from abroad, are as convincing as telling a country bumpkin that if he pisses against the wind the world will be a better place. The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! What would they want to come here for? Such megaphonic announcements are opium for the bewildered masses, many of whom are yet to wake up to the terrible state that Britain is in. Please, pass me one of their sleeping pills!
The only positive thing to come out of Britain throwing its money away and the avatar-changing farce is that Trump by word and deed has been unequivocally vindicated. By advocating a path for peace, he has already proved to the world that contrary to the deriding image that mainstream media painted of him during his first term in office, the crazed war monger never was him; it was, and always has been, the backsliding liberal left. Biden was a stooge; Obama was a black bum sitting on a fence, though they claim he played good golf; Trump, though not a peaceful man ~ he is not a lefty wimp or a wokist pushover ~ is a man who believes in peace. The clamouring desire for war, for never-ending, relentless war is an obsession exclusively liberal.
Indeed, Trump’s defiant stand for peace contrasts strongly in his favour against the liberal craving for war, which reverberates hysterically on both sides of the Atlantic. If you couldn’t see it before Trump’s sincere endeavours for peace, your vison should now be clearing. The real war mongers of the West are the pseudo-liberal cabal, the elitist globalist clan, who hide behind tired old slogans that project them as the patron saints of democracy and humanity but really who are perfectly willing to spill the blood of others in their relentless pursuit of hegemony.
These are the goons who want you to ‘Stand with Ukraine’, or rather the last thing that they want to happen is for Trump to broker a peace plan. They do not want peace full-stop, especially peace by a peace-making Trump, as this will only cement his glory, expose them for what they are, and spur him onto greater things, none of which they have no doubt will be in their globalist interest.
Standing for Ukraine, as defined by British policy, means perpetuating warfare, which, as Trump has laid on the line, could edge us closer to World War III.
UK Zelensky Tour is a Charity Gala Performance
If war does break out in Europe, and let’s fervently hope this day will never dawn, it will surprise an awful lot of idiots who repeatedly spout the mantra that nuclear war will not effect us, as the UK has its own deterrent. This might be an appropriate juncture to remind the lefty lot that it was not so long ago that they wanted to scrap our nuclear deterrent and use the money instead for welfare handouts and to fund migration.
Sing along now: ‘We can’t all live in a yellow submarine …’
Our politicians, whose only skill seems to lie in their remarkable ability to never tell the truth, should nevertheless make it abundantly clear to the obfuscated British public, particularly those who ‘Stand by Ukraine’, that the first casualty of a war that goes nuclear will be the United Kingdom. In the first seconds of a nuclear war, our little, bitty, titchy island and all who reside upon it will unfortunately but effectively be evaporated. There’s not enough room on our two nuclear subs for Britain’s ever-increasing migrant army, let alone the rest of us.
The West breaking its promises not to expand NATO and the alliance’s absorption of Europe’s entire geopolitical space …
The Cuban Missile Crisis ~ a lesson from history In May 1962, the Soviet Union began shipping missiles and technicians to Cuba. The yanks were none too pleased about this. It was the closest brush with World War III since the end of World War II.
The irresponsible to the extent of insane notion to billet NATO missile bases in Ukraine capable of carrying nuclear payloads within easy reach of Moscow is comparable to Russia siting missile bases on the Isle of Man. You just don’t do it, do you?
Forget about the government (Oh, you already have!), forget about Ukraine (You can’t! You’ve gone and changed your avatars!), what we need, and urgently, is a bomb-disposable expert, one who will leave other countries to manage their own affairs and who will focus his mind exclusively on dismantling the clear and present threat of Britain’s Migrant Doomsday Bomb.
Do I stand with Ukraine? No! I stand for Trump and peace. The rationale of my thinking being that it is hard to stand almost anywhere in a pair of smouldering boots.
“I am not crazy; my reality is just different from yours.”
28 February 2025 ~ Rabbit Hole Gastro-Bar Kaliningrad
There is a gastro-bar on Mira Avenue Kaliningrad which lies at subterranean level. At the bottom of the steps that lead down to its entrance is a sign. The sign says enigmatically: “Fall into the Hole, Get Lost in Time”. The name of this gastro-bar is unlike any I have ever encountered. How many Rabbit Holes have you frequented? Through the windows of the front door, I can see the bar itself, the thing with beer taps on it. Without a second ado, like a ferret down a rabbit hole, and what could be more appropriate, I cross the portal to the other side.
Like Alice who passed before me (Who the !*!* is Alice?), who, it has been suggested, had an addiction of her own, I find myself in Wonderland. But first a passing word, or more, on what we mean by ‘cozy’.
Rabbit Hole Gastro-Bar Kaliningrad
When people use the term ‘cozy’ they usually employ it in a complementary or even compensatory way, intimating that whilst the place they are describing may be small, it is warm, comfortable and inviting.
Before becoming a city slicker, I lived my life among country folk, whose view of the average rabbit hole was anything but romantic, and I tended to concur with them. But this strictly urbanised concept persuaded me to revise my opinion.
From the moment I entered its rarified world, I felt the urge to compare it to the British pub of yore, with its typical two-room segregation: one for the serious drinker, traditionally known as the public bar, and the other for more discerning types, which went by the name of the lounge. But the two-room similarity ends at this point of the parallel, since whilst one side of the gastro-bar has a discrete and inglenook feel and the other, being slightly larger, though not tremendously so, an aspirant sense of restaurant, neither one nor the other can be said to be less cozy.
It is the larger room of the two, however, where Wonderland is best perfected. Not exactly the gossamer Wonderland as conceived in the maze-like labyrinth of Lewis Carroll’s inventively playful, playfully odd, often obtuse and fantasy-making mind, but rather the rich star-spangled extravaganza bristling with special-effects, which, we are told at the time of writing, is the highest grossing film of director Tim Burton’s career. The framed anthropomorphist images displayed on Rabbit Hole’s walls are not the exquisite renditions of Tenniel or of Attwell, they are loud, near-modern grotesque, decidedly Burtonesque, and the looped Alice in Wonderland film shown silently on the wall-mounted screen needs no introduction: it is Mr Burton’s Hollywood blockbuster.
One of the most compelling draws of this pantheon to Burton ~ no, not a monogrammed pair of Alice’s ~ is its enticing assortment of Wonderland hats. Casually tossed in a wicker basket just below the TV screen, these simulated props, which identify with Alice’s fictional characters, enable those who are smitten by the happy-snappy smartphone age to plonk them on their bonces, take photos of each other and feed them proudly to their ‘Like-clicking’ friends, who are presumably waiting, phones in hands with nothing but bated breath, for the next instalment of lives that surprise. ‘If the hat fits, it fits’, and the management of Rabbit Hole have latched onto this modern compulsion, for it certainly fits their marketing ploy.
Wearing an Alice hat or not, there is something important you need to know about dining out at Rabbit Hole, which is that before the evening is out you will be rubbing Deep Heat into your neck. I think we can safely say that the last thing Mr Burton would likely want to hear is that his multi-billion-dollar film has been upstaged by a ceiling, but there you have it, and there it is.
Rabbit Hole’s ceiling is a work of art, an engaging, colourful illustration that wouldn’t look amiss in an early 20th century children’s story book. It is in itself a fitting tribute to the golden age of authentic Alice.
Its canvas is awash with iconic Wonderland objects, which float around in a densely turbulent space as though, caught up in the Wizard of Oz tornado, they have been flung at random and as a whole into ever-lasting affection, which, as all we avid readers know, is the library of our impressionable years to which we owe a lifelong membership.
‘Crikey!’ you might think, as you crane your neck in admiration, ‘they’ve even crimped’ the ceiling, but in this respect you’d be lavishing praise where praise is not readily due, for whilst the effect lends the images an appropriate dreamlike character, as every student of Königsberg’s history knows, or if he doesn’t should, the series of narrow arches that give the ceilings of basements and those in old industrial buildings in this part of the world their characteristic ripple, as aesthetically pleasing as they are, are principal to the fulfilment of an essential structural purpose. Having made this distinction, however, artistic concept and construction complement each other, as though their eventual coexistence had been ordained by Carroll himself. Carroll’s tale has innumerable twists, but Rabbit Hole’s ceiling has a few of its own.
If you haven’t come to Rabbit Hole to gawp in amazement up at the ceiling, the only explanation can be that perhaps you are here for the food.
Rabbit Hole Gastro-Bar Kaliningrad
I see a lot of positive comments regarding the quality of Rabbit Hole’s food posted on the internet but have failed to find anything much written about the quantity. A word in your ear, if I may. On the evening that we dined there, one amongst our group was rather disappointed that the prawn salad she had ordered only contained as many prawns ~ two to be precise ~ to justify its name and warrant its plurality. And I was not exactly impressed when the baked potato for which I had paid the British equivalent of three whole pounds was lost in the landscape of a bowl whose suspiciously disingenuous proportions could have taken a single olive and optically turned it into a melon. Taste in all things was in place and thus it goes was quality, but the whereabouts of quantity was anybody’s guess, perhaps it was off taking tea with Carroll’s March Hare and Mad Hatter.
I have no idea what brand of beer they serve in Alice’s wonderland, do you? But down in Kaliningrad’s Rabbit hole, I was perfectly happy to reprise my friendship with the ever-amenable Maisel’s Weisse, which, as every student of good beer knows, perhaps those very same students who are so up to scratch on Konigsberg’s history, is a special Bavarian wheat beer.
I would have been quite content sitting and sipping at my Maisel’s Weisse whilst gazing at the ceiling ~ pass the crick-in-the-neck cream, please ~ had it not been for my discovery of that something exciting going on at a nearby table of ladies. They had just received a wooden platter from the waiter in a bowler hat containing umpteen shots of different vodkas. You may recall, and if you don’t here is the link that will jog your memory, that I knew all about these special platters and the different vodkas they conveyed, having been bought one at the Dreadnought.
Did Rabbit Hole have a vodka or two tinctured with different flavours? Most certainly they did not! They had a vodka or 54, replied the indignant waiter, and before we could disarm him, he had whipped his phone out of his pocket as smartly would have Hickok had he possessed a mobile phone instead of his trusty side-iron, and tippy tapping away on his phone, not Hickok but the waiter, he began to recite a list of vodkas as long as Alice’s arm when whatever the potion it was she drank inflated her general stature. The only way we could switch him off ~ and here’s a mark of salesmanship ~ was to interrupt his roll call by ordering up a batch of those vodkas upon whose fragrant personalities he was so zealously expatiating.
The least adventurous of our party, and, if the truth be known, cursed by the same affliction as Wonderland’s White Rabbit, I stuck to my staple flavoured vodka, horseradish, a choice I presumed would be safe by precedent, but which, as it transpired, was nothing of the sort. The grimace on my face could, I suppose, have been mistaken for the grin on the face of the Cheshire Cat, but whatever it was that he was on, this was not my fix. I am not sure what became of the radish, but I felt the kick that came with the horse.
The next safe bet was cherry flavour, but this concoction as nice as it was being rather more sweet than I cared for, made me think that it may have been more prudent had I approached it via the stepping stones of turnip, carrot, swede and cucumber, but that my friends is what tasting is, a bit of a tightrope to getting it right, but a talking point when getting it wrong.
By the end of this Rabbit Hole evening, the unpredictable marriage of Maisel’s Weisse with exotic vodkas brought me to the realisation why when Alice drank her magic infusions one minute she felt too small for the room and much too tall the next. But the sorcery hadn’t ended here. Before returning to the ground above me, I was aghast to see in my reflection that some of the vodkas had gone to my head and one ~ it must have been carrot ~ had definitely gone to my ears … Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit …
18 February 2025 ~ Ponart Brewery in the Strange Case of Creation
>> Creation — the famous exhibition from Annenkirche and the art group Grain is now in Kaliningrad! This is a biblical view of the creation of the world through the prism of modern Christian art. The exhibition is located within the walls of the atmospheric old Brewery Ponart, where the past and the present, faith and creativity, deep meaning and stunning visual design are harmoniously combined. At the exhibition, you will learn all the most important things about the days of creation. You will be able to touch God, get closer to the heavenly bodies and decide for yourself whether to bite or not to bite the forbidden fruit. Large-scale installations and aesthetic locations help to penetrate the theme and provide the opportunity for many beautiful keepsake photographs. << Translated from the exhibitor’s website
Sailing past the world and saying goodbye to the dinosaur, we entered a short, narrow section of corridor, the walls of which were decorated with multiple lights, each having flower petal shades in hues of natural green and yellow. This room appeared to represent Day 3 of God’s world creation: the introduction of the natural environment, the phenomenon we call ‘nature’.
The impact of the following room would have been awesome without comparison to the cramped and confined space of the last, but no such prelude was necessary.
We were now standing in an area of the old brewery, which once would have comprised three or four storeys but, gutted from floor to rafters, had been recast as a towering shaft, gnarled, scarred and ragged. The entire confinement was bathed in a low red glow, causing me to bookmark Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death, which was a rather unfortunate negative parallel, because the huge illuminated moon suspended from the ceiling suggested that in the narrative structure by which the rooms were sequenced, we must have arrived at Day 4, the creation of the universe. Don’t quote me on this, however, as my proficiency in maths is far below the standard of the divinity’s.
A low, not humming sound, but musical chord, which wavered slightly, but not enough in noticeable degree to be called melodic, vibrated sonorously through the vertical vastness of this lofty chamber, adding audibility to its already visual awesomeness. Stunned by the giant moon, I also found myself becoming inadvertently absorbed by the many scars with which the faces of the wall were pocked and disfigured, the many uneven ledges and protuberances, the legion of empty joist holes, which reminded me of eye sockets in the face of an ancient skull.
Scaling three of the four walls was a metal staircase, linked by two horizontal platforms at higher and lower levels. This was a staircase which, if you had not turned adult, you would want to climb immediately. Up I went!
The difference in elevation of the two landings provided an agreeable variety of photo opportunities, which, have smartphone will snap, we, of course, took full advantage of.
At the summit of the steps, we passed into a small piece of truncated passageway, emerging thereafter into a great rectangular room, the installations and arrangement of which in relation to one another reminded me of the surrealist work of Terry Gilliam, Monty Python’s collage animator.
Lighting ~ green, blue, orange-red ~ bird flocks strung in mid air, paintings of beasts on the walls, a row of trampoline-seat swings and, in the centre of this row, but at the further end of the room, an enormous pointing white hand (if this had been the UK, it would have been liberal black), thrusts out of the heavens (in this case from the ceiling) through clumps of something that I am rather fond of. I was thinking ‘cauliflower’; the artistic creators most probably clouds.
“Michaelangelo!” Olga announced, annoying me. I had wanted to say it first
The next venue, the room immediately above the one containing the giant hand, was, arguably, more surreal than the last. Two rows of the same sized but differently stylised mannequin heads centred atop rectangular plinths travelled along the centre of the chamber, whose every wall had attached to them paintings of a symbolic nature depicting either variations on the theme of divine creation, Michaelangelo’s version, or unsympathetic renditions of the progenitors of original sin, the hapless Adam and Eve.
Lighting continued to generate atmosphere as it had in the rooms before, and once again could be heard that low, impenetrable but penetrating, measured background hum, which, speaking for myself, had nothing of hallelujah in it but a lot of numbing depth. It gave me grim satisfaction to note that it, and all I had experienced whilst on this voyage of wonder, accorded with my sullied view that of all God’s myriad creations, with the exception of man himself, the world is the most imperfect. Indeed, I have to say and must say, that you would need to be less receptive than deaf, dumb and blind, or a child upon a rocking horse or swing, not to arrive at the end of this incredibly evocative ghost-train ride with more of awe and wonder and less of self-possession than you had upon starting out.
True to form, there is nothing in this biblical treatise on the creation of the world that does not deserve to be called amazing but at one and the same time peripherally unsettling, and nowhere was this more apparent than in each and every one of the artistic interpretations of the spark of life and the fall of man.
The grotesque ethereal landscapes portrayed symbolically in these works of art made the scores of red rosy apples suspended on threads of different lengths, some so long that the apples attached to them descended through circular pits in the floor, wherefrom they could be witnessed hovering above a rectangular trough scattered with scarlet bricks, divine enough to test the wrath of God. This then is the thematic ethos of the exhibition’s penultimate room, where it is hats off to Creation’s creators who, by ingenuity or by accident, have made the legendary curse of original sin never seem more tempting!
I will never now be able to look again in innocence at a store-bought rosy apple or pluck one off a tree without that the act of doing so emphatically returns me to this desirous scene at Ponart Brewery, as well as to the mythological premise that almost every instinctual human act is sin wrapped up in guilt or guilt wrapped up in sin.
It occurs to me that there is someone out there who is abrogating responsibility for filling this flawed world of ours with a dynastic glut of apple pluckers. Tell me, who can think of Granny Smith when the orchard in full bloom is full to bursting with attractive distractions like Honeycrisp and Golden Delicious? It’s easy to blame it on Adam and Eve, they are not here to defend themselves.
Ponart Brewery in the Strange Case of Creation
The truth of the matter is that the biblical story of creation, that masterpiece of tragedy of which we are a part, means different things to different people. Go and see it for yourself, and ask yourself at the end of the journey, is the biblical view of our world a slice of apple pie, or does it give you the pip? One thing is for certain, Creation is an exhibition, which starts and keeps you thinking. https://zernoart.ru/creation_kaliningrad
A socio-cultural perspective on Russia’s cake habit contrasted and compared with and illuminated by one or two supplementary notes about having your cake and eating it in Great Britain
Revised 4 February 2025 | First published 26 March 2023 ~ Russia’s Love of Cakes Differs from the UK’s
Cakes. I don’t imagine for one moment that when somebody in the West mentions Russia, cakes are the first thing that spring to mind. Equally, I’m willing to wager that the UK media has written precious little lately, or written little at all, about the magnificent variety of cakes in Russia and the widespread availability of them in spite of those silly old sanctions.
They certainly would never divulge that the super-abundance of cakes in Russia is part of a western plot organised and funded by the Sorryarse Open Cake Society to swamp the Federation with cakes, similar to the way in which it is suffocating the western world with boat loads of useless migrants. I am not so sure about cake, but the spotted dick that they are creating is fast filling up with gritty currants.
Whoa now! Hang on a minute! Blin, yolkee polkee and blaha mooha! How dare you lump our delicious Russian cakes in the same inflatable dinghy with a gaggle of grinning third-world freeloaders destined for 5-star hotels at the expense of the British taxpayer!
Sorry, I stand corrected and in the same breath exposed. It is true that I am no Don Juan when it comes to loving cakes. However, as one of the last of the few true Englishmen, I concede to enjoying a nice slice of cake whenever the mood so takes me and, when the opportunity avails itself, regard it to be the perfect accompaniment to the English custom of afternoon tea.
All well and good, but neither affrontery apologised for nor my confessed willingness to embrace the odd iced cake rather than the swarthy migrant amounts to diddly-squat when it comes to explaining the cultural differences that set cake worship apart in Russia from similar proclivities in the UK.
Cakes are cancel proof
Cancel-proof, like most things pertaining to Russian culture, as the West is finding out and finding out the hard way, Russia’s love of cakes is in a sacrosanct league of its own. For example, it is not often, if indeed at all, that you will see men in the UK roaming around the streets with a big sticky cake in their hands. There is every possibility that you will see them holding another man’s hand, or, if you are really unlucky ~ or lucky if you are a professional photographer assigned to defining British culture ~ some other part of their brethren’s anatomy, but never a cake in hand. In the UK there seems to be an hypocritical subtext, an unspoken reservation at work, which, ironically, seems to imply that even in these enlightened times cakes and men together in public is tantamount to poofterism. Alack a day, but there you have it.
Russia’s love of cakes differs from the UK’s
Having thus established that men carting cakes around in public is not the done thing in Britland (but then what is and, more to the point, who is?), we arrive at a striking contrast. I’ve lost count of the number of times when entertaining at home (dispel all images of magic tricks, juggling, charades and karaoke) that on opening the gate to greet our Russian guests, at least one man will be standing there with a large stodgy cake in his grasp. As for dining out, I have yet to go to a restaurant with my Russian friends where rounding off a meal without a sumptuous sweet, most of which resemble cakes drenched in cream and syrup, would turn an everyday event into something of a precedent. Perchance it ever occurs, it would breach the unexpected like a hypersonic missile bursting through the dream of eternal hegemony. Cakes don’t come in on a wing and a prayer in Russia; they are part of the national psyche, in which whim and caprice can play no part.
The company Cakes R Rus is yet to be incorporated. The reason for this oversight is not immediately clear when cakes in Russia attract such popularity, but the greater mystery by far must be why in Russia are cakes so popular? It is a matter for conjecture, is it not, that often what presents itself at best as a half-baked explanation turns out in the long run to be remarkably overdone. Not so when it comes to cakes. Cakes are interwoven into every Fair Isled fabric of daily, popular and expressive life. Judge this on the merit that there are almost as many traditional sayings, remarks and literary allusions to cakes, and on matters pertaining to cakes, as there are cakes themselves. We will come to that in a moment.
Speaking from experience, all shops in Kaliningrad, that is to say all food shops, except the fishmongers, the butchers and the caviar sellers (add your own to contradict me), however small the shop may be, are guaranteed to stock one, two, even sometimes three, fairly chunky, big, round cakes, whilst supermarkets routinely offer flotilla to armada volumes of seductively sumptuous cake varieties, rich, lavish, opulent and sufficient in taste, size and price to float everyone’s cake-craving boat.
For the love of cakes
In addition to these generic outlets, Kaliningrad is no stranger to the small independent boaterie, sorry I meant to say bakery. There are any number of such bakeries (I won’t tell you just how many, for if I did that would be telling.), but the most noticeable because most prolific chain is undoubtedly Königsbäcker. Why not Kalininbacker? What a silly question.
Now we have both stopped crying, I will try to explain how the Russian perception of cakes differs to the perceived role that cakes play in modern British society and why; and in the course of doing so, you may suspect that you have stumbled upon a hint that enables you to answer the question, why in Russia are cakes so popular?
Exactly how the Russian cake mentality diverges from its English counterpart is not as subtle as you might first think. So, for all you cake lovers out there, let me try to explain. Here goes!
First and foremost, bugger The Great British Bake Off, an awful television prog which is opium for the masses. Like coronavirus, which also kept people at home glued to their televisions, The Great British F!*off most likely foreshadows something more dreadful to come, such as The Great British Bake Off in the Nude and I’m A Cake Get me Out of Here, currently previewing on the Secretly Ashamed Channel.
The Great British Bake Off, which I always find time to switch off, lost all credibility for me when one of the female contestants was allegedly discovered substituting Viagra for self-raising flour. When the cake flopped, she was most disappointed. Aren’t we all when our cakes don’t rise. But her story had a happy ending, three to be precise, for when the show was over, after tea and cake with three of the show’s male competitors, she left the studio a satisfied woman. So satisfied, in fact, that she continues to pay her TV licence even to this day!
Anyway, Great Bake Offs or preferably no Great Bake Offs, my experience has it that the celebritising of cakes has very little impact on consumer purchasing habits. UKers may gasp in unison when confronted on the goggle box by Big Cake El Supremo, but it’s a different story altogether when buying down Asda or Iceland. Small synthetic packet cakes are the type that Brits on average go for, something cheap and abundant, over-stuffed with sugar and small enough to fit inside one’s pocket. (Hey you, watch out! There’s a store detective about! “And what of it! They can’t do nothin’. It would be a violation of our subhuman rights. Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! He! He!”)
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake baker’s man bake me a cake as fast as you can (The cherished belief that all bakers are highly motivated individuals lends itself to scrutiny)
It occurs to me (which is the get out clause to ‘it occurs to nobody else and why would it?’), that cakes in Russia are rather more special-occasion items than tear open a packet of Kipling’s as quickly as you like and let that be an end to it!
Kipling’s individual pies are probably not as bad as so-called experts on synthetics would like us to believe, although when shady and disreputable store owners infringe the sell-by date, and this happens with greater frequency than it should in the UK, especially in shops run by migrants, the pastry tends to be dry and falls in embarrassing flaky bits down the front of your jumper. In winter, when it may, or conversely may not, be snowing, such socially unacceptable things may pass by virtually unnoticed, but once the Christmas jumper emerges in all its dubious glory into the glaring spotlight of spring, the shards of pastry in which you are covered can begin to look like dandruff. Mr Kipling may very well make exceedingly crumbly cakes, but to stop yourself from being conned and from looking more like a bit of a prick in your unfortunate Christmas jumper, particularly when it is splattered with pastry, choose your cake stores carefully and always check the sell-by-dates, especially if you have no option ~ and options in the UK are getting fewer by the boat load ~ than to buy from P. Akis Convenience Shores, a disproportionate number of which are concentrated in Dover. I wonder why that is?
Inspired by my last comment, I am tempted to ask, do you remember the 1970s’ individual fruit pie phenomenon, characterised first by square pies wrapped in grease-proof paper and later round pies presented on a tin-foil base? Tasty, ay! But, alas, like most things in life, they tended to shrink as time went by. Any road, can apple pies truly be classed as cakes? I suppose they can if you drop the word ‘pie’ and substitute it for ‘cake’, and am I stalling because I have bitten off more than I can chew in my self-appointed role as Anglo-Russian cakeologist?
Russia’s love of cakes is holistic
As I have already said (I hope you’ve been paying attention!), cakes in Russia are rather more a special-occasion commodity than tear open a packet of Kipling’s as quickly as you like and get them down you in one mouthful before the pastry crumbles. Kipling’s individual apple … (ah, we’ve already covered that …).
Moving on: I am not suggesting that they, Russian cakes, are strictly reserved for special occasions such as births, weddings and funerals, but they often come bearing people, such as to get-togethers at home, to private parties, social gatherings and events of a similar nature. They also occupy pride of place among boxes of chocolates and flowers as a way of saying thank you to someone who has rendered a kindness to another mortal soul or has performed some function in their official capacity above and beyond the call of duty.
In these contexts, the cake’s presentation shares equal importance with noshability, which possibly explains why Russian cakes, with their white-iced coverings, frothy cream crowns, candy sequins and fruit-festooned exteriors, make our traditional English jam and cream sponges look like poor relations; same bourgeoise boat perhaps but not at all on the upper-deck with their ostentatious Russian counterparts. Sigh, how ironically times can change and ostentatiously do, and with them cakes as well!
But let’s not leave it here! Whilst we, the English cannot compete with glitz, there is still a lot to be said for our good old-fashioned sponge cake, something that wants to make you sing not ‘There will always be an England’, because it’s much too late for that, but ‘There will always be a sponge cake’. There is something solid, enduring, traditional, something reassuringly staid and respectfully no-nonsense about plain, old English sponge cakes; something wonderfully neo-imperial, boldly neo-colonial, something so 1940s in the sense of stiff-upper lip that frankly I am astonished that these thoroughly English cakes have not been singled out for special ethnic-cleansing treatment by ‘take a knee’ cancel-culturists, or cast like so many heritage statuesover walls and into ponds with the blessing of the left-wing British judiciary. Tell me, is it premature of me to feel even a little bit mildly complacent about the safety and sovereignty of the patriotic British cake? I’ll take a Tommy Robinson, please, he makes an exceedingly difficult rock cake for the soft under-dentures of the British establishment.
A socio-cultural perspective on cakes
The socio-cultural and historic significance of cakes may strike you as more than a mouthful, but history is replete with examples where the icing on the cake is the role of the cake itself. Spectacles such as birds flying out of giant cakes have been going on since the time of ancient Rome (not now, of course, due to animal rights laws) and scantily clad frosted women have been leaping out of oversized cakes since the 19th century (not so much today, however, because of the feminist movement). I am perfectly aware of the existence of the Cambridge Stool Chart, but tell me, is the feminist ‘movement’ in some way linked to this chart?
And you thought they were just coming in by dinghies!!
Literary cake tropes have fared much better than their visual counterparts. Boris Johnson (You remember him, don’t you?), who had a cake named after him and in Kyiv no less ~ where else?, borrowed and modified the well-known phrase, ‘Have our cake and eat it’ in his bid to convince democracy of the benefits of Brexit. What he forgot to tell us, however, was that behind the political scenes the British and French governments had cooked up a migrant shuttle service ~ one-way ticket only ~ thus ensuring that after Brexit the cake would be ‘had’ alright, had and eaten by others, nibbled away like vermin at cheese, leaving nothing but crumbs for the British.
Slightly more famous than Boris Johnson but not, as far as I am aware, cake enriched by name, is Mary Antionette. She is credited with uttering the oft quoted and immortal phrase, ‘Let them eat cake!’, and although in all probability she said nothing of the sort, her disregard for, or indifference to, the plight of her country’s poor (typical of the French) is nowhere near as offensive as the Conservative party’s debasing betrayal of Britain’s Brexit electorate.
Boris ‘The Fruit Cake’ Johnson, sometimes referred to as ‘that Big Cream Puff’, is not the only man in showbusiness to have had an honorary cake named after him. Other cake-named celebs include no less than Elvis Presley, as well as such Russian personalities as ballet dancer Anna Pavlova and the first human to leave our world by rocket, Mr Yuri Gagarin, both of whom the West zealously tried to cancel just because their cakes were better than Boris’s, an all-show but nothing-of-substance confection cynically whipped up in Kyiv in order to keep the ackers flowing. Boris’s cake was made according to Biden’s recipe (that’s Biden as in empty chef’s hat not as in Master Baker). My question is, therefore, that with all this cake naming going on, isn’t it about time that somebody in Russia baked a cake and named it ‘Kobzon’ in memoriam of my favourite crooner? Come on chaps! How about it!
Whist I wait for this honour to be bestowed, we will hold our collective breath in anticipation of Jimmy Saville, Gary Glitter, Adolf Hitler, oh and don’t forget our Tony ~ Tony ‘Iraq’ Blair ~ having cakes named after their illustrious personages. And what about a ‘Boat People’ cake to celebrate the end of Western civilisation.
And what is so wrong about that? A good many famous people and not so famous events and places have had the honour of cakes named after them. The most obvious being Mrs Sponge, who lent her name to the sponge cake. No kiddin’! No, its a historical fact! Her first name was Victoria. She lived the better part of her life at 65 Coronation Crescent. (Source: Alfred ‘Dicky’ Bird). Crossword Clue: 7 across ‘Queen’; 5 down ‘custard’.
Another famous namesake cake is Battenberg, relating to Prince Cake, and in the towns and locale category, that is to say where places not people have given their names to cakes, we have the English Eccles cake, which obviously gets its name from Scunthorpe, and a cake we all love to bypass, colloquially known as Sad Cake, named as legend has it after the UK town of Wellingborough. It’s a ‘going there thing’: so don’t!
The metropolis has its own cake, historically known as the White Iced Empire but renamed in recent years, if not entirely rewritten, and consequently referred to by those who would rather it remained as it was as Double Chocolate Black Forest Ghetto. Also known as Chocolate Woke or, by those who have not had their brainwashed heads thrust right up their arses (This is the BBC!) as the Liberal Upside Down cake. It is often confused with the Fruit-Bottom cake which, though far from all it is cracked up to be, sells like proverbial hot cracks during Londonistan’s Gay Pride month. If you have the extreme good fortune to be in the UK capital during that poof-pastry period, do make sure to skip lickety-split down to London’s Soho, the geographical and moral-less centre of LGBT fame, and treat yourself whilst you are there to a slice of the famous Navy Cake from Hello Sailor’s bun shop or a ‘once tried never forgotten’ Golden Rivet Muffin from the café El Bandido’s.
All of this, I am pleased to say, is a very long way away from Kaliningrad and its culture, and everybody who lives in Kaliningrad is also pleased to say, may it, with the Good Lord’s help, long remain that way.
Meanwhile, whilst you sit there wondering which of the world’s biggest cakes ought to be named after you, if there is anything in this treatise on Russian/British cakes which you think I haven’t covered, if you really feel that you must, then jot down the one or two points you believe I might have missed and consign your trunk full of comments to ‘Care of the Cake in MacArthur Park’ . It’s only right and proper since ‘It took so long to bake it …’
Please note: At the time of writing, Starmer hasn’t had a cake named after him yet, but according to one political commentator, a man who narrowly escaped debasing himself by appearing on the Great Bake Off, who understandably wishes to remain anonymous, when that great cake day eventually dawns Starmer’s cake is bound to be called something resembling CurranT, with the capital ‘T’ standing for ‘Taxes’ and some of the letters in between omitted. That one’s got me really foxed?
Vintage sponge cake: I found this image at <a href="/ru/”https://freevintageillustrations.com/vintage-sponge-cake-illustration/?utm_source=freevintageillustrations&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=downloadbox”">Free Vintage Illustrations</a> / https://freevintageillustrations.com/vintage-sponge-cake-illustration/
Nursery Rhyme Baker’s Man: I found this image at <a href="/ru/”https://freevintageillustrations.com/pat-a-cake-nursery-rhyme-illustration/?utm_source=freevintageillustrations&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=downloadbox”">Free Vintage Illustrations</a> / https://freevintageillustrations.com/pat-a-cake-nursery-rhyme-illustration/
Revised 19 January 2025 | First published: 16 June 2022 ~ What makes Kaliningrad Flea Market a Junk Buyers paradise?
NOTE>: Kaliningrad flea market has moved! Follow the link to the new location here. Use this article to gain an insight and overview of what the market has to offer. The address of the new location can also be found at the end of this post.
In 2000, the first time I set foot on Kaliningrad soil ~ a giant step for a man who had never been to Russia before ~ one of the major attractions very quickly became the city’s flea market or junk market, as we like to call it.
In those days, the junk market was located at the side of Kaliningrad’s central market, a monolithic and cavernous complex consisting of all kinds of exciting combinations of traditional stalls, purpose-built units and multi-layered shops, selling everything from fruit and veg to jewellery.
To get to the market we would cut around the back of Lenin’s statute, which occupied the place where the Orthodox cathedral stands today (irony), and making our way along a make-shift pavement of boards raised on pallets, often treacherously slippy as winter approached, we’d pass amidst the wagon train of covered craft-sellers’ stalls, trek across the city’s bus park and, on the last leg of the journey, sidle off down a long, wide alley, which had rattling tin on one side and a towering building on the other. I have no idea why, as I was often in Kaliningrad during the sunny seasons, but my abiding memory of that alley was that it sucked wind down it like the last gasp of breath and was never anything other than cold, wet and raining.
Another ‘in those days’ was that the junk market extended along the side of the road, which is now a pedestrianised space between buildings ancient and modern and the latest super monolithic shopping centre.
Dealers could be found in an old yard opposite, plying their trade from a shanty town of stalls, all higgledy-piggledy, thrown and cobbled together, whilst public sellers set up shop on a narrow sloping scar of land, a grass verge at the side of a pavement worn down over the years by the restless itinerance of junk-seller hopefuls.
In our militaria dealing and 1940s’ re-enactment hey days, we bought twenty pairs of sapagee (high leather and canvas military boots) from a bloke stalled out on this piece of ground over several consecutive days. We also bought his Soviet military belts, the ones that he was wearing. On the last day of purchasing, we would have had his belt again had he more to sell, but all that he had left by the time we were through with buying was a piece of knotted string, which he needed to keep his trousers up.
When we left Russia at the end of a month’s visit, this was in 2004, border security couldn’t help sniggering when they found inside our vehicle twenty pairs of old Soviet boots, rolled up tightly, lashed down with string and packed away in bin liners. But he who laughs last, laughs longest. We hadn’t sneaked off with an icon or two or anything of any great value, but boots bought for a quid a pair that we could sell on in the UK at £35 or more a pop to WWII re-enactors and members of living history groups was unarguably lubbly jubbly. Whilst we wouldn’t get rich on the proceeds, it would certainly help to offset the cost of our trip to Kaliningrad. Dear, dear comrades, it shames me to admit what a despicable capitalist I once was.
When I first came to Kaliningrad (2000), I was buying stuff mainly for myself, but as I turned dealer, as most collectors are obliged to do to reclaim the space they live in, I did what all collectors must when the fear of decluttering wakes them in a cold sweat from their slumbers: I went out looking for more clutter, the justification being that I was no longer buying it for myself but selling it on for profit.
Believe you me, sooner or later (usually later), every junk hoarder arrives at a critical stage of consciousness, when they finally have to admit to themselves that buying old stuff is not just a compulsion, it is in fact a disease. After confession, however, absolution swiftly follows and, like all professional sinners, hoarders quickly learn that regular sin and regular confession go productively hand-in-hand. Thus, wherever it was we travelled to ~ be it Lithuania, Latvia, Poland or Odessa in Ukraine ~ the story was always the same: junk markets and antique shops loomed large on the itinerary.
What makes Kaliningrad Flea Market a Junk Buyers’ paradise?
Be it ever so difficult, if not impossible, for the likes of us to understand, but accumulating old stuff is not everyone’s cup of tea. Thus, the first victims of the development and progressive gentrification of Kaliningrad’s market area were the junk sellers. Speaking euphemistically, they were ‘politely asked to move on’.
I must admit (there you go, I am at it again, confessing!) that when I discovered their absence, I was truly mortified: new shops, block-paved walkways, tree-inset pedestrian-only streets ~ to be sure an incredible face lift, which no amount of Botox or timely plastic surgery could hope to emulate. All, I suppose, applaudable. But oh! Wherefore thou goest junk?!
As it happened there was no cause for alarm. All I needed to do was go around the bend, something that I am known to be good at, and there it was, as plain as the specs (the vintage specs) on your nose.
The precise location of the junk market was ~ I use the term ‘was’ because rumour has it that the purveyors of indispensable high-quality items and second-hand recyclables may be made to move on again to make way for further civic tarting ~ parallel to the road at the back of Der Wrangel tower, thereupon extending at a right angle, along a sometimes dusty, sometimes muddy, tree-shaded stretch of embankment, skirting a remnant of Königsberg’s moat.
The better-quality items ~ such as militaria and Königsberg relics ~ are generally to be found on the stalls lining either side of the pavement. Here you can discover gems, although not necessarily, or regularly for that matter, at prices to suit your pocket.
The pavement-side sellers are mainly traders, people ‘in the know’, who are hoping to get at least market rate for their wares or substantially more, if they can wangle it.
Experience has taught me that in dealing with these chaps movement on prices is not unachievable, but don’t expect the sort of discounts that are possible to negotiate at UK vintage and boot fairs. Sellers in Kaliningrad are skilled in the art of bargaining and are seemingly absolute in their conviction that if you don’t want it at the quoted price some German tourist will.
A busy Saturday at Kaliningrad Flea Market
If you are after military items, especially those relating to WWII and to Königsberg’s German past, then it is here, along this stretch of pavement, where most likely you will find them. Badges, military dog-tags, Third Reich medals and weapon relics are often quite prolific in this quarter, as is cutlery, ceramics and ceramic fragments, many backstamped with political symbols and the insignia of Germany’s military services.
A word of warning, however. For although Kaliningrad’s German heritage and the fierce battles fought there during WWII would reasonably lead you to expect a preponderance of genuine military relics, as anyone who collects Third Reich memorabilia and/or deals in this specialised field will tell you, counterfeit and reproductions abound. German WWII relics, both military and civilian, bearing ideological runes attained collectable status almost before WWII had ended, and a thriving market in quality replicas to service this growing interest emerged as early as the late 1940s.
Party badges, military decorations, particularly of the higher orders and those associated with the German SS, have been faked and faked extensively, and faked with such credibility that it is difficult to distinguish, sometimes almost impossible, the later versions from the real McCoy, particularly since many were struck from the same dies and moulds that were used to create the originals.
The rule of thumb when hunting out Third Reich bargains from dealers’ stock is that you are less likely to get a bargain than to experience a hard bargain, as the pieces acquired by dealers will almost certainly have been exhaustively studied and meticulously researched. However, if you are tempted to buy, pay attention to the item’s appearance. Remember that genuine military items dating to the Second World War are now well into their dotage ~ 80-years-plus ~ and just like ‘mature’ people will generally exhibit significant signs of age, age-related wear and tear and sundry other defects from natural use and handling.
The other thing to watch out for is a proliferation of similar items at any one time. When in the UK, I was a regular attendee at the Bedford Arms Fair, then held in the now demolished Bunyan Centre, you could guarantee each year that a ‘bumper crop’ of something or other would mysteriously materialise. What an alarm bell that is! For example, one year it was German army dress daggers. Every other dealer seemed to have some and all in mint condition; the next it was German flags. These looked and smelt the part ~old ~ with the exception of their labels, which did neither. So, beware! Before you part with your cash or touch your card on the handset, remember these two wise words: Caveat emptor!
When I buy German these days I do so not to sell on but mainly for nostalgic reasons, and because I am attracted by the historic value only, I am content to purchase military pieces, decorations, party badges and anything else that appeals to me that have been dug up out of the ground. Naturally, condition ranges from considerably less than pristine to battered, biffed, corroded and poor, but an item in this condition is more likely to be the genuine article than one that might be described as ‘remarkably well-preserved’. Moreover, you can usually buy such items at a price that won’t break your brother’s piggy bank (is that another confession?).
The same can be said for architectural pieces such as enamel and metal signs that are Königsberg in origin. Signs ~ advertising, military, street plaques ~ whatever they might be, are personal favourites of mine, since they make historically interesting additions to any thoughtful home design. In purchasing relics of this nature, the same rule applies as the guiding one proposed for determining whether militaria is genuine or not. Signs, whatever their type and whatever material they are made of will, in the main, have been used, thus commensurable indications of use and age should be apparent.
In the past four decades, as original signs, especially enamel ones, have grown in popularity and correspondingly price, various retro companies have been successfully plugging the gap in an escalating market, meeting demand with repro goods. Some of these shout repro at you from a telescopic distance, but as techniques in ageing evolve, it often can be hard at first glance, even after several glances and even after a detailed study, to separate the wheat from the chaff, particularly when impulsiveness knocks caution quite unconscious. And signs are not the only things that are being skilfully ‘got at’. I recall a ‘19th century ship’s wheel turning up at our local auction house. It was so well aged and distressed that were it not for the fact that it was so thoroughly convincing, you could easily have talked yourself Into disbelieving that it was anything other than the genuine article.
This is what to look out for: Signs that are ‘uniformly’ aged or show wear and tear in places where you would most expect to find wear and tear but not to the extent that it dissuades you from going ahead with a purchase are to be placed at the top of the suspect list. The last thing you want to discover, after years of gazing lovingly at the antique sign in your home, romancing on the fancy that this was once on a Königsberg shop front, long imagining how eyes like yours lost in time and to memory alighted on it as yours do now, is to learn that your treasured piece of history was in fact knocked out in China less than a week before you bought it.
Original German/Königsberg signs(photo taken Victor Ryabin Studio, c.2010)
Once authenticity has been established, anything to be had forming a direct link to Königsberg can only be irresistible, not just signs but home appliances, kitchen ware, tea sets, ornaments, furniture, garden tools, anything in fact, especially when that anything bears irrefutable provenance in the form of a maker’s mark. Metalware and ceramics embossed or printed with commercial references, ie references to memorable brands or specific retail outlets, are desirable collectors’ pieces. Old ashtrays, many of which are inventive in shape and size, are top whack in this category. Even if chipped and cracked, they still command high prices, and as for the best examples, which are usually in the hands of dealers, after you have exclaimed with astonishment, “How much!” in those same hands they may well remain.
For a less expensive and in-profusion alternative, you could do far worse than plump for bottles. Bottle bygones are dug up in their hundreds, possibly thousands, in Kaliningrad and across the region, but as there are as many different shapes, sizes and hues as there is quantity, it is not unreasonable to discover rare, curious and even exquisite bottles rubbing shoulders with the more mundane.
In the UK, old bottles from the end of the 19th century to the 1960s are as cheap as chips (used to be, before the West sanctioned itself), but Kaliningrad is not the UK, so don’t expect to get bargains on a par. The trade here adjusts the market price according to the needs and instincts of German visitors, many of whom are easily swayed to part with more money than they seem to have sense for a fragment of their forbears’ past. But “Ahh,” I hear you say, “what price, philistine, can anyone put on nostalgia?” Must I confess again?
I have been known to part with as much as ten quid for an interesting and unusual bottle when it has caught my fancy, but this kind of impetuosity acts in defiance of common sense. If you haven’t got the bottle to part with that much, and you shouldn’t have (Frank Zappa: ‘How could I be such a fool!’), when visiting Kaliningrad’s ‘flea market’, turn 90 degrees from the pavement, head along the well-worn and sometimes muddy embankment, and there you will find bottles and a vast range of all sorts, spread out on the ground on blankets, perched on top of little tables, hanging even in the branches of trees, for this is the market’s bargain basement, home to mainly domestic sellers.
I have bought all sorts of things from this part of the market that I never knew I did not need, not to mention clothes that I have never worn and never will wear. For example, I was once obliged to buy an old tin bucket, and I would not dream of wearing it. It’s far too nice a bucket to use as a bucket should be used; so, there it sits in our dacha full of things that one day I possibly may go looking for but will never dream of looking for in that old tin bucket. It’s the sort of bucket that dealers such as I typically find in house clearances ~ a bucket of flotsam and jetsam left behind by the owner when he up and decided to die; a bucket of odds and ends destined to take up valuable space; the accidental contents of which having absolutely no value at all, I would never be able to give away let alone turn as much as a penny on. I sometimes wonder if this is not the only logical reason why people fill their houses and barns with junk, viz to make more work for those poor sods whose job it is to clear them after they, the owners, kick the bucket. And what a lovely bucket, my bucket is!
Now, where was I? Ahh, yes wandering around on the bank mesmerised by matter.
As I said at the outset of this post, Kaliningrad’s ‘collectors’ market’ is on the move again. Please don’t quote me on this! As Elvis Costello said, it could be ‘just a rumour that was spread around town’, but its veracity is tied to the echo that the strip of wooded embankment roaming along by the side of the Königsberg fort may soon be hosting its last tin bucket. There is a whisper in the air of landscape reincarnation and the rustle of leaves in a public park.
Likewise, I am not entirely certain where this cornucopia of memories, this junk market par excellence, is now officially bound, although the wind in my tin bucket tells me that it may be somewhere not far removed from the city’s botanical gardens.
To be perfectly honest with you (another confession may soon be required), I really harbour no desire to know the new location ~ what the eye doesn’t see the heart won’t pine after. Thus, the next time that I wake up at the market handing over my roubles, I won’t be able to blame myself for going there deliberately and for buying things on purpose. Take a leaf out of my well-thumbed book: never leave chance to anything else but intention ~ you can always confess in the fulness of time.
Revised 22 December 2024 ~ Russia Kaliningrad Visa Information
Airspace Closures
Russia has closed its airspace to airlines from multiple countries in direct response to airspace closures effecting its airlines, which were introduced by western governments opposing Russia’s military operation to ‘demilitarise and de-Natzify’ Ukraine. Airlines on the banned list are prohibited from landing in or flying over Russian territory. As a result, air travel disruptions are widespread. If you intend to travel in the immediate future, you should contact your airline or travel agent for further information. Links to Airport/Airlines websites can be found at the end of this guide
To visit Kaliningrad, you will need to apply for and have been issued with a Russian visa. For those of you who are not sure what one of these is, it is an official document that permits you to legally enter a foreign country, in this case the Russian Federation. The visa is valid for a specific duration of time. It contains the date of entry to the country and the date of exit, as well as your name, travel document (passport) details and the purpose for which you are travelling.
There are various types of visa depending upon the
nature of your visit, but, for the sake of this blog, let’s assume that you are
visiting Kaliningrad as a tourist.
Russia Kaliningrad Tourist Information: Tourist Visa
A tourist visa will allow you to enter Kaliningrad,
and leave, within a specified time-frame of 30 days. This means that the maximum
length of stay in Kaliningrad is 30 days and no more. It is important that
you leave the country before or on the date of exit.
Before a tourist visa can be issued, you will need to
have confirmation of where you will be staying throughout the duration of your
visit. Two documents are required,
commonly referred to as visa support documents, and they consist of: (1) a
Voucher; (2) a Booking Confirmation.
If you are staying in a hotel, you will need to ask the hotel to send you a hotel voucher and confirmation of tourist acceptance. Once you have received these, you are then ready to make your application.
To complete your visa application, you will need the following:
1. An original passport, valid for more than 6 months, containing at least 2 blank pages for your visa and entry/exit stamps
2. An application form
3. One valid passport-type photograph
4. Payment for application
Note: The Russian Service Centre (The Russian National Tourist Office) can assist you with all stages of your application, including visa support documents. You can contact them by telephone on 0207 985 1195; and/or visit this page on their website: https://www.visitrussia.org.uk/visas/getting-a-russian-visa/
Their location and postal address is:
Russian Service Centre Russian National Tourist Office 202 Kensington Church Street London W8 4DP
However, you will still be required to go in person to the Russian Tourist Office at 202 Kensington Church St, London W8 4DP for biometric scanning . This sounds worse than it is. Biometric scanning means that you need to supply your fingerprints.
The time it takes for you to receive your Russian Visa depends on which service you pay for. Visas can be received within two days of the completion of the application procedure.
Russia Kaliningrad Visa Information: Professional visa support company
To make things easier for you, there are various visa-support companies that you can contact, which will take you through the entire process. My support company of choice is Stress Free Visas, if only because if you do get stressed whilst using them, you can have a good laugh at your own expense! Their website address is www.stressfreevisas.co.uk.
When using their service, you will be asked to fill an
application form online. It is as well to know what to expect before you start,
since when they start asking you questions, such as what is your inside leg
measurement, it will be difficult to do so unless you have a tape measure
already at hand. OK, it’s not that bad, not quite, but there is information
that you will need that you might inconceivably not have thought of.
To this end, please see the following:
Q: Who is paying for your trip to Russia? A: [If it is you, put ‘independently’]
####
You will be asked ‘information about your financial
situation’. You will need to enter your ‘overall monthly income from all
sources’ and various other financial details.
####
You will need to include your National Insurance number
####
You will be asked to enter ‘place of birth’ and ‘date
and place of birth’ of your spouse
####
You will be asked to provide the following details
about your parents:
Name Date, country & place of birth Nationality If deceased, date & place of death
####
You will be asked to provide the name of the hotel you
will be staying at, plus address and telephone number
####
And that, as Bruce Forsyth used to say, “is all there
is to it!”
To assist you in all visa-related matters, here again is the web address for Stress Free Visas: www.stressfreevisas.co.uk
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Updated: 16 December 2024 ~ How to Get to Kaliningrad from UK
Airspace Closures
Russia has closed its airspace to airlines from multiple countries in direct response to airspace closures effecting its airlines, which were introduced by western governments opposing Russia’s military operation to ‘demilitarise and de-Nazify’ Ukraine. Airlines on the banned list are prohibited from landing in or flying over Russian territory. As a result, air travel disruptions are widespread. If you intend to travel in the immediate future, you should contact your airline or travel agent for further information. Links to Airport/Airlines websites can be found at the end of this guide
See: Airlines/Airports Websites at the end of this post
How to Get to Kaliningrad from UK
Most people travelling from the UK to Kaliningrad are not
going to do so by car, train, taxi, bicycle or hitching. Some of you might, but
most of you won’t. You’ll want to come by plane, so that’s what I will focus on
here.
Flights from the UK to Kaliningrad
As far as I am aware, there are no direct flights from the UK to Kaliningrad, and there has not been for some time.
The last time I flew back from Kaliningrad to London direct was many years ago. I remember it well, as I sat in the front of the plane looking through the open door to the flight deck. The date was 10 September 2001. It was most probably the last day that you would be able to do that on an international airliner.
I am told that the only ‘convenient’ way to fly to Kaliningrad from Europe is to fly to Turkey and from there to Kaliningrad. If you aren’t in the market for paying between £400-£800 pounds, then I wouldn’t bother.
If you do fly to Kaliningrad, you will land at Khrabrovo Airport. Once a relatively small red-brick building dating from the Königsberg era with a high wire fence, today Khrabrovo Airport is a modern terminal possessing all the usual facilities.
From Khrabrovo Airport to Kaliningrad
The distance from Khrabrovo Airport to Kaliningrad central is about 20km.
The easiest way of getting to Kaliningrad is by taxi. Look for the cubicles by the airport terminal exit, which offer taxi services. The fare to the centre of Kaliningrad typically costs between 700 and 900 roubles (approx. £5.32~ £6.83). Here is a price guide by destination using licensed taxis (recommended).
The cheaper option is to travel by bus ~ fare 50 roubles (0.38 pence). The route number is 244-Э. Payment is made on the bus, either to the driver or a conductor. Buses run frequently, about every 30 minutes, between 9.00am and 9.00pm (Link to Bus Timetable). The average time of the journey to Kaliningrad’s Yuzhniy Bus Station is 40 minutes.
Kaliningrad via Gdansk, Poland
(Photo credit: Serhiy Lvivsky)
The route that most of us take when travelling to Kaliningrad is to fly by Wizz Airlines from Luton London Airport to Gdansk and then travel from Gdansk to Kaliningrad.
Time was once that I would take a pre-booked taxi from Gdansk Airport to Kaliningrad. If you had contacts in Kaliningrad, which I had, someone could arrange this for you. In 2024, I was told that the journey to Kaliningrad from Gdansk Airport would cost you in the region of £200-300. This is a gigantic leap in price from the 100 quid that I was paying back in 2019. Why? Could the price hike be associated with border-crossing difficulties emanating from coronavirus restrictions, a by-product of western sanctions or just plain old profiteering? Whatever the explanation, you might be of the opinion that the taxi option is no longer viable. Even if you like spending money, Poland is no longer accepting vehicles with Russian number plates crossing from Kaliningrad into Poland (now, where’s my screwdriver!) (Link to article on Poland’s extraordinary measures. It also mentions a ‘big wall’, so you won’t go climbing over that, will you, with or without licence plates! So there!)
I have travelled by bus to and from Kaliningrad via Gdansk many times now.
To do this, you must first take a taxi from Gdansk Airport to Gdansk Bus Station, located at 3 Maja St 12. There are plenty of taxis at the airport rank, and the cost of the trip is about 87 zloty (£16).
The bus ticket from Gdansk costs 170 zloty (approximately £33). There are 3 buses a day from Gdansk Bus Station, and the last bus leaves at 5.00pm. The approximate travel time is advertised at 3hrs and 30 mins, but in reality it often takes longer than this, due to the grilling you get at both borders, especially since the Polish border authorities introduced the practice of photographing everyone on board: Smile please, we are going to make crossing into Kaliningrad extremely irritating for you. It will be inside leg measurements next! (Spoiler: My past two trips took 8 hours on both occasions!)
Catching the bus means buying tickets online in advance. By far the most straightforward and therefore best online booking service is Busfor.pl
Example of Busfor’s Gdansk to Kaliningrad page below:
There was a time when the bay from which the Gdansk>Kaliningrad bus service operated was Gdansk’s best kept secret. You could try asking at the bus information office, but if they had that information they would not be letting you have it. Later, they stuck a piece of paper on the wall, which revealed the bay to be number 11. Don’t be put off if when arriving at the bay you see the name Królewiec and not Kaliningrad. According to what I have read, in 2023 some bright Polish spark came up with the idea of renaming Kaliningrad or, as they put it, reverting the name to its historical Polish name. That’s helpful, isn’t it?
The facilities at Gdansk Bus Station are bog standard. It does have a bog (It will cost you 4 zloty for a pee.), but the metal tins that used to function as a left-luggage department have moved, TARDIS-fashion, from the interior of the bus station to a bit around the back of it, and the Bus Station cafe, which was basic but useful, as there are no other cafes nearby, has closed. There is a burger bar in the bus park, which, in winter has a plastic sheet around it, where you can stand and wait for your order.
At the time of writing, you will have approximately two hours to kill if you catch, for example, the morning flight from London Luton Airport to Gdansk in time to catch the 3.00pm bus. My advice is take a walk into Gdansk Old Town for great cafes and an historic atmosphere.
The buses dock at Kaliningrad’s Central Bus Station in the vicinity of the city’s South Railway Station. Change here for local buses, coaches to Svetlogorsk/Zelenogradsk coastal resorts and taxi services.
Kaliningrad via Vilnius, Lithuania
It was once possible to get a train from Vilnius, Lithuania, to Kaliningrad (the trip took about 7 hours). That service has been suspended now, and if you travel to Vilnius from the UK by plane, the only way to get to Kaliningrad by public transport is to take a bus.
There are three buses from Vilnius to Kaliningrad each week. The timetable can be found here (You will need to translate from Russian.): https://avl39.ru/routes/int/litva/
The journey takes about 7 hours in all but can be longer depending on the number of passengers on the bus and the time it takes to clear border control. The schedule is a late night/early morning job!
Tickets for a one-way journey cost approximately 5800 roubles £45.50; 10,500 roubles £84.30 return.
Buses arrive at Kaliningrad’s Central Bus Station, where connections can be found for multiple routes throughout the Kaliningrad region and also onto Gdansk in Poland.
Kaliningrad’s public transport buses run from the bus/rail concourse, which also serves as a drop-off and pick-up point for taxis.
Rumour has it that an alternative to the cross-border bus from Vilnius is to use local buses/trains, cross on foot via the Kibartai-Chernyshevskoe border and then use local buses/trains on the Russian side. I cannot confirm this, as I have not personally used this route, but it is one you might like to check out.
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Ponart Brewery Another Bite at Creation’s Apple 18 February 2025 ~ Ponart Brewery in the Strange Case of Creation >> Creation — the famous exhibition from Annenkirche and the art group Grain is now in Kaliningrad! This is a biblical view of the creation of the world through the prism of modern Christian art. The exhibition… Читать далее: Ponart Brewery in the Strange Case of Creation
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It turns out that Joe was not such a bad guy after all. He served a useful purpose in keeping Donald’s seat warm for him.
7 November 2024 ~ Welcome Back President Trump to the White House
I don’t often cry Hallelujah, at least not first thing in the morning, but 6th November was an exception. The pseudo-liberal left media on both sides of the pond almost had me believing that all was lost, almost had me believing in their lies, but for all their twists and distortions they had failed to sway the U.S. election: Harris was out of the running; Trump had won the day.
Consequently, what would have been just another grey, dull, overcast morning in damp and soggy England was miraculously transformed into an overwhelming sense of jubilation. The news that barnstormer Trump had, against seemingly insurmountable odds, risen phoenix-like from the ashes of liberal machinations, overcoming conspiracy theories, court cases, investigations, two impeachments, in-party opposition and at least two assassination attempts and then gone on to win the election and make history as only the second president of the United States to serve non-consecutive terms in office is surely a sign from on high that long entrenched liberal-left hegemony can and will be defeated.
Welcome Back President Trump
There are a number of reasons why Trump romped home to victory, but the bedrock of his success is the robust stance he is taking against the greatest liberal-orchestrated evil of our time, engineered mass immigration.
This affirmation by the American people that mass immigration is fundamentally iniquitous and has to be stopped is a cue for the people of Great Britain. If you are going to do it the democratic way, then kick out the Cons and Liebour and, before it is too late, vote in Farage and Reform.
In the aftermath of Trump’s triumph, it is virtually unbelievable that the lefty media are asking questions like why and how did Trump succeed? Are they really that thick? Do they really not get it?
Only pathological liars falling victim to their own psychosis could be bewildered by Trump’s victory. They’ll be asking us to believe next that mass immigration enriches us, rather than admit that it and the wokest drivel by which it is underpinned are the greatest existential threats to Western civilisation since the invention of Tony Blair.
It is reassuring to note that recent political developments show positive indications of the routing of the left: Brexit, Nigel Farage’s accession to Parliament, Viktor Orban’s defiance of EU dictatorship, right-wing political gains in France, anti-immigration riots in the UK and now the Return of Trump.
Trump’s election, his re-election, is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular in U.S. history. That Trump has endured and prevailed against inestimably powerful and pervasive forces of hate, malignancy and corruption, restores faith like nothing else could in a democratic system which, whilst much lauded by posturing liberals, is sadly viewed throughout the world as deeply flawed and bastardised.
Now Trump is back where he should be, there may be hope for the future yet.
4 November 2024 ~ Kaliningrad flea market has moved to a new location
The Kaliningrad flea market that has occupied the pavement area close to the Central Market, and in more recent years spilled over onto a ribbon of disused ground bordering the moat of the Wrangel Tower, has officially moved.
For me, as I dare say for many, the relocation of this sprawling and excitingly chaotic masterpiece of antiques, collectables, curios and junk, marks the end of an era. Not that we did not know that it was coming; plans to move the market on have been in the pipeline for years. Indeed, I wrote about the proposal in a 2022 blog post: What makes Kaliningrad Flea Market a Junk Buyer’s Paradise?
Kaliningrad flea market moves to a new location
We all know that nothing stays the same forever; Königsberg can testify to that. Nevertheless, knowing that change is imminent rarely compensates when it comes to pass.
There will be some, of course, who will breath a sigh of relief that most days, but on a Saturday in particular, they will at last be able to stroll without let or hindrance along the sidewalk next to the Wrangel Tower instead of running a zigzag gauntlet through sandwiched lines of dealers’ stalls agog with curious clutter-buggers.
I, for one, however, will miss the incipient urge whenever I visit the city’s Central Market (food market) to detour to the ‘junk’ stalls to see what they have on offer that I cannot live without, such as an old tin bucket, for example.
There have been occasions when travelling by bus on route to somewhere else that I have accidentally alighted at the flea market. Of course, I have only gone to look, not to buy. So imagine how surprised I have been on arriving home to discover that whilst I was only looking a Soviet belt, a Königsberg ashtray, a kitsch ornament and an old German helmet have somehow jumped into my shopping bag.
Kaliningrad flea market has moved
I have not yet had the chance to work out which bus route one should take to get to the market’s new location. Gaidara Street 8 is its new address; a piece of land, I am told, that lies opposite the bridge on the way to Sovetsky Prospekt.
At the time of writing (4 November 2024), the market is not yet functioning. By all accounts, the site is vast, but a great deal needs to be done to bring it up to snuff, to make it seller- and buyer-friendly. News is, however, according to the market organisers, that the site will be ready and the market up and running in a matter of days not weeks.
Now, where did I put my Kaliningrad map? What have I done with my bucket?
