С большой грустью сообщаю, что наш дорогой друг Стас (Станислав Коновалов) скончался от послеоперационных осложнений во время лечения в больнице. Мы с женой Ольгой познакомились со Стасом в январе 2019 года. Нас познакомил с ним наш общий друг, художник Виктор Рябинин. Позже Стас рассказывал мне, что Виктор сказал ему: «В Калининград переезжает англичанин. Тебе следует с ним встретиться. Он интересный человек, и я думаю, вы найдете общий язык ». Я не совсем уверен, что заслуживаю быть названным «интересный», но мы нашли общий язык в нашей любви к истории в целом и в частности к истории Кенигсберга- Калининграда и его окрестностей. Важным элементом нашего общего языка было вдохновение, которое мы оба получили от нашего друга и наставника Виктора Рябинина. Вскоре после смерти Виктора Рябинина в июле 2019 года я сказал Стасу, что нашел две картины Виктора среди своих вещей в Англии. Он ответил с присущей ему скромностью, что, хотя у него нет картин Виктора Рябинина с его автографами, ему достаточно того, что у него есть «тайная гордость», заключающаяся в том, что он был «близок к этому великому человеку». «Я был его учеником много лет, – сказал он. Когда я рискнул предположить, что Виктор был его другом, Стас ответил, опять с присущей ему скромностью: «Виктор знал очень многих людей, но он, вероятно, не считал их всех своими друзьями. . Могу сказать, что я был его учеником, что я восхищался им и был счастлив в его обществе… »Затем он сделал паузу, прежде чем сказать:« Но я хотел бы думать, что он считал меня своим другом ». Стас был скромным человеком. Он скромно относился ко всем своим достижениям, даже тогда когда было совершенно очевидно, что у него было столько же, если не больше, прав их превозносить. В знак признания его достижений, я попросил Стаса написать краткий биографический отчет о его работе и жизни, в том числе о его отношениях с Виктором Рябининым, и поместил его очерк, вместе со ссылками на его практику экскурсовода на страницах своего постоянного блога под рубрикой “Виктор Рябинин Кенигсберг”. “Стас Калининград Кенигсберг Путеводитель”https://expatkaliningrad.com/personal-tour-guide-kaliningrad/ Стас очень много работал над своими проектами гида, оттачивая и совершенствуя их, снимая несколько видеороликов на YouTube и всегда спрашивая: «Что ты думаешь об этом аспекте?» “Все в порядке?” «Есть ли в сценарии видеоролика что-нибудь, что, по твоему мнению, требует пояснения?». Как и смерть Виктора Рябинина до него, смерть Стаса лишила Кенигсберг-Калининград еще одного его великого посла. Но нас его смерть лишила гораздо большего. Стас был человеком прямолинейным, открытым, искренним. Он был добрым человеком, всегда готовым помочь, он был сердцем хорошей компании. Вместе, мы делили общий язык прошлого, а я через него – общий, но очень важный язык – человеческий. В общем, Стас был самым ценным арсеналом – он был незаменимым другом, которого мы не могли себе позволить потерять.
It is with great sadness that I report that our dear friend Stas (Stanislav Konovalov) passed away recently from post-operative complications whilst undergoing hospital treatment.
My wife, Olga, and I met Stas in January 2019. We were introduced to him by a mutual friend, Victor Ryabinin the artist. Stas told me later that Victor had said to him, “There is an Englishman moving to Kaliningrad. You should meet him. He is an interesting man, and I think you will find a common language.”
I am not altogether certain that I deserve the appellation ‘interesting’, but we did find a common language in our love of history generally and specifically for Königsberg-Kaliningrad and the surrounding region.
An important element in that common language was the inspiration we both received from our friend and mentor Victor Ryabinin.
A short while after Victor Ryabinin’s death in July 2019, I told Stas that I had found two paintings by Victor among my possessions in England. He replied, with characteristic modesty, that whilst he did not have a signed painting by Victor Ryabinin the artist, it was enough that he had a “secret pride”, which was that he had been “close to this great man”. “I was his student for many years,” he said.
When I ventured to suggest that Victor had also been his friend, he replied, once again with characteristic modesty, “Victor knew a great many people and associated with a great many people, but he probably would not have considered them all to be his friends. I can say that I was his student, that I admired him and enjoyed his company …” He then paused, before saying, “But I would like to think that he thought of me as his friend.”
Stas was a modest man. He was modest about all of his achievements, when it was quite obvious that he had as much right, if not more, to blow his own trumpet with the ‘best’ of them.
Stas worked extremely hard on his tour guide projects, honing and perfecting them, making several YouTube videos and always asking, “What did you think of this aspect?” “Was that alright?” “Is there anything in my tour guide script that you think needs clarification?”.
Like Victor Ryabinin before him, Stas’ death has robbed Königsberg -Kaliningrad of yet another great ambassador.
It has robbed us of so much more.
Stas was a straight-talking, open, sincere individual. He was a kind man, always ready to help and good company.
Together, we shared the common language of the past, and I, through him, the common but all-important language of humanity.
In summation, Stas was that most precious of all commodities ~ he was the indispensable friend that we could ill afford to lose.
A sunny afternoon with Stas Konovalov, ‘Stas’, [right of picture] Kaliningrad Königsberg Guide
Hats the way to do it! There are uniforms, but there’s nothing uniform at the Uniform Museum Restaurant
15 August 2026 -Trying it on at the Uniform Museum Restaurant Kaliningrad
What is it about hats that wants to make you plonk one on your head? Perhaps it’s because if you plonked one anywhere else, it might look suspicious.
Suffice it to say, when we owned a vintage warehouse, we had a lot of hats, and, of course, people tried them on. We didn’t mind that, as long as they were doing so with a real intent to buy. But some people came to the shop to try them on and try it on, simply because they wanted to take photos and selfies and stick them on social media. Very often, as they handled the genuine vintage merchandise, which they had no more intention of buying than I have of voting Labour, and may I say, handled it in a cavalier fashion, including the cavalier headgear, I felt as though I could stick one on them. Such was my annoyance that I could have very easily cast myself as the Basil Fawlty of the antiques world. Indeed, I am fairly certain there were some who believed I was.
Trying it on at the Uniform Museum Restaurant Kaliningrad
In Kaliningrad, where there is no shortage of one-off bars and restaurants, a quirky venue exists which resembles a giant wardrobe, hung with historical military uniforms and hats from bygone eras, allowing patrons, as they see fit, and even when they do not fit, to try on at their leisure. No Basil fawlty there!
Cunningly catering to the selfie and social media crowd, this dine, drink and dress-up emporium located on Gorkogo Street stands recessed from the thoroughfare, its large glass-fronted prospect belying the formal municipal image which people of a certain age freely ascribe to venues traditionally charged with the responsible task of curating, preserving and presenting the remnants of former epochs. I would say that its modern appearance works in an opposite way to mine, in that on the other side of purported modernity, when you become familiar with it, lies a sanctuary for the old and interesting, the curious and the antiquated.
Furthermore, in keeping with the adventurous proclivity exercised by today’s museums to fully embrace modernity, turning to all that interaction can bring to the minds of those that cannot live without it, the Uniform Museum Restaurant does not attempt to confine itself to merely encouraging admiration for selective obsolescence, which is something, for example, that Kaliningrad’s London Pub has got off to a fine art. By contrast, this unusual restaurant, because remember that this establishment is first and foremost a place to eat and drink and not a vintage clothes emporium, is an open invitation to see, touch and then try on any clothing that takes your fancy, be it any one specific garment or multiples thereof, which, for those whose lives are ruled by the constant need to nurture social media, is an opportunity made in heaven; nor is it one to be discouraged by the restaurant-bar itself should you naturally have the inclination when posting yourself in their attire to name the location that made it possible.
The number and the variety of uniforms on display combine to produce a rather staggering prop piece, and whilst, as one might not unreasonably expect, the majority of the uniforms are rooted in Russia’s Soviet past, interspersed among them, spanning several Soviet-era decades and covering all of its three main military services, together with law enforcement clothing, are equivalents fetched from further afield, from countries that spark the dealer’s question, “I wonder who they sourced those from?” This consideration makes for a quiet sport; convenient, pleasant and erudite in the distraction it affords, as you wait to receive your orders from the bar, which, unlike certain orders, are ones you will want to act upon with relish and with gusto.
As I was waiting for my beer to arrive at the table appointed for that purpose, my observations had yielded examples of various military uniforms pertaining to, I estimated, several different nations. The compulsion to leap out of one’s seat in defiance of the natural instinct to honour one’s drinking fidelity and to do so with an alacrity that might dangerously suggest one wasn’t nearly as old as the uniforms surrounding one, was not, for all its magnetism (bygone clothing has this effect), a powerful enough enticement to waylay enjoyment of the restaurant’s beer, arguably the best of which is brewed there on the premises. Forbearance in this matter was not induced by mind over matter but rather by what mattered most; as beer outranking the highest office projected by the most powerful uniforms mustered in that place commanded unstinting obedience and called for immediate respect. This was indeed a ceremony I honoured to its utmost, raising my hand several times in a dignified salute, which just happened in the process to have a tankard grasped within it.
The restaurant’s onsite brewery centres its craft on brewing beers Germanic in style and origin (Quick! Put that German helmet on! And now, just as quickly, take it off!) offering connoisseurs the loyalty incentive which a regular rotation of fine premium beers never fails to recruit.
I was slurping my way through one of these beers when some battered mushrooms and smoky cheese straws as limp as an evening without Viagra requisitioned my mouth, whilst other diners in my vicinity resourced the pleasure of choosing fare from a rather more substantial selection of European and Russian dishes or, staying strictly within the rigid framework of masculine convention, organised their eating campaign around a manly well-done steak or tactically mapped out a safer strategy by enlisting burgers and chips.
“Tell me,” a voice enquired, heavily tinged with exasperation, “do you ever eat a proper meal?” The gap from where the voice ensued was wrapped around the very thing that the adjective ‘proper’ qualified.
“Only when I do,” came my guarded reply, “but if I were wearing that suit of clothes –” I pointed my hand in such a way as to suggest the arrival of reinforcements, which, pursuant to my gesticulation, were at the bend of the stairs – “I’d do it 18th-century style. ” For that was my conclusion.
Trying it on at the Uniform Museum Restaurant Kaliningrad
Of all the garments arrayed that day in the Uniform Museum Restaurant (like many Russian names of restaurants, the translated version can be a bit of a mouthful), there was none among the myriad that recommended themselves more strongly than those that adorned the turn of the stairs, garments which, in their masterful cut and sparing no expense in the tailored art of procuring embellishment, were all that elegance could possibly wish for. And here we have reached a stage convenient in our encomium on the triumphs of a restaurant interior second only in bygone clothing to the renowned costumeries of Angels and Bermans’, where nothing can deter us longer from digressing into a proverb that will, I ardently promise you, return full circle in later paragraphs.
The proverb ‘Manners Maketh Man’ must surely, at the didactic level, a place where virtue and morality superintend its every attribute, be underwritten by the observation that the part played by sartorial elegance underscores the doctrine and, whenever elegance is commendable – and when feasibly can it not be? – attends to the spirit of that attainment that William of Wykeham most properly endorsed, his being the sort of opinion that one would expect from the Bishop of Winchester installed as such in the 14th century.
In today’s world, however, anywhere in that portion to which the conceit ‘developed’ can be pinned, clothes, and not just they alone, reflect our fall from grace; but the former in loss of style and finesse stands as our greatest reminder of the miserable depth to which relentlessly we are descending because visually clothes so boldly demonstrate how cattle-minded we have become.
Try to imagine, for example, how liberated you would feel if you caught yourself in the act of casting aside those ruddy awful, oh-so-ugly work-like pants hung with unsightly cargo pockets, or divesting yourself and your tortured image of that ‘Ee-mon!’ thuggish hoody, or burning those nasty cheap tracksuit bottoms, like those pitiful, sad, ill-advised and now quite droopy feminists did back in the 1960s, who were made to look so very daft by burning their bras in public; and you, having reclaimed yourself by shedding those awful clothes like the skin of the snake or the caterpillar, with an independence beyond your experience, attire yourself instead in such an elegant livery of bold exquisiteness as that depicted faithfully on the unassuming stairway wall of the Uniform Museum Restaurant. (See, I told you we’d get there in the end!)
UNIFORM MUSEUM RESTAURANT
… garments which, in their masterful cut and sparing no expense in the tailored art of procuring embellishment, were all that elegance could possibly wish for.
Imagine the dash you would cut, the Beau Brummell you would unfurl, and how, on a scale of 1 to 10, effectively transformed and influentially transformational, you and your image would become; better by far than any sex change, if not more controversial, the outcome of such a wardrobe shift would be marked with approbation, your own, of course, for yourself included.
On the feasibility of this exercise I leave you to ponder thoughtfully, examining the 18th-century styles that hang on the bend of the stairs, as, thinking it proper between pints, I venture now to reconnoitre the restaurant’s upper quarters with a wish to observe the scope and nature of the uniforms it holds and to assess the ambience that dwells therein.
To me, that is to say, to my particular way of thinking, which, I most humbly own, is not the way of everyone’s or, to tell the truth, of anyone I’ve met, the restaurant’s extensive room upstairs is a low-lit, smoochy, mood-infusing, clubby kind of a place, whose snob-screened and comfortable encompassing cushioned booth-style seats make the prospect of assignations an almost mandatory ritual, whether in your own mind you consider yourself to be one of a kind with Leslie Phillips, that is to say, an old-school romantic, or are one half of a typical pair of timeless canny canoodlers.
Both the ground and first floors of the Uniform Museum Bar in Kaliningrad are bathed in a uniform dimly lit style, which brings out the best, I feel, in drinking and dining ambience if liking it darker is your thing, whilst allowing the spotlights to do what they do at their most effective, which is to highlight and illuminate the thematicising principle donated by the vintage attire.
It would not be based on empirical science should I venture the suggestion that the upper echelons of this most eccentric, most unusual bar and restaurant are more replete with uniforms than its contemporaneous downstairs cousin’s; possibly yes, possibly no, but whatever the final reckoning, the amount of such is prodigious and wants for nothing in great variety; moreover, the lower ceilings of the upstairs room and the lowered lighting framing the spot-lit clothes lend something familiar to its character, which, I would bet my best cravat on, is akin to a boutique feel, as though the venue in its entirety would not be out of place should it be lifted and transported back to the days when Carnaby Street in London was incontestably chic, that is, back to the 1960s, before London became a migrant warehouse (I did mean ‘warehouse’, didn’t I?). This is an image also bolstered by hat stands full of hats – what else! – and where military visors in abundance are contrasted here and there with civilian and vernacular headwear, which, like those in the shop I used to own, immediately tempt you to pick them up and plonk them on your head. I said so, did I not, in the opening sprint of this post?
Trying it on at the Uniform Museum Restaurant Kaliningrad
I was most surprised, and may I say not only a little impressed, to find displayed among these hats a traditional British coppers’ helmet, one of those Noddy-like pointy things, sometimes called the ‘custodian’, which sadly Britain’s ‘bobbies’ wear less and less these days because life on the streets has become too dangerous and nothing short of a reinforced bucket, painted regulatory police force blue, would do the job intended of it.
It is only the second of these helmets that I have witnessed in Kaliningrad; the other is known to me, as it was the one I carried from England, circa 2007. I gave it as a present to artist Victor Ryabinin, later to be told by him, with a grin lighting up his face, that of all the many and interesting items dotted around his studio, the one that intrigued his art students most was the British policeman’s helmet.
But let us now put our helmet away and make that significant move from anecdotal reverie to ponder on the nitty-gritty that makes a restaurant and a bar, and, where they still exist, a UK public house, the particular place you think it is, and go there via our intuition with a word or two on personality.
The selection process by which we nominate any one person for membership to our private club of liking and appreciation, an individual whom, from the moment of introduction, stands unambiguously out from the crowd, is one that sifts computer-style through numerous character attributes, sometimes instantaneously, at others with measured deliberation but certainly decisively, all but for the exception of those who are wanting in judge of character, before approval can be stamped. Yet, deeper qualities notwithstanding, the mostly initial yet often sustaining credentials by which these fellows gain admittance to the inner circle of ourselves are defined intuitively and subjectively by that all-appealing influence that goes by the name of personality.
You may ask, or if you won’t, I may ask it for you: what is there that makes one place more memorable than the next, assuming that nothing too bizarre or rather out of the ordinary happens to exert a disproportionate influence over recall and reflection, be such as they are thought good or bad? What is it that attracts us to one particular bar and restaurant to the full and obliging extent that with the first visit now completed, we vow to return and do? The perceived quality of beer and food, of course, plays a major part, but there is never not at least something persuasively more in addition, the absolute magic ingredient, unless you are a cheapskate whose only seduction is less to pay, and that extension to delight is synonymous with, or no different to, our reaction to personality.
Personality, when ascribed to objects other than strictly human, is typically, generically and often loosely defined by the substitution of atmosphere. We often do not say that a venue has personality when, in actual fact, we do, for personality is what we mean when we talk of a somewhere or something which, according to our sentiments, is endowed with attractive, positive qualities to which we are receptive and of which our senses firmly approve.
An example here in Kaliningrad would be if I were asked to judge which of the two, the London Pub or the subject of this post, the Uniform Museum Restaurant, tops the personality league. And the winner, ladies and gentlemen, but only by a narrow margin and perhaps because the building itself is old, is to pull no punches or wriggle from under the clinch and to honour honesty without reservation none other than the London Pub.
The reasons for this evaluation are beyond the scope of this current post, but a word or two in explanation should make the distinction clear enough, for what the Uniform Museum Restaurant surrenders in personality to its charismatic competitor, apart from and including an excellent range of beers and, I am told, a competent menu, it more than advances positively with a gimmick that stamps its mark not casually, nor sufficiently, but with a lasting indelibility, like the backstamp on a fine piece of Minton, except that in this case, on the ledger of your memory.
By building itself around the theme of vintage military clothes, it guarantees by power of novelty, uncontested as the restaurant is by any Kaliningrad equal, a retentive, singular character trait more than considerably capable of rescuing its reputation from run-of-the-mill obscurity. This leitmotif of archived military clothing, which, when it is shared with others, both by word of mouth and inevitably via the techie-grapevine, will encourage those that learn of it and feel they are missing out to hurry along there double quick to try on those lovely tunics and hats. They may also, whilst they are doing this, purchase food and drink, thereby making the circuit complete.
And when you acknowledge the unholy alliance forged between the ubiquitous smartphone camera and social media’s inducive drug-like fix, linking that manipulation to the irresistible urge to bedeck oneself with vintage clothes and to plonk on a vintage hat or two, which I did, mark my words, and with no less care for restraint than I appear to have for hypocrisy, then Wallah! Look no further! Your restaurant-bar has a winning formula.
Of course, the litmus test for any bar or restaurant worth its weight in food and beer is, after having drunk and dined there, will you recall the holistic event as one of quality and with affection, and will you have the will, or even better, a great desire, to make yourself no stranger to the venue? If the answer to both is ‘yes,’ and recommendation by word of mouth asserts itself with no hesitation or obstructive second thought, then all the right boxes have been ticked. Apropos of which, I think we can let on here that the Uniform Museum Restaurant has all the vital boxes covered and has therefore lost little of that which otherwise could exert itself to impactful lasting detriment; its only concern, maybe, is that the presence of all those vintage clothes, should this review be appraised by moths, attract the opposite of the right clientele, the sort of clientele that any keeper of ancient textiles would rather do without. About which I am able to speak with no less of a lot of authority, having, as I undertook to mention in this wise post’s prologue, been once the proud and insufferable owner of a vintage clothes emporium. So, that is where we’re going to leave it now: trying them on, taking them off, and generally enjoying the food and beer at the Uniform Museum Restaurant, Gorkogo Street, Kaliningrad.
Vital Statistics
Uniform Museum Restaurant 150a Gorkogo St, Kaliningrad 236029 Russia
Tel: +7 963 350-73-09
Opening times Monday to Thursday: 12pm to 12 midnight Fri, Sat and Sunday: 12pm to 1am
Food – International Cuisine German, European, Russian, Eastern European, Ukrainian
29 July 2026 – Racists in the UK! Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job
The images in this post have been generated using artificial intelligence and are intended for illustrative purposes only. None of the visuals imply any real-world endorsement, affiliation, or association with any specific product, brand, or entity. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), places, or events is purely coincidental.
[Posted in category Mick Hart’s Diary 2026]
In case you haven’t noticed or are a liberal lefty in lefty denial, there is, in the UK today, a severe and palpable sense of racially aggravated unease among the rightful heirs of our British heritage. Failed socially engineered multiculturalism, the daily arrival of ‘boat people’ flooding with open government arms into blighted Britain, high-profile racially motivated vicious crimes where the victim is almost exclusively white, a tension that is tangible and alleged two-tier policing are polarising the political spectrum into those who crave more woke and migrants and those who never asked for either and feel they could do quite well without.
Our esteemed former prime minister, the man who everybody likes to dislike, even by those of his own kind, who, in spite of loss of support, including from those in his own party, refused to take the glaring hint and would not pack his bags and go until he was given the royal arse-boot, was too busy during his time in office posing for cheesy, smarmy photos with Ukraine’s converted comedian, the ubiquitous Mr Zelensky, rather than do what Britons demand and ultimately deserve, which is to tackle the immigrant crisis.
Any hope that the new Labour hopeful, Andrew ‘call me Andy’ Burnham, and his newly elected cabinet (bye-bye, Mr Lammy) will apply themselves to this existential problem is not a hope that we should cling to. As long as the old two past-it parties continue to be voted in by the stuck-in-their-ways, heads-up-their-arses, gormless British electorate, the streets of Britain will grow more dangerous, and our towns and cities will become, as many are already, the unrecognizably menacing places that the prophet Enoch Powell predicted all those years ago.
Meanwhile, as Andy Burnham and his Labour cohorts celebrate accession into the breach, a little-known chain of public houses, once celebrated for common sense, seem bent on repositioning themselves as number one in the woke parade.
Racists in the UK! Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job
A few weeks ago, I ventured out for a pint at my friend’s local WokeForkers. It was that evening on the day of the week when I expected the pub to be quiet, which, indeed, it initially was, little knowing, however, that the latest roster of bar staff (these pubs seem to change their bar staff faster than I can change my underpants – old proverb, every gusset has a suspect lining) had just emerged from company training, from which, and I kid you not, not one of the dunces or dullards had mastered the art of anything, least of all, I warrant, the essential public relations skills which, for as long as hospitality has existed, have always been first and foremost for running a pub successfully.
This, however, was not the least among their greatest disadvantages, although the one begets the other, for they were also of that dismal generation, which, duly processed, packed and prepared by the corporate liberal sausage factory, the British education system, programmes the poor unfortunate wretches for a life of second-class citizenship, making them fat between the ears, ready for the country’s future, which many pundits see as comparable to a slaughterhouse.
I have no idea, do you, where some pubs get their staff from? They seem, by their dour expressions, surly, disinterested ways and chip-on-the-shoulder attitudes, as if, like Zelensky’s army, they have been dragged off from the streets. Whatever it is they teach them at Pub Mismanagement School, devotion to duty isn’t it, neither are the principal tenets required of the hospitality trade, such as amiability, affability, congeniality and conviviality, and above all and most importantly, the indisputable golden rule that customers should at all times be treated with respect – as the customers are those very people who, by putting their money over the bar, pay the barmaids’ wages.
Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that most of the staff are female, and those who aren’t are not much different, for even those whose gender poses difficult questions look and act as though every moment is a hormonal crisis. It only goes to show that in any mismanaged democracy, you need to be extremely careful who you give the vote to, let alone give them leave to stand mardy and daft behind the bar as if the menopause arriving early has turned off the smile along with the taps and all they are waiting to do is call ‘last orders’. Now, don’t call me sexist! Like the WokeForker’s staff who earole everyone, I am merely repeating what I heard someone say at a table whose conversation was personal, private and had nothing to do with me whatsoever. {The opinions in this post are not necessarily those of the person you might think I am.}
On the drinking night in question, the night I had anticipated would be pleasantly quiet, the one thing I had not bargained for was a themed evening revolving around “You can’t say that; it’s racist?”
Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job
Now this particular pub in Wellsford Garden City stands at a junction with Ethnic Street. And one of the reasons I like to drink there is that by sitting next to the windows, you can watch the world, such as it is or as it has sadly become, go by, whilst wishing it would go away. How much nicer it would be to gaze through those same windows and see on the other side of them Britain as it used to be before the migrant invasion (a cluster of wistful, heartfelt sighs!).
“You’re not supposed to say that!”
“I know. It’s a bugger, isn’t it.”
Psychologist, psychiatrist, anthropologist, social historian, time traveller, circus trainer, zookeeper, most emphatically zookeeper, but anyone, in fact, who is seeking a snapshot of UK life can get it from one of these window seats, and once you are over the shock of it – to do this takes two or three visits – the spectacle unfolding is almost as freakishly entertaining as it is distressing. We’ll say no more of that. Ungird your loins, as most of them do, and go and see for yourselves.
On the evening when my account took place, we had not long taken temporary residence in these very seats, which look out onto the madness at which I have hinted, when, flying around the corner on two wheels, like something out of an ancient Sweeney episode or a cartoon from the 1960s, came a cop car at full tilt.
Something serious must have occurred, but what? Had someone been making mean tweets on his phone? Had an act of terrorism taken place that urgently needed to be hushed up in the interests of ‘race relations’? Was the High Street under siege by a terrifying far-right rally attended by two old grannies; a woman who dared to call herself that; and a moved-from-Rochdale (quickly) choirboy who, whilst not yet supporting Labour, might be trained to do so when he’s given the vote at the age of 13? (Roll up! Roll up! Here exclusively in the UK, Labour’s young performing poodles!) But no, we were wrong on every count. Whatever it was that had kicked off, it was here, among us, at WokeForkers, whose highly intelligent bar staff had gone and called the old bill.
The marauding cop car screamed to a halt, as they so dramatically do in 1940s black-and-white films (careful what you say there!), and seconds later in they marched – two of Britain’s finest: one with a head that was really quite bald and the other wearing his colleague’s toupee, which, dislodged when the driver hit the brakes, had landed on his chin, lending him the appearance of the Wild Man from Borneo, which I suppose must mean he lives in Luton.
AI-generated image
As we were sitting miles away from the bar (it’s a prudent thing to do, out of earshot of the WokeForkers’ Stasi), we couldn’t at all make out what was going on, but we knew that it must be serious, for why else would the police have been called?
After a full ten minutes in which nothing happened at all, a tall gent, foreign-looking, wearing what looked like a Chinese face and carrying a populist tote bag (it had a Union Jack on its side) marched defiantly, with no police escort, as though he were guilty of nowt, apart from the tartan kilt he was wearing, across the space of the room and disappeared onto the street.
You would have thought that being let off by our more than lenient British policemen (well, I said that he was foreign-looking, or he would have been arrested), the accursed fiend would have counted his blessings and made himself particularly scarce, but this he did not do. No sooner had he exited than he was spotted by one of our party eating apples near the pub’s back door. Eating apples! Near the pub’s back door!!!! His unacceptable presence must have been detected by one of WokeForkers’ ever-vigilant CCTV installations (for if ever a street was in need of a camera, then Ethnic Street is it), as moments later, the dynamic duo – Baldy booby and Beardy bobby – were out there on the street giving the culprit a piece of their minds, which he, the ungrateful recipient, looked as though he neither wanted nor knew what use he could put them to.
At this point in time, we had not the faintest idea what it was that had gone down, so naturally we were all of a mind, “Well done, those boys in blue; it’s best you move him on!” The truth of the matter is, however, that this extremely dangerous man, for what else could he be, tried himself three or four times to move by his own volition, but whenever he made to walk away, the coppers were on him again.
Just as they, as a group, drew level with our viewing window, a female member of the establishment’s bar staff came to collect some empty glasses. Someone in our party asked her what the problem was. I think we were all expecting to hear a sorry tale of attempted murder – after all, it’s fast becoming a national pastime in Britain – but what we got instead was a sorry something else.
“Oh dear!” went the girl, her attitude and countenance struggling to contain the dreadful trauma she had just experienced. “He [the Chinese man in a kilt] was making racist remarks at the bar … saying things about !*!*… When I argued with him, he brought up the subject of !*!*and {here was the real big hit!} He mentioned Tommy Robinson!” At the uttering of Tommy Robinson’s name, she literally, physically shuddered, and I thought for a moment she would fade away like a latter-day Gothic heroine or crumple into insignificance like tomorrow’s and the next day’s and every edition before and after of that mamby-pamby left-wing pamphlet, now on the web, the Guardinistan.
“But he’s not a white bloke, is he?” one of our party asked, presuming by prescription that no one could be accused of racism unless they were unconditionally white.
We all peered out of the window to test the validity of this assertion: it was hard to tell just what the man was, standing there in his Chinese face, looking all Jock-like in his kilt and feverishly eating apples, but what he expressly wasn’t, or had no reason to look like, was a man that was guilty of anything more than not having chosen his pub too carefully.
“Oh yes, he is a white man,” returned the wilting maiden, in an emphatic tone of voice and a horridly fraught expression that clearly suggested he could be no other.
“But you have to admit that his eyes aren’t British and his complexion is …”
She peeped through the window alongside me: “I suppose he must have a suntan.”
What a lucky chap, I thought; he must have been somewhere nice, somewhere other than WokeForkers, as there certainly was a definite dearth of any sunshine here, or anywhere, for that matter, where sunshine is employed symbolically to reflect a happy cultural climate, the likes of which we no longer have in the Disunited Migrant Kingdom.
If the barmaid had expected a commiserative response from us, she would have been sorely disappointed, since we were all too busy trying to fathom why a racist comment, if indeed there had actually been one, and a verbal reference to Tommy Robinson (I always get his name mixed up with a certain lefty actor) justified the deployed resources and exceedingly precious time of not one but a brace of coppers – and they were not even hobby bobbies! – whose only contribution, from what we were able to discern, was a forty-minute ideological lecture.
At length, and quite a long length at that, the taken-to-task white imposter, for so he seemed to us, made his third or fourth attempt to quietly walk away, only to have himself recalled by yet another officer. Had someone mentioned Tommy again? They had brought in reinforcements!
Racists in the UK!
At this juncture, the harangued man was literally at a junction; he was standing on a traffic island in the middle of the road, and as he reserved his legal right not to return to the beckoning copper, Mr Plod-come-lately, who was rather of that group which included PCs Baldy and Beardy, the most pugnacious of the three, marched across the road to him, where the poor man duly received yet another remonstration.
This peculiar – and rational people might say – preposterous police procedural episode persisted for yet another twenty pointless finger-wagging minutes, with the man, who was no doubt ardently wishing he had gone anywhere else in the world but WokeForkers, standing, in every respect, head and shoulders above his inquisitors and responding to their pontifications in a cool, calm, and collected manner, giving, from what we could see, a lot better than what he was getting, as people do when knowing that by being in the right they have natural testimony on their side, finally, having had enough of it and not having lost his temper, as I suppose this is what the coppers wanted, waved his hands in tired conclusion and strode away in his riding-up kilt, his single man’s sack – full of apples – swinging in the breeze, like a man who had clearly won his argument and was off to a decent pub.
AI-generated image
The irony of the situation, as irony tends to lurk, don’t you think, around virtually every corner in life, like racist men in kilts armed with bags of apples, was that it wasn’t more than ten minutes after this extraordinary piece of theatre, which, according to our collective opinion, was a complete and utter waste of time, that I trekked off to the bar to replenish our party’s glasses.
The young barmaid behind the bar, who was entirely where you’d expect her to be, with a must-have ring thrust through her snout and her hair all dyed in a laughable colour, asked me what I wanted to drink. So far, so good, so proper, but I couldn’t quite make up my mind. WokeForkers sell mighty fine ales, unmatched, unfortunately, by their bar staff, and often one is spoiled for choice, which is sadly and far too commonly not the case with their bar staff.
It just so happened by a quirk of Time that a middle-aged chap had arrived at the bar contiguous with my own arrival, and with me being in full dither, he was given the option to order his beer ahead of me, but he, like me but for different reasons, was also finding the simple task of placing his order difficult due to the row from the TV set, which was showing a BBC broadcast of a gaggle of noisy migrants celebrating the short bus ride from the shores of Dover to a 5-star hotel.
He apologised to the barmaid for not being able to make himself heard: “I’m sorry,” he said, politely, “but some illegal migrants on the telly are talking rather loud.”
The barmaid immediately froze; her jaw shot down several metres like Frank Zappa’s Billy the Mountain’s; her ridiculous blue hair bristled; her face underwent a monstrous change, which wasn’t exactly a bad thing because it wasn’t particularly pleasant even in its ‘normal’ state, but now it appeared all bent and twisted as though savagely infected by a virulent dose of that plague exclusive to the liberal left called ‘outrage’ or was cast in a mask of tormented virtue like Hope not Hate’s at its most hypocritical.
“What did you say?!” she demanded.
I tried to prevent the middle-aged man from reiterating his previous utterance, for, being an expert on leftist ire, the motivation behind the question was all too plain to see: the harridan behind the bar was gunning for confrontation. But the inoffensive middle-aged chap, believing no ill in what he had said, merely repeated what he had said.
Those of you familiar with Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist will have no difficulty, I am sure, in recalling the manner in which Mr Bumble reacted when Oliver asked for more, and had our rancid barmaid been auditioning for Bumble’s part in the soap-operatic drama that she had taken upon herself to direct, I would recommend her before you could say, ‘Does she not know how to smile?’ but I wouldn’t employ her behind a bar for all the inflatable dinghies in France or all the beer at WokeForkers (OK, well even I can make concessions!)
With her hackles raised, which made her hair look dafter, and inconsolably rigid with outrage, she could hardly muster utterance, but when she retrieved her articulation, she suddenly cried out, “Racist! What you’ve said is racist!” and straightaway she was on it, like a chronic dose of the shits, calling loudly along the bar, “We’ve got a racist here!”
Immediately, in response to her wailing, a beanpole excuse for a man sporting a bun on his head, without an arse in his trousers and masquerading as something that was worth the space he occupied, lickety-splitted fast-like from the opposite end of the bar, where no doubt he had been lying in wait to pounce on the first errant customer (who, for public consumption, had to be white) for making racist remarks.
The female Mr Bumble reported her findings to him, and immediately he went from looking absolutely and totally gormless to adopting a posture of high alert, as if he needed his nappies changing and the only one he could trust with this task was wonderless woman the manager – well, lefties are known for their kinks. Not to dwell on that too much, a second racist in one evening had been unmasked at the WokeForkers’ bar! [Dramatic chords of music!]
The manager, female I think, but then I could be wrong, was on the scene like a butcher’s dog, but the amiable white middle-aged man, who was clearly racist because of this fact if not for any other, knowing what they were at, waved his hand contemptuously and with a rewarding complacent smile casually walked away, leaving his three would-be antagonists, all of whom he had made quite clear he wouldn’t touch with yours, which is to say, your resentment and anger, looking perfectly stupid. And one has to raise the question, could they look anything else?
AI-generated image
Left standing alone as I was, the dangling-in-the-wind manager had no one else, only me, to turn to, so rounding on me, it said, as if I really wanted to know, “Like every responsible pub, we adhere to a zero-tolerance policy.” Should I have been impressed? It sounded lame and weary.
I wanted to say it was a pity that we didn’t have a similar policy to stop the boats from flooding in as well as one to prevent the left from ethnically cleansing the white population and its sovereign culture, but I contented myself by thinking these things and tried to suppress a smirk as I said, with remarkable cheerfulness, “And what an effective policy it is to be sure (crikey, I was close to sounding Irish!), but as all I am trying to do is order a pint of beer, perhaps someone would be so kind as to take my order and serve me.” I almost had to shout to be heard as the illegal migrants on the telly were having such a raucous time here in dear old England that it sent a shiver of pride from the nape of my neck to my balls, er of my feet, and elsewhere throughout my body, or something of that persuasion, to acknowledge that I belonged to such a recklessly tolerant nation.
The immediate panic over, and the alarmist barmaid having returned from wherever she had scuttled off to fortify her troubled self with intakes of air and smelling salts, I promptly ordered my pint.
As she pushed the glass against the tap, it was then that she took her Marxist role just a little too far.
“I suppose you’re racist too?” she rasped.
Woke Watch UK!
Now call me old school or even old-fashioned, but in my long and illustrious career of supporting the British pub, I have had the belief instilled in me that barmaids are there to pull your pint, not to pull your chain.
The answer that I was ready to give was manifold, such as “Has your girlfriend left you? Is it the wrong time of the month? Or don’t you know what gender you are?” But I knew that she was goading me, so the compliant answer given was, “Yes, of course I am; I’m a white English male; how could I be anything else but racist? ” But then I went on to correct her, saying that I am not a racist; I am a realist, and that, whilst the words have a similar ring to them, there’s a world of difference between the two, and it is only the left who confuse them because it suits their divisive agenda.
Having failed to elicit the response that she was so keenly after and not knowing what further to do to advance her cunning plan, from then on she shut her trap and did what she was paid to do – poured the pint and took the money.
Racists in the UK! Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job
Now, you may be thinking, and rightly so, that all that I have related is a silly storm in a teacup, and in this you would be right; in itself, it is. But when you collate these issues — a ‘zero tolerance policy’, which works like a one-way street; an almost hysterical urge by giddy-headed girly staff to adopt the role of brain police rather than confine themselves to what they are paid to do, ie take your order and pull your pint; the praises sung of ethnic enrichment, in tones of a drugged-up parrot, when nothing could be further and more nauseatingly far from the truth; and the programmed decrying of racism aimed at native Britons living quietly in their own country, because it is their country and because it is their heritage, and they would like to keep it that way – when all these factors are added together, rollocks! A piece of general advice would be that people that work in pubs should do the job they are paid to do and never stick their oar in. Comprehendi lefties?
Should, dear reader, in spite of the evidence that I have laid before you, an element of doubt yet persist, then ask yourself the following: Did an alleged racist comment by a man in a kilt with a bag of apples standing at WokeForkers’ bar warrant the intervention of not one, not two but three police officers? Did the chap who stood at the bar and wryly referred to the noisy migrants deserve the reaction he received from the neurotically troubled barmaid? And wasn’t it, don’t you think, just a little bit on the impudent side, not to mention provocative, when the lowly underpaid serving wench overstepped her mark by calling me out as racist (not that he gives a f*ck, shouts an inconsiderate heckler) when all I had said and done was order a pint of beer?
A week or so in the aftermath of that evening of entertainment, how dire the weather was for June inserted itself, as weather does in English conversations, during a chat between yours truly and a stranger in a pub, which was not, I hasten to add, WokeForkers’, for you have to be careful, very careful what you say in there!
“Considering how vile the weather has been of late,” said I, “the UK has to be the last country on earth where you’d want to be faced with extortionate fees for gas and electric heating.”
Quickly the man addressed replied that these are not the only things that are wrong with this country today, and discovering from that moment forward that we were mutual travellers not only in kind but also in destination, off we went down the bumpy road on route to collapsing Britain, stopping off on the way at the cultural climate of fear engendered by accusations of racism and what it did for a man called Nowak; the knife-wielding migrant butcher prowling the streets of Belfast; the ethnic-obsessed two-tier cop shop; tragic Southport; indefensible Rochdale; and the saddo younger generation, whom our pied piper politicians are leading up the garden path and tossing over Culture Loss Cliff. We also took a detour to reflect upon the situation of an authoritarian incumbent PM, whom, no matter how many want him out, simply won’t F Off!* Naturally, when we had gotten to where we knew our journey would take us, which was around and around and around in circles, I apprised my fellow traveller about the ‘spot the racist night’, hosted by Wellford’s WokeForkers.
“Civil war,” is coming, he said, solemnly shaking his head. “Everyone you talk to is thinking and saying the same.”
One cannot deny the uneasy feeling that the hands on the doomsday clock identified by Elon Musk are moving inexorably closer to that retributive midnight hour.
Close the curtains, bolt the doors and turn the television on for a counter-intuitive narrative, if that’s the only defence you have against what is lurking out there on the streets, but confront, do not avoid, those disturbing images of the migrant boats as they keep flooding in, and if anyone calls you racist when you speak your mind, remember what terrors silence will bring and wear your antagonists’ failed agenda as you would wear a badge of honour.
How will it all end, you ask? “Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”
* He’s gone, and the panacea replacing him is ‘Nice to see me being nice’, good old Andy Burnham. What are you going to do about violence on the streets, Andy, the steamrolling immigration problem, and the boats flooding into Dover? Are we ever going to get a PM who is brave enough to grow a pair and save us from extinction, or are our PMs and our much-maligned country forever doomed to be controlled by pseudo-liberal globalists?
PS: If you are planning on getting stabbed in the not-too-distant future, you could do a lot worse and be a lot more stupid by doing it in Manchester, since ‘news just in’ informs us that in selected parts of the city, wall-mounted ‘bleed kits’ are being installed. How reassuring is that! Who needs law and order when you’ve got a political plaster?
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, knocking at the moonlit door’
‘No!’ was the answer from Number 10. At least no one here who will or dares to give you the answer you’re looking for.
It holds a special place in my memory, for in a brief snapshot, a split second in time, it captures one of Victor’s most endearing character traits, that admirable part of his personality which demonstrates his ability to play down adversity and take everything in his stride.
Victor Ryabinin Artist: a man who continues to inspire
Staying with my recent focus on the small, Baltic coastal resort of Otradnoye, the aforementioned photograph was taken on Otradnoye Beach in January 2005, following an unseasonably wet November and December.
The high earthen banks skirting Otradnoye beach had, after two months of nigh-incessant rain, sunk sponge-like into themselves, and the underlying soil erosion, together with high winds, had, by the dual action of undermining and invisible climatic battering, caused the banks to slip and the trees to break and splinter. In the worst scenario, entire trees had been brought out by their roots, and those not already strewn across the beach were stumbling like a drunken orgy to join the ones that had.
Victor Ryabinin Artist: a man who continues to inspire
Somehow, our gallant little group, consisting of Victor, Olga, Olga’s son Daniel, myself and an English friend called Barry, had descended to the beach by way of the crumbling banks. Our walk from Svetlogorsk had been a dicey one, rain-soaked and windswept, alleviated only by a planned excursion to Brachert House Museum. Now, standing on the beach, ready to take that iconic picture, although the wind had dropped a little, the rain was with us again.
Whilst I huddled up in my totally inappropriate London city overcoat, which, being made of pure new wool, would, by the end of the day, thanks to the teeming rain, be twice as heavy as when I had taken it from the wardrobe, Victor, demonstrating typical nonchalance, lowered his umbrella. And that’s the spirit in which I knew him and also how I remember him. For all I know, he may have been privately carrying all the cares in the world on his shoulders, but if such had been the case, he certainly never showed it.
It is true his symbolist art betrayed a tormented sensibility. It had been with him since his childhood and was the driving force behind his work. Victor sometimes hinted that he was locked within an eternal struggle, with haunting apparitions of the ruins in which he had been born and the echo of the city’s suffering ringing in his ears. Growing up in this traumatised environment, his gentle disposition and vulnerable romanticism experienced at first-hand the slow, grinding metamorphosis from scarred and bombed-out shell to modern-thriving urban centre, but the world beyond which shaped his city never left his heart.
I sometimes felt this pain and made it mine, but for me it was but a fleeting impression, not something forged across a lifetime. I could drop the catch, whilst he could not, or give it back whenever I chose, or so I erroneously told myself, whereas for him his only escape, albeit one which spiralled inwards, was through consultation with his muse and by working daily through his recollections on the level of social history. However, if this had been his mortal lot, he rarely ever showed it. To us, he was always and forever a pennies-from-heaven man, holding aloft his open umbrella, a twinkle in his philosophical eye and a smile upon his kindly face, skipping over the Kaliningrad potholes and singing in the rain.
There is music in his memory, and I am privileged that it comes back to me almost every single day.
^Why is that man carrying that dog? That’s a good question. Because he was convinced that it was a stray. So, he carried it for a mile or more along a narrow and winding seawall, and when he put it down, the ‘rescued’ dog trotted calmly away up and over the bank and presumably went home.
Restored breweries should brew and purvey craft beers. Polessk Brewery does.
7 July 2026 – Polessk Brewery: Revisited in the autumn of 2025
POLESSK BREWERY, formerly the Albert Blankenstein Brewery, founded in 1840, is no small building, so, not surprisingly, the renovation project on which I expatiated in a post entitled Restoring the Polessk Brewery (2021) is still ongoing. During autumn past, I took time out to revisit this splendid neo-Gothic monolith, whose social and economic significance and, more to the point, the nature of the products that it historically purveys – and here we are talking beer – conjoined with its architectural style, have everything going for them that appreciation could desire.
Prior encounters, of which I believe there were three, were either undertaken in summer, the height of the tourist season, or coincided with special events, so it felt rather odd but no less fascinating to venture to this exotic place in an out-of-season capacity when other mortals were busy elsewhere, doing what, I have no idea, when they could, like me, have been up to something not without validity, such as supporting their local brewery by toasting its venerable history with beer once again brewed on its premises.
The feature image shows the Albert Blankenstein Brewery reproduced in postcard format during its turn-of-the-20th-century heyday. Comparisons of this view taken from the front of the brewery can be made with the photographs taken by us of the restorative process as it appeared in 2021: see Restoring the Polessk Brewery.
It did not bother me a jot, on completing the flight of stairs and making an entrance into what is effectively the brewery’s main reception hall, that apart from Olga and me, the only other evident person was the young chap behind the bar. Ye who are acquainted with my predilections and lifelong habits will not need me to tell you that the motive for this reprisal, I am not ashamed to say, was to ascertain if the worthy project had remained true to its stated trajectory and was now, as in days of old, brewing and selling beer again, in which regard I am pleased to disclose I could not have been more delighted.
Albeit a little early in the day for a wise and sensible man like me to initiate imbibing, as there was no one else to do it for me, it would have been rude, as the saying goes, had I deferred for the sake of propriety an act that seemed unconditionally proper in contrast to the alternative, which would have been to observe misguidedly a churlish point of temperance. Besides, the day it was rather cold, so what could be more appropriate than warming it up with a chilled glass of beer?
Barrels and what have you. What could be more natural?
Mick Hart, enjoying history at the Polessk Brewery.
Mick Hart reflects on good beer at Polessk Brewery.
Just one of many rooms in this capacious brewery!
They’ve spelled “beer” incorrectly, but we know what it is.
Wholesome and natural, that’s beer for you.
If it was for sale, I would have bought it.
Highly decorated traditional German beer bottles.
Girders and traditional wooden beer casks – a fine sight indeed!
Polessk Brewery: Revisited in the autumn of 2025
As there was no one to compete with, which meant that we had the unbridled run of the place, there was ample space and opportunity for getting reacquainted with this fine old building’s history, aided and abetted to no unexceptional extent by its superb exhibition graphics and many excellent didactic panels, and all the while enjoying in their various appointed places scattered memorabilia of assorted brewing shapes and kinds, all of which, in their obsolescence, were glorious and engaging. The fact that this educational as well as recreational tour can be undertaken, as it should, whilst indulging in the very product on which the 19th-century brewing plant had built its reputation enhances and consolidates the overall experience
Indeed, whilst indulging in absorption, I was so absorbed by industrial history that I bought two litre bottles of the end result to take away for further contemplation, as there was little doubt in my mind to instigate the contrary that I would not give them my best attention later that evening at home. And on this score, I could hardly have been more accurate than if history yearned to prove to me that it does indeed repeat itself, as we are frequently led to believe it does by those who know better than you and I. An exotic doctrine, to be sure! But perfectly acceptable if the space or place prescribed by history to which we must return is one we are ready to vouch for and one that is worth revisiting, and here we need to introduce that unequivocal asseveration that the Polessk Brewery has worked so hard for and which, therefore, it so richly deserves. Praise where praise is due: Raise your glasses, ladies and gentlemen; let’s drink to the brewery’s continued success!
Revised 30 June 2026 | First published 16 November 2024 ~Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?
Update: Since first writing this post and revising it, I have passed through the Poland-Kaliningrad borders a number of times. Much has remained the same, except on the last occasion I travelled, the Polish were no longer hopping on the bus and taking photographs of each and every person with a hand-held camera. However, it is still necessary to have your mugshot scanned when you produce your documents at border control.
The other change, again at the Polish border, is that both travelling into and out of Kaliningrad, we were made to cart our luggage into the border control office and have that scanned, too. This is a new one, as border security used to check the baggage randomly by peeping into the hold underneath the bus.
Having your baggage scanned is no great shakes, as long as you haven’t got a bootlegging and tobacco-import fetish, as the Polish are hot on the alcohol and fags trail. However, the building into which you have to traipse to have your credentials and yourself gawped at is up a short, but rather steep, flight of steps, so stand by to struggle and curse as you drag your heavy luggage, like the Grand Old Duke of York, up to the scanner and down again. There are some who say that borders border on insanity and others who would reply, “Where would we be without them!” I’m saying nothing; just my rank and serial number.
The answer to the question is ‘yes’. Yes, it is possible to access Kaliningrad via the Polish-Kaliningrad border and vice versa. The only caveat is that before you go, stock up on patience.
In the not-too-distant past, the bus from Kaliningrad going to Gdansk was held up at the Polish border for as long as it took to miss a flight at Gdansk – seven hours, in fact. Whilst this particular case may be the exception to the rule, lengthy delays are not, and in response to this and other inconveniences generally assumed unnecessary, and some infer deliberately obstructive, a petition has been launched, which you, dear reader, can access here. Against the intolerable conditions on the Russian-Polish border (Kaliningrad)! {Note: to read this in English, you will need to click on ‘Translate’ and change the language from German.}
Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?
Not all border crossings are as bad as the last one you experienced, but some can sometimes be worse, and some can be worse but interesting. For example, take a crossing I made in 2024.
We cleared the formalities at the Russian border without let or hindrance and trundled off with great expectations, fifteen of us in all, onto Polish territory.
There were no other vehicles in transit, only our bus, and the usual procedures went smoothly enough. We were gawped at, our credentials were examined, we had our mugshots taken (again!) and, after 30 minutes, we were back on the bus.
We took our seats, brum, brum (that’s the sound of the bus starting up), and off we merrily went.
Traditionally, it is at this point of the journey when, with the inquisition over, the invisible stays shared by all release themselves collectively, letting relaxation spill palpably out in a sigh-giving rush of relief. The advent of this liberation is customarily celebrated by proper professional travellers in possession of proper professional travelling cases with a dignified mass unzipping, whilst those of us who own neither dignified travelling cases nor commendable travelling standards have to be content with rustling through our carrier bags. The end result is the same, however. Having given stress the elbow, it’s time for comfort eating.
Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open?
I had just begun to tuck into my penultimate hummus and tomato sandwich when, ay up, mother! What’s going on? Instead of hitting the open road, our bus was being syphoned off into a fenced and gated compound.
“Ay up?” I thought again. Well, you would think that, wouldn’t you.
I cannot say for certain whether it was my fault or not. Perhaps I want to believe it was for the sake of an impudent ego. But the question kept repeating itself: were we locked inside this compound, sitting motionless inside our bus in front of this big, this bland, this ominous, this nondescript and bureaucratic building because of something I had said?
When the clam-faced female within the Polish border office had fired the question at me, “Cigarettes and alcohol?”, my facetious reply had been, “Yes please?” And then when she did not get the joke (what joke exactly would that be?) and barked the question again, I had waved it away with an Englishness, simpering yet polite, which Leslie Phillips would have been proud of, but possibly she was not.
Cigarettes? Alcohol? Never touch the stuff!!
Whoever was or was not to blame, there we sat on the bus, and we sat there for a bad 10 minutes, us and this dull, brick, windowless building, facing each other down, one with complete contempt, the other suggesting complete containment.
Is the Poland-Kaliningrad Border Open Yes But?
There was something about our situation and the building that confronted us that nudged my idling imagination into the realms of the deep mischievous. That sign at the compound’s entrance, did it really say ‘Work sets you free’? I am glad to say it didn’t. But what exactly did it mean, this reference to a ‘Revision Centre’?
The bland building was giving nothing away. Indeed, there is not much more to say about its external aspect, except that high upon the roof it had a prominent funnel-shaped air vent.
I could not see anything clearly, as the sun was in my eyes, but I am almost willing to swear on anything other than a stack of beer bottles that for one second I saw, or bore the conviction that I saw, poised at the mouth of the air vent, the shadows of two men. They were crouching down at the sides of the vent, leaning in towards it, and each had something in their hands, something that looked like canisters. I had just begun to focus on the containers’ labels when a shard of light leaping out of the sun temporarily blinded me. Through the eclipsing halo that ensued, and with the bus now moving in reverse and distorting my perspective, the words on the label were reduced to a blur, and all that I could make of them was a capital ‘Z’ at one end and a capital ‘B’ at the other.
Our bus had not entered the building by the floor-to-apex roller door in front of which we had initially parked. It had taxied around to the back of the building, where it slowly disappeared through a similar portal at that end. Creeping at a snail’s pace, it inched its way gradually in, permitting me to regard at will the character of the chamber into which we were being swallowed. We were saying goodbye to the outside world, but one hoped it was temporarily.
We were passing into an alley, just the right width for the size of the bus. To the left of us was a platform, solid, broad and deep, not unlike one you would loiter upon whilst waiting for a train. It was not the height of the vehicle’s windows but fell just a little below it.
At the back of this platform at regular intervals were two or three large doors. They were big doors, metal doors, with handles of such prodigious proportions that the only way to open them would surely be to enlist the brawn of two thick Polish men with arms that did not fit. In a corner close by the doors stood a bag that seemed familiar. It looked like one I had seen before on the lorry of KG Smith & Son, Northamptonshire’s premiere coal merchants.
Until now the bus had been trickling forward, but it suddenly drew to a shuddering halt. The driver got up from his seat, made an announcement I did not catch and opened the doors of the vehicle. Before you could say Polish sausage, especially before you could say it in Polish, a man in paramilitary uniform had bounded up the steps and, standing at the front of the bus, all officious-like ~ did I hear someone say ‘full of piss and importance’? ~ was presumably ordering us all to get off. Simultaneously, a larger man armed with a big black dog had stationed himself strategically next to the door at the side of the bus, from which the young and old, singles and couples, some with children, some without, two or three middle-aged gents and a peculiar sort of Englishman with a grey and straggly beard were struggling to alight, laden down as they uncomfortably were with their assortment of bags and chattels.
The platform to which this innocuous group had descended was considerably narrower than that on the opposite side. Folk were bumping into each other as, ‘Roust! Roust! Schnell! Schnell!’, they were ordered to take their travelling bags from the hold beneath the bus.
Nobody seemed quite to know what it was that was expected of them. A big, as in overweight, man, looking not unlike Hermann Göring – perhaps it was his time-travelled brother – had already started rummaging through one of the passenger’s bags. He had the bag perched on a table placed at the side of the wall and was going through the contents as if he was pulling the entrails out of a late-for-Christmas turkey. He looked much more like a TV villain or an officer from the Guesswho than a man who ought to be showing respect to the public he was frisking.
Hermann’s brother had a very loud voice, which he used to good effect. Stopping in mid-rummage, with his hands inside some lady’s lingerie, he bellowed, “Form a queue!” at the meek, the innocent and the inoffensive, over whom he lauded ultimate power and whose only crime today was that they wanted to get from A to B. Obediently, one by one, they fell silently into line.
During this demonstration of ‘I’m a man in a uniform, so you’d better do as I say!’, two other guards had joined the jamboree: a flint-eyed woman in a boiler suit spoilt only by its insignia and one of those strutting cockerel types: ‘I’ve got tattoos on my neck, and I’ve come to throw my weight about’.
And now the carnival commenced in earnest: The man who had the sniffer dog was sniffing; the cockerel was in and out of the bus as if someone had knocked him off his perch. The flint-eyed thing was glaring. ‘Look at those eyes! Those eyes! Those eyes!’; and the mountain man with a skinhead haircut who went by the name of Hermann’s Brother was rifling through one’s personals as if he were mixing cement.
His brawny arms were in there, his paddle hands a-swirling. He had obviously learnt his cultured trade from washing his pants in a tub.
Fortunately for me, no such ignominy would besmirch my person. I was, as they say, travelling light. I only had a carrier bag, in which I had placed my laptop and the sad remains of a pack-up meal prepared for me by my wife.
Most of what had been packed for me, I had already scoffed. All that remained was a lonely sandwich, lolling half in and half out of one of those flimsy, thin plastic boxes routinely used in supermarkets for the display and sale of cakes.
Although I was not in the least bit hungry, having eaten just minutes before, the thought of the Polish strangler rinsing his mitts about my sandwich spurred me into action. Better to eat the sandwich now than have it used like a paper towel hanging next to the gents’ urinals. The problem was that Fatty Arms was getting through those bags like Joe Stink from the Secret Service, and the combination of hummus and bread not being the easiest thing to masticate resulted in a situation of alarming prematurity, an unfortunate occurrence whenever it chooses to strike and one not entirely limited to such incidental matters as love, proposals, life and death but also, or so it would seem, during the crucial business of crossing borders.
Thus, when the big you-know-what turned to me and barked, “Cigarettes? Alcohol?”, it was an effort of no small magnitude for me to reply, “Yes please.”
He glared at me contemptuously – well, can you blame him, really? – and pulling his girt big shoulders back in a show of manly authority (he had done the same with the 80-year-old standing frail and tired in front of me), said slowly and precisely, “We will wait until you have stopped eating, then you and I will talk!”
“Oh, really, what about?” I spluttered, choking on my sandwich. “The weather? Football? Religion? Politics? ~ Er, no, anything but politics.”
The sandwich safely swallowed, he sang the refrain again: “Cigarettes?” and “Alcohol?”
Do you know what I think? I think that he was asking me whether I had the aforenamed items concealed about my person or stashed inside my laptop. When I answered in the negative, first he looked suspicious, then profoundly disappointed.
I took a swig of mineral water. He probably thought the alcohol was hidden in that bottle ~ as if! ~ and that I had hurriedly eaten the illicit cigarettes between two slices of bread. Whatever it was he didn’t know, and I think it was a lot, he was not a happy man, which is hardly surprising really, looking and acting the way he did. But he wasn’t finished yet.
Furtively, he glanced down, looking at my little one – at the little bag that I was carrying – and a tiny ray of hope shone briefly through his cold pork pies, though it was tinged with disbelief by the answer he anticipated but did not want to hear.
“No big baggage?” he asked.
I could, of course, have just said ‘no’, thus putting him out of his misery, but Bernard Manning answered for me, “Just the wife,” said Bernard, “and she’s at home at present.”
Hermann Rummage pursed his lips, shuffled, scowled and then dismissed me. The interrogation over, I climbed back onto the bus.
Ten minutes after my ascension and with no contraband having been found, we were out on the open road again, steaming towards Gdansk: the young and the old, singles and couples – some with children, some without – two or three middle-aged gents and a peculiar sort of Englishman with a grey and straggly beard.
Those lovely chaps at the Polish border, I mused, stood a greater chance of finding a rational thought in a liberal’s head than illicit fags and booze on the God-fearing lot inside this bus, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it. Who of us can say with any degree of certainty what goes on in the cranky minds of liberals?
Yet the trees were green, the sky was blue, and every cloud has a silver lining: after all, we hadn’t been gassed, just inconvenienced and harassed.
It was just another sourpuss day at Checkpoint Proper Charlie.
Summery Scenes in Kaliningrad and its region 2024-2025
26 June 2026 – Kaliningrad weather? – A What You Need to Know Post!
Brr, that’s all I can say. That was a quick post, wasn’t it? My allusion, as distinct from illusion – that’s one of those that everyone who voted for Starmer has since become acquainted with and will no doubt once again with the installation of Andy Burnham; oh, how fools are easily fooled – is to my last post (It’s sounding over Britain!), the one in which I appear to ratify the collective delusion (delusion this time) that it always snows in Russia, which it most certainly does in a good many Frederick Forsyth and Len Deighton novels and in most mainstream spy films based upon their books. It even snowed in the pop video used to promote Elton John’s Nikita. I almost said Akido, but I’ve practised that enough (ooh, my aching joints!), and very nearly Akita, but that’s my brother’s dog, neither of which, as I recall, are remotely connected to snow. Do you remember Peter Snow and his infamous ‘swingometer’, replaced today by Sky News’ military analyst Michael Clarke, who is a hybrid of Peter Snow and a friend of mine called Greg? Sorry, it’s all getting so confusing. That’s flux for you.
In order to demonstrate, therefore, that it always snows in Russia, but it doesn’t, well, not here in Kaliningrad at any rate, I’ve whipped out the old photo album and borrowed from myself some lovely, summery, sunny pictures that rather prove my point.
Kaliningrad Weather? – A What You Need to Know Post!
My previous post was built around snowy scenes in Polessk, so I thought it only fair in order to dispel notions that it always snows in Polessk that I contrast those images with their summer counterparts. These photographs show the Deyma River and Polessk Canal, together with the landmark Eagle Bridge. The sun is shining, the snow has gone, the ice has melted, and the boats are out.
Here am I, sitting outside Königsberg’s Rossgarten Gate, outside the Rossgarten Gate restaurant. It’s not that they wouldn’t let me in, but the restaurant’s name, Solnechny Kamen, which, as you students of Russian know full well, translates to ‘Sun Stone’, subliminally inspired me to capture the first rays of summer, which were breaking prematurely over the city in the last month of May 2024. Incidentally, I’ve not gone mardy and am not refusing to eat my food because, instead of a pint, I’ve been given a cup of coffee; I’m just thawing out after a long, hard winter.
Summer in Kaliningrad and its region is not all about beer and sun lounging – more’s the pity. On the contrary, it’s a time to get things done! Do those knee pads suit me? I’m doing a real conquistador job on upcycling that old open-arm bench, and our good friend, artist and conservationist, and, quite frequently, Immanuel Kant, is treating our historic Soviet statue to a summer makeover.
When the sun’s out, you want to be outside with it, but as my friend’s father, Mr Wilcox, used to bawl at me whenever I was ‘holidaying’ at his farm in my youth, “We’re fighting a war against human nature, Hart!! There’s work to do!!” And you couldn’t say fairer than that, because you daren’t. As his ghostly voice echoes across the decades, I assuage his wrath by turning my hand to a little shabby chicing in the country house hallway. Alright, alright, I admit most of the ideas were Olga’s.
And when the work is done … (most of these ideas are mine.)
Celebrating summer’s divine attributes.
Am I responding to the dulcet tones of my authoritarian guardian Mr Wilcox, or is it just excellent weather to be doing it? All my own work? Leave it out!
And when the work is done … it’s time for a libation with the neighbours.
Going German bunkers on a hot day in Kaliningrad. Meanwhile, Ginger teaches himself how to hide behind a flower before venturing out onto the terrace to assess how invisible he has become.
Late summer: the last rays of sunlight falter over the Curonian Lagoon.
18 June 2026 – Polessk in Winter is Rather More Than a Frosty Atmosphere
Do you know there’s a rather rude English expression that goes, ‘I don’t want to piss on your fireworks’, wryly meaning ‘I don’t want to spoil it for you’, which, being a gentleman, I would never use, particularly as the opening line for a blog post, in the same way that I would never say, in the first month of summer, that in ‘less than six months’ time it will be Christmas’; for who, after a long, drawn-out, bitterly cold and exhausting winter, such as the one Nature treated us to in Kaliningrad this year, would want to be reminded at this escapist juncture of the unravelling seasons of the cold, ice and snow, from which it seems we have only just emerged, when we are yearning, body, mind and soul, for sun, warmth and pretty women wearing summer dresses?
You might well consider it perverse, therefore, that in the midst of my understanding almost all I profess to understand, I go ahead willy-nilly in the contradictory manner of a British politician doing exactly the opposite of what he promised before he was elected, but, as it is with politicians, memory rarely recognises the virtue of fidelity, so that being unfaithful to one season whilst embracing quite another suggests an equal portion of love for those devoutly courted in the past and for those with whom contentment brightens life at present, permitting you to pick and choose as and when and how you choose with self-proclaimed impunity.
Thus it is, without further, if any, considered apology, unless to make allowances for the damp condition in which you find your fireworks, that a perverse pleasure falls to me to introduce to you an unseasonal series of photographs that recollect a winter’s day in and around Polessk, a Kaliningrad regional town, which, long ago in German times, was known by the name of Labiau, with one or two appended photos taken somewhere else but on that same petrified day and not so dreadfully far away as to make my inclusion of them beyond the remit of my title.
Polessk is situated at the confluence of the Deyma River, which branches off from the Pregolya River, and the Polessk Canal (pre-Soviet, the Grosser Friedrichsgraben). When winter temperatures plummet, sections of both waterways can morph into super-thick ice plateaux, allowing the intrepid, the experienced, and those who are determined whatever the climatic conditions to dangle their rods in the water, to stroll across it nonchalantly as if the doing of the action were the natural consequence of a rash desire. Our camera spies a local chap sauntering back to terrafirma over the ice-bound waters, where his comrades have been perched for hours in pursuit of a fisherman’s tale.
Eagle Bridge
The following view is a glimpse of the historic Eagle Bridge, which spans the Deyma River on the edge of Polessk. Built in German times, between 1919 and 1922, when Polessk was Labiau, its landmark construction, immediately recognisable from its twin operating towers, accommodates a restored ancient mechanism which hoists the bridge in two to permit the transit of river traffic. Down-to-earth blog readers will from my brief description most likely, and correctly, visualise a drawbridge, whilst bods with technical minds are liable to protest, ‘The term that he is searching for is a double-leaf bascule bridge. Don’t you just love an engineer!
Here’s me, standing on Eagle Bridge. I’m glad I invested in that thermal-lined coat– and pants!
Curonian Lagoon, Frozen
This ice-bound scene is not in and of itself Polessk but, recorded on the same day when the other views were photographed, it captures the fate of the Curonian Lagoon in its transformation to a frozen expanse, as seen from the coastline of the former German fishing village Labagienen, renamed Haffwinkel in 1938 and renamed again Zalivino by the Soviets after World War Two. Look carefully at the photograph: those little human specks lurking in the distance are by virtue of their courage akin to something like ice warriors, or you might presume just nuts. Observed in the twilight hours, with a low of minus 30 degrees nipping at your nose and with your eyes misting over, an eerily atmospheric sense replaces objectivity, inducing me to half expect a figure ominous in proportion skimming past on a dog-pulled sled followed in frenzied pursuit by Baron Frankenstein.Does it affect you this way, too? No, I didn’t think it would.
On your bike! It’s the Phantom Cyclist!
Stone the crows! I’m not sure about them, but you’ve got to handlebars it to him, he certainly frightens me. As scarecrows go, he is a lot more original and effective than a plastic bag hanging on a stick. The only time you have to worry is when, on your own and in the dark, you hear the sound of the cycle wheel whirring close behind you. Er, let’s walk back via the other route; it’s been such a long while since we went that way…
The Ponart Brewery Beer Shop
Now, this is a very interesting place. It stands on the corner of a narrow, weaving road, hemmed in by old German apartment blocks, overlooking the combined waterways of the Deyma River and Polessk Canal (historical name, the Grosser Friedrichsgraben). A local distribution outlet for the historic Ponart beer brand, brewed again to traditional recipes at the restored Königsberg brewery complex, which was built in 1839 and converted in recent years into a multipurpose cultural centre of which Kaliningrad is rightly proud, this worthy Polessk trading post is a convenient stopping-off point for stocking up on vital goods before and after excursions.
I imagine that this photograph is self-explanatory. Here am I inside the Ponart beer shop, situated at Zavodskaya Ulitsa, 1, Polessk, Kaliningrad Oblast, ordering one of their fine draft ales. Better than soup with a hot water bottle, it’s just the job after a two-hour stint of walking around in conditions that mimic those of the Arctic.Can you see my nuts?
A water tower cast in the image of a Gothic castle
11 June 2026 – Water Tower Otradnoye (Georgenswalde) is outstanding
Among the Kaliningrad region’s many examples of red-brick Gothic architecture, water towers are an interesting group. Towers in a broader architectural context are one of Gothic’s principal aesthetics. It is these that best achieve the soaring vertical and steep perpendicularity by which structures in this genre, be they standalone or an integral part of more complex compositions, are canonically determined.
The Kaliningrad region’s water towers, whilst sharing design characteristics of a fundamental nature, are, when considered on a one-to-one basis, by no means indistinct.
Each tower is engendered with structural and stylistic traits that lift them out of rigid conformity.
Water Tower Otradnoye (Georgenswalde): a functional folly
K. Fischer’s Otradnoye (formerly Georgenswalde) tower is of a standard rectangular tapering build, with a four-section, snow-arresting flanged-metal triangular roof. Elevated to a height of approximately 147 feet, the mediaeval replica exhibits typical red-brick Gothic elements but with distinct and personalised variants, such as, in its mid-section, lancet-inspired indentations which, although they are tall and narrow, are capped with rounded ends and used to produce a sunken frame in which to display conforming windows arranged in a vertical sequence. Other arrangements of note include a recessed crenellated frieze, a triangular pediment with matching corner buttresses, cement-rendered horizontal bands which divide the building into vertical sections, blind niches of different dimensions, and deep, stepped-back door alcoves typically arched but wide in form.
As with many civic buildings of this type and of this period, the overall exotic impression borrows for its impact from romanticised notions of picturesque castles, bold and grand in stature, whilst concealing behind its fortified mask a utilitarian purpose which, at the time of its inauguration, was rarely excelled in practicality and, in contradiction to its appearance, more modern and useful in application.
K. Fischer’s Georgenswalde tower is a prominent local landmark in the Soviet-renamed coastal town Otradnoye. Its historical and architectural value is reflected in its official status as a protected cultural heritage monument.
Otradnoye is one of those places you cannot have enough of
31 May 2025: Otradnoye Kaliningrad – a little gem on the Baltic Coast
In my previous post, I wrote about an evening spent in the Villa Gretchin, a guest house of which I cannot speak highly enough; its interior, accented with East Prussian Baroque influences, makes it a thoroughly immersive base for exploring Otradnoye’s history and enjoying its beautiful beach.
Otradnoye, which before the end of the Second World War was known as Georgenswolde, is a small coastal settlement founded east of Svetlogorsk on the Sambia Peninsula.
Svetlogorsk, the larger of the two resorts and therefore the more popular, developed and commercialised, is serviced by umpteen bars and restaurants and by stalls and shops specialising in the sale of one of the region’s most precious commodities, amber. It is also home to a futuristic multifunctional cultural centre, the Amber Hall Variety Theatre, otherwise known as Yantar Hall, and is currently undergoing a major mixed-use, residential, pier-side construction programme which runs 1.5 kilometres along the length of its Baltic seafront.
In comparison, Otradnoye has a café, a handful of hotels/guesthouses and a small hut overlooking the beach selling beer and light refreshments. Although this difference is a striking one, obviously making Otradnoye the smaller of the two resorts, it doesn’t necessarily follow that Otradnoye is steeped in solitude. On the contrary, an unpretentious swathe of white sandy beach, set against, on one side, steep forested banks and, on the other, the foaming blue Baltic, acts as a seductive magnet to folk addicted to sun, sea and sand. Come late autumn, however, and throughout the winter months, visitors naturally fall away, turning the less-developed Otradnoye into the much-prefered destination for those whose tastes excel in out-of-season beach resorts.
^^ The winter of 2004/05 was extremely wet, and the banks along Otradoyne on the Baltic Coast were landsliding chaotically beachward. That’s Olga Hart with her umbrella and handbag and Victor Ryabinin with an umbrella and briefcase. The photo is by me, unseen here with my umbrella and bowler hat. We were all well-prepared for the weather and terrain.
Indeed, my own, personal introduction to this atmospheric seaside village took place in the winter months. It was January 2005. Under the knowledgeable instruction of our late, lamented friend, Victor Ryabinin, an expert on Kaliningrad history, including that of its region, and a well-known local artist, we paused for a while at Otradnoye. We were en route to somewhere else, whose destination I cannot recall and which we never reached – but that’s another story. However, I do clearly remember rendezvousing before we set off to Otradnoye in a café somewhere on Svetlogorsk’s outskirts: Victor with his map of the local area, and I with Olga and a friend called Barry.
It was during this first visit that I made the acquaintance of the German sculptor Brachert and toured his former house and gardens, now the Brachert Museum. It was also on this occasion that I learnt firsthand (or should that be foot?) that the woodland descent to Otradnoye beach was unforgivingly precipitous and that the return journey by the concrete road laid in Soviet times was, far from being less precipitous, if anything considerably more arduous.
^^ The Hermann Brachert House Museum in Otradnoye
Nowadays, walking from the beach to the upper reaches of Otradnoye is a marginally less daunting prospect, thanks to a series of well-planned paths that zig-zag their way across and through the tree-dense, sloping land and which have at various stages seats on which to park yourself should a labouring constitution importune an advisable rest.
At beach level, there is lots of sea and sand, but what conspicuously isn’t there are swish hotels, swanky restaurants, specialist boutique shops or any other tourist bolt-ons – at least not for the present!
^^ Otradnoye Beach, c. September 2022
A single hut presides, raised on a small grassed promontory, fronted by a seating area of simple appearance and modest proportions, yet availing patrons of the myriad sights and delights typically associated with summer beach activity and maintaining a year-on-year monopoly as the only outlet for snacks and drinks other than those which the thrifty and, simultaneously, practical may have prepared and carried with them inside their bags or rucksacks.
Svetlogorsk, being not that far away, indeed right there on one’s visual doorstep, throws down a provocative gauntlet, suggesting a leisurely beachside walk, but before the challenge is taken up, one would do well to remember that sand is no immediate friend to the calves or upper legs, neither of which may thank you later for any decision made in haste. So before giving in to that little, that shrill, that insistent voice, which is so insouciantly urging you to throw caution to the wind, “Go on!” it is goading. “A walk on the sand will do you good!” You might want to pause for a moment, long enough for a second thought to give credence to the consequences.
The other way to flit on foot between the two resorts is to take the woodland route, using the proper hard-surface paths which in recent years have been laid for this purpose. This option is a rewarding one, as not only does it combine the health-promoting qualities that walking is said to bestow with an appreciation of the natural habitat, but by passing around the perimeter of a former Soviet Young Pioneer camp, long ago abandoned and now in a state of overgrown memory, for people lured by social history, of which, I confess, I am one, if you forgot to bring that flask and sandwiches, there could yet be sustenance in food for thought.
^^ Remains of a Soviet Young Pioneer camp between Otradnoye and Svetlogorsk
For those among you whose footwork is strictly limited to the sensible practice of getting on and off buses, it won’t, I am certain, hurt you to know that public transport visits both Otradnoye and its alter-ego Svetlogorsk frequently and in both directions.
The road that these buses tootle along is a reasonably busy throughfare and is pictured in my mind, which may or may not be accurate, as a band that dissects Otradnoye village into two distinct and separate parts.
The area that lies immediately above the seafront descent, the location of the Brachert Museum, contains very little by way of amenities, ordinary or otherwise; almost nothing, to be exact, should one somehow commit the grave injustice of overlooking the Georgenswalde, a tall and stately hotel with a likeness in its character reminiscent of Art Nouveau. My impression when I stayed there, possibly now a little more than four years ago, was that in general appearance and overall style of service it rang a Soviet bell; particularly, I recall, its breakfast-room experience, which, me being typically me, I typically enjoyed without regret or reservation, rather more than not, I would say, had it been anything different.
^^ The Georgeswalde overlooking the Brachert House Museum in Otradnoye (c. 2022)
Up the hill aways, a short but not entirely effortless stroll from where the Georgenswalde is situated, a walk which takes in magnificent villas, ancient and modern, gentle and loud, there stands on the right-hand side a large but unassuming guesthouse appropriately entitled Vysokij Bereg (English translation: High Bank), ‘appropriately’ entitled because the bank on which it stands is indeed a very high one, providing its owners, guests and customers with a commanding view of the Baltic Sea, which could only be more commanding if the bank from which it claims its title were not so liberally fringed with trees. Vysokij Bereg’s café welcomes resident guests and non-guests alike and is held in high regard by some within our exclusive circle for the excellent pizzas it purveys as part of its wider meal selections.
The entrance to the café occurs at the back of the guesthouse, where a hard-surface terrace is just the job for dining outside and peeping through the trees at the Baltic’s expanse beyond. This particular view is no less properly available should the weather and/or the time of year nudge you gently or propel you keenly towards the café’s sheltered interior, but on clement and sunny days, the option to sit at a patio table or lounge in a canopy swing out on the grass, whilst the smaller ones among you enjoy the children’s playground, is for those of us who believe we are normal a choice too logical to just pass up.
^^ Mick Hart doing something different for a change at High Bank guesthouse in Otradnoye
On Otradnoye’s opposite side, the one across ‘the road’, the intrepid explorer is guaranteed to stumble upon a gathering of other cafés and restaurants, including in the mix, one or two shops of a specialist nature and an assortment of handy convenience stores, good for all sorts of groceries, including snacks and drinks for picnics.
^^ German villa in Otradnoye awaiting restoration
Both sides of Otradnoye are united architecturally, each one offering commentary and teasingly tempting glimpses into the region’s pre-war history. If you like your domestic buildings large and gothically asymmetrical with lots of interesting, imaginative features both in wood and masonry, inspirational houses which take on a fairytale essence when tucked away in woodland glades or built surprisingly yet sympathetically into the pine and silver birch landscape, then the sights Otradnoye lays before you will either have you wishing that you could live in a house like this or whisper to you that perhaps you once did.
Whilst many of these abodes have over time regained their individual, one-family, exclusive villa status, and some rub broader shoulders with overpowering contemporary mansions, others, those which in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War were hurriedly converted into three- or four-family homes or communal family units when the Soviet population replaced the region’s German populace, are hived off to this day but in the manner of flats.
In this respect, Otradnoye is no different from almost anywhere else in the Kaliningrad region; the sight of early-twentieth-century grandeur sharing relative space with the conspicuously lavish, sitting next door to a Soviet conversion and, next door to that, a more recent block of flats becomes less and less incongruous the more that it is witnessed, and the same can be said for those wonderful homes and gardens, again within the mix, which are as rustic as rustic can be. The build variations on any one street can be really quite astonishing, and though you may take a liking to one particular type, you cannot help but like the other also and experience a certain fondness for something much the same as you do, comparatively speaking, when it is something just the opposite.
^^ Rusticity meets character in Otradnoye
Among the various interesting buildings asserting architectural and historic merit dotted around Otradnoye, I recommend you take time out to hunt down the former railway station. Dilapidated currently and waiting on conservation, it is yet impressive for what it once was, for what it is now, for what imagination working on its behalf lends aspiration to what it may be, and for what, if correctly restored, it may in time amount to.
^^ Ye olde railway station in Otradnoye
Another intriguing landmark deserving a trip to Otradnoye, with or without a packed lunch, is architect K. Fischer’s red-brick Gothic water tower. The Kaliningrad region contains a number of such towers, each conforming in its own right to the Gothic revivalist style but equally invested with its own distinguishing characteristics, of which Mr Fischer’s is no exception.
Six tiers and square in formation, Fischer’s Tower towers at an approximate height of 147.6 feet. It is proudly endowed with distinctive attributes conformational to its undisputed place in Gothic architecture. When built, it was also equipped with hot and cold water tanks and a bath room at ground level. I am not sure whether the bathroom has withstood the test of time, but just in case it is still in situ, don’t forget to include in your travelling pack a bar of soap and your favourite loofah.
To find this emblematic structure, asking the way won’t come amiss, for, as far as I can remember, and as tall as the tower is, we were granted access to it via someone’s garden, from which we could see its triangular roof thrusting up out of the trees. The natural seclusion in which the tower quietly reposes makes the first approach to it all the more novel and fascinating.
^^Old re-roofed German house in Otradnoye, with Fischer’s water tower peeping over the treeline
Of the two seaside towns mentioned in this brief essay, Svetlogorsk is the place to go if what it is you are after is an historically attractive coastal resort whose town has been brought up to spec with every conceivable modern convenience. Otradnoye, on the other hand, is the destination of choice for those who hold with the maxim that as ‘less is often more’, those who seek will surely find. Beachside, during the height of the season, Svetlogorsk becomes a bustling hub for Russia’s domestic tourist trade, while down the beach a little, Otradnoye bristles with Kaliningrad locals, but whether on the seafront or away from it, if what you want is quieter, less is more in Otradnoye.
^^ Mick Hart sitting on ‘rock armour’, Otradnoye beach, winter 2025
Getting to and from Otradnoye from Kaliningrad by bus
Bus No. 116 departs from Kaliningrad Central Bus Station 6 to 8 times daily and, likewise, from the Otradnoye bus stop. The journey takes about 1.5 hours, and the fare is 70–120 roubles, as determined by route and departure point.
Buses No. 118 and No. 125 run more frequently, about every 20 minutes, between Kaliningrad and Svetlogorsk. Walk, take a taxi or catch a bus from the Oytradnoye stop into Svetlogorsk and use connecting services there. The fare from Kaliningrad to Svetlogorsk and vice versa costs between 155 and 180 roubles depending on the route taken and place of embarkation.
The official Kaliningrad Bus Terminal portal for regional travel is avl39.ru
What I didn’t know I soon did, and I liked it very much
20 May 2026 – Villa Gretchen in Otradnoye – what you need to know
We arrived in the small seaside town of Otradnoye (formerly Georgenswalde) in an area with which I am not acquainted. It was one of those hotch-potchers, consisting of large, two-storey Soviet concrete buildings, most likely houses of culture or sanatoriums; post-Soviet residential flat complexes; and small, by comparison, and dotted here and there, detached family dwellings, once the abodes of native East Prussians.
The guest house, Villa Gretchen, which was our destination, had been donated for the evening to Mr Chileekin and his party by Mr Chileekin’s friend, who was, in fact, the owner of the property.
Villa Gretchen in Otradnoye – what you need to know
From the outside, the front of the guest house looked little different from any other ordinary pan-tiled classic German house, but from the side street into which we and our vehicle had pulled, it was plain to see by the modern but architecturally in-keeping porch, the nearby brick-built grill cabin – let’s go Scandinavian and call it a ‘grillkota’, and the smart and well-kept service buildings that, if you had missed the guest house sign as I had successfully done, you might go all Miss Marple, deducing not incorrectly that there is more to this place than meets the eye, as the visual introduction was less than it appeared to be.
Once across the threshold, the impression changed immediately, and what an impression it made!
“It’s your sort of place,” Olga remarked, observing my observation.
She hadn’t got that wrong. The entire building had been restored; convincingly decked out in a successful attempt to capture the Gothic-Baroque German style that at one time had reigned supreme in this former Prussian territory. The impact was surprising and instantaneous.
There was nothing on the outside to prepare one for this change of scenery. The porch through which we had passed had led to a dark and heavy door with an inset, bulbous, smoked-glass window. On the other side of this door, the entrance hall was small but large in first impressions. On one wall hung a sizeable mirror in an elaborately carved and moulded frame, and on the other, small and neat, a dark wood hat and coat rack belonging to a distant era, together with two framed sepia photographs of couples in their middle age, who, had they been alive today, would be getting ready to celebrate their 156th birthdays.
As the door to the adjoining room was open, or possibly just an open aperture, the centrepiece of the house, as seen from where I stood, could easily be identified as the two-tier, ceramic-tiled, traditional German stove, but whilst this indeed was a strong contender, it was the staircase in its mid-blue livery artfully distressed by hand, which, striding up behind us and turning sharply through ninety degrees, stole the stove’s immediate thunder.
Stairway to Heaven
The staircase was constructed of good, solid planks of wood. It had shaped apron embellishments and panels lining the stairwell walls, patterned with scrolling mouldings. The ‘worn’ cobalt blue colour encompassed rails, steps and panelling, creating a simple yet effective visual and atmospheric bridge to a highly credible living past. This masterpiece of time engineering was assisted in its effect by archivolt inclusions and by the stylised manner of the wooden framework, which, extending from floor to ceiling where the steps led down to the basement, blended complementary elements of rustic, fairytale and Art Nouveau.
Simplicity and intricacy were happily co-existent, sometimes restrained and sober and at other times quite flamboyant. For example, the bold, organic cutaway shape of the wooden ceiling spandrel formed a quaint freehand feature at the juncture where the third flight of steps, those leading to the attic, disappeared from view. This third level of steps, continuing the theme of cobalt blue, rises above and away from the landing, concluding at its summit in a series of supporting spindles surmounted by a handrail. From the first step in the hall to the last step into the roof, design and decor continuity contribute to the time inflection as the 21st century falls away and a sovereign past takes over.
Standing on the landing, just beneath the attic stairs, a graduated stack of archaic leather travelling cases seemed to say, ‘Hello. Remember me? ”. In type and in arrangement they reminded me of their useful ubiquity when requisitioned as props for stage and TV period dramas and in real life for the part they play in adding nostalgic credibility to photographic backdrops, especially when the photoshoot, be it for personal or professional reasons, chooses as its venue quaint Victorian railway stations, often well-preserved thanks to the efforts of steam enthusiasts. Graduated travelling cases form a tried and trusted staple in the creation of the obsolescence we freely equate with the past and of which we are particularly fond when used with a certain exactitude in living history dioramas at England’s 1940s’ events.
Sharing space on the same landing as the Villa Gretchen’s travelling cases was a small, polished rectangular table playing host to an old-fashioned telephone. It was a phone quite different to the obsession we have today – that nasty little rectangular thing that hitches a ride in our bag and pocket like an insistent, chattering parasite to which we are habituated to honour and obey.
The telephone on the small, rectangular table was big and bold and bulky, deliberately made not to be mobile, made of metal with a Bakelite handset and delightfully surmounted by two brassy conical gongs. Whilst its consummate authenticity demanded the kind of closer attention I was not prepared to indulge in today – it was already long past beer time – the switchboard of poetic licence connected me to the reflective thought that no matter what its actual age, it and its suitcase mates did what they were supposed to be doing, and doing it rather well.
From the landing, sharing the phone and suitcases, a corridor ensued, giving access right and left and, at its farthermost end, to a total of four guest bedrooms.
Olga immediately seized on one containing an imposing double wardrobe and a broad, open swathe of shelves that had been imaginatively positioned beneath beams of some antiquity, cleverly recessed into the folds of the building’s natural contours, and which ran the entire length of one wall. For a moment it seemed as if we had arrived and we were settled, but indecision being what it is – I suppose you could say it is indecisive – temptingly raised its not-untypical head when, on opening the door of a second room, which, though nominally smaller than the first, was even more atmospheric. So enchantingly struck we both were by the enticing old-world beauty of a bed whose head- and footboards were richly and lavishly carved and opposite by a wardrobe in sumptious high-flown, full-blown Baroque that we felt obliged to run, two or three times at least, back and forth between the two rooms in order to get the flavour of each. Needless to say, the final decision of which of the rooms we should take was delayed for a good ten minutes or more by the tedious repetition of “Take a photo of me!” – the compromise to which became “Take a photo of me as well”. I imagine you need no introduction to that adage for all ages: ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ‘em!’
Villa Gretchen’s owners had spared no small deliberation and, with it, I would say, expense, pursuant to their quest to reconstruct, as far as they were able, an atmospheric and convincing facsimile of how a German residence may have looked in the early years of the 20th century. Even the crest rail on the bedstead’s headboard and the adjacent linen press pediment conformed in style to one another. I couldn’t have felt more at home than if I had landed here by TARDIS.
Meanwhile, downstairs, for that’s where we would eventually be when we had ceased singing songs of praise, it had not been possible to pass insouciantly from the decade-deeming entrance hall into the wooden-beamed and leather-chaired lounge without pausing en route to admire the scene-stealing presence bestowed by that chunky, German stove, to which I alluded earlier, or, as it is called in German, a Kachelöfen.
These glossy or matte-tiled monoliths are unlike anything ordinarily found in any 19th-century or early 20th-century English residence, but in Königsberg and its provinces and throughout traditional German homes, their functionality at that time would have been considered as indispensable as they are highly prized today, and just as their look and composition attracted attention then, they are equally, if not more so by dint of age and curiosity, desirable objects to have and to own in one’s home today.
It needs to be remarked upon that way back when in the days of yore, those Germans had a certain knack; they knew a thing or two, as the construction and effectiveness, not forgetting visual appeal, of the Kachelöfen bears witness to. They might, to the novice, incite trepidation, but all it takes to operate this particular brand of dinosaur is a small but intense wood fire, hot enough to propel a steady stream of heat into a complex network of brick cavities, saturating the internal masonry beneath the Kachelöfen’s heavy tiles, and the whole caboodle is thus transformed from a showcase ceramic stack into a giant storage radiator, capable of releasing constant and uniform warmth for, depending on the size of the stove and its consequent built-in efficiency, a time of no-mean duration, extending from 12 to 24 hours, long after, in most cases, the fire itself has turned to dust. I think we can safely say, especially with regard to Britain, a country in which we cannot afford either gas or electric heating, where we are sitting on tonnes of coal but not allowed to mine it, that every home should have one; the only problem is that we cannot afford to burn wood either. Now, where on earth did I put them? Those low-cost handy hot water bottles?
Villa Gretchen in Otradnoye – what you need to know
Had I not been rushing to get into the social hub of things and open a bottle of beer, I might have tarried long enough to take photographs of the magnificent stove, but, as noted on the landing page, this blog is not intended to be anything like a typical travelogue, so until I do acquire photographs I shall leave the latter to germinate in the well-manured soil of your fertile visual imaginations.
From the comfortable lounge I haven’t described in detail, in spite of it containing a nice settee and chairs in leather and disporting on the wall the most remarkable mural depicting the city of Königsberg, we sallied through the kitchen, emerging thereunto to take our place inside a sizeable room fashioned for all intents and purposes like a mediaeval banqueting hall, although you could just as well describe it as a congregational chapel. This public hospitality space lent itself most admirably to gatherings such as ours, which, as previously not divulged, was Mr Chileekin’s birthday bash.
In addition to infusions of an intoxicating nature, there was a lot to absorb in here, such as the long refectory table, bygone furniture from various periods, a marvellous oversized red-brick fireplace and many other choicely curated bits and bobs and curios intended, as they did, to divert, distract and delight.
Potential enjoyment might also be gained from the maestro tinkling of a parlour piano, an instrument much loved and, for my liking, too often attended by the wilful fingers of enthusing children, which hammered away relentlessly on the ebony and ivory keys, greatly to the detriment of unamused adult ears, not to mention their delicate dispositions; and over there, behind me, covering one entire wall, was another source of enjoyment, but one which would never jangle one’s nerves. It was the most elaborate painted mural, which I think you can just about see peeping out from over my shoulder in the photograph below. You know, I really think it is high time I got myself a photographer!
Our sojourn at Villa Gretchen took place in the deep midwinter, which is to say, it was cold. But this did not deter us from wandering out at midnight and making use of the brick gazebo.
It was dark, and my eyes were bleary – I have no idea why – but they still retained sufficient sense to discern in the feeble lamplight the astounding extent to which the patrons of this fine building had enclosed a fireplace within a wall whose red-brick arches and bowed crenellation would not have looked out of place had they once occupied a great hall belonging to Königsberg Castle.
The open sides of this wine-and-dine palace were protected by polythene sheets of the heavy-duty variety, which are perfect for making walls which don’t object to the light coming in. It also contained a barbecue fire, which helped stave off a modicum of the crisp December air on the eve of our patronisation. A construction such as this must be a boon in summer, with the plastic sides rolled all the way up and the sun granted full permission to join the throng inside.
Throng or no throng this evening, I eventually reached a stage when I knew it would be wrong of me to succumb to another drink, so I only had one more, a quick snifter, so to speak, and then, like Captain Sensible (almost), made my autopilot way to where I could hear my baroque bed calling. I even remembered where this bed was; oh, there to lie in Gothic style and there to dream of Camelot (I think I’ve got that right?), with its winsome damsels in distress, which is where, on this cognac- and beer-full night, I decided I would leave them – bold Good Knight, this night, good night.
Useful Information
Villa Gretchen, Sanatornaya Ulitsa 4, Otradnoye, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, 238563
