Tolstoy Art Café Kaliningrad: It’s a Novel Experience

No need to read between the lines ….

10 November 2025 – Tolstoy Art Café Kaliningrad

Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Fyodor Dostoevsky — I feel a certain intimacy with either one and all of these gentlemen, not solely because I have read and admired their inimitable works, their acknowledged masterpieces, but also from the observation that these noted writers displayed a fondness to lesser and higher degrees for alcoholic beverages. That Tolstoy did not follow suit, at least by the time of 1850, when come his spiritual transformation he renounced the demon drink, could explain the reason why I am not so well acquainted either with his works or with the life of the man himself. As in matters of race and politics, people of a certain persuasion are often drawn to one another, finding comfort and cohesion in shared identities and experience.

Tolstoy Art Café Kaliningrad

Any prejudices that I might entertain towards temperance in general and temperate people in particular were swiftly dispelled, however, upon learning of a café in Kaliningrad bearing the name of Leo Tolstoy. Not thinking to inquire whether the said establishment had outlawed the sale of alcohol in deference to its namesake, I decided, nevertheless, that since Leo’s transformation had caused him to revise and relinquish the unnecessary primordial practice of sinking one’s teeth into flesh, whilst his denunciation of alcohol could be excused as an aberration, his conscious metamorphosis from carnivore to vegetarian proved in this particular that he could not be all that bad a chap, and, even should you not concur on this point, take stock that he wrote a book or two, and that anyone in my opinion who willingly devotes the greater percentage of their little life wrestling with the written word deserves, if nothing else, to have a café named in their honour. It does make you wonder, though, about the literary prowess of McDonald. (I know his brother; he has a farm.) We are all acquainted with the adage ‘never judge a book by its cover’, and McDonald’s, of course, are not real restaurants, but having more junk-food factories named after you than Colonel Sanders implies that Old McDonald’s bruv has to be one hell of a writer. Based on the same criteria, have you ever dined at the JK Rowling?

Tolstoy Art Café Kaliningrad: It’s a Novel Experience

Anyway, burger to thoughts of that nature, let’s first apologise to Leo and then get down to the nitty-gristle: What was it that I found and liked on my maiden voyage to the Tolstoy Café?

You might like to check out these …
Café Seagull by the Lake
Soul Garden
Patisson Markt Restaurant
Croissant Café
Premier Café Bar

I could say, and if I did, I would be perfectly wrong in doing so, that should you not be specifically looking for it, the whereabouts of Tolstoy Art Café would be impossible to miss. Komsomol’skaya Street, which is where the café is located, lies in what was in Königsberg’s time one of the city’s most prominent suburbs. The same rings true today.

Here you will find row upon row of solid, upmarket German flats, punctuated now and again with imposing municipal buildings and villas of a stately nature. Being predominantly residential, the assumption that the Tolstoy Art Café would have no great difficulty in standing out from the crowd is to court an evident misconception. Despite the oversized painted portrait of Tolstoy’s well-known visage, the building occupied by the café, being set back from the road and, during the months of summer, being partially screened by trees, could lead without deliberate scrutiny to passing the image off as the competent endeavor of—and here I am being polite — what some would call a ‘street artist’, or, if it suits your understanding better, the work of a graffiti merchant, who, having taken his paints and spray can, has adorned the wall of a uniform townhouse with a likeness of his favourite writer.

Whether I could have found the café alone, working from directions only, is a metric that cannot be tested. I knew where I was going, as I was being taken there.

Tolstoy Art Café, Kaliningrad: A Literary Retreat

Tolstoy, I am now referring to the man, the ingenious, gifted writer, is not about graffiti, nor about temperance and not liking sausages; Tolstoy is a man of letters. OK, so the letters of which we speak don’t spell “Mine’s a beer” or “Order me up a Double Big Mac”, but they’re definitely of a type that professionally and epically, and to this I will also add lavishly, fill many a page in many a book — think of War and Peace. Thus, that the theme of the Tolstoy Art Café is irrefutably bookish is not the kind of revelation that is going to blow your socks off or knock the stuffing clean away out of your Christmas turkey. There are books at Tolstoy Art Café — indeed books and books and books — but the fact that they are there — and there, and there and everywhere — is only part of the story.

Stacked in blocks and bound in string, which once was the way of doing things when preparing books for shipment, is a nice twee touch of vintage, which the café carries off well. And books to be found where they should be, stood at attention on shelves, lend the place an erudite air. Yet, it is not books in themselves, as appropriate as they are to a café named after a famous writer, that generate true novelty. It is in discovering books where you would least expect to find them and in a capacity and aesthetic arrangement hitherto unexperienced where the known ordinary surpasses itself.

I’ll try you with a clue. Tolstoy was a brilliant writer, an undisputed literary genius. His intellect and imagination seemingly knew no heights. Millions of readers around the world admire and look up to him. In his exploration of human experience and his deep moral and philosophical insights, he stands head and shoulders above many of his contemporaries.

“Tell me something new!” you say. And as your eyes roll upwards in an intended show of exasperation, now you see them where you saw them not, up there on the ceiling.

Books on the ceiling at Tolstoy Art Café in Kaliningrad — **Blog**

Books and volumes of them, some presenting their covers, some with opened, fluttering leaves; some pinned to the ceiling, others suspended at different heights by string; not just thrown together but creatively arranged, pre-planned, choreographed, artistically assembled.

The sight of so many books hovering above like words of wisdom placed inconveniently just out of reach is enough to make the dullest fellow want to say, as though he means it, “I do enjoy a good read, you know, though most of it is over my head.”

Whilst this is patently obvious in the room with its halo of books, Tolstoy Art Café is two rooms bookish. The second room has soft seats and books on shelves arranged traditionally, which can be taken down and read at leisure as one would do in a public library.

Tolstoy Art Café, Kaliningrad. This room is like a public library.

But don’t book now! I whisper. To get into this furthest room, you must pass beneath an arch of books, as though entering into a sacred chamber where scholarly miracles are performed.

Tolstoy Art Café. An arch of books ... — **Underneath the arches .**..

Meanwhile, in the first room, the one with the books aloft, look for the book entitled ‘Going through an identity crisis’. This refers to the room itself. Exposed brick walls with angled lamps that play with shadows and highlights trend towards industrial chic, but a plethora of retro wall plaques, framed disparate prints and the inclusion of a parlour piano tilt the impression unevenly towards a sense of sitting quietly somewhere in Tolstoy’s living room, unlike any he ever owned but fictitiously convincing enough to urge you to respect his views on abandoning meat and booze: “Just a couple of soda waters and a vegetarian sausage, please.”

Olga Hart samples novel chic at Tolstoy Art Café

Rest assured, however, that the menu is not so Tolstoy-friendly as to predispose you to any such subterfuge. If anything, it is plainly lacking in vegetarian options, as though Mrs Tolstoy is in the kitchen cooking up things she shouldn’t. The meat options may not sit well with the man who created Count Vronsky, but I have it on good authority that they are for the most part tasty dishes, reasonably priced and pluralistic.

Mercifully, the Volstead Act that Tolstoy visited upon himself is not inflicted on the eponymous café’s patrons, thus enabling me to sample, not only sample but also enjoy, a rather moreish wheat fermentation to go with my meatless pizza.

Mick Hart in Kaliningrad with wheat beer at Tolstoy Art Café

Mick Hart, beer, a piano, vintage - just how he likes it!

When I am out on the town, I’m not one who watches prices, so I cannot whisper in your lug if the fare at Tolstoy Art Café was underpriced, overpriced or just about the right price {“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom,”—so said Tolstoy himself} — but I am willing to bet my entire collection of vintage luncheon vouchers that if you are looking for somewhere different, which is also comfortable and atmospheric, a place in which to rest your bones, partake of a bite to eat, and drink a commendable coffee or (sshhh!) a beautiful bottle of beer, then, as Anna Karina once said, or was it five chapters in War and Peace, “… one must live and be happy.”

Buying happiness for 100 roubles — **Happiness costs a mere 100 roubles (less than a quid) at Tolstoy Art Café, Kaliningrad**

I am old enough to remember a time when ‘Happiness was a cigar called Hamlet”, but today, it’s a place called Tolstoy Art Café where creatives park their arts and others like to make such jokes as, “Do I need to book a table? Don’t judge it by my cover. Turn over a new leaf in your life and open a new café chapter. Bookmark my words, you’ll love it, I’m sure!

The main thing

Tolstoy Art Cafe (Art Кафе Tolstoy)
Ulitsa Komsomol’skaya, 17, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, 236023

Opening times
Monday to Friday: 8am to 9pm
Saturday: 10am to 9pm
Sunday: 10am to 9pm

Kaliningrad Zoopark Now and Then Then and Now

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Going zoolally at Kaliningrad Zoopark

30 October 2025 – Kaliningrad Zoopark Now and Then Then and Now

On Kaliningrad’s Prospekt Mira, across the road from the city’s foremost Soviet hotel, a great imposing slab of a place called the Moscow, geometrically flanked by two curvilinear buildings, the one on the left containing the exemplar restaurant Patisson Markt, stands the beckoning entrance to one of Kaliningrad’s more exotic, historic attractions, known today as the Kaliningrad Zoopark.

Kaliningrad has had a zoo for years, even before it was Kaliningrad. The zoo came into being, took shape and became a permanent fixture exactly where it is today when Kaliningrad was Königsberg in the 1890s.

It would have to wait for more than a century, however, before Mick Hart would come along and bless it with his presence.

Königsberg Zoo entrance early 20th century

^ The entrance to Königsberg Zoo. How it was in 1913.

^ The entrance to Kaliningrad Zoopark. How it was in 2025.

Kaliningrad Zoopark 2001

My first visit to Kaliningrad Zoo took place in May 2001. My exact recollection of it is what you might call hazy (those vodkas the night before!), but I noted in my diary that it was an entertaining, atmospheric but rather rundown and whiffy place. To animal and zoo lovers, my appraisal of this valued institution embedded in the archived history of the ancient city of Königsberg may be considered rather unworthy, but you cannot be a pig farmer, as such was my lot in my youth, without becoming a connoisseur of the pongs of the animal kingdom, in much the same way that you cannot work in the media, as I did in later life, and not become familiar with the pong of humankind.

No longer linked with much affection to either end of the animal chain, the higher or the lower, my enjoyment of the zoo was initially inspired by its unique place in the history books, particularly that of its status as one of the few surviving large-scale landmarks not to be completely destroyed by the intense aerial bombardment and vicious urban fighting that took out most of Königsberg towards the end of the Second World War.

In 2001, the year when I crossed the zoo’s threshold for the first time, the main attraction was its resident hippopotamus. The connection was, and is, a historic, romantic and deeply iconic one. It follows the poignant story of Hans the Hippo, one of only four of the hundreds of animal inmates to survive the devastation wrought by the siege of Königsberg and the vicious hand-to-hand combat that took place in the grounds of the zoo itself.

Monument to WWII battle in Königsberg Zoo

^ It’s difficult to imagine, and you don’t really want to, that a fierce and deadly battle took place here, in what today is one of the most quiet and tranquil spots in Kaliningrad. This memorial commemorating that struggle reads: “On April 8, 1945, Hero of the Soviet Union, Lapshin, and his rifle platoon launched a surprise attack from two sides of the zoo, taking the bridge, killing 30 Nazis and capturing 185 more. This action decided the outcome of the Battle for the Zoo.”

It is not readily known what happened to his fellow survivors, a deer, a donkey and a badger, but Hans, who was found badly shot up in a ditch, was lovingly nursed back to life by a Russian military paramedic using that cure-all of all cure-alls, vodka, which he administered to the wounded hippo in copious amounts.

A hippo, a deere, a donkey and a badger. Statue at Kaliningrad Zoopark

^ A hippo, a deer, a donkey and a badger
This statue, constructed from metal plates and rods by a team of 15 different artisans belonging to the art group San Donato, commemorates the four that survived the wartime battle at Königsberg Zoo.

Having beaten all the odds, Hans went on to symbolize both life’s fragility and durability, becoming and remaining the zoo’s fabled hero and its number-one attraction until his death in 1950.

Since the passing of Hans, Kaliningrad Zoo has always had a hippo. I tried to unearth the name of the hippo residing at the zoo contemporaneous to my visit in 2001. Unsuccessful in this enterprise, I nevertheless have fond memories, all be they rather distant, of an enormous set of open jaws eagerly catching fish tossed between their gaping hinges from a keeper’s plastic bucket.

History of the Zoo
The origins of Kaliningrad Zoo predate my arrival on the scene by something more than a century. Conceptually they occurred in 1895, the year that saw in Königsberg, on the site where the zoo stands today, a German industrial craft exhibition. At the close of this event, it was suggested by the organiser, entrepreneur Herman Claesson, that the wooden pavilions erected for the occasion not be deconstructed but remain where they were in situ and the site that they currently occupied be used in the creation of a zoological garden under the auspices and administration of a group specifically founded for this purpose, which eventually would be known as the Tiergarten Society.

Initially, and throughout the early years of the 20^th century, the zoo became a major attraction and flourished in every sense. But this golden age would end abruptly, as did so many other things, with the outbreak of World War I.

Despite reopening when the hostilities ended, in the depression-riddled years that followed, the zoo never fully recovered the popularity it had once enjoyed. The Tiergarten Society, which had successfully founded and run the zoo from the moment of its inception, was dissolved in 1938, and on its dissolution the administration of the zoo and the future that awaited it passed into the hands of the City of Königsberg.

They loved a zoo and a circus in the late 19th century

The latter years of the 19^th century witnessed international animal trade on an unprecedented level, supplying zoos and circuses with a source of public entertainment, an educational resource for the scientific community and a lucrative business for entrepreneurs.

When Königsberg Zoo first opened its gates, it offered its awestruck audience the opportunity to come face-to-face with something of the order of 900 different kinds of animals curated from no less than 260 global species. Although figures vary from source to source, estimates of the number of animals held by Kaliningrad Zoo today cite something in the region of 2,300, drawn from as many as 300 species, comprising mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, amphibians and invertebrates.

Whilst Königsberg Zoo, based on its animal population, was, at the time of its incorporation, by no means the largest zoo in the world, with 40 acres of land at its disposal, it was no diminutive enterprise. That figure has remained constant, but the increase in its animal populace is matched and superseded by its daily bipedal visitors.

On 11 October 2025, it was announced on a Kaliningrad News* site that the next 956 visitors would take the zoo’s visitor total to an impressive 700,000. The zoo’s director, Svetlana Sokolova, wrote in her Telegram channel that the 700,000th visitor could expect to be a prize winner.

Kaliningrad Zoopark Now and Then Then and Now

Considering the extent to which Kaliningrad itself has evolved over the 25 years that I have known it, it comes as no surprise that in composition and infrastructure the zoo’s improvements are commensurable.

Such development is not solely reflected in the facilities of the animal kingdom but also in the amenities for those people who come to the zoo to be stared at by the animals.

Today’s Kaliningrad Zoopark, as well as showcasing creatures great and small, also presents the perfect habitat in which to unwind and relax. Beyond the city’s hustle and bustle, the secluded grounds of the zoo stand as a parkland haven, a nuanced natural retreat replete with tree- and shrub-lined walkways, quiet meandering paths, quaint historic bridges, green and floral sheltered spaces, and, depending on what time of the year you visit, pumpkins.

^You’ll turn into a …
Either a lot of Cinderella coaches or Stingy Jack’s secret stash; whatever the allusion, who could resist a photograph with so many lovely pumpkins — certainly not our Olga.

Kaliningrad Zoo is a family venue, catering for young and old alike. There are plenty of places to picnic in and, if making sandwiches is not your thing, eateries of various kinds. Plus, in the unlikely event that your offspring should get bored, there are swings, slides and other playground distractions that ought to be more than enough to keep the little darlings occupied and prevent them from behaving like grizzling grizzly bears.

On the subject of bears, grizzled or docile, a series of dramatic declivities sloping down to the winding channels that follow the flow of the Pregolya River are an invitation to explore the zoo on foot. They provide the route to the bear enclosures, a rugged quarter of rock and gullies, mined with caves and passages in which, should the fancy take them, the bears can take refuge and hide (bears can be self-conscious too, you know). There are also plateaus at different levels where they can lounge, lie, preen and pose quietly to their bear hearts’ content.

A little further on this descent, at a point where the path zigs left at a zag of 90 degrees, a large compound presents itself for inspection by the curious. It is about the size of a football pitch but asymmetrical by design, and on all but one of its four sides has steep, overhanging cliffs. The side where it is cliffless has, in place of a wall of rock, a natural tree-trunk frame containing a viewing window, presumably made of reinforced glass. It explains itself in an instant. Lying but a few feet away on the other side of the glass is a lazy, lounging lioness. She is staring away from the window, seemingly oblivious to the meaty snacks observing her, but the thing to remember with predators, be they animal or human, is that though the eye of instinct may be closed, it rarely ever sleeps.

It is quite a walk, this walk to the base of the valley, but once you’ve hit rock bottom, there is space enough to catch one’s breath on any one of the Zoopark’s little curved bridges. Here, you can rest for a while, and gazing into the trickling water, ask yourself the question, because it is so tranquil, did a desperate, violent struggle for life, a dreadful and bloody war, really take place where I am standing? The answer seems to ricochet across the time that’s spent, tearing a piece of complacency from your tiny moment of living consciousness, making life all at once both undeniably precious and, should you dwell too deeply on it, undeniably senseless.

Now that you are where you are, all you need to do is climb back up to where you were. With 40 acres to traverse, the way to spare your legs is to hop aboard the zoo park’s train. This little colourful engine, with its open-sided flatbed platform, doesn’t rely on tracks for navigation. It trundles along on a nice set of wheels, effortlessly transporting effort-avoiding paying passengers around the park from A to B and to almost every other letter in the Zoopark’s personal alphabet.

The Kaliningrad Zoo, the one that I knew back in 2001, is not the zoo that I know today. On reprising my visit last autumn, in September of 2024, I was, I admit, quite frankly surprised by the extent to which I enjoyed the experience, both the animal exhibits and the off-the-beaten-track sojourn in the idyllic parkland gardens. However, had Hans the hippo’s ghost been present, I am sure he would have been less than amused by the greeting proffered by his modern successor. It really was a case of “Do you think my bum looks big in this Zoo?”

Kaliningrad Zoo. It's bottoms up from the hippo!

^ I genuinely believe that they are trying to tell us something?
I wasn’t sure if I had missed the notice on the way into the zoo which explained that today was a special themed event run by the animals entitled ‘Turn the other cheek’, or whether their unified display of wildly, and sometimes widely, differing sized posteriors was a planned act of concerted cheekiness. My first prize goes to the cuddly bears; my second to the bare-arsed cheek with which we were presented. As the zoo is billed as a family experience, please feel free to ignore this remark.

^Are you looking at me?!

Aquarium at Kaliningrad Zoopark — Tanked up

Big fish at Kaliningrad Zoopark — Tanked up

^Something fishy going on
Some fish can be quite frightening, can’t they? There are so many fishermen in Kaliningrad, I was rather surprised on entering the aquarium that there weren’t some in here dangling their rods.

Capturing the past. The architecture at Kaliningrad Zoopark

^ Refreshments
Kaliningrad Zoopark is not a refreshment-free zone. Unless you have eaten alreday in Patisson Markt, you will find no excuse not to take some sort of refreshment during your stay in the park. I like the way in which the zoo’s serveries, such as the one shown here, echo the distinctive architectural style that once was Königsberg’s signature.

Königsberg style restored at Kaliningrad Zoopark — Gorgeous Gothic finials

A natural habitat at Kaliningrad Zoo — Gorgeous Gothic finials

^Last two photographs
If your Russian is not as rusty as mine, and your eyesight younger, you may be able to make out from the photographed information board what exactly this building, reconstructed as a faithful replica to its lost 19^th century origina,l was. You can’t? Well, take a look at the pictures. The original was constructed in 1903.

^ It’s green and it’s woody
No prizes for guessing why Kaliningrad Zoo is called Kaliningrad Zoopark. It’s green; it’s woody. There are lots of benches on which to sit and lots of trees to sit next to and under and lots of shrubs to admire. Kaliningrad Zoopark sits where it does; a quiet, natural, leisurely retreat in the middle of a modern city teeming with life and traffic. The zoo takes you off the streets and keeps you out of mischief.

The main thing

Kaliningrad Zoopark, Prospekt Mira, 26, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, 236022

Tel: (8) 401 221-89=14

Opening times
Monday to Sunday 9am to 5pm

Admission
https://kldzoo.ru/visit-and-tickets/prices-and-tickets/

Kaliningrad Zoopark Website
https://kldzoo.ru/

Reference
*There are 956 people left before the record 700 thousand visitors to the Kaliningrad Zoo – Kaliningrad News

Image attribution:
Konigsberg Zoo entrance with carriages c.1913: https://picryl.com/media/tiergarten-konigsberg-eingang-e8aeb3

Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions

Do I detect an air of Pofik!?

Edited 30 September 2025 | First published: 3 July 2022 ~ Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions

It cannot be pleasant being the least liked prime minister in British history, but it should be remembered that Kier Starmer and his crew are only where they are today as a result of 14 years of Tory ineptitude, non-stop party infighting and off-the-chart bungling and incompetence. If the Cons hadn’t been so obsessed in beating Labour at its own wokist game, and Badenoch is a symptom of this absurdity, the foundations that they laid which paved the way for Labour’s accession would never have lost us our country.

This post, originally published in July of 2022, was a response to two inseparable misconceptions: first, that with work Boris Johnson could overcome himself and somehow run the country; and second, that Western sanctions would critically undermine Russia’s economic stability, which has proven to be far more resilient than the UK and its allies evidently anticipated. Here is that retrospective.

With Lithuania threatening to blockade Kaliningrad by restricting transit of goods from mainland Russia by train, the Latvian interior minister gleefully announcing that this proved that the West was poised to ‘take Kaliningrad away from Russia’¹ and the prime minister of Poland making so much noise that it is difficult to tell whether it is his sabre rattling, his teeth chattering or something more personal knocking together, it looked as though once again the storm clouds had begun to gather over the former region of the Teutonic Order.

I cannot, however, say with any semblance of sincerity that, as the shadow slowly dispersed, the Kaliningrad populace breathed a sigh of relief, for, quite frankly, and not flippantly, but wanting as always to tell it exactly as it is, nobody — meaning nobody with whom in Kaliningrad I am acquainted — seemed to give a flying f*ck!

You can put it down to whatever you like: the Russian penchant for c’est la vie, faith in themselves and their country, a growing immunity to the West’s mouth and trousers or perhaps the absence of a corporate media that makes its fortune by pedalling fear, but, whatever you attribute it to, if the residents of Kaliningrad were supposed to feel concerned by the slew of sanctions and the threat of isolation, then think again, as it didn’t happen.

Perhaps the intended fallout never occurred because we were all too busy laughing at Boris Johnson’s jokes. For example, the one about the conflict in Ukraine, which, says Boris, would never have happened had Vladimir Putin been a woman. Woked the Downing Street clown, It’s the “perfect example of toxic masculinity,” causing me to ask myself what exactly is masculinity when it is detoxified? Is it where you rove around without wearing any pants with your gonads painted rainbow colours, or when you go into hiding like President Turdeau does whenever he hears a trucker’s horn?

To increase his chances of success in obtaining future employment with Robert Brothers’ Circus, Boris jocularly suggested during the G7 Summit that the leaders of the ‘free’ world (free with every packet of neoliberal dictatorship) should, to equal the manliness of Vladimir Putin, take off all their clothes, to which President Putin replied, and I think this is something we all can agree on, “I don’t know how they wanted to undress, waist-high or not, but I think it would be a disgusting sight …”² It certainly conjured up an image far more frightful than any threat that the collective West had yet devised and had a far more psychologically damaging impact than the predictability of waging war with the globalist weapon of choice — sanctions.

Alack-a-day, as unthinkable as it is, if Boris wasn’t joking, then his latest remarks well might be some of the most stupid things he has ever said. However, it doesn’t necessarily follow. Occasionally, but seldomly, and most likely accidentally, Boris proves to himself, and others who care to listen to him, that if he tries, really tries, he is capable of utterances that seem at face value to make some sense, not much and not often, granted, but like miracles and wishes that sometimes can come true, the fantastic has been known to happen, which is more than can be said for anyone in the Labour party ~ or about any and all of the Labour party’s supporters.

Nevertheless, Boris old boy, you must admit that some of the things that you have been blurting out of late do have a rather silly public schoolboy wheeze about them. Now, were you the current President of the United States at least you could plead senility or, failing that, insanity. But be careful and beware! Keep on behaving in this childish manner and you’ll make yourself the perfect candidate for filling Biden’s boots when in a not long time from now Biden’s booted out.

Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions

I suppose that in moments like these, those of us who are old enough to remember, should simply take a step backwards and give thanks that we lived in the England of old, in the days of pre-gender bending. And though for most Winston Churchill has passed from living memory into history, note that the great man himself was endowed with more than his fair share of so-called ‘toxic masculinity’, even more, perhaps, than that which queerly circulates among whatever it is that charges around playing women’s rugby. And heaven be praised that Winston Churchill was such a toxically manly man, for had it not been so, we’d all be speaking German now. Mein Gott!

We don’t. And the dark clouds over Kaliningrad, like all the threats and nonsense leaching out from the G7 Summit, were nothing but storms in a teacup. The only positive outcome for those of us in the West who are rapidly losing faith in ever being blessed again with a real man for prime minister is that Boris kept his trousers on.

And yet, so as not to be accused of having been economical with the truth, I can confirm that a storm did break. After a glorious week of glorious weather, Kaliningrad and its region were suddenly plunged headlong into the most frightful and persistent series of electric storms imaginable.

For three days and as many nights, the firmament’s guts growled flatulently. Sheets of livid light flashed across the sky and, lying there in bed unable to sleep because of it, it was easy to imagine that the entire world was forked ~ forked, that is, with lightning!

Olga was in a right old tizz. To her it was a celestial sign, unequivocal confirmation that her tarot-card readers, crystal-ball gazers, soothsayers and the like, whose predictions she believes implicitly and to whom she refers collectively and in glowing terms as esoterics, whom I call snake-oil salesmen, had got it bang to rights: change was in the air; portentous and tumultuous change; a new bright dawn was coming.

Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions

As strange as it may seem, our normally vocal cat Gin-Ginsky had nothing to say on the matter, or if he did, he was keeping it to himself. He is a rather diplomatic cat. He doesn’t make jokes like Boris Johnson, which means he remains in favour and, unlike Boris Johnson, makes him rather easy to live with.

Considering him to be a little less slim than once he probably was, Ginger, not Boris Johnson, we recently changed his food to a brand called ‘Food for Fat Cats’, as recommended by those in the West who keep their clothes on at G7 Summits.

The word ‘light’ on the packet implies this food has dietary benefit. Ginger seems to love it. He scoffs it twice as fast as he did when eating his former brand and in ever-increasing quantities. Every now and again he will look up from his bowl and fix you with his ginger eyes as if to say, “Fat cat, indeed, I’ll show you!” Perhaps, the meaning of ‘Food for Fat Cats’ is ‘Food to make cats fatter’? I must remember to warn him that if he ever attends a G7 Summit not to take his shirt off!

Those of you who in the West, especially those among you who changed your Arsebook avatars to the colours of the Ukrainian flag and are now ashamed you did but never will admit it, are dying to hear, I know, how badly the sanctions are biting in Kaliningrad. That’s why I mentioned the cat: he’s biting into his grub. But I would be Boris Johnson should I lie and say that the price of cat food has not increased incrementally since the waving of the magic wand of sanctions. What other things have gone up recently (ooerr Mrs)? Have all of us in Kaliningrad been forced to change our diet? Are we all eating cheaper brands of cat food?

I know that an interest in this topic exists because lately a lot of people have been tuning into my post Panic Buying Shelves Empty. I can only presume that this is down to Brits kerb-crawling the internet in search of hopeful signs that western sanctions don’t lack teeth.

Instances exist, I will admit, when we, like our cat, are biting these days into different brand-named foods than those in which we used to sink our gnashers before sanctions were pulled from the hat. The reason being, I suppose, because the brands that we used to buy belong to manufacturers who have been forced into playing Biden’s game, Exodus & Lose Your Money.

Price increases in some food categories have been duly noted. Pheew, what a relief, I hear you say. If this was not the case, then the sanctions’ ideology would be more embarrassing than it already is for leaders of western countries who are ruining their own economies by having introduced them.

Were we talking beer? If we weren’t then, we are now.

With the advent of the sanctions, some beer brands are noticeably absent, although the earlier gaps in shelves have since been filled with different brands from different brewers from different parts of the world. Those brands untouched by sanctimonies, which is to say those that still remain, do reflect a hike in price, but as prices fluctuate wildly here during the best of times, it is simply a matter of shopping around as one always does, sanctions or no sanctions, for products that do not mug your pocket.

So, there in essence you have it. Not from the bought and paid for UK corporate media, agenda-led by globalist moguls, but from an honest-to-goodness sanctioned Englishman reporting from Russia’s Kaliningrad, who is willing to swear on a stack of ale casks, with one hand on his heart and the other on his beer glass, that life in Russia’s exclave under threat and sanctions has changed so little as to be negligibly different to life as it was in the days when sanctions were but an evil twinkle in the eyes of those whose machinations have ultimately let them down.

If you wanted to hear that the sanctions are working, I’m sorry I disappointed you.

References
1. Russia threatened NATO with a “meat grinder” when trying to take Kaliningrad Russian news EN (lenta-ru.translate.goog)
2. https://www.rt.com/russia/558107-putin-boris-johnson-response/

Image attributions
Thunderbolt: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Mr-Thunderbolt-cloud-vector-image/31288.html
Fat man: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/fat-man-clipart_4.htm

Palestine What a State! By the UK in a State!

*The UK in a state recognises a state as a state

Not to understate it too much, but, I say, Sir Kier, is that armada of boats steaming towards the UK from Palestine?

25 September 2025 – Palestine What a State! By the UK in a State!

If you are a liberal lefty, a member of a certain ethnic group embedded in the UK or part of the applaud-everything topsy-turvy left-wing press, you are most likely celebrating Starmer’s decision to recognise Palestine as a state. There are many others, however, which include, not surprisingly, Israel’s Netanyahu, who regard this latest suspect move by Starmer as hoisting up the white flag to terrorists and their aims. ‘Netanyahu slams Starmer as ‘rewarding terrorism’ — The Sun.

Now, see here!
Brits told to be vigilant as boats sail in on tide of terror
Reform Mass Deportation Bill is the Way to Save UK
Elon Musk Violence Speech Hits a Raw Liberal Nerve

Palestine What a State!

The left-wing governments of France, Australia and Canada would argue differently. They are not recognising Palestine as a virtue-signalling gesture to consolidate the leftist vote or to appease ethnic groups of whom they are frightened shitless (it’s much easier to pick on and intimidate ‘unprotected groups’, ie white British); neither are they doing such to win votes in the future from this rapidly expanding ethnic tribe. Their message to the world is, ‘We are doing this for humanity.’ It’s very much the same message as one we are more familiar with: we are standing with Ukraine in the name of sovereign democracy.

Their now follows a small, but significant cough, ‘Ah, hem!’ Not to be confused with Amen, because that’s something in the West that very soon we will not, along with a whole lot of other things, be permitted to say, although now we have started to say what we should have said but didn’t a long, long time ago, of course, we’ll go on saying it.

Here’s a man who knows his onions!

“Britain only recognised Palestine because it is ‘flooded with foreigners’” — Marc Rubio, The Telegraph

My concern is that shortly after Starmer’s announcement, I heard what I thought was an ill wind, or was it the sound of dinghies inflating somewhere in the desert?

Excuse me, Mr Starmer, sir, does your recognition of Palestine mean that we can expect to see in the not-too-distant future a flotilla of refugee boats crammed with Palestinians bearing down on Dover?

Palestine What a State!

Everybody knows what the UK corporate media wants them to know about this momentous conferment, but has anyone asked the terrorists living and thriving in the UK what they make of it all? Are they eternally grateful for the fair play and moral decency exhibited by Keir Starmer and his western cohorts? “What jolly good fellows they are! Time to play the white man!” Or are they much too busy patting each other on their backs for what they regard as a job well done, celebrating the rewards of terrorism, and interpreting Palestine’s new-found statehood as a reassuring sign of weakness, of Starmer and the Labour Government’s willingness to bottle it, back down, capitulate and ultimately surrender?

This toilet roll symbolises Britain going down the pan as we surrender all to mass immigration.

And if perchance this is their reaction, and there’s a good chance that it is, to what extent, I ask myself, has this latest leftist folly empowered and emboldened those who choose the path of terrorism to threaten our existence?

Hang on in there, Britons! It looks like it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it, if ever, gets better.

Thought for the day … and every day from now on
Headline: ‘Sir Sadiq Khan has lashed out at Donald Trump, calling him “racist, sexist, misogynistic and Islamophobic”.’ — GB News

Comment: Apart from saying how original was that (I bet you’ve never heard those words before [lefty in a tantrum]), in this day and age, as things stand and are about to fall in the UK, being called any or all of these things must be treated as a badge of honour, provided they are directed at you by someone who thinks they are liberal, and particularly if that someone is the Mayor of Londistan, Sadiq Khan.

Something to remember
The liberal media is at pains to argue in its defence of Khan and immigration that crime rates in London, although they have increased, are significantly lower than those in most major cities in the U.S. This is a meretricious comparison, because crime rates in US cities have always been significantly higher than in their UK counterparts. If you don’t believe me, ask Al Capone.

The comparison that needs to be made is that of crime rates not only in London but also across the UK in the decade preceding the year 1997, which is the year when that nice Mr Blair opened the floodgates to mass immigration, and the incidence of crime since, and, where London is concerned, the crime rates in the capital before Mr Khan took office and the levels of criminality under his stewardship as mayor of London. It would also be of interest to gain access to official records showing serious crimes committed in London and the UK as a whole, broken down by ethnicity. A similar breakdown of criminal acts committed at public events like rallies, demonstrations and riots based on the same criteria, with an additional reference to political groups, would also be a useful indicator of the direction Britain is going in terms of nationwide law and disorder, although due to political bias and partisan reporting, a statistical record of this type would have questionable validity.

Now here’s a good idea!

US President tells PM to use military to stop the boats – Daily Mail

And now something from Migration Watch Newsletter:

Small Boat Migrants Now Outnumber British Military

The Great God AI tells us:
Migration Watch UK is an independent, non-profit think tank and campaign group founded in 2001 that advocates for lower, more controlled immigration levels in the UK, arguing that current levels are unsustainable and put excessive demand on resources. The organisation conducts research, provides analysis, makes policy recommendations, and engages with the public and policymakers to reduce net migration and ensure it is properly managed.

Here is their website > Migration Watch UK
You can read candid and authoritative news here about Britain’s mass immigration fiasco and sign up for Migration Watch newsletters to keep track of the lunacy as it unfolds and escalates. It may help you to plan your escape!

*Epilogue: The humanitarian motives for recognising Palestine as a state are, of course, quite laudable. However, even though the significance is purely symbolic, it’s how your more-than-average terrorist chooses to interpret the reasons behind the UK government’s actions, and the influence it brings to bear on the terrorist mindset going forward, particularly in its ramifications for future terrorist attacks perpetrated on British soil, that remains the worrying factor.

Image attributions

White feather: https://stockcake.com/i/elegant-white-feather_293405_59625
White Boxer Shorts: http://www.clker.com/cliparts/G/z/X/k/z/1/white-boxer-shorts-hi.png
Flag: http://www.clker.com/clipart-drapeau.html
Toilet roll: https://vectorportal.com/download-vector/roll-of-toilet-paper.ai/23375

Elon Musk Violence Speech Hits a Raw Liberal Nerve

We thought it. Elon Musk said it. He said it at the Unite the Kingdom Rally

21 September 2025 – Elon Musk Violence Speech Hits a Raw Liberal Nerve

The British establishment and its leftist media were clearly stunned by the huge number of British patriots who gathered in London last week to voice disquiet, dismay and disgust at the political elite’s indifference to, or perceived complicity in, the erasure of the UK’s culture by the immigrant tsunami. They were also mortified when Tommy Robinson, recently released from what some have described as Britain’s Gulag, bounced back into the limelight to be joined on stage by Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who, guested in by satellite link, warned the British nation in no uncertain terms that their once revered and illustrious country is on the verge of collapse and that every Briton should be prepared for the violence that is coming.

Unite the Kingdom Rally

Unite the Kingdom was without question the largest and the most successful anti-immigrant rally ever to hit Britain’s streets. Both the liberal political elite and their media cronies were caught with their pants down, most likely in the same room.

Usually, over-vocal and brimming with far-right cliches, on this auspicious occasion, the shell-shocked liberal media seemed to be having difficulty in deciding what ammunition to use.

The rally’s composition alone, full of happy, cheerful British folk, including mums and families, many bedecked from head to toe with colourful Union Jacks, and the carnival atmosphere of it all, tossed the media’s only grenade, the one that goes off with a far-right phut, squarely back into the lap of the propaganda arsenal from whence it had been half-heartedly thrown.

A re-arming exercise would take place later, but during the rally’s opening salvos, the biased UK media and London’s leftist hordes were hopping around on a lame back foot.

Naturally, once the crowds had dispersed, it was time for the usual roll call of how many law-enforcement officers had been injured in the line of duty. Correct me if I am mistaken, I think it was 26. (How can anyone do that job, bound and hamstrung as they are by our insufferable climate of woke?!)

Britain’s poor, old, beleaguered bobby
Sympathy where it’s due, please. Unlike our police force of old, today’s police are as much victims of a dysfunctional ideology as the rest of us. They have a very difficult job to do under the cosh and jackboot of woke. The coppers that I have talked to cannot wait for the day when the force becomes a force again instead of being a cross between a public relations bureau and a branch of the social services. The UK police force like the UK education system urgently needs to be rescued from the weed-ridden liberal landscape that Britain has become, pruned downwards from its political top and replanted in unpolluted soil. The police that I have talked to are as desperate for change as you and I.

In the days following the most successful anti-immigration rally in British history, much would be made of the injuries sustained by the boys who were once in blue but who, like most of us in the UK today, would feel considerably safer on Britain’s streets if permanently clad in full body armour.

The injuries that the police sustained at the Unite the Kingdom rally are, of course, deeply regrettable, but they pall into insignificance compared to the year-on-year assaults which occur as regular as clockwork at that vicious, vile, stab-happy fest, the murderous Notting Hill Carnival — the public disorder event of the year, which carries on regardless for reasons that must be obvious to you.

The Villains and the Victorious

The biggest villain at the Unite the Kingdom rally was not the odds on favourites, Tommy Robinson, nor Katie Hopkins, who with customary zeal and vigour delivered to the establishment the kind of resounding kick in the nuts which the establishment having duly received would like to pass on to Elon Musk. Yes, you’ve got it, children, the naughtiest man at the rally was Uncle Elon.

It is, however, one thing, to put the ideological boot into a working-class lad like Tommy Robinson and to threaten and intimidate a woman (although, I, for one, would not want to try to intimidate Katie Hopkins!), but quite another altogether to attempt to muzzle and bring to the liberal heel one of the world’s most prominent figures.

Apart from daring to show his face at a media-proscribed ‘far right’ rally, speak candidly with its attendees and on their terms, understand the fears that bind them and align himself with their noble cause, Elon had the brazen temerity to vocalise in public what every Briton thinks but many are afraid to say — such is the yoke of liberal woke — that racial-religious-leftist violence is coming to Britain’s streets big time and that something like a civil war is imminent.

The UK media were quick to twist the words of Mr Musk, disparaging him for inciting violence, when all he said, in fact, was that given the state of Britain today violence seems inevitable, and when that violence comes all one can do to survive is respond to it in kind. Elon said nothing more than any self-defence instructor tells his practitioners every day: when there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, when your backs against the wall, fight or die are your only options.

Elon Musk Violence Speech Hits a Raw Liberal Nerve

Elon Musk’s prediction of violence coming to Britain because of deep and divisive cultural changes inflicted by mass immigration, in which the UK’s political elite are regarded by some, by many, to be both instigative and supportive, are by no means uncorroborated. In 2023, David Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies, published an essay in two parts called Civil War Comes to the West¹. In this disturbing treatise, he identifies mass immigration and the multifaceted cultural malaise derived from its imposition as principal flashpoint factors in the causation of an internal conflict that will be violent, intense, widespread, sustained and tragic.

This is the ‘violence’ that’s on its way as defined by Elon Musk. Nothing more; nothing less. He may have had the balls to say it, but I bet you thought it first.

“Western governments under increasing structural civilisational distress and having squandered their legitimacy are losing the ability to peacefully manage multicultural societies that are terminally fractured by ethnic identity politics. The initial result is an accelerating descent of multiple major cities into marginally ‘feral’ status …” – David Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World, King’s College London

“Things are manifestly worsening right now. They are, however, going to get very much worse—I would estimate over not more than five years. That is because of the combination of two other vital factors. The first is the urban versus rural dimension of the coming conflicts which, in turn, is a result of migrant settlement dynamics. Simply put, the major cities are radically more diverse and have a growing mutually hostile political relationship with the country in which they are embedded.” – David Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World, King’s College London

A couple discuss on the phone Elon Musk Violence Speech

On 16 September 2025, the headlines screaming from your TV screens, emblazoned across the front of newspapers and cluttering up the internet, when not just parroting the words ‘far right’, were obsessing, touchy-feely-like, about the disconcerting way in which the Unite the Kingdom rally had ricocheted detrimentally like a bullet in a cowboy film across the length and breadth of Britain’s normally happy, fully assimilated, interethnic communities.

A new dramatic word, along the sensational lines of ‘slammed’ and ‘blasted’, entered the liberal media’s lexicon, as PM Starmer proclaimed that the Unite the Kingdom rally had sent a shiver through communities.

Yes, that’s right folks, ‘shiver’.

“Plastic patriots”, said our plastic prime minister, by openly voicing their desire to preserve their country’s cultural integrity [he didn’t say the latter bit] had sent shivers through Britain’s colonised land [he didn’t use the word ‘colonised’]. He also did not state specifically whether this shiver was felt elsewhere or was exclusive to liberal-left circles, including the seat of government.

Sounding more like Captain Mainwaring than he has ever done before, and believe me that’s quite difficult, The Standard cites the plastic PM as saying, through his official spokesman of course (shouldn’t that be his ‘official spokesperson’!) that the words of Mr Musk “threatened ‘violence and intimidation on [the streets of Britain].” Adding, “I don’t think the British public will have any truck with that kind of language.²”

But, Mr Prime Minister, Mr Spokesman and your mealy-mouthed media mouthpiece, that is exactly one of the major issues that the rally was addressing: the violence and intimidation that is already on our streets. It is a language we could well do without, but, alas, it is all around us. It needs to be addressed, now, or has that slipped your notice?

Perhaps what Musk should have said was not that ‘violence is coming’ but that the violence which is already here is going to get a damn sight worse unless something effective is done about it and done about it quickly. Or, he simply could have said, ‘You ‘aint seen nothing yet!’

That same Standard article quotes Mr Miliband, who is Labour’s Energy Secretary (now, he’s doing a grand job, isn’t he!), as winging away on LBC, “Who the hell is this guy?” Ed, if you weren’t referring to Starmer, Elon’s the man whose got more money and more respect than you’ll ever have. Ed went on to say, according to the article, that “Just because you’re a billionaire, it doesn’t give you a right to … tell us how to run our country.”

Well, I hate to be a far-right fly in the liberal left’s hypocritical ointment, but billionaire or no billionaire, he has as much right as anyone else to voice his opinion openly.

We may not have much of one left, but at least we like to go on pretending that we live in a democracy, and that the cornerstone of this pretence is the right to say what we want to say, the strategic erosion of which, in case it escapes your two-tier notice, is another major reason why the Unite the Kingdom rally took place and why it is universally regarded as such a towering success.

It can’t happen here!!!

Now look here, liberal lefties, what is difficult to understand? The comments made by Mr Musk were neither ‘dangerous’ nor ‘inflammatory’; he was not inciting violence; all he did was merely reiterate what Professor David Betz has said, which the Mirror also echoed, that Britain’s ‘feral cities’ are bringing us closer to civil war³.

Readers’ comments at the close of the Mirror’s article hit the proverbial immigrant nail fairly and squarely on its boat-landed head (just a metaphor, you understand; no intention of inciting violence):

Marod June 3, 2025: “It would not be Civil War as it does not fit the description: ‘A civil war is a war in which parties within the same culture, society, or nationality fight against each other for the control of political power’.

Townsrwt June 4, 2025: “Not a civil war. Drugs gangs taking over citys … towns even villages [which will] be like Haiti or parts of South America.”

Let it be known, therefore, that the ‘violence coming to Britain’ will not be a ‘civil war’ but a war to preserve or destroy our culture. Let it be known as a cultural war (er, hypothetically speaking)

Getting back to Starmer’s shiver, whatever fallacious ripple is said to have run through Britain’s communities, it is nothing compared to the seismic tremor caused in recent years by bad political actors and their inadvertent or planned bad management of the immigrant-multicult fiasco. I am sure that legacy Britons shiver with far more credibility at the heinous changes in our society that are turning our towns and cities into worse than third-world no-go areas. I don’t recall a time in my youth of exploding vests and rucksacks, summary knifing and machete attacks, young girls stabbed in community halls, lorries driven into crowds, assaults on police at airports and nationwide grooming paedo gangs conducting rape on an industrial scale whilst those in authority turn their heads and look the other way. This is not the Britain that used to be. It’s not the Britain we want today. It cannot be the future Britain or Britain will have no future.

Elon Musk Violence Speech Hits a Raw Liberal Nerve

I do hope that those of you who have condescended to read this post will not, as the PM’s spokesman said, ‘have any truck with my language’. Whether they come in trucks or by boat, let’s hope and pray they are dealt with swiftly. At present, we cannot stop them from coming, we cannot get them out, but what we can do, and what we do do, is to put them up in expensive hotels and give them free housing and benefits. The far right, who are not far right but every-day, ordinary British folk, are tired of political gimmicks and games that have no hope of succeeding. They no longer buy the Blairist line ‘diversity is good for you’. They know what it is; they’ve got it; most of them wish they hadn’t and would like to turn the clocks back. Enough migrants are more than enough. We don’t want more, full stop.

This is not the time to vote for the parties your fathers and grandfathers voted for; then was then, now is now. Stop the migrant invasion. Save Britain from the hideous future that Elon Musk et al envisage.
Vote Reform and save your country.

References
1. https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west/ https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west-part-ii-strategic-realities/
2. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/keir-starmer-prime-minister-tommy-robinson-nigel-farage-elon-musk-b1247863.html
3. ‘Military expert gives chilling British ‘civil war’ warning over ‘feral cities’ – Mirror,3 June 2025

Image attributions:
Tug of Door: http://www.clker.com/clipart-520843.html
Cheerful family: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Cheerful-family-saying-goodbye/74068.html
Man on phone: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Man-on-the-phone/71458.html
Woman on phone: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Woman-on-the-phone/41314.html
Boats coming in: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/People-ride-banana-boat/88891.html

In answer to Elon Musk violence speech, woman tells her hubby, 'You knew it would happen sooner or later'

Reform Mass Deportation Bill is the Way to Save UK

As Starmer does the hokey cokey with one migrant in and one migrant out, Nigel Farage has a better solution: Mass Deportation

14 September 2025 – Reform Mass Deportation Bill is the Way to Save UK

Vote Reform UK

Fabulous news. When the UK’s Reform Party, with Nigel Farage at its helm, wins the keys to Number 10 in the next general election, and be sure to vote for them because the old Labour-Cons duopoly is well past its sell-by date and has nothing left to offer, then not only will you get a patriotic government that puts British people and their interests first, but, as a cornerstone of this assurance, you will also receive the bonus prize of the Mass Deportation Bill.

A Migrant-free hotel in the UK after Reform UK come to power

According to Reform, more than 180,000 illegal migrants have crossed the English Channel since 2018, bringing the number of people with no lawful right to remain in the UK to approximately 1,000,000, and the boats just keep on coming! Pause a while and think about that.

Responsible British people are not happy:
110,000 join anti-migrant London protest | Reuters

Farage gets it right:
Nigel Farage vows to deport 600,000 illegal migrants

Starmer’s vow to ‘smash the migrant smuggling gangs’ sounded good when he said it (a bit like beating on an empty oil drum with a rolled-up manifesto), but, when all is said and done, it’s all been said, but nothing’s been done. The only thing that Starmer has smashed is the final remnant of trust in him and the clunky, past-it, inadequate party that he represents.

Keir Starmer is on the side of international treaties and foreign courts. We are on the side of the British people — Nigel Farage

Reform Mass Deportation Bill

Clues as to why the migrant invasion will never be stopped at Britain’s shores, at least not by Labour or their bedfellows, the Cons, are detectable in the importance that Farage attaches to leaving the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) and in repealing and replacing the manipulative Human Rights Act. These two institutions more than any other are used by our elected officials, by liberal-lefty lobby groups and self-serving immigration solicitors to keep the third world flowing unobstructed into our country whilst at the same time frustrating attempts to fast-track them out again.

What does it all add up to? Although confusing for the left, for those of us who are not self-delusional, the outcome is elementary:

EU + Human Rights = Never-Ending Flow of Migrants = Loss of cultural Identity = Loss of Cultural Cohesion = More Woke Enforcement = More Rochdale-style Cover-ups = More Vicious and Unsafe Streets = More acts of Terrorism.

We’ll stop short of the net conclusion, which is indigenous population cleansing, although this is not an illogical step after relegation as second-class citizens.

Reform Mass Deportation Bill

With the implementation of the Mass Deportation Bill, swanning across Europe to get into soft-touch Britain will immediately lose its appeal, and once the boats have been stopped, we can then begin the second phase of getting rid of those illegals who never should have been allowed to pollute the streets of our country. “Who are you? And what are you doing here? Papers, if you please!”

Conspiracy theories

Those of you who pride yourselves on your ability to join the dots whenever anyone mentions ‘progressive liberalism’ might be inclined to believe that a link exists between the existential need for mass deportation and the recent call by President Trump to prosecute George Soros, the doyen of the left, the man that their media loves to refer to as that ‘philanthropic billionaire’. You can read about it here: https://www.rt.com/news/623582-trump-calls-soros-criminal-prosecution/
[Note: The UK establishment has blocked RT News, so in order to read this article, you will need to resort to that VPN, which you recently and very wisely installed 😉]

Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) has also provided funding to civil rights and activist groups across the US, including organizations involved in Black Lives Matter and other protest movements, some of which have been linked to violence – RT News

George Soros is not directly involved in mass migration to the West, but rather funds humanitarian organizations and pro-democracy groups through his Open Society Foundations (OSF). Claims that Soros orchestrated migration flows are part of conspiracy theories – Google’s AI Overview

There are those, naturally all to a man far right and all to a man conspiracy theorists (no gender bias here), who regard Soros and Soros junior as instrumental kingpin proponents, fanatical supporters and principal bankrollers of the West’s ongoing migrant crisis. The less charitable among these theorists, or, depending upon your personal bias, you might define them as enlightened factions, tend to concur with Trump, leading some to hypothesise that ‘billionaire philanthropy’ is an anagram for anarchy, with broader subversive undertones involving weapons of mass migration.

Soros’s name has also recently resurfaced in connection with the 2016 “Russiagate” smear campaign. Earlier this month, the US Senate Judiciary Committee released a report alleging that OSF had links to the Clinton campaign’s efforts to promote the debunked claims of collusion between Trump and Russia – RT News

Mr Soros has a son – you may call him Sonny Soros — who, according to ‘far-right conspiracy theorists’, is a chip off the old, chip-on-the-shoulder block. Presumably, this heir apparent is waiting in the wings to take up the yoke of absolute power if and when old pappy ever decides the time is right to leave this wicked world. The devil may not look after his own, but who is to say that the Deep State doesn’t? You would have to be a conspiracy theorist to dip your toe into that one.

“I always thought Soros & Son was a wholesale immigrant shipping company.” – a seven-year-old from Pakistan with multiple aunts and uncles

If these terrible ‘right-wing conspiracy theories’ have even a grain of truth in them, then the EU’s special offer of ‘take a third-world migrant and get a million free’ is planned to continue unabated until it reaches the point at which our tiny overcrowded island capsizes into the sea which, as we can see from the White Cliffs of Dover, can be violently black and stormy.

I wonder, hypothetically speaking, what the last words would be of someone who had orchestrated such a philanthropic outcome. Something along the lines, perhaps, of “I’ve f*cked it up good and proper; there’s no world left worth living in; now is the time to say goodbye.”

Bye-bye, Mr Soros, 'philanthropic billionaire'.

Let’s not let that happen. Liberalism is on its way out; Migration needs to follow. Reverse the inward trend. Halt the invasion in its tracks. Return the boats to France complete with unwanted contents. Save yourselves whilst you can from the deplorable fate of second-class citizenship. Save the UK for your children’s sake.

Vote Reform. Vote for Britain. Vote for Mass Deportation.

Reform Mass Deportation Bill is the Way to Save UK. Save our children's future.

Image attributions:
Hotel: https://clipart-library.com/clipart/a-hotel-cliparts_9.htm
Spaceship leaving Earth: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Spaceship-leaving-a-planet/74224.html
Parting is such sweet sorrow: https://clipart-library.com/clipart/8iAbeALoT.htm
Child holding banner: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Kid-with-banner/66736.html

Now see here 👉 Brits told to be vigilant as boats sail in on tide of terror

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Elon Musk Violence Speech Hits a Raw Liberal Nerve
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My Special Day Out in Svetlogorsk by Mick Hart

A day out at the Baltic Coast

28 August 2025 – My Special Day Out in Svetlogorsk by Mick Hart

Don’t you just hate it when you mislay something? It’s so frustrating, isn’t it? This year I have had trouble remembering what I’ve done with summer. I recall someone saying, “Hooray, summer is here!”, and I recollect catching a glimpse of what I thought was it, but I looked away for a second, and when I looked back it had gone. Indeed, the past few days have seen rain and floods so portentous as to be almost biblical.

A couple of weeks ago — I won’t be precise — I caught summer in the act of sneaking up on me. In complete defiance of the official weather forecast, the sun was clearly violating the conditions of its parole: it was out and about and shining.

I hadn’t had my fair share for a while — well, you don’t at this age, do you? — you do? Well, lucky you! — I’m jealous of your suntan — so, I said to the missus, or she said to me — it’s one voice after all these years (ah, hem): “Why not go to Svetlogorsk for the day?”

Checking my diary for prior engagements and finding in my calendar that what was left of my life was free, I acquiesced (some people just agree), and before you could say, “I wished he’d get on with it!”, we were on our way to Svetlogorsk.

Had I found my bicycle clips, we would have gone by tandem, but there’s more to life than losing things, apart from life itself, so I consulted a very good guide written by someone of proven veracity, and taking myself at my word, we decided to go by bus.

My Special Day Out in Svetlogorsk

We weren’t working to any particular timeframe, which is a pretentious way of saying that we weren’t working to any particular timeframe, so we took a minibus, a 61, to the stop by Königsberg’s fighting bison, an imposing composition in bronze by none other than August Gaul, and walked the short distance from there to the bus stop situated on Sovetsky Prospekt (Soviet Avenue). Just as I wrote in my earlier post, and, of course, I never lie, within minutes of us being there a Svetlogorsk bus rolled in, and a few minutes later we rolled off in it.

A few minutes more saw the evidence laid before us that I was not the only one who had found a bit of summer amongst the wreckage of the season. It was just as I had written in that extremely well-researched blog post of mine: traffic build-up in the Kaliningrad suburbs on roads leading out to the coast.

Fifteen minutes into it and having been overtaken twice by the same snail in reverse, I began to wish that I had never written that post to which I keep referring; talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy!

In that post (There I go again! If I didn’t know myself better, I would accuse myself of bias!), I wrote that the time it takes to travel by bus from Kaliningrad to Svetlogorsk is one hour and fifteen minutes, and, though my eye for detail comes as no surprise, I somehow couldn’t believe that I had got it so terribly right! What I failed to mention in that excelent mother of all posts was that there is at least one bus on the Svetlogorsk route that doesn’t go where you think it is going; it does not stop in the centre. This bus enters Svetlogorsk’s outskirts and, just when you are slipping into a sense of false security, goes sailing off to somewhere else (“Next stop: Somewhere Else!”). So, if you find yourself on this bus (“Hello, Mrs Conductor, does it stop at the centre?” “The centre of what? The universe?”), you’d best get off as we did, at the stop in the dip near the lake.

This stop, hitherto unused by me, turned out to be more convenient than I first gave it credit for. On the way to the beachfront, it was our intention to call at the arts and crafts street market opposite Telegraph Café to collect and pay for a commissioned piece of leatherware. Could it be a pair of swimming trunks? Not telling you. Let’s just say that whilst most things shrink in the water, you wouldn’t want this one to ride up with wear.

The shortcut through the hills and wooded hillocks of old Svetlogorsk [sic] Rauschen made me wince at the outset as it was all uphill (funny that?), but the absolute joy of this route was that it took us through an interesting mix of dwellings old and new, from original German houses secreted in wooded gardens to glades containing mid-rise flats, adventurously medievalised by the inclusion of half-timbered uppers.

The other surprising thing about this shortcut, or cutshort as Olga sometimes muddles it, was that this ‘cutshort’ really was short. We emerged from the woodland shortly after entering it, and there, on the right, was the market. I don’t believe we’ve accomplished this before; we were exactly where we wanted to be and quickly.

The compact area set aside for traders at the confluence of two streets was packed today. Summer could run, but it could not hide!

Some stalls at this market are permanent fixtures; others are infills, with traders bringing their own folding tables, which is something that we sometimes did when standing at boot and vintage fairs in England. Ah, what memories such sights bring!

First sight of Olga was met with great enthusiasm by friends and associates alike; they also said hello to me. I was acquainted with most of these people, and as for those I had not met, well, introductions in Kaliningrad are evergreen experiences.

Speaking English in Kaliningrad

There was a time, when I first came to Kaliningrad, in the perestroika years, when the sound of someone speaking English, and the sight of an Englishman speaking it, transcended curiosity. The unwavering stares received had a polarising character: at one end of the spectrum, a deep suspicion lurked; at the other, the kind of fascination that vainer folk than I might have found quite flattering.

Eventually, I grew accustomed to the habit of being gawped at and even got to enjoy being regarded as an exotic object, apparently too much so, because as the years rolled steadily by and a new generation arrived on the scene, replacing the Soviet mindset with their internet view of the world and the more savvy grasp it gave them of the ways of different cultures, modesty forbid, but I missed the attention my simple presence had once so effortlessly generated. But one grows older, as one does, and as one does, one hopes, less needful of the spotlight. “I wanted so much to have nothing to touch. I’ve always been greedy that way.” (Thank you, Leonard.) And then, just when you least expect it, like some of the buses we travel on, the bell rings and it’s all change, please.

Hunkering down in Russia during the coronavirus period, which was a much-to-be-preferred option than returning to hysteria-blighted Britain, I discovered once again that the sound of someone speaking English and being English on Kaliningrad’s streets had overnight become something of an anomaly, more so than it would, given Kaliningrad’s exclave status, than in Moscow or St Petersburg, and that this trend would be intensified by developments in Ukraine as visitors from the West diminished, particularly those who wear cravats and speak with English accents.

Olga Hart at Villa Malepartus in Svetlogorsk

But I digress (“Cor blimey, don’t you!”) Helloes, how-are-yous, introductions and curious observations over and with our business at the market done and dusted, we wended our way at a leisurely pace along Svetlogorsk’s charming streets, taking note on our way of the capital renovation that had rescued the Villa Malepartus from almost certain extinction.

A new café lifted on wooden decking at the entrance to the public space containing Yantar-Hall was designed to attract attention. We contemplated the prospect of offering it our patronage but decided not to after all, turned off by its ‘boom boom music’.

We continued our walk to the coast, strolling across the landscaped parkland be-fronting Yantar Hall, marvelling at the transformation from all it had been in my days, a soggy chunk of decaying woodland (there are some who would say that they liked it that way), and ended up for that bite to eat, which we would have had at the previous café had the volume been turned down, at the glass-plated, steel-framed and, on a bright and blue-skied day, aptly named Sun Terrace.

Strategically situated on the coastal headland on route to the Svetlogorsk Elevator, The Sun Terrace is the perfect place to pause and enjoy, as I did, over a pizza and coffee, twenty minutes of quiet repose. The sunny skies above, the green lawns all around, the garden beds with their shrubs and flowers, the birch-tree woodland backdrop, the little birds singing and chirping happily in the boughs and branches of trees – what more could one possibly ask for? Noise, it would seem, is the answer. A couple seated opposite us outside on the café’s patio was respectfully asked by the waiter if everything met with their requirements.

The male contingent replied that whilst they could find no fault with the food, the one thing lacking was music.

I wondered if The Sun Terrace were to act on his advice, what music they would opt for. Would it be, let’s hope not, the kind that had driven us quickly away from the café we would have frequented had it been less musical? Could it have been less musical? Hmm? There’s no accounting for taste.

No music is good music when that music is bad. So, Sun Terrace be advised: continue to do what you do well – provide the space, the food, and beverages and leave the music to Nature’s Orchestra.

Mick Hart enjoying The Sun Terrace Cafe on his day out in Svetlogorsk

The Svetlogorsk Elevator, which, being English, I am disposed to call a ‘lift’, is an architectural landmark forged from glass and steel and something that is too compelling not to have been covered in two of my earlier posts:
👉 Svetlogorsk a Tale of Two Lifts – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia
👉 Whenever I need a lift, I go to Svetlogorsk – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

As the Elevator’s website highlights, there is no better place to be than aloft inside its vast glass gallery if stunning views of the Baltic Coast are the sort of thing that floats your boat.

Olga likes to go there to take selfies for social media; I go there to take an interest in the luxury seafront apartments‘ latest phase of development. As you can see from the photo below, they, and the promenade on which they are based, have really taken shape.

Luxury seafront appartments in Svetlogorsk

👉Svetlogorsk Promenade Perchance to Dream – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia
👉 Svetlogorsk Promenade a New Chapter in its History – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Older than the Elevator but refurbished since my first trip on them in summer 2001 are the small suspended yellow pods, at one time Soviet red, which, capable of transporting in their enclosed and glazed interior two standing or seated passengers, are a cable car and ski-lift hybrid. Essentially, the vehicle is a funicular, conveying passengers to beachside level from the upper reaches of the steep coastal bank and, more importantly, back again. They offer a convenient and comfortable alternative to foot-slogging the uphill path that, once completed but with great difficulty, leaves even the fittest person pretending not to be out of breath.

The cable-strung contraption is a particular favourite of mine. Whenever I visit Svetlogorsk, I look forward to the prospect of sailing up and down in it, even if getting on and off, with its slightly alarming bounce and the need to open and latch two doors whilst the conveyance sways in contradiction, demands a certain degree of elasticity more suited to supple youth and to the rest-assured action of younger sinews.

Mick Hart travelling the Svetlogorsk cable car

The queues for this novel but practical mode of transport show no sign of getting shorter as bathers head for the only substantial open stretch of beach sufficient in capacity to accommodate their growing influx.

Svetlogorsk’s oldest promenade is still very much under wraps due to ongoing restoration, a programme that has effectively closed the greater percentage of the beach resort’s beach.

Meanwhile, at the new promenade, a ribbon of sand implanted at the point where the structure meets the shore provides an attractive, albeit limited, beach alternative. It is an integral feature of the coastline complex, which in essence, and for the present, siphons off overflow bathers from the opposite end of Svetlogorsk, but the reality on the ground is that by far the greatest proportion of sand is still very much off limits, pending the completion of the renaissance of the earlier promenade.

My Special Day Out in Svetlogorsk

Not being a beachy person, not even in the slightest (I haven’t been since Charles Atlas warned about the inherent risk of sand being kicked in one’s face.), the prospect of being barred from the beach is somebody else’s – not my – problem; whereas no bar on, overlooking or at an equitable distance from the beach, is very much my problem.

I have to say, therefore, that on my most recent visit to Svetlogorsk, I was well chuffed by the discovery that the portion of beach still open to those who like nothing more than to laze and swim, swim and laze, laze and … (It is fairly easy to see how writing about this aimless practice could become habitual, even if actually doing it could not.) has a small food and drink outlet held up to the sky on stilts.

For a man who has just descended by cable car, the challenge of climbing two flights of steps to buy a bottle of beer was a less arduous undertaking than perching on a wooden plank for the 25 minutes it took for my other half to grow tired of splashing about in the briny.

Strange things happen at sea, or so I have heard it said, and just to prove this point, whilst she was in the water, Olga made a new friend. She wasn’t a mermaid nor sea monster but a young woman with a delightful mien who had authored a book about Japan, possibly making her stranger than both those marine creatures put together, and though she failed, mercifully, to address me in Japanese, when she spoke she spoke the King’s English almost as good as Charles himself and nearly better than me. (I just can’t seem to stop these days using words like ‘like’ and ‘innit’. “Ee, mon, I haven’t the faintest where me gets de ‘abit from! It makes me eddy at me!”)

Anna Vaga author, and her book about Japanese culture

These facts alone were enough to qualify both her and her husband for an invitation to join us this evening at that well-known restaurant Wherever. We did not know where the restaurant was and would not know until later, when we would rendezvous with a friend and follow her to wherever it was that she saw fit to take us.

We met our female companion in the rip-roaring, rollicking centre of town, which, I am fairly certain, must be twinned with Great Yarmouth, where people crowd intently and to the beat of open-air music, sing, dance, eat and carouse as though they are on holiday, most likely because they are.

Although the restaurant to which we were taken was not familiar to me, the building that it occupied had, for as long as I could remember, been an object of admiration as well as one of intrigue. I could not understand for the life of me why such an obvious Rauschen relic, an edifice of historic importance, had lain for so many years in such a sad and sorry state of destitution. Shame on me, I know, but in the early twenty-tens, I had regarded its exotically planted but much neglected gardens as nothing more than a cutshort, though I always peeped inside the building whenever I went stampeding past on my way to wherever it was I must have been going, wondering why this rarified building, whatever it was supposed to be, seemed to have no other use than a place for stacking chairs. However, mystery on mystery, or simply a case of misplaced memory (it’s gone the way of the sun), for when we asked one of the waiters how long the restaurant had been open, the answer we got was ‘always’. It was a Delbert Grady moment: “You’ve always been the caretaker. I should know, sir. I’ve always been here.”

Anyway, to put you out of your inquisitive misery, the beautiful building’s restaurant goes by the name of Kurhaus. The building itself is restored-Rauschen, but the restaurant has more than a lingering flavour of what it must have been like to dine there during Soviet times. The absence of loud music is a blessing!

In describing my day at Svetlogorsk, I have unwittingly provided you with a blueprint for an excursion. It is easier to remember than trying to say ‘fiddlesticks’ fast, so put your map-head on your shoulders and get a load of this:

How to get there. Where? Precisely

Get off at the bus stop near the lake; turn left, then immediately right; keep a straight line at the back of the houses and climb the steps into the wood; keep on walking until you reach a broad glade ‘ringed’ with houses and flats; climb the steps or slope to the right; turn left at the top of the hill, past the flats with the wooden fretwork; then turn immediately right. (How are you doing so far?) From here you will see the open-air market and, across the road, the Telegraph café. From the café, hang a left and then immediately left again. The Starry Doctor Hotel is on the left and the Villa Malepartus a little further on your right. This street is a wonderful street complete with old and new-old houses of an extremely evocative nature, which any one of you or I would love to live in if we had the chance. When you reach the junction at the top of this road, Yantar Hall is unmissable — it is large, modern, futuristic and also, they tell me, multifunctional. Head along the winding path in front of this wave-like structure, and there you will find The Sunshine Terrace (as its name is written in English, you will find it hard to miss), and after you’ve taken refreshment there, it’s straight on to the lift.

To find your way to the cable cars, direct your feet towards the centre of town (you could try asking where this is!). The ticket office can be found to the right of Svetlogorsk’s railway station just inside a small, paved area where amber traders sell their wares. Treat yourself to some of this before you make your descent. (It’s more than a million years old, you know! Not the chairs, the amber.) And now that I’ve got you down on the beach, have a beer for me!

Telegraph in Svetlogorsk Good Coffee Unique Art

On route to originality

Revised 25 August 2025 | First published 14 October 2024 ~ Telegraph in Svetlogorsk Good Coffee Unique Art

Contrary to received wisdom, it is not always necessary or indeed advisable for travellers to stick to the beaten track. Verily, by doing so the chances of missing out on some hidden cultural gem or other, or hitherto unencountered esoteric and unusual experience, are magnified manifold.

Indubitably, there are some parts of the world, some sinister and dubious places, where keeping to the beaten track is less a question for tourism than an action guided by common sense in the interests of survival.

Take London, for example, that patchwork quilt of small towns wherein no boundaries lie. One minute, you, the traveller, can almost believe what the travel guides tell you, that London is, indeed, one of the world’s most civilised cities; the next, having strayed from the beaten track, that you are up S*it Creek without a paddle in, what to all intents and purposes, is the Black Hole of Calcutta. Is it Africa or Pakistan? There’s no point leaving the beaten track to be beaten in your tracks. Best to beat a hasty retreat.

A link 👉 My Special Day Out in Svetlogorsk by Mick Hart – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Telegraph in Svetlogorsk

Enrichments of this nature do not apply, thank goodness, to a small, secluded backstreet in the seaside town of Svetlogorsk on Russia’s Baltic Coast. Not officially known as ‘Off the Beaten Track’, Street Ostrovskogo (‘Off the Beaten Track’ is easier to say) is a quaint, leafy, meandering avenue that wends its way from Street Oktyabr’skaya (if you find it easier, ‘Off the Beaten Track’ will do).

In Svetlogorsk, the streets run off from a large, open public space in the centre of the town, which, during clement months, overflows with tourists eagerly taking advantage of the outside drinking and eating areas. One of the streets that travels from this lively, bustling hub is Ulitsa Oktyabr’skaya. It is the street you will need to walk to get you to the Telegraph café.

The route is a rewarding one. It takes you past a Svetlogorsk landmark, the 1908 Art Nouveau water tower, past the town’s pretty Larch Park with its copy of Hermann Brachert’s ‘Water Carrier’ sculpture ~ the original is in the Brachert Museum ~ past my favourite and recently renovated neo-Gothic/Art Nouveau house and onto the Hartman Hotel.

To say that you cannot miss Ulitsa Ostrovskogo would be a silly thing to say, because if your sense of direction is anything like mine … Sorry? Oh, it isn’t. Well then just look for a clothes shop on your right. You won’t be able to miss it, because your sense of direction is better than mine and also because in the summer months some of its garments are hung outside in order to make the shop more visible, and besides it is located within one of those charming old German edifices that have at their gable end an all-in-one veranda-balcony glazed and enclosed in wood. This then is the junction at which you turn for Telegraph. This is the end of the beaten track.

Halfway along this quiet backwater, at the point where streets meet chevron-fashion, stand a permanent cluster of market stalls. You didn’t miss the turning, so there’s no earthly reason you should miss these either, especially those with roofs, which give them the quaint appearance of modest garden summer houses. Here, artisans working in various materials, from leather and ceramics to metalware, together with artists of paint and palette, regularly gather to sell their goods. The range and novelty of their handmade products really are surprising and the quality of them consistently high.

Olga Hart & Lilya Bogatko in Svetlogorsk

Olga Hart with Pavel Timofeev in Svetlogorsk

Lilya Bogatko with Olga Hart selling designer ceramics in Svetlogorsk

The location of these stalls could not be better placed, since a little further on the left-hand side, you have reached your destination ~ Svetlogorsk’s former telegraph building, resurrected in recent years as an outlet for arts and crafts and as a coffee shop and art gallery.

Telegraph in Svetlogorsk

In addition to selling coffee of various kinds~ and very good they are too! ~ Telegraph deals in assorted teas, other delicious drinks, a seductive range of desserts, irresistible homemade cakes and the sort of pastries you’ll want to leave home for. It is also a cornucopia of distinctive handcrafted wares, including vintage and designer clothes, prints, postcards, vinyl records, decorative items for the home, and original works from local artists.

IIts comfy settee and low-slung armchairs, into which one’s body readily sinks, plus the light and airy but cozy ambience, make for a very pleasant environment in which to relax, unwind and shop. If you cannot find a gift in Telegraph, something special to treat yourself with or a Baltic souvenir, then there’s definitely something wrong with you.

Interior view of Svetlogorsk Telegraph art cafe

An introduction to two of Telegraph’s artists

https://vk.com/album55604070_101203993
Lilya Bogatko works in the field of applied arts, designing and decorating ceramic goods with stylised naturalistic images. She prefers to work in monochrome, consigning her line-drawn black motifs to high opacity white grounds on tableware and ornaments. Her distinctive illustrations, many of which have a gentle charm that could grace a children’s storybook, possess an ethereal quality. Indeed, a fair proportion of her subjects, be they man or beast, float above the earth; they take to the air with wings. When her subjects are not animals, real or mythological, or people literally raised to a higher level of spirituality ~ have wings will fly ~ her stock-in-trade motifs are replications of Kaliningrad landmarks, such as the now defunct and liquidated former House of Soviets, the refurbished Zalivino lighthouse overlooking the Curonian Lagoon and Königsberg Cathedral.

Based in St Petersburg, Lilya is a regular visitor to Kaliningrad and the Kaliningrad region, from which she derives inspiration and consolidates her sales outlets.

https://vk.com/album-30057230_195486413
Pavel Timofeev has an arts and crafts workshop at Telegraph in Svetlogorsk, where he produces, among other things, leather purses and wallets, men’s and women’s leather bracelets with inscriptions on request, ornamented key rings and a range of fashion jewellery.

His speciality is selling watches with watch-face customisation. The face design can be made to order, with the option of a leather strap in traditional classic or novel styles. The straps can also be personalised.

For examples of Pavel’s watches, please refer to the carousel that appears below this profile:

The room opposite Telegraph’s ‘sitting room’ is its designated art gallery, a well-lit exhibition space with enough wall and floor capacity to showcase umpteen works of local artists. On the occasion of my visit, the art form most conspicuous was assemblages ~ 3D compositions created by taking disparate pieces of whatever it is the artist has scavenged and then arranging or assembling them on a backboard of some description so that the configuration that ensues presents itself as a pictorial image or, from impressions of the whole or its parts, invites interpretation.

Art exhibition assemblages Telegraph Svetlogorsk

Victor Ryabinin, our artist friend from Königsberg, was the man who introduced me to assemblages. His interest in the potential of this technique as a medium for symbolism had him unearthing whatever he could from the remains of Königsberg’s past and putting the pieces together so as to excite in the observer a quest to uncover meaning, either the artist’s or their own.

Since Victor was profoundly immersed in and also deeply disturbed by the eradication of Königsberg, the assemblages that he built from the remnants of destruction often convey a personal sense of irredeemable loss, an inescapable sadness, a wistful but unrequited need for a less tragic end to the city which he dearly loved and in which he loved to live. Victor travelled outside of Königsberg more often and also further than its famous philosopher Immanuel Kant, but he possibly left it less than Kant or anyone else for that matter.

By contrast, the assemblages gathered together under Telegraph’s roof evinced none of this solemnity. They danced a confident riot of bright, effusive colours, orchestrating lively, often comic, images and energising expressive shapes, some fondly reminiscent of the enchanting kind of illustrations that adorned the pages of story books beloved of old-time children, others cleverly more obtuse or playfully cryptographic.

A coloiurful and fun assemblage for sale at Telegraph in Svetlogorsk

In vivacity of colour and their three-dimensional character, the assemblages reminded me of the kind of shop-front sign boards popular in the Edwardian era, and there was much at work in their composition to insinuate a vintage charm. But the incorporation of parts taken from obsolete engines, metal handles, steel rivets, goggles and the like, plus paraphernalia of various kinds possessing mechanical provenance and rigged to suggest articulation, disclosed a contemporary steampunk influence. Intriguing, all bewitching and also fun to boot, take any one of these assemblages, hang them in your abode and if until now you have felt that your home lacked a conversation piece, trust me when I tell you that this omission will be rectified.

Rock music guitar player assemblage at Telegraph in Svetlogorsk

In the Svetlogorsk we know today, cafes, bars, restaurants and places of interest to view and visit exist in appreciable numbers, but every once in a while, one stands out in the crowd: Telegraph is that one.

It may have exchanged its wires and needles for coffee and for art, but the function of the historic building as a centre of communication lives on in its role as a meeting place, and the message that it telegraphs couldn’t be more accommodating: Sit a while, relax, enjoy a beverage and a piece of cake and let your sensibilities flow with the positive vibes that emanate from all that you see and all that you feel around you and from what can be bought and taken home, because the chances are that whatever it is that tickles your fancy in Telegraph, you will never find another like it; the chances are it will be unique.

After browsing, binging, basking and borrowing (borrowing from your friends to pay for the coffee and art, “I’ll see you alright, later …”), especially on those days when the craft-sellers’ stalls are active, in finally heading off for home, you will say to yourself with satisfaction, what an enjoyable day I have had. I am so pleased I read Mick Hart’s blog and was urged by him to get up off of my … ah, to get off of the beaten track.

Telegraph ~ as described on Telegraph’s VK site:
https://vk.com/telegraph39

Telegraph ~ social and cultural space of Svetlogorsk.

Telegraph is a public and cultural space (a centre of urban communities), created by city residents for city residents.

We do not have a director, but we have a working group. We are a community of participants with common goals and values.

Telegraph is located on Ostrovskogo Street in house No. 3 (next to the Post Office).

There are four spaces here:

– a coffee shop (here you can try aromatic fresh coffee)
– a living room with an exhibition of works by craftsmen (you can buy local handmade souvenirs)
– a gallery (local artists hold exhibitions here)
– workshops (pottery and carpentry)
– a terrace and a lawn with the longest bench in the city.

Our space regularly hosts meetings of various communities. Any participant can propose an idea for their own project and find like-minded people who will provide the necessary support.

Telegraph exists outside of politics, outside of religion. We are open to new acquaintances/initiatives.

The Telegraph project team deals with city projects and development issues.

Co-working ‘Thoughts’ (Aptechnaya, 10); keys from the barista in the coffee shop; additional conditions by phone +79114839050

We look forward to your visit.

From Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk

How to get from Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk

18 August 2025 – From Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk

One of the things that I like about being in Kaliningrad is that it is not far away from the Baltic coast. The main resorts, Zelenogradsk (in German times: Cranz) is approximately 35km (22 miles), a 30-minute drive away, and Svetlogorsk (in German times: Rauschen) is 40km (25 miles), which takes about 40 minutes to drive.

Modern roads and upgraded transport links have improved travel to the Baltic coast no end since the good old days, when all there was in the way of major travel infrastructure was a couple of pre-war German roads with more than their fair share of potholes.

The problem is that whilst the region’s ever-developing tourism infrastructure is fuelling dramatic growth, the good news for the region’s economy is not always good for local travel, as there are days in the height of summer when vehicular demand for the Baltic coast can severely test one’s travelling patience.

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From Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk

Kaliningrad’s tourism record reads like a year-on-year success story, particularly with the impetus it received from restricted overseas travel during the coronavirus era and a continuation of that trend due to evolving geopolitics.

Domestic travel to the Kaliningrad exclave from Russia’s capital city, Moscow, and from other territories inside ‘Big Russia’ appears to have multiplied 10-fold over the past five years. To get a handle on this, you would need to review the statistics, which, with a grade 9 CSE in math, I am disqualified from doing. What does add up, however, is that whichever mode of transport you plan on using to get you from Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk or Kaliningrad to Svetlogorsk, be it private car, taxi, bus or train, during the height of the tourist season, it pays to avoid peak-time travel.

Here’s some handy information to help you on your way:

Distance from Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk and to Svetlogorsk by road

Significant disparity on the internet exists regarding the distance between Kaliningrad and Zelenogradsk. I don’t know why it does it, but the distance keeps on changing. Sometimes it is 40km (25 miles), sometimes 34km (21 miles) and sometimes 20km (12.5 miles). It just keeps getting closer or moving further away depending on who you would like to believe. Why not, then, believe me? Thirty-five kilometres (22 miles) seems to be where it’s usually at.

The time it takes to travel from Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk by private vehicle or by taxi is another debatable issue. Some internet sites say 20 minutes; others, 40 minutes. I would hazard a guess that with a good backwind and favourable traffic fluidity, the journey should take no more than 30 minutes.

The distance between Kaliningrad and Svetlogorsk has a rather less shaky consensus. It appears to hold steady at 40km (25 miles), giving an average time to drive it of 40 minutes.

Taxi from Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk
General rule of thumb: beware of travel and trip advisor websites that purposefully conceal the dates on which they publish content. Case in point: A reasonably well-known travel website, which precludes publication dates, claims that a taxi from Kaliningrad to Svetlogorsk will cost you 600 roubles. To get there at that price, you will first need to take a time machine to a point in the distant past when things were a whole lot cheaper.

The average taxi fare from Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk is 700-1000 roubles (£6.45-£9.20), with the lower end of the tariff being the least likely of the available options.

The average taxi fare from Kaliningrad to Svetlogorsk is 1000-2000 roubles (£9.20-£18.40).

Taxi Services:
Whether you use an app, call the cab office, or hail a cab on the street, Kaliningrad is no different from any other city in the world: always agree on the fare before entering the vehicle. The majority, if not all, of Kaliningrad taxis are now meter-based, so if you take one off the street, the driver may just point to the meter when you ask the important question, “How much will it cost?” Whether you accept this answer will depend on how trusting you are and how well you cope with suspense. I, for one, am rather fond of a ballpark figure/estimate.

🚗Maxim (taxi ordering service (app))
https://zelenogradsk1.taximaxim.ru/en/order-a-taxi-online
Tel: 8 (401) 222-22-22

🚗Yandex (taxi ordering service (app))
https://taxi.yandex.ru/

🚗Taxi Europe
https://taxi500600.ru/
Tel: 8 (401) 250-06-00

🚗 Baltic Taxi
Tel: 8 (401) 233-33-33

🚗Uber Taxi
Download the Russian Uber app from this website:
https://taxuber.ru/kaliningrad/
Tel: +7 (4012) 566 666

Buses from Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk

The city’s main bus terminal is a short walk away from Kaliningrad’s Southern Railway Station (Kaliningrad-South) (Kaliningrad-Yuzhny).

It takes approximately one hour by bus from Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk and from Kaliningrad to Svetlogorsk, about one hour and 15 minutes.

The bus fare to Zelenogradsk is approximately 100 roubles (90p)

The bus fare to Svetlogorsk is approximately 155 roubles (£1.43)

From Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk: a bus ticket showing the fare to Svetlogorsk

Buses to Zelenogradsk and to Svetlogorsk leave Kaliningrad Bus Terminal approximately every 20 minutes.

If you are catching the bus from the main bus terminal, you must purchase your ticket at the terminal itself. Automated gates are now in operation, and you will need to have your ticket at hand for scanning validation.

Buses to Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk also leave from a stop opposite Kaliningrad’s Northern Railway Station (Kaliningrad-North) (Severny Vokzal) on Soviet Avenue (Sovetsky Prospekt). If you are not working to your own strict timetable, you can wander down to this stop, check the destinations of each bus as they dock, select the one you want, hop aboard and buy your ticket.

The last bus from Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk leaves at 21:30.

The last bus from Zelenogradsk to Kaliningrad leaves at 21:30.

The last bus from Kaliningrad to Svetlogorsk leaves at 22:30.

The last bus from Svetlogorsk to Kaliningrad leaves at 22:30.

The line number of the bus to Zelenogradsk is 141 and to Svetlogorsk 118.

Bus operator details are available from:

🚌 +7 (4012) 64-36-35

More information and booking:

🚌 info@avl39.ru

Train from Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk
The journey by train from Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk takes approximately 35-45 minutes, and from Kaliningrad to Svetlogorsk, about 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Trains depart from Kaliningrad’s Southern Railway Station (Kaliningrad-South) (Kaliningrad-Yuzhny) multiple times per day.

Stops on the way are displayed visually on a screen in each carriage and delivered audibly by an automated voice, which is conveniently broadcast both in Russian and in English. When travelling by train to Svetlogorsk, please be aware that the final destination is Svetlogorsk-2, so don’t alight at Svetlogorsk-1 unless this is the stop you are aiming for.

The train fare to Zelenogradsk-Noviy Station is approximately 100 roubles (92p)

The train fare to Svetlogorsk 2 Station is approximately 125 roubles (£1.15)

Links to train timetables

🚂 Kaliningrad to Zelenogradsk:
https://rasp.yandex.ru/all-transport/kaliningrad–zelenogradsk
https://www.ufs-online.ru/

🚂 Kaliningrad to Svetlogorsk:
https://www.tutu.travel/poezda/vokzal_Kaliningrad-Yuzhnyy/Svetlogorsk-2/

🚂 Book a ticket for rail travel inside Russia
https://www.rzd.ru/

So, there you have it. Whether you drive it, bus it, go by taxi or take a train, Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk are right on Kaliningrad’s doorstep. Follow my advice, and I guarantee you’ll know you’ve arrived when you finally get there.

Tapkoc Belgian Blond Ale

Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Tapkoc Belgium Blond Ale

Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad

6 August 2025 – Tapkoc Belgian Blond Ale

With the name Tapkoc on the collar label, and beneath it, on the label proper, the picture of a piddling cherub (Manneken Pis) with ‘censored’ slapped over his naughty bits, who could resist the play on words? We could, fellow drinkers, because, dear beloved, we are gathered here today to conduct the serious business of reviewing Belgian Blond Ale.

Trusting that the brewers would never be so brave as to brew a beer with ‘told you so!’ in mind, I left Cultura Bottle Shop with Tapkoc nestling in my nice brown paper bag, confident that what was in a name and upon a label had nothing to do whatsoever with what was in the beer or what it would taste like.

Beer review links:

[Butauty] [Kanapinis (light)] [Kanapinis (dark)]
[Keptinis Farmhouse][Bistrampolio] [387 Osobaya Varka] [Double Mother T.]

Let’s come to this from another direction.

Heaven forbid that I would be so lax as to invite accusations of vulgarity, but I sincerely believe that no student of the English language can claim to have mastered that language until they have complete understanding and appreciation of the many idiomatic expressions and the daily uses to which they are put. Take ‘piss’, for example — no crudity intended — not to be confused with ‘taking the piss’, which is something I’d never do.

The impolite word ‘piss’, together with its derivatives and associations, has extremely versatile usage in the English language, a fact no better illustrated than when it is used in conjunction with the gentlemanly art of beer drinking. Take note (make some, if you like): the expression ‘going on the piss’ is a common phrase in the United Kingdom. Precisely translated, it means ‘to go on the beer’, of which an elaboration would be to indulge in a beer-drinking session. Not that in England beer is considered urine; on the contrary, since the dissolution of Watney’s piss water, beer is held in high esteem by many, even exalted by some. For example, when we say in England that we have been on a ‘piss-up’ or ‘pissing it up’, it’s not something we are ashamed to admit to; quite the reverse, in fact. ‘Piss artists’ are rather proud of having been ‘on the piss’. We regard it not in terms of disapprobation but as something of an achievement. In other words, when the English say they’ve been ‘pissing it up’, the connotation of shame is rarely present.

People who have been ‘on the piss’ may feel a little embarrassed when they are forced to admit in consequence that they ended up ‘totally pissed’ and in the process disgraced themselves, but by and large they are not ‘pissed off’ to have ‘pissed it (their money) up the wall’ and ended up quite rat-arsed. Please note, however, that whilst many who go ‘on the piss’ invariably end up rat-arsed, they are rarely ever, if ever, referred to by themselves, their relatives, friends or colleagues as ‘rat-arsers’.

The English are nothing if not reserved, preferring, if at all possible, to avoid the more debasing title of ‘pisshead’ in relation to their drinking habits but have no difficulty whatsoever in accepting the synonym ‘piss artist’ — a name which many practitioners wear as though it were a badge of honour.

Excuse me, once again, if only for excusing myself, which some may infer as a sly attempt to circumvent self-censorship for the sake of being crude and wanting, like a naughty boy, to see the word ‘piss’ in print (well, it makes a change from writing sh…hhhhh!) It’s just that ‘piss’ and the past tense ‘pissed’ have such astonishing versatility within the English language, almost as much, but not quite, as another adaptive English word, which is ‘fart’, but we won’t fart about with that at the moment. We will leave that for a later lesson and get down now to the serious business of tasting this Belgian blond, coz if we carry on like this, getting pissed will be out of the question.

Tapkoc Belgium Blond Ale won a Bronze medal in the ‘Light Ale’ category of the competition for brewing products ROSGLAVPIVO-2023 and a Gold medal in the international competition Beer 2024 in Sochi.
[source: https://tarkos.ru/catalog/blond-el/]

Tapkoc Belgian Blond Ale

So, the beer with the piddling Belgian boy claims to be a Belgian blond ale. What exactly did I make of it?

At first sniff, the blond Belgian releases a lovely bouquet of tangy, hoppy notes, accompanied by a deeper, rounded sound. No, this is not the follow-up English lesson that I mentioned earlier. The aroma of this beer is a nose-fondling melody. It’s not quite a symphony of scents, but it pulls out the organ stops similar to the way in which Gobbo Fletton, our village church organist, did during the 1960s, that is, forcefully but in no particular order.

I was relieved, as much as the boy on the bottle, by this reassuring revelation. And yet, as the beer didn’t smell like p…, what exactly did it smell of? Potato juice or pastry? As pale and pallid as it certainly is, someone had come along and put body in this beer (which is different from somebody’s body), and the part that was the most pleasing was that it packed a bit of an oomph. (No, this is not the follow-up lesson to which I alluded earlier.)

In the glass, Belgian Blond has a hazy fantayzee look, which, for a blond beer, is often interpreted as a sign of honest-to-goodness, natural quality, particularly if the fruit-basket scent is oranges and lemons, say the belles with large melons. The chorus line of different notes is as revealing and provocative as the 19^th-century music hall Can-Can. Can they? Yes, they can. Have they? By Jove, they have. The fruity exterior cleverly masks a deceptively deep, dense flavour, which may or may not be innocent or, failing that, have been put there on purpose.

Storm in a teacup or pee in a pod? I have no intention of pissing about or pissing off the brewers; Tapkoc is no clone. For a start, and at the finish, Belgian Blond is a six-percenter, and I seriously doubt you will find anything anywhere which subtly brings together such a pleasing piquant taste and underlying strength. If the motive for drinking it is still unclear, perhaps we had better call Poirot. He was Belgian, was he not?

Ah, now you are taking the — guess the penultimate word competition — p…

And my last word on the subject? Writing this review was easy. In fact, it was a piece of — guess the last word competition — p …

BOX TICKER’S CORNER
Name of Beer: Tapkoc Belgian Blond Ale
Brewer: Tarkos Brewery
Where it is brewed: Voronezh, Russia
Bottle capacity: 0.5 litre
Strength: 6%
Price: 130 roubles (£1.20)
Appearance: Blond
Aroma: So much to choose from
Taste: An interesting and not unflavourable test of the taste buds
Fizz amplitude: 5%
Label/Marketing: Statue of a small boy urinating
Would you buy it again? It’s already happened

Beer rating

The brewer’s website has this to say about Tapkoc Belgian Blond Ale:
A rich golden ale with a subtle, ethereal aroma of spices, created by Belgian yeast. The strong beer gives a noticeable warming effect and stimulates the taste buds but does not overload them. It is an ideal accompaniment to exquisite dishes. Website: https://tarkos.ru/

Wot other’s say [Comments on Tapkoc Belgian Blond Ale from the internet, unedited]
🤔 It’s OK, but it smells like cardboard. [Comment: That’s because he’s got a cardboard box stuck on his head.]
😉 The beer may not be quite in style, but it’s interesting, and I liked it. [Comment: You can’t say fairer than that.]
😑 I don’t get the joke about the name Tapkoc and its relevance to the peeing cherub. [Comment: An unassimilated migrant living in the UK]
😎 Unusual in everything – from the label to the taste. [Comment: He’s got it!]

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