See Kaliningrad Region by Coach

Bussing it around the Kaliningrad region

31 July 2024 ~ See Kaliningrad Region by Coach

What is it about coach-based tours that have long been unappealing to me? And, if I faithfully eschewed them in the UK, why would I volunteer to go on one, here, in Kaliningrad? Well, I certainly had the means, the motive and the opportunity: at 15 quid I could just about afford it; I want to visit as many interesting places in the Kaliningrad region as I can; and we had a bus to go on. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

“You’ll probably be the only man on the bus,” opined my wife. According to her, Russian women are predominantly more interested in matters of culture, art and history than Russian men. Ooh, that’s so sexist!

Well, she was wrong. There were three males on the coach, including myself, and one of them was the bus driver. I wonder what he was doing on this trip?

As with many events that are organised for me, I did not know where we were going or what we were going to see. I had been told that one stop on the way to Wherever It Was would be a cheese factory. I was rather looking forward to that. It’s a pity it never happened. However we did stop at two towns, two settlements, visited two museums and ate in an unconventional restaurant.

The job of the by-bus tour guide is very much a vocal one, and no sooner had the driver started the engine and put the bus in gear than the guide was giving us a dose of the verbals. She spoke too fast for me to catch everything she said, but I got the gist and where the gist escaped me, Olga brought me up to speed.

The first place where we came to rest was ‘The Big Meat Pie’. I don’t suppose for a moment that this is its real name, but I christened it that in the summer of 21, when we paused here for refreshments on route to Angel Park.

You would never have guessed it from the effigy of a big meat pie proudly rotating on top of a pole some forty feet above the carpark that this place is genuinely held in awe by lovers of big meat pies.

I am not sure whether anybody from our group partook of these exquisite delicacies, which look like giant turnovers, but I do know that there was a veritable stampede for the public incoveniences, which, located inside the premises, are one of those annoying places where to pee or to poo comes at a price.

Whenever I travel anywhere in the Eastern Hemisphere, I deliberately cut down on my fluid intake and was glad that I had today, because the toilet queue was rammed and the access gate unmanned, in other words it was coins or card. I can just imagine how happy folk would have been standing there with bursting bladders should a silly old fart of an Englishman jam the gate with the wrong coins or fail to use his card correctly.

There was another option: Outside in the carpark stood two of those little green Portaloos. I don’t like these, do you? No matter where you find them in the universe, more often than not they are stink-ridden, lack essential supplies for the paperwork and have, that is when they do have them, hand-gel sanitisers that have not seen gel since dinosaurs ruled the Earth. (Come back dinosaurs, we now have globalists!)

As in all the best sitcom films of the 1970s (Carry Ons and On The Buses etc), having peed or not, having stuffed a gigantic meat pie down our gullets or not, we all at a given moment filed back onto the bus and went roaring off in unison ~ destination, a town called Gusev.

A town called Gusev

Our bus drew to a halt in front of a large, ornate and, although I say so myself, impressive-looking Orthodox church domineering a vast piazza (no, that’s a pizza you are thinking of), which, before it underwent the modernisation of multicoloured block paving, substantial shrub and flower planters, street lamps of a retro nature and benches to watch the world go by on, would have been, I am sure, a large chunk of bland concrete on which the Soviets held parades and where its dignitaries and officials would have addressed the proletariat. If that was the sort of place it was, it was not that sort of place now.

Naturally, I took photos of what I could see, and naturally/unnaturally, depending upon your point of view, Olga asked for numerous photos to be taken of herself to go with her numerous selfies.

The Greg Wilcox bag, a fantasy military shoulder bag befittingly finished in olive drab, donated to me by my old friend Greg some time in the recent past, had been requisitioned for today’s trip. Hidden in it were sandwiches, sweets, fruit and a flask of coffee. This bag was slung over my shoulder as I stretched my legs in the square. Had you been nearby, over near the church, perhaps, or furtively lurking behind any one of several ornamental canons, you might have seen me extract from this bag a savoury roll and a large banana. A note to the uninitiated: Always take some snacks with you when embarking on a bus tour.

Stop over ~ Olga complaining that it was over too soon; that we had not seen enough ~ it was back on the bus: ‘chop, chop!’

Could it be Dobrovolsk?

After a brief interlude of highway driving, we left the beaten track. The Kaliningrad region (Kaliningrad Oblast) covers an area of approximately 15,000 square kilometres. In the past decade, a spanking new network of highways have made regional travel far more comfortable and infinitely more express, but the land is still criss-crossed with old Gerry roads, which are typically long, straight and narrow and lined on either side by sizeable trees.

It was by recourse to this web of smaller roads that we eventually ended up ~ and I choose the phrase ‘ended up’ with considered deliberation for its sense of where we felt we were ~ seemingly tucked away in a strangely quiescent nowhere hidden away in the back of beyond.

From the elevated vantage point of our bus windows ~ one of the advantages of travelling by modern bus is its height, since it allows you to see things which at eye level in an average-sized car would be at best half visible if not plainly indistinct ~ it appeared to us that we were driving into the centre of somewhere; a core area of something. But what exactly, I was not sure. It was a large space that would have been open was it not for the dominant presence of a prodigious, vented, cylindrical Soviet war monument, a tall obelisk arranged in three parts set in paved grounds surrounded by trees and shrubs.

Kaliningrad region by coach ~ Dobrovolsk

To the right of this monument-occupied otherwise empty space stood a series of small prefab sheds, white with sloping roofs, which looked commercial in purpose. One, in fact, was a café, but whatever function the rest fulfilled all looked closed and vacant. The impermanent nature of these huts put me in mind of the sort of thing common to British seaside resorts back in the 1960s.

At the far end of this contrastive arrangement, a long, grey building presided, which had its origins in the German past. Although in part it contained the settlement’s shop, the spectacle of the Russian flag hoisted upon its front lent to the whole a distinctly municipal air.

The gravity and dignity which this building bestowed, counterpoised as it was with the row of little white huts, was not, however, salient. That accolade went to the war memorial, which, not in its size and scale but by virtue of its symbolic presence, dwarfed everything around it.

These centralising elements, particularly the preponderous nature of the carefully choreographed cenotaph, whilst engaging all normal senses, were yet softened and enveloped, near and far the same, by an already verdant call from a mid-summer fast approaching. But what was decidedly unaffected either by hand or by nature, nature, that is to say, divined at its most natural, was the felt presence of an invisible entity, an invisible mass of some description, which, whilst no one in their right mind would want to meet it at night, was, I am glad to say, in the full refulgence of open daylight at the better end of almost unbearable.

I am trying to remember another such brooding dominion in my life where the push-me pull-me forces were so exacting. I know there have been some, even perhaps too many, but in this place, at that time, the ambivalent impulse to stay and go exerted an indescribable strength, so strong in its contradiction that either nothing I had experienced was quite so remarkable of its kind or the power that it wielded had wiped the slate of memory clean.

It was, therefore, with regret and relief and a kind of mystical thank you that, with our explorations for now concluded, we clambered back on board the bus and took off for another world, one hopefully less unfamiliar.

Another long trek through the old East Prussian countryside on roads narrow and lined with trees and for the most part empty of vehicles, brought us by and by to another public space of note in the centre of what I guesstimated was a small provincial town but was later told had city status.

Here our bus was met by the head honcho of the town’s museum, who preceded to deliver what I have no doubt was a most informative lecture on the history of the township and the biographies of its great and good. Unfortunately, however, two factors weighted against staying the course of his holding forth, which were that (a) my work-in-progress Russian permitted me to catch only so much of what it was he was saying, and (b) all of us from the coach were standing there in the midday sun slowly baking like a tray of potatoes. Thus, we sincerely trust, without incurring lasting offence, we sidled off to renew our acquaintance with an old and thoughtful friend. It was Mr Vladimir Lenin, who, standing high upon a plinth with an air of requited authority was, for all his self-assurance, looking rather upstaged, we thought, so we gave him the benefit of our attention and made his day by taking a snapshot.

Lenin-in-Krasnoznamensk, KAliningrad region

At length, with the man from the museum having reached the close of his not inconsiderable address, we rejoined our bus-prone group and allowed ourselves to be led away towards the town’s museum, passing on the way a group of local drunks who, observing our ordered formation on Russia’s Pioneers’ Day could not resist lampooning us, calling out with a snigger: “Are you pioneers?” They could not have made me feel more at home than had I been walking down Rushden High Street past the drunks that congregate outside the Rose and Crown. But we sallied forth away from them, like the cultured folk we were; away from their mid-day quips, away from their cool, their corrupting, their challenging, their callous and chilled cans of beer!

Krasnoznamensk and its museum

I like my museums like I like my antique auction houses: old buildings labyrinthed with rooms. Thus, Krasnoznamensk museum and I were destined to get on famously.

The exhibits contained therein are drawn from every-day life in the former East Prussian region, from and across the time when its occupants were German to and across the time when its occupants were Soviet. The displays range in type and scale from pottery fragments skilfully mounted between the frames of picture boards, a simple but effective technique which I must remember to try myself, to chunky household furniture, reconstructed Soviet kitchens and cottage-industry weaving machines. There is more than enough paraphernalia upturned into the present from its resting place within the past to make obsolescence a thing of the future, including ~ and these are my favourites ~ hand-written letters, objects of ephemera, 19th century postcards, diaries and scrapbooks ~ intimate records of social history on which I place the highest value.

German-photograph-album-and-scrapbook-Krasnoznamensk-Museum, Kaliningrad region

It was of no insurmountable consequence that I struggle in reading Russian and that the only words I know in German, other than Adolf Hitler, are ‘achtung’ and ‘schnell’, since help was on hand to translate the Soviet texts (you cheat, you!), and I found the German scrapbooks largely understandable. The newspaper cutting headlines and snipped extracts from magazines could often be worked out, especially when there were images present, and the published and personal photographs were all but perfectly self-explanatory.

Cuttings-in-German-scrapbook-Krasnoznamensk Museum

One exhibit which particularly caught my time-obsessive eye was a torn and mottled document, on which was written in a hand exquisitely calligraphic and laid out with the exalted precision fabled of the Germanic race, an inventory of goods and chattels belonging to the writer’s home. Completed comprehensively, this illuminating historical record had been carefully rolled into a scroll and slotted for safe keeping inside a metal cannister. The lid had then been screwed on tight and the time capsule secreted away within the wall of the writer’s house, and there it had remained undisturbed for over a century. Great galloping goose bumps Batman!

Above: The time capsule dates to 1905. It was discovered on 8th July 2019 in the wall of a building in Youth Street, Dobrovolsk, Kaliningrad region.

Time-capsule-in-Krasnoznamensk-Museum-dated-1905

Above: Condition of handwritten document preserved as a time capsule.

Calligraphy-German-Krasnoznamensk-Museum

Above: Close-up of the handwritten paper found within the time capsule.

By the time we emerged from the museum, time itself had moved on and taken the piss artists ~ that delightful bunch of fellows who had so kindly serenaded us earlier ~ with it, leaving us with a bench on which we could sit in peace and enjoy our ice creams. There are times when time can be nothing but cruel, and at other times awfully kind.

Once all of us pioneers had been assembled, we set off, guided-tour fashion, not in the direction of our charabanc but towards a piece of notable scenery.

The weather was made for meandering, and our walk, taken in low gear at deliberate tourist speed, took us down a steepish street with some lovely old houses on either side, the culmination of which was a landscape painter’s view of an archetypal red-brick church resting on a hill.

The pictorial composition with the church seen in the distance on top of its grassy eminence, bucolically framed by trees and meadows, its inverted mirror image reflecting in the river, made me reach for the brushes and easel that I have never had and oddly enough did not bring with me, and which, even if I had and did, I could not have used in a month of Sundays (this is where Victor is needed). So, I reached for my camera instead.

We had come to a halt on a small knoll leading up to the sluice gates of a dam. From this position, and along the lower embankment, the water barely moving, pooling in the river’s widest point before making its rapid descent over the crest of the barrier, the lucky sightseeing tourist is treated to a first-class display of contrasting natural elements. In the foreground ~ suspension, energy, drama, a continual state of momentum; away and to the rear ~ unity and balance, a time-honoured pastoral tranquillity. Juxtaposition holds its own on the fringe of this chocolate box scene but is exceeded by a clever aesthetic in which we and Harmony have no doubt that she is the pedastalled Goddess and Contrast her submissive.

Krasnoznamensk Church, Kaliningrad region by coach

Having seen the church from afar, it was no other trick of nature that in the space of a short bus ride we were at its gates and then inside. The once Lutheran institution, which, as far as the cursory eye could see, had undergone no dramatic changes to its external heritage, had surrendered within, however, to the will of the reigning Orthodoxy.

Mercifully, in this instance, the exchange of religious affiliation had done nothing to damage the age-old idea of church as a place for retreat and sanctuary, and neither was it sufficient to have harmed and/or eroded all that we had been taught as children, that irrespective of denomination a church is always a church, a temple within whose hallowed walls everyone talks in whispers. With this particular church, even the least devout of Christians would be hard pushed to come away without confessing some admiration for the splendiferous Orthodox décor and a love of the heavenly scent lifted into the air from a multiplicity of burning wax candles.

Among the congregation of the church, there were these three Storks ~ you know the sort of thing: those prehistoric, long-legged birds native to these lands ~ who were conspicuous for their absence. They were standing not so far away looking like beaks on stilts above their ginormous nests, which they had built without permission on the tall tops of some telegraph poles, protruding from the yard of a deserted industrial building. “We never saw nuttin,” they seemed to say. “We were here, at home, all day, minding our business as usual.”

Storks in Kaliningrad region nesting on a telegraph pole

Above: Did you know that storks can be camera shy? She sat down as I was taking the photo.

It may be of interest for you to know that stopping off for a bite to eat had been included in the price of our tour. As that was something that never happened at the ‘Big Meat Pie’, and by now it was half-past three, we were all getting rather peckish. “I should think you jolly well would be!” reasoned the storks. So we said our goodbyes to them, waved farewell to the church and shot off in the bus.

Seeing the Kaliningrad region by coach

On our way to somewhere else (Nemanskoye), it was made known to us that the restaurant awaiting our patronage was located in the same settlement where the last venue of the day, a museum to local and Soviet history, was our current destination. The master plan was simple: split the company into two groups; one group to the museum; the other off to the restaurant. We were in the restaurant group and that was fine with me.

By and by the bus came to rest on a piece of rough ground. I presumed that the large German building to the left of us with a giant mural on its gable end had to be our restaurant, but I couldn’t have been more wrong than had I won first prize in the Getting It Wrong on A Bus Tour show.

In my defence, however, there was nothing in the near vicinity remotely restaurant-like. Before us stood some old brick barns, worth their weight in golden history, and behind us a red-brick building with a broad and sweeping roof, which, judging by its maintained appearance and the tended garden in which it stood, was, I inferred, the museum. Give the man a coconut! This time I got it right!

Nemanskoye Museum, Kaliningrad region, Kaliningrad Oblast

Above: Vicarage when the region was German. Now a museum dedicated to Soviet social history.

Unlike the other venues we had stopped at on our journey, this hamlet had no centre. All it appeared to consist of was half-a-dozen humble cottages on either side of the road. Where on earth in a place like this could the restaurant be? I wondered.

I was still wondering this when the game of follow my leader began. We were heading in the direction of a typical row of East Prussian cottages, brief terraces under one roof often topped with asbestos; one-storey dwellings which logically could have been two, as almost all German houses built to this spec scattered across the region have room enough in their attics in which to hide a doodlebug.

We were walking across the opening to a yard which, with its sloping sheds, buckling barns, old wagons, oil drums, chickens and a cat, had ‘rural smallholding’ written all over it. What it did not have, however, was a sign saying ‘restaurant’. Nevertheless, before long, we would be stooping under a home-made porch, frightening off a gaggle of children who were hanging around outside and making the cat go ‘meow’. I replied in kind, of course; forever the well-behaved Englishman.

Above: View from inside the restaurant into the back yard.

Normally, a provincial building of this type would be segregated into three or four parts, that is to say three or four homes, with the front doors lined up in series along the longer edge, which is often, but not always, the side that borders the road. Bucking the trend, however, this building ~ it was our restaurant ~ was accessed through the gable-end wall. I imagine that at some time in its history the intersecting walls had been removed in order to transform the building into what it had become, one long rectangular room.

It was welcomingly cool within, if not a trifle chilly and definitely feeling and smelling unused, in the sense of quaintly damp. Several laid tables with four seats apiece were arranged in sequence along one side, the side with the windows that bordered the road.

The decoration was rather spartan and most of all it did not fit. And yet, its being so oddly mis-matched made it a place like nobody else’s, and a memorable one at that. The restaurant had a bar where similar things were going on. At first it was alluring, but faster than immediately, you could say quite at once, it lost its appeal and attraction, like a sequestered piece of ground might do if thought at first to be a garden when in fact it was a graveyard. Every bottle on every shelf and attached to every optic was as empty and forlorn as a liberal comedian’s repertoire and looked as if they had been that way before recollection had been invented. The bar did have Jim Beam, however! But, of course, it didn’t.

It was socially unacceptable, so many empty bottles, a little like reading the local obituaries first thing over breakfast to see which of your remaining friends had died the night before. With a heartfelt sigh, I turned away. I might even have said a short prayer. And if I didn’t, I should have done.

Above: Is there something a bit Old West going on here? The drinks had certainly gone west.

Ordinarily, I am not a fatty fry-ups man, but today I was so hungry ~ the proverbial hungry traveller ~ that I could have seen off a plate of bacon and eggs, no problem ~ minus the bacon, of course. However, the menu had but one thing on it, of which we had been forewarned but it did not follow had come forearmed.

Today’s special was billed as a traditional Lithuanian delicacy. It was normally stuffed with meat, but a vegetarian option, in which the animal parts had been replaced by potatoes, was about to make its debut. So, let it not be said that I had not been adequately catered for!

When the dish was slapped on our table, however, I greeted it with deep suspicion bordering on alarm. Whatever was it supposed to be? It embodied the shape of a Cornish pasty but had such a pallor of sickly white that the last to make its acquaintance must surely have been Count Dracula. It glistened from head to toe with something that looked like nitro-glycerine and was crowned with a caking of crispy brown stuff, which, I rightly or wrongly presumed, was a pinch or a sprinkling of bacon burnt. Vegetarian or not, it had an altogether living look, like an alien cheaply made for an early episode of Dr Who before Big Budget turned it woke.

I nibbled just a bit, just to be polite, but could not disguise my aversion. At the very least it reminded me of those rubbery, stodgy, suet dumplings routinely and far too regularly offered up as food at school (which you had better eat or else!) and which dropped from gullet to guts like British Navy depth charges onto states of panic in the turmoil below.

Politely saying, “I think I will pass”, was not on the menu either. There it sat, this delicious delicacy, as bold as bollocks upon my plate. It could only be a matter of time before the guards discovered that Appetite was missing and would drag me away for interrogation: “You don’t like it? Why? What is wrong with you? Why don’t you like it?” Every question they fired at me sounded like an accusation.

In fairness, and unfairness, we vegetarians are used to this. I myself have 48 years of used to. But it certainly is not everyday, especially in these enlightened times, that turning down a recipe on the grounds that meat might be lurking in it attracts such grave astonishment from an audience so astounded. Every person within the room, that is every person without exception, was gawping in my direction, some with their forks comically frozen midway to their mouths, as if they could not believe their eyes and ears. How could one be so rude to that lovely hunchbacked anaemic thing crouching on our plates.

I lowered my eyes to my own plate; it was right and proper to do so; such indefensible shame. The source of my torment grinned back at me in a state of half-mutilation: “Eat me! Eat Me!” it goaded. Where was Alice’s Wonderland when you needed to shrink in it most!?

“These people,” I thought to myself indignantly. “Why do these people complain?” (Although no one was complaining.) After all, whatever it was we were eating, or not as the case may be, had come from Lithuania. It was not as if I was turning down honest-to-goodness buckwheat or good old kapoosta pie; those I can eat ‘till the bears come home! I simply, but categorically, had lost myself in the critical fog of what, by all accounts, should have been that Lithuanian moment.

Glad I came to the restaurant, gladder when I came out, all I had left was the cat for a friend. It followed me to the roadside and saw me off with a last ‘meow’, saying “No one can blame you, Englishman. Given the opportunity, I wouldn’t have eaten it either.”

“Must be a Russian cat,” I thought.

Banquet over, I tightened my belt and put on my museum hat. It was by far the better thing to do. If museums be the food of love, move on!

Above: Museum as seen from the grass area on the opposite side of the road.

Nemanskoye Museum

The renovated but not spoilt building now occupied by Nemanskoye museum is devoted generally to an exposition of Soviet cultural history and specifically to life in the village of Nemanskoye from the end of the Great Patriotic War to the fall of the U.S.S.R.. In German times the house had doubled as the home of the vicar and village hall, a place where meetings could be held to air and discuss community matters.

Now, as a museum, the connection between the past and the present could not be more complete. It is as sharp as a contactless card: Cross the threshold it registers. The connection is a personal one. The museum so thoughtfully tended with personal love and care wires you into its memory banks quicker than you can say ‘Life was harder in those times but somehow remarkably more in touch with the core of who and what we are’.

The Soviet story of life in the settlement and the lessons learnt in humanity passed down through the decades from the vicarage that was, and the influence they brought to bear in creating this private museum, whether predetermined or acausal, have a humanist continuity that is worth revisiting at a later date and thus in a later post. Although my sound advice to the reader is go and see for yourself.

Epilogue

At the outset of this post, I confided in you my reservations about sailing off on coach trips. Never a beckoning finger or a tune that would have me dancing to it have persuaded me to think otherwise, but had I stuck to my prejudiced guns and been led by nothing but precedent, what, odds I wonder, would Ladbrokes have given me of my ever encountering the historic delights I experienced thanks to this tour?

True one or two of the stops we made had been little more than flying visits, such is the nature of coach tours, but they made an impressionable mark, so that should the compulsion assert itself, which I am fairly certain it will, then these introductions may pave the way for further exploration.

Thus, the moral of this story is, in case you have not deduced it yet, that, as with many things in life, and guided tours are no exception, give it the benefit of the doubt: ‘don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!’

Königsberg Artist Beyond the One in a Million

Thoughts on the fifth anniversary of the death of Victor Ryabinin

18 July 2024 ~ Königsberg Artist Beyond the One in a Million

I am asked by the curious both in my native country, England, and in Russia, why my blog is dedicated to Victor Ryabinin.

Surely, a blog written in English whose target audience is presumably English people could have been dedicated to any one of a number of English friends or colleagues with whom I am close or hold in high esteem?

To answer this question, I turned to the many people whom I have crossed paths with, and some with whom I have crossed swords, and drew the conclusion that outside of my family circle only three people, excluding Victor, qualified. One is my friend of 44 years, Mel (Melbourne) Smith; the other his brother, Rolly Smith; and the last, but by no means least, Mr Richard Oberman, my former English literature tutor, who taught at Kettering Technical College, aka Tresham College.

Mel and Rolly Smith are two of my life’s most colourful characters. They were an investment in experience which paid dividends in friendship. Without them I would have foregone so much by way of excitement and laughter that an omission of this magnitude would have been nothing short of criminal. Looking back, with the help of my diaries, the exploits that we shared have taken on a legendary status, made more so by the retelling of them. Of all the things in life that cannot be overvalued, friendship, laughter and camaraderie are difficult to compete with. Theirs is the currency in which we trust: the gold standard.

Richard Oberman was a master of his vocation. Dry humoured, slightly off the wall but always in control, he would play his classes like a fiddle. As good a psychologist as he was a teacher, he would deftly juggle his act using the stick and carrot approach to win his students over. He was our general, we were his troops, and like every astute and accomplished leader he brought us on by steady degrees to trust, obey and admire him. Displaying an in-depth knowledge of and an absolute love for his subject, better than any who would teach me later at university level, by the encouragement he gave and the respect that he engendered, he opened up a future for me to which before I had been oblivious and in the process of doing so changed the course of my life forever.

Set against this exquisite triumvirate, Mel, Rolly and Richard Oberman, who and what was Victor Ryabinin?

Königsberg Artist Victor Ryabinin

Victor Ryabinin was born in Königsberg, where, like the great German philosopher Emmanuel Kant before him, he worked, lived out his life and died. He shared with Emmanuel Kant a genuine, singular love for the city, and though he travelled quite extensively whereas Emmanuel Kant did not, he shared the convictions of the city’s academia that Königsberg was a spiritual magnet drawing into its centre intellectual and artistic excellence from the highest minds and most sentient hearts and from every sphere of imaginable talent.

Victor Ryabinin, the artist and historian, charmed all who came in contact with him. His professional and bohemian side possessed an aura of mystique and an intuited profundity. Like most creative minds, a managing ego must have been working somewhere behind the scenes, but wherever he kept it hidden it never got the upper hand and through all the years I knew him, he was never anything less than open, honest, affable, modest and perfectly unassuming. Indeed, Victor Ryabinin, the man, epitomised the best that human nature can offer. He was everything you could want and more than you could hope for. He was an ambassador for humankind.

Victor had a gentle heart, a warm welcome, and no edge to his character. He had a wonderful sense of humour that was often self-effacing (he said that those who could laugh at themselves had a right to laugh at others). He was endowed with a gravitational presence, a generous sense of spirit and had the most enchanting art studio, where I, for one, never painted but sat with him for hours on end, talking history, eating gherkins, smoking cigars of a cherry flavour and drinking beer and vodka.

Victor’s company never grew old. Victor himself never grew old. He collected years like the Königsberg relics with which he adorned his studio, but the years, like all who knew him, respected his ageless spirit. Driven and sustained by an endless curiosity and an endearing fascination for everybody and every new thing, this was perhaps the secret elixir by which he kept himself ever young.

The grim irony of his dying just nine short months from the time when he, more than anyone else, brought me to Kaliningrad, and the way in which his death, inconceivable and unexpected, swept away the blueprint of my future, came as a stark reminder, as it had with the death of my friend Mel Smith, that whilst we may all be unique and some of us exceptional, those most precious to us are simply irreplaceable, so that when they up and leave arm in arm with death a sizeable chunk of our present and more, much more, of our future leaves the table with them.

Victor Ryabinin disclosed that he would reach out to such people who possessed the qualities that he lacked. This statement alone reveals the modesty and humility that endeared him to so many, for it is difficult to imagine what those qualities could have been that he failed to see in himself whilst everyone around him saw them with such clarity.

If throughout my life I had taken a leaf from Victor’s book and leant towards those people whose qualities I lack, I would, to paraphrase my old friend Cohen, have “leant that way forever”.

In retrospect, my choice of friends would appear to have been determined on criteria not dissimilar to that adopted by Molly Fox, my former boss at a publishing house, who once confided in me that she no longer filled job placements on applicant suitability but according to their eccentricity, interest value and personality.

If ever a man could tick these boxes, and the many more besides by which exceptionality can be measured and companionship appreciated, then Victor Ryabinin was that man.

I have yet to meet another like him. I know I never will.

Königsberg Artist, Victor Ryabinin's tombstone

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg-Kaliningrad

“I first met Victor Ryabinin in the spring of 2001. A friend of my wife’s, knowing how much my wife liked art and how fascinated I was with anything to do with the past, suggested that we meet this ‘very interesting’ man, who was an artist and a historian.” ~ by Mick Hart

An artist who can hear angels speak

“The first year of Victor Ryabinin’s life could have been his last. There was an epidemic in Königsberg which wiped out hundreds of children, both German and Russian. The military doctor who came to visit the Ryabinin family broke Victor’s parents’ heart when he delivered the verdict that there was nothing to be done to help their child. ‘A day, perhaps two,’ he said, ‘and the child will die’.” ~ by Boris Nisnevich

“One in a million? Perhaps just one …”

“At first sight, from a teenager’s point of view, he was this small and funny man, but very soon our attention was attracted to his methods of teaching. He was a breath of fresh air in my understanding of art. He was so alive in comparison with many of the other teachers. He ignited our imagination” ~ by Stanislav Konovalov ~ student and friend of Victor Ryabinin

Farage Election Victory Ruins Labour’s Big Day

Farage’s victory makes Labour’s landslide look like landfill

5 July 2024 ~ Farage Election Victory Ruins Labour’s Big Day

Astonishing and fantastic news: Labour won the General Election! Well, no, of course it isn’t. It is only astonishing that given the Labour party is the party of immigration that anyone in the UK, except that growing number who neither have an historic nor emotional franchise in the country, would vote for them at all, and it is only fantastic in the sense that at this most pivotal point in British history, to be handed the keys to Number 10 is akin to be handed the poisoned chalice.

Thus, although mainstream leftist media had already linguistically married ‘Labour’ and ‘Landslide’ far ahead of the election results, the mood within the Labour party and among its kneejerk supporters is that the honeymoon is over even before it started.

As more than one journalist put it, Starmer’s ‘New Dawn’ is significantly different from the one that Tony Blair enjoyed in 1997.

The left hate him now, he is a constant source of embarrassment to them, but, in 1997, Blair was unconditionally idolised; for all the wrong reasons, yes, but idolised he was. Conversely, no one cares that much for Starmer or for his party; both are boring and predictable, and no one has any great faith in him even less his government. Labour’s election was a protest win. It was more to do with kicking the Tories out than embracing Labour’s ironic slogan ‘change’. I think we can safely there will be precious little of that.

As for the Cons …

As for the Cons, for 14 years the Conservative government was more powerless than it was in power. Riven with internecine squabbles, split down the middle by Brexit, hopeless in the face of the immigrant invasion, the Conservatives ended up looking less like an adult government than a snotty-nosed bunch of toffs partying wild whilst home and alone after their parents forbade them to do so.

Who remembers that wonderous moment when following one of the their election victories (there have been so many recently that I have forgotten which one it was), when the UK’s political map went all but totally blue. Even up North and over Hadrian’s Wall, in Labour’s traditional heartland, less red remained intact upon the political map of Britain than on an arse severely spanked a fortnight ago last Wednesday. The Conservatives had been handed the country on a proverbial plate. Mrs Thatcher sold the silver; this lot broke the crockery.

Nevertheless, in spite of the liberal media’s attempts to put a victorious spin on Labour’s ‘landslide’ victory, outside of their fantasy world, the general feeling is that there is very little to shout about. Everybody knows that Starmer and his motley crew have absolutely nothing new to offer, just more of the same that nobody wants and what the country wants rid of.

It’s a Labour landslide!

That’s good, because it means that Labour, like their Conservative chums, are more than certainly doomed. By stuffing their ears with Woke, turning their back on the host population and doubling the number of third-world migrants flocking to these shores, which is exactly what they will do, it will not be very long before the avenging arse boot of doom swoops down from an offended heaven and kicks them into the political wilderness to share the fate of their Tory friends.

And won’t that be a bright, New Dawn! Bye, bye Labour, bye, bye leftism. Now that will be a landslide moment!

The big news, the history-making news, the ‘takeaway’ from this Election was the outstanding performance of Nigel Farage and the performance of his party, which both UK and US media in a fit of foot-stamping pique dubbed the ‘upstart party’. Could that be a typo? Perhaps they mean the ‘Upstaging’ party? Or the party that ‘Upsets’? I see before me a vision of upturned apple carts.

And then there is that troubled word, that wrongly attributed, that clichéd word, that ‘landslide’, a dynamic hardly applicable to the shifting electoral sands on which Starmer precariously rests. But when applied to Nigel Farage, to his meteoric rise and the ultimate success he achieved in four short unprepared weeks in which he kicked the Tories out of Clacton (Oh, they did like to be beside the seaside!) and secured a place for himself within the House of Commons, now that is a landslide and no mistake!

Farage Election Victory Ruins Labour’s Big Day

The fundamental but essential difference between the people who voted Starmer (apart from being stupid) and the people who support Farage is that Starmer is merely tolerated whilst Farage is genuinely loved. And this is what the UK needs. It is what its people long for. Someone they can look up to. Someone they can identify with. Someone they can trust. And, for heaven’s sake, someone at last who has a personality!

These are the reasons why the mood within and surrounding Labour including and most tellingly across its typically gloating media is not just simply low but, beneath the hollow cries of ‘landslide’, as low as it can get. Labour is back in Number 10, but all that anyone cares about is Nigel Farage in Parliament.

The last thing that a political party wants, a political party for migrants and woke, which is all that Labour is and all that it will ever be, in these terribly troubled UK times is a vocal, woke-resistant, straight-talking, defiant adversary, in other words Nigel Farage, facing them down with relentless vigour within the House of Commons.

Sparks are going to fly. You mark my words!

For a long complacent British establishment used to calling the shots without fear of contradiction, Farage’s accession to Parliament is the one terrible, frightening nightmare that’s kept them awake at nights but which they thought, they prayed would never come true. The man that single-handedly took on the Evil EU and defeated it single handedly now has his sites on Starmer and is taking careful aim. “We are coming after Labour,” he says, sounding more like Britain’s Clint Eastwood than the mealy-mouthed politicians that we are used to and used to despising. And there is weight behind his words, for already the bad guys are running for cover. (More toilet rolls for Westminster, please!)

One thing we can be sure of is that Farage will blow the whistle on every attempt by the UK establishment to accelerate and enforce the Anglo-European plot to mongrelise Britain with third-world migrants, and will take great delight, I am sure, in exposing the woke apparatus which has for far too long, since 1997 to be exact, been used to oppress and suppress British opinion, British tradition and centuries-old British values.

Viewed in the harsh light of day and in the grey and murky shades of Starmer’s dubious limp new dawn, Labour’s win is less of a landslide than Leonard Cohen’s avalanche. I’ve heard it tell that Number 10 can be a very cold place indeed, even though the taxpayer foots its gas bill:

I’m always alone
My heart is like ice
And it’s crowded and cold
In my secret life.

Kier Starmer wrote ~ sorry, I meant Leonard Cohen.

The real winner in this General Election is undoubtedly Nigel Farage. He certainly put a damper on Labour’s and its media’s triumph.

Now it is up to Reform supporters and every right-minded UK person who wants to take their country back to keep the pressure on Labour. No opportunity must be missed to piss on Starmer’s fireworks. And a very warm welcome to you, Mr Fate! Your place has been reserved, Sir, its at the front of the queue.

Vote Rough Speaking Parker for a Better UK!

Well spoken that man!

2 July 2024 ~ Vote Rough Speaking Parker for a Better UK!

The rough-speaking cockney geezer who, like Nigel Farage, is to be congratulated for injecting life and humour into what started out to be the most dull as dishwater general election ever, is, it would appear, a well-spoken actor, who was certainly, definitely, absolutely not hired by a hard-left British media corporation, who had employed the man before and who just happened to have an undercover reporter in the right place at the right time.

If Parker is to be exonerated for anything, apart from his wonderful accent (I have met him a thousand times in back street London pubs and seaside resorts in Essex.), it is for seizing the opportunity to say nationwide exactly what he thinks (and he may speak for many others) about British politics and ‘British’ politicians and to offer his solution (which others may secretly back, but not whilst being ‘secretly filmed’) to the single most-important issue of our time. My only criticism of him is that I wish he would stop bleeping and just say f*ck like most British people do.

Vote Rough Speaking Parker for a Better UK!

A seaside sideshow, the manifestation of the intemperate use of a truth serum, staged or not, the ‘secret’ filming of Parker revealed him to be an incisive and deliberate thinker, able to offer cheap, though admittedly somewhat unorthodox, solutions to the UK’s ‘small boat’ problem. Whilst Parker may never be nominated for a chance to win the Nobel Peace Prize, as many lefties are ~ he talks too posh for that ~ the Parker Solution, as his advocates call it, is certainly worthy of serious debate in the forthcoming sitting of Parliament.

For the time being, however, I shall stick to my guns, not Parker’s, and vote Reform. But if this man, Parker, ever attempts to act himself into Number 10, and he’s far more likely to get an Oscar than Starmer in that role (I have the feeling that Starmer will play a strictly walk-on/walk-off part.), then I’d vote for him in a heartbeat.

Vote Rough Speaking Parker!
His Parker Solution is bang on target!

Breaking Wind and News Just Out
(Broadcasting source: Across the English Channel~4)
(in fact, more than 4, there’s boat loads)
Rough Speaking Parker may form new UK Outrage Party

Here’s something you’ll want to take advantage of
🤔
A one-time discounted offer of a free day out in Clacton, if you enrol now in Mr P’s “‘ow to talk ruff, like me … guvna!” course.
Plus, a special Meet Nigel Farage the Prime Minister in Waiting coupon for ex-prime ministers of the disgraced and soon-to-be defunct Conservative party.
Email Channel 4-and-a-half using the catchline:
*F*cked up by our own ‘secret’ filming*

Image attribution
Double decker bus: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Double-Deck-Bus-Vector/2005.html

Nigel Farage Election Hope for Migrant Invaded UK

Nigel Farage shakes up election in a bid to rescue Migrant Beleaguered Britain

Update 30 June 2024 | First published: 11 June 2024 ~ Nigel Farage Election Hope for Migrant Invaded UK

30 June 2024: Thought for the day: A ‘carefully selected’ BBC Question Time audience, Woke cries of Racism and other tricks to incense the brainwashed and get the liberal sheep barking, demonstrates how terribly frightened Britain’s fifth column is of Nigel Farage’s mission to take on the establishment and save the country from its dystopian fate. A vote for any other party other than Reform is a vote to put the last nail in the coffin of your country.

You cannot trust the mainstream media. You cannot trust the UK’s old political parties. It’s the usual dirty tricks time as the pseudo-libs go running scared …

Nigel Farage: Not frightened to speak out

Imagine waking up the day after the election and finding that the only truthful man in British politics, the one that the pseudo-left are knicker-twisted about, has won the General Election. Yes, Nigel Farage is in! Not only would the UK have someone in office who means what he says, who is a true patriot, who is not frightened to speak out about the iniquities and threats of socially engineered immigration, who would enforce his call for net zero migration and put British people first, but he and his Reform party would change the landscape of British politics forever ~ and forever for the better.

First off, the immigration problem would be kicked into touch. Farage recognises, or rather is willing to state what other politicians are too frightened or too self-interested to acknowledge, that immigration, particularly illegal migration, is the single most important issue of our time.

Nigel Farage Election Hope

In this YouTube video, the ‘Negative Impacts of Immigration’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYHOmT0f13c footage is included from the topical debate programme Question Time, in which Nigel Farage spells out the negative impact immigration is having (and remember, this address was made in 2016!) on local school placements, GP access and young people’s chances of getting on the housing ladder. More importantly, he makes a case that the globalist fallback on the economic advantages of never-ending, uncontrolled and unvetted migration is not nearly as significant as the negative impact it has on quality of life.

Hitting the immigration nail firmly on the head is Farage’s forte, but he stops short in his definition of quality of life of including the deleterious effects of an increase in serious crime and terrorism, the loss of safety on our streets and the disintegration of social cohesiveness*. An interesting point, however, flagged in this video is that the population of the UK has risen by 10 million since 1997, when Tony Blair came to power, 85% of which is directly due to immigration.

“A foreign court in Strasbourg [is] telling us how we can control our borders”
*Nigel Farage*

Comments accompanying the video, ‘Negative Impacts of Immigration’ provide a consensus of opinion of what ‘quality of life’ entails:

@yamyam3905: Why do you think you can’t get a council house ? Why do you think you can’t get a doctor’s appointment, Why do you think it takes you hours to drive anywhere. Why do you think you can’t get your child into a school. Why do you think people are too afraid to go out at night ??????

@veronicapetersen8915: Welcome to South Africa since 1994. This … happened in South Africa since and we were silent we just went with the flow.
[Note: Good comparison. Another good comparison would be Sweden, which owing to its open-door immigration policy is rapidly descending from dysfunctional to dystopian.]

@garyfallows1123: If Enoch Powell had been listened too, Britain wouldn’t have this problem.
[Note: Ah, Gary, the Usual Suspects are as frightened of Enoch’s ghost as they are of Farage’s presence]

@bobcat2378: It is high time the house of lords was abolished!
[Note: And with it the dictatorship of the European Court of Immigrant Rights and the Europhiles Convention on Migrant Rights and any connection we have with these two manipulative networks.]

The question “Why do you think people are too afraid to go out at night?” and allusions to South Africa derive from the routinely unpublicised perception that UK society largely is, and UK streets predominantly are, unsafe.

Suit or amour needed in the UK because the streets are so violent

Just off to the local shop, dear, to buy the Guardinistan

To put it bluntly, the economic argument for supporting immigration palls into insignificance against the perceived need to wear a stab vest whenever you walk up the street, and the pragmatic need to weigh the odds of survival before attending a concert, theatre production, before participating in a major event and assembling in any crowded place for fear of nutters brandishing knives and detonating bombs*.

“Our towns and cities are literally becoming unrecognisable in every way.”
*Nigel Farage*

Let’s rerun the intro to this post> Imagine waking up the day after the General Election to discover that the Reform party had taken office with Nigel Farage as leader. Nigel Farage as Prime Minister of the UK. Wouldn’t that be handsome! It would truly herald a new dawn, not only for British politics but for the positive fate of our once, but no longer, glorious country.

Sadly, however, as Nigel Farage points out in his recent Talk TV interview, such is not possible [see video]

Mike Graham, the host of the show, asks Nigel, why they, Reform, “are not looking at going all out and winning?”

Farage replies simply and honestly that it is impossible. The political voting/electoral system does not permit it.

“If this was proportional representation … an Italian-style system, a Dutch-style system, I promise you, I’d be sitting here saying ‘I can be Keir Starmer’,” says Farage. I trust he did not mean that in the literal sense!

What Nigel does not say, but he could have, is that the UK ‘first past the post’ voting system is rigged, insofar as it ensures that the grossly imperfect status quo of British politics goes virtually unchallenged. In this respect, the UK’s democratic system is no different from any other: it is a managed one. The Old Guard, Liebour and the Cons, will stop at nothing to keep the seesaw going, ensuring that every five years the same two tired, past-their-sell-by-date parties jockey for prime position.

Nigel Farage Election Hope

On the issue of immigration, the most important issue of our time, the Tories have proven themselves to be woefully inadequate ~ fourteen years of woefully inadequate. The explanation that they have been too busy fighting amongst themselves to run the country properly is a credible one, but methinks it is only half the story.

To give the Tories their due, the one thing that they were successful at was drawing the British people’s attention away from the real threat to our society, immigration/migration, by instituting mass hysteria, first with coronavirus lockdowns and calls for successive jabs and then with Ukraine.

INCOMING!!!

In both cases, instead of listening to the siren warnings that Farage & Co were sounding, apprising us of the threat to social stability and British values posed by the migrant invasion, our sorry excuses for leaders were urging us to change our avatars, first to ‘I have had my vaccine’ and then to the colours of the Ukrainian flag. Whilst the majority of Brits were falling for these ploys, our streets were becoming steadily more dangerous, terrorist plots and acts were increasing and the economy nosedived dramatically.

Coronavirus costs and the wasteful moral and economic extravagance of arms shipments to Ukraine became the government’s get out clause for price hikes on almost everything. Migrant hotel bills of £8,000,000 a day is a lot of money to find. It has to come from somewhere folks! Isn’t it all so wonderfully liberal!

Meanwhile, Labour, the party without any policies, who opened the floodgates to mass immigration in 1997, looked on dumbfounded: Could the Conservatives really be beating them at their own game, upstaging them in the race to divide and rule and inflict grievous racial harm on a moribund British society? They could hardly believe their left-wing binoculars as boat after boat of migrants romped in.

Pirate Ship Migrants from France. Nigel Farage Election Hope for Migrant Invaded UK

The most important issue of our time, immigration, is a good yardstick with which to measure how closely aligned the agenda of the UK’s main political parties has become under the auspices of the globalist-liberal cartel.

It also discloses how crucial the ‘first past the post’ system is for ensuring the permanency of a two-party political system.

“The national debate on immigration has gone so far to the left during 14 years of Conservative rule“
*Nigel Farage*

This raises the question that If our ‘first past the post system’ is a deliberate bar to any small party making significant headway against the old two, which it is, then what can Farage and his Reform party hope to achieve by standing in the election? Farage claims that he is not ‘back’ just for the election but for the long haul, to build Reform into an effective opposition to a Labour government, which I suppose means a political entity that is capable of holding a Labour government’s every suspect bill and anti-British policy to account, especially with regard to immigration.

“The Conservatives are going to be in opposition, but they won’t be the opposition”
*Nigel Farage*

Imagine how mortified Liebour and Cons must be, recalling Farage’s superlative performance in the European theatre of politics. There he will be, in the House of Commons, meting out the same indomitable and no-holds-barred Farage treatment that he visited on the despots of the European Union. The thought of Nigel in the House of Commons asking awkward questions about failed immigration farces and every other wokist kowtow must already be giving his enemies in and out of Westminster the most collusive shit fit. How entertaining it is all becoming. At last a ‘reality’ programme worth paying one’s TV licence fee for.

“It’s like D-Day in reverse!!”
Nigel Farage, commenting on the UK’s migrant invasion

We must all by now have grown accustomed to the lead-in-to-election blackmail that a vote for another party other than the establishment twins is a vote for the twin you least like. Within the straitjacket restrictions of the ‘first past the post’ system, this perhaps is the most honest thing our politicians tell us.

From the word ‘Go’, even before Nigel Farage threw his cap into the ring, the Tory party were falling back on the old tried and tested mantra that a vote for Reform will be a vote for Labour. And what? It’s worked before, but who cares now? The miserable performance of the Tories in the past 14 years has clearly demonstrated, particularly with regard to immigration, that apart from the old school tie there is fundamentally no appreciable difference between the mainline politics of Cons and Labour, most of whom are Europhiles, and, one would have to be daft not to suspect, in the globalist paymaster’s pocket. As for ‘throwing away your vote’, Liebour and the cons are so much and so often in the same bed together when it comes to globalist policies that you will be buggered if you do, and buggered if you don’t, merely, I hope, in a manner of speaking.

So, the message this time around is don’t worry about ‘throwing your Tory vote away’, because in their present form they are Tweedledee to Labour’s Tweedledum, and the foregone conclusion is that Starmer and his crazy gang are going to get in anyway ~ that is the nature of British seesaw politics.

seesaw politics of the UK electoral system

See Saw Everyone’s Sure
Brits will have a New Master
Democracy is a cross in a box
But it’s always a liberal Disaster

The net result of this farcical catastrophe will be a doubling down on all things detrimental to British values and our British way of life. But take heart, the cloud may yet have a silver lining ~ of sorts.

Will Labour bring it on!

The socio-political situation in the UK is so dire now that it can only get worse and in one sense ~ Hobson’s choice ~ the quicker it does the better. In other words, if there is going to be a ruck, best get it over with, and at this point in time, the advantage is yet to be lost. Give it another decade, however, and if things in politics don’t radically change, there will be nothing left to fight for. So, the completely favourable thing about Liebour coming back to power, albeit a grim but realistic one, is that by facilitating the migrant invasion and pushing all those ‘ists’ and ‘isms’ to the top of their agenda, they will be sure to stoke division faster than the Tories ever could through culpable indolence and sheer ineptitude, and up will go the powder keg one way or another. Let’s face it, the question of the end game is a question of ‘sooner or later’. It is not as if it will not happen.

Hourglass: Time is running out for migrant-invaded UK. Nigel Farage Election Hope.

Time for the UK is fast running out …

A peaceful, but Britons-first resolution, is clearly what is needed. But that can only be brought about by a strong and determined leader with strong and determined leadership skills. Wishy Washy no longer washes. The UK has past the tipping point.

Nigel Farage Election Hope

So, if you want more of what we already have and don’t want, such as millions of third-world migrants, draconian tax increases to pay for them, more street crime and candle-lit vigils*, more division in the name of diversity, destabilising sectarian politics, more houses, roads and cars and more hypocritical soundbites about environmental issues and saving the poor old planet, less money in your pocket, less valuable items left in your homes after visits by Burglar Bill* and no Old Bill to follow it up as they are all too busy monitoring tweets, no-go areas in towns and cities, even no-go towns and cities, and a suffocating smog of woke ~ if you want, in effect, your once great country to look and to be like South Africa, with a distinctly Swedish flavour, then put your ‘X’ in the box for Labour.

What’s that I hear you say? “It can’t get any worse!”

Really?

👌VOTE ROUGH SPEAKING PARKER ~ He’ll Get The Job Done!💪

*Reference
https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/520/is-immigration-a-threat-to-uk-security

Moreover
Is the UK in multicultural Meltdown?
How to deal with a Vaccinated Liberal Family Member at Christmas
2023 UK Woke Hits an All-Time High!
Frozen Peas in Bedford Supermarket is no Woke!
Lies and democracy, are they now the same thing?

Image attributions
Union Jack: {Karen Arnold} https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=37271&picture=union-jack-flag
Suit of armour: https://clipart-library.com/clip-art/219-2190705_armored-knight-png-transparent-image-knight-transparent.htm
Pirate boat: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Silhouette-of-a-large-pirate-ship/35818.html
Binocular view: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Volcanic-island/82732.html
Seesaw: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Kids-on-a-seesaw/75311.html
Hour glass: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1100724 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hourglass.svg#/media/File:Hourglass.svg]
Diverse faces: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=112189&picture=diverse-faces

Zelenogradsk Restaurant BALT a Lesson in Harmony

Balt Restaurant Zelenogradsk Review

Updated: 30 June 2024 | First Published: 29 January 2023 ~ Zelenogradsk Restaurant BALT a Lesson in Harmony

I’m sure, almost certain, that it was not there 18 months ago when I last visited Zelenogradsk (doesn’t time fly!), but it was there now. I am talking about a new restaurant ~ new to me ~ that sits smack bang at the midway point of Zelenogradsk’s serpentine high street: a large, impressive, luxurious establishment set back from the street inside a broad paved plaza, its plate-glass single-storey extension forming a scaled juxtaposition against the taller four-storey building to which it is attached, the latter meticulously refurbished to a grand and imposing standard.

In the winter months when we were in town, the first impression of this restaurant from the outside looking in was PC; that’s not politically correct, but plush and cosy.

It was bitterly cold that day, and if the hallmark of a successful bar or restaurant is principally defined by the pulling power it possesses to tempt one off the street, then rest assured Balt restaurant has it.

Oh, did I forget to tell you? The name of the restaurant is Balt.

The first impression from the exterior of the building, which is so categorically bourgeoisie that Lenin had turned his back to it, was swish. I made a mental note, a simple equation: plush+posh+impressive+coastal-resort-town-centre = expensive. So, let’s jump to the bill. We had three dishes, nothing elaborate, a speciality tea and a glass of beer. It didn’t break the bank.

The second impression the Balt conveys is ‘big’. “It’s so big!” say your senses, when perhaps what they should be saying is not that it’s so ‘big’ but “It’s so tall”! In keeping with the modern trend in bar and restaurant design, the Balt is undeniably big, but, initially and accurately, the spaciousness perceived is confined to the height of the ceiling. In fact, the seating area which leads away from the entrance hall is limited to the perimeter of the extended part of the building; it forms the letter ‘L’, being a long, but slightly wider than the word implies, corridor. This is because, once again conforming to popular predilections, the restaurant is built around the kitchen, in other words built to a plan in which a centralised kitchen is King.

In the olden days, restaurants concealed their kitchens as though they were the black sheep of the family, the philosophy seeming to be ‘out of sight, out of mind’. This closeted mentality was an excellent way of keeping patrons on edge, since they never knew come the following morning, having enjoyed their meal the night before, whether their friends would be ready and waiting to scream, “You didn’t eat there, did you!” and then hamming it up with relish, proceed to recount in lurid detail the latest hygiene scandal.

Today, there is no need to be told by the ‘well-meaning’ ~ friends, family or the media ~ what goes on in restaurant kitchens, because everything is on display and laid out for the eyes to see. Restaurant kitchens have come of age. They are open, accessible, uninhibited, something to be admired, something to be proud of, not hidden away like a seedy back room in the depths of a mucky book shop. Restaurant kitchens have been emancipated, and a large part of that liberation lies in the transformation from an observance of cautious propriety to out-and-out exhibitionism.

True, some bar and restaurant designs tend to over-egg the soufflé. Displaying a kitchen eagerly in all its stainless steel, hygiene-oriented, busy, industrious, functioning glory is one thing, but it is quite another and quite inexcusable to overdo the exposure. Thankfully, Balt’s kitchen is a far more sophisticated and in-keeping centrepiece, enabling it to escape comparison with a man in a mac on a hill surrounded by too little foliage. I think the word I am searching for is ‘subtle’.

In fact, everything about Balt, not in its individual accoutrements but taken as a job lot, regarded in its entirety, is the epitome of subtle. How this works exactly is rather clever, because Balt is far and away not without a surprise or two, not undernourished in novelty.

Zelenogradsk Restaurant BALT

We were able to appreciate both the component parts of this dichotomy and its overarching effect from the favourable location of the table to which we had been escorted. The seats to which we had been shown occupied the latter portion upon the longer extension of the ‘L’ shaped room, almost at its inflection, thus availing us of a first-class view of each and all the different elements, which, when assembled as a whole, add up to the Balt experience.

First off, we were close to the kitchen, just a few feet away from the serving area: a long, curved counter on which chefs add the finishing touches to the dishes they are preparing before popping them into the tandoor oven, and from which attentive waiters pick up meals that are ready to go.

From our vantage point, we had a privileged view of the kitchen and the floor-to-ceiling tandoor, a large cylindrical-shaped oven used for baking unleavened flatbreads and for roasting meat. Once the open oven door and blazing fire beyond had ceased to remind me of crematoria, it was fun to watch the chef at work, sliding the various dishes and breads into the wood-fired oven with the help of a peel, a long-handled shovel-like implement with a flat metal pan attached to its furthest extremity.

Chef uses tandoor oven in Zelenogradsk restaurant Balt

Looking straight ahead, I noted with satisfaction the high-backed wooden chairs belonging to the nearest table. The back rests consisted of two vertical ebonised planks slightly angled toward one another. Close to their highest point a pair of semi-circles had been cut out so that in alignment they formed a circle. The only other concession to decoration was the seemingly random inclusion of small, pierced motifs ~ simple shapes which donated a touch of mystique without disturbing the minimalist balance.

Ebonised plank chair in resturant frequented by Mick Hart

My forward view also provided examples of ingenious lighting styles, including a heavy, orange tassel-roped pendant and lampshades mimicking small sheaths of straw.

Rope lamp shade in Zelenogradsk restaurant

The tables to the left and behind me were objects to be marvelled at. The tops were made of marble, the ends scalloped to give an uncut look. They were supported on a cluster of angled posts, recycled wave-breaking poles, some of which had been allowed to protrude through the table’s surface, and hovering above them with remarkable pendulosity was a clump or cluster of shell-like bowls, off-white in shade and in shape asymmetrical, which had me wondering, out loud as it happens, if they were really made from the pumpkin skins I imagined they were or from moulded papier-mâché

Zelenogradsk restaurant tables Flintstone-style.

Every item in the Balt’s atmospheric makeup is an imagistic letter in the word and concept of ‘Natural’: wood, stone, fire, rope, straw, vegetables. At one end of the subtle spectrum, Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble would not look out of place, but the Balt’s natural is a polished natural that borrows as much for its appeal on the application of chic sophistry as it does from down-to-earth and back-to-nature.

Crazy paving restaurant floor Baltic Coast

For all its emphasis on the natural world, Balt’s designers’ have hedged their bets, choosing not to preclude but include the fashionable tried and tested, omniprevalent in bar and restaurant, distressed industrial look.

This approach has become so widespread that it has gone beyond ‘must have’ to ‘can’t do without’. In the Balt, it has gone one further, becoming ‘Would you Adam and Eve it, the concept actually works!’: rocks, marble, stoneware vases, corn plants, vegetables and pieces of tree, rub along quite nicely, thank you, with gnarled brickwork, whitewashed slat-board, old beam ceilings, exposed ventilation ducts and suspended arty farty spots.

Zelenogradsk Restaurant BALT old brickwork

It is a tribute to Balt’s interior designers that they have managed to pull off a subtle, seamless fusion of modern chic and reclaimed-rundown and then wrap it all up in an eco-friendly ethnicity.

Harmony at the Balt restaurant, Zelenogradsk

In a nutshell ~ and I am sure that Balt would approve of the use of such natural imagery ~ the key word to Balt’s come-hither and dine-within appeal is harmony. Everything, including things that would normally be at odds with each other, are wedlocked. It might be a marriage of convenience, but one that is no less perfect for it. Even the ethnic music, with its emphasis on tom-tom beat and repetitive chanting, is low-key, Sade-like and subtle.

At the centre and everywhere else of this is lighting. I’ve said it before; I’ve said it again; I’ll say it again and keep on saying it: from Restaurant Guy Savoy in Paris to The Four Seasons B&B in Brightlingsea, if the lighting is not right everything else will be wrong. Lighting is the magic drawstring that pulls everything together.

Balt’s lighting is soft, suffused and artistically modulated: a harmonising integration of ambient-sensitive ceiling spots and downlighters, overhead table pendants ~ each paired with its own novel shade ~ soft-glow wall lights, natural fire and candles. It’s good, because it works. It works because it’s good.

At this juncture, I know what you are thinking: So much for the Balt’s design; what about the grub?

Those of you who have read any of my bar/restaurant reviews will know that when it comes to food I’m hopeless. Why do I go to bars? To drink. Why do I go to restaurants? Usually because the company I’m in wants to go to restaurants, and so I tag along, but also because, as you may have deduced, I am an ardent fan of interior design and a connoisseur of atmosphere.

As a baked-beans-on-toast man, a man who likes simple food, I cannot provide you with a gourmet breakdown of the range of food Balt has to offer or the quality of its meals, and neither shall I try. However, a quick twirl around the internet should satisfy your curiosity. It might even tell you all you need to know.

Our order at the Balt amounted to a snackette: a spicey vegetable platter on oven-baked bread ~ a white leavened flatbread similar in texture and taste to naan ~ and some exotic-looking poppadoms. It was not in the least expensive, but I will say that presentation took precedence over quantity. Now, were you to indulge in a main meal, the situation may be completely reversed or, like everything else at Balt, a happy medium struck.

I had a beer, naturally. It was palatable but served up in one of those peculiar ‘neither here nor there’ glasses, ie glasses that are neither small nor large, which frankly I find irritating. Half a litre, fine; half a half litre, fine; anything else exceeds my mathematical ability (see Soul Garden post).

Mick Hart at the Balt restaurant in Zelenogradsk

Olga Hart at Balt restaurant in Zelenogradsk

The Balt, I am told, offers a range of dishes based on Indian subcontinent fare, which is something of a luxury in this part of the world. The prices are so-so, but not so expensive that they will tear the lining out of your pocket, and the carefully choreographed atmosphere, which is as restful and relaxing as it gets, beats anything I have experienced anywhere else in the Kaliningrad region or for that matter in the UK. Recommend the Balt? I’d buy it if I could!

The main thing
Balt (restaurant)
Kurortny Prospekt, 16, Zelenogradsk, Kaliningrad region

Tel: +7 906 238 99 74

Website: https://balt.rest/

💚 Around the Kaliningrad region

Angel Park Hotel > An inspirational rural recreation centre on the site of an East Prussian settlement
Amber Legend Restaurant > Amber Legend Yantarny, a jewel in the coastal town of Yantarny
Fishdorf Country Guest Complex > A family-oriented retreat, secluded and steeped in nature
Fort Dönhoff (Fort XI) > An evocative 19th century redbrick fortress, part of Königsberg’s labyrinth defence network
Polessk Brewery > Beer, history and German-Gothic architecture (that’s my personal order of preference!)

Hotel Mercure Gdansk reasons to stay there!

Hotel Mercure Gdansk a Welcome Oasis

23 June 2024 ~ Hotel Mercure Gdansk reasons to stay there!

You may recall, if you were listening to me (“Now, pay attention, as I will be asking questions later!” ) that returning from the UK to Kaliningrad, I made the fatal mistake of booking via Booking.com the apartment Tawerna Rybaki in Old Town Gdansk. To all extents and purposes, the apartment never existed, and I was left on the streets of Gdansk, me and my faithful laptop, with nowhere to lay my head for the night.

The subsequent hunt for alternative accommodation was a long and arduous one, eventually culminating, not before time, at Gdansk’s Mercure Hotel.

Although I appreciate that my positive affirmation of the Mercure’s finer points may be tinged by the fact that at the time I was desperate and ‘any port in a storm’ had become my alma mater (original use of the term), in reviewing the Mercure Hotel, I have attempted to put the object of my misfortunes, the bogus Rybaki apartment, as far behind me as I can and write with objectivity.

So, here we go: My first reaction to the Mercure was “Oh, it’s a tower block”; my second, “It looks a tad upmarket for a chap who just wants a bed for the night”; my third, “Bugger this for a game of soldiers, I have been walking around for hours. I need to book in somewhere and head off to a bar!”

Getting the feel of the place

On the other side of its perpetual revolving door, the Mercure’s interior is TARDISial. It’s grand, it’s palatial, it’s swish, say your senses, but once you have checked in and taken a second look your senses qualify your first impression with ‘it is also rather passe’.

The lobby, indeed the Mercure in its entirety, has a distinctly 1980s’ look and a period feel to go with it. It is not faded and jaded, on the contrary, the hotel could not be more 1980s than if it was still the 1980s. And yet, it is not unfair to say that the swish has lost its swashbuckle.

Nevertheless, there is enough of the right thing going on in its aircraft hangar interior to strike the gong of plush. The vast space is broken down into open-plan units: seating areas with big, spongey recliners, coffee-table resting points, unusual modernist sculptures, a shimmering shiny floor, downlighters, uplighters, pendulous globular basket lampshades, and, ah yes, at the back of the room, that all-important traveller’s requisite the hotel lounge and bar. Don’t leave home without one!

It had been a long day for me when I booked in to the Mercure, and I was dying to use the loo, so I was not entirely enamoured when I was given a plastic card instead of a good old-fashioned key. First off, I shoved it in the hole, and it did not work the lift; then I nipped quickly off to the toilet, and it did not work the toilet lock, then when I rushed up to my room in it went and opened the door, ruining whatever chance I had of changing my pants and complaining. Just in the nick of plastic-card time!

My opinion of the interior downstairs décor, that it was 1980s, was given a serious leg up when the lift went ching on the hotel’s sixth floor. In contrast to the capacious lobby, the sixth-floor landing and long, long corridor was a little Alice in Wonderland. I felt as if I had sipped from Alice’s ‘Drink Me!’ bottle, and now my head was touching the ceiling.

The imposing and all-suffusing chocolate browns of the carpet, which match the tones of the doors, the walls and the ceiling, and which are brought into intimate proximity thanks to the carpet’s thick and heavy mercurial globular patterns and their blotting paper absorption of the well-intentioned low-lit lighting, has 1980s stamped right through them like a piece of seaside rock, and the rooms, or at least my room, completed that turn of the retro page.

Turning back the page need not be disagreeable if, like me, you find that direction infinitely more appealing than moving with the times. Thus, although the tones of the hotel room, at least the room in which I was staying, followed the lead of the communal areas in their 1980s’ love of chocolate, the amenities therein neither added to nor subtracted from the context of backdated.

There was everything you would expect to get from a hotel of this scale and calibre. It came in spades and with enough variation to seduce you into believing that it offered more than you had expected and all with an extra air of luxury tinged with a personal touch.

The lighting alone was sufficient to do this to you. Ambient lighting, lighting for reading, mood lighting, soft lighting and lighting to get you in the mood ~ multiple combinations of it and all at the flick of a switch ~ or two.

Not the Hotel California, hence no mirrors on the ceiling, for which I was truly grateful. For I would not wish to inflict on myself a view of myself like that first thing in the morning! But the room did have its fair share of mirrors, including, above the convenient desk, a nice, big, long, rectangular one, which looks a bit like a telly? I could not tell you for certain as I have not used one for years.

The seating was also variegated to suit every type and class of bum. And there was an adequate wardrobe with sliding doors and adequate chests with sliding drawers. And a bed with a firm and comfortable mattress, on which to sleep and what have you.

The 1980s was not so primitive as to exclude the presence of an ensuite bathroom, and neither, I am glad to report, was my 21^st century room. It had a credible bath and shower room and even contained a toilet, which was just as well in the circumstances, as a tower-block hotel with a lavvy out back in the yard would be mighty inconvenient.

Ah, excuse me, I almost forgot, there was also a safe to put things in, if only you knew how to use it (I believe you put your bits inside, then close the door and lock it Mick.) (Quite so.), and the room comes equipped with its very own window, which is useful for letting in natural light, which if there was no window, you would need to bring your own natural light, and, of course, when letting in light and even when it is not, the window comes in handy when you get the urge to look out of it.

I am not about to pretend that the view from my window was actually inspiring, but equally shall not argue that it was not. As the photograph below reveals, the view does capture Gdansk; the new Gdansk and the old.

View from hotel window at the Mercure, Gdansk

Excited by the red-brick church, you swear on a pint of good beer that as soon as you have unpacked your things, attended dutifully to your reasonable ablutions and put on a different cravat, you will point your brogues decisively in the direction that you want to go and permit them to carry you off towards the architectural/historic masterpiece that those ever-inventive Poles did christen the Old Town.

Unfortunately, however, although the Mercure Hotel is devilishly close for on-foot types to the town’s historic quarter, my shoes belong to an era, as I do myself, in which modern navigation aids play no understandable part.

I could have asked the way of course, but that would have been too easy and obviously much too sensible, and so, of course, I didn’t. I simply relied on my sense of direction, and for once I got it right.

This is something else that speaks in Mercure’s favour. If, like me, never becoming a navigator was one of the most applaudable things you did in your life, then the Mercure should appeal to you. Its name emblazoned in bright white light at the very top of its tower acts like a lighthouse beacon. It can be seen from many points of the compass and therefore can be used in co-operation with other landmarks to guide you safely home in the unlikely event you have drunk too much after a night on the town.

Mercure Gdansk the name acts as a navigational beacon

In summarising my Mercure experience, I would say “a solid hotel ~ rock solid”. Comfortable, appealing ~ in a slightly old-fashioned sort of way ~ and supremely atmospheric, it effortlessly brings together the feel of a hotel somewhere above its station with a kindly welcome that is home-from-home. The bar, my natural habitat, has that cushty, big upmarket hotel, relaxing, come-hither air. You just order yourself a drink and sink yourself carefree into its soft and sumptuous seats. The staff are as pleasant as they are helpful; the service cannot be faulted. Everything around you is as easy on the eye as it is upon the senses, which is quite an achievement in itself as the hotel contains some visual surprises. And in its relativity to Gdansk’s Old Town and to the central railway station, if any hotel deserves the accolade of being well-appointed then that hotel is the Mercure.

I know and I do appreciate that on that fateful day when I first laid eyes upon it, the Mercure appeared on my troubled horizon like an oasis in a desert of lies and deceit, but be that as it may, from any objective viewpoint, the Mercure delivers the goods and with it value for money. What else would you expect? It is not for nothing that it derives its name from the Roman God of Travellers!

The main thing

Hotel Mercure Gdańsk Stare Miasto
Jana Heweliusza 22, 80-890 Gdańsk, Poland

Tel: +48 58 321 00 00
Website: Mercure Gdańsk

Streetmap: Mercure Gdańsk

Keptinis (Farmhouse Beer) in Kaliningrad is it good?

Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Keptinis (Farmhouse Beer)

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

6 June 2024 ~ Keptinis (Farmhouse Beer) in Kaliningrad is it good?

“Anyone for tennis?”

Hardly!

“Anyone for Keptinis?”

I should say so!

‘Keptinis’ ~ it doesn’t exactly roll off of the British tongue, does it? How I remember the name of this beer is to think of a sport I don’t like. Problem is there are many ~ football, cricket, rugby, tennis, I have a healthy dislike of them all. But for the sake of recalling the name of a beer, and a very good beer at that, no sacrifice is unjustified.

Thus, I take the silly game in which three rackets are involved, two that are held in hands and the other that coins in money, and, by the simple cross-referencing method, I think of that common earole complaint medically known as tinnitus, but spelling it wrongly ‘tinnitis’, and I allow the tail of the misspelt word to wave in my direction. Then all I have to do, by way of association, is to think of a beer so all consuming that it would save me from anything foolish or rash, like playing or even watching tennis, and ‘kept away from tennis’ thus, with tinnitis in my ear, I say it so fast it becomes ‘Keptenis’, which is as near to Keptinis as dammit and as damn them is to a boat load of migrants steaming into Dover.

An easier, far less linguistically challenging means of bringing this beer to mind is to focus on the label. With its striking green and yellow shapes and the stovepipe hat and long moustache of its mysterious pop art poster man, it really is, to coin a phrase and in the process mix two metaphors (which like mixing race is never advisable), the ultimate dog’s whiskers, and just to please the equality conscious, the absolute cat’s bollocks. Mix your metaphors if you will, but before you go mixing anything else, for heaven’s sake think of the pups.

Beer review links:

[Butauty] [Kanapinis (light)] [Kanapinis (dark)]

Keptinis is a mixed-up beer. The moment you flip the Keptinis stopper you are nose to brew with a different species. This is no simple mass-produced, wishy washy paleface lager or bland keg-bitter fizz bomb. What you have is a subtle hybrid. So subtle, you may not know what it is, but it sure as hell smells different!

So, there I am, sniffing away like a kid in a baker’s shop. Although, I never was a kid, as I never was American. And my first reaction to Keptinis is: For what I am about to receive, will it taste like liquefied rye bread?

“Is there any body there?” I ask, like the only one at a lonely guy’s séance.

And remarkably there is. An awful lot of body. Almost too much in fact (and also too much in fiction): a crowded coven of smell apparitions which, in no one order of merit or preference, gives vent to nasal impressions like dried fruit, molten caramel, aromatic scents, spices of the orient and something not dissimilar to chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

Whiffed from within the glass, the subtle and complex combination of deep and rich aromas give way to a smell that is more pronounced, more reminiscently rounded. The jury is out on the soft drink kvas, which is, it may surprise you, mildly alcoholic, while at a stonking 5.7% Keptinis commands a virile strength that by any stretch of the wotsit is hardly soft and rarely limp.

The creamy head that flows profusely and lathers up at the top of the glass looking like old-fashioned shaving foam is a sight for proverbial sore eyes, especially eyes up North (It’s looking up at those pigeons that does it. Why are they all wearing head scarves these days?). But it reminds me more of ice cream; Mr Whippy passing his flake. It was all 69 in the ’70s. (That’s ’99’ with a bit knocked off.)

Keptinis (Farmhouse Beer) in Kaliningrad is it good?

The first mouthful revs up your kvas. Talk about turbo-charged! The taste is full-throttle and it comes at you fast, bouncing from taste bud to taste bud, like brown ale on a Friday night down at the working It’s club, and though incipiently and enduringly dry, both the finish and the aftertaste possess a hitherto secret hint of a not unlikeable sweetness.

The contrast is right-on punchy and funky. To give it a visual translation, a kind of non-binary gender-neutral pole-vaulting limbo dancer strutting her stuff on a pinball table. Please, if you must indulge you fantasies, Keptinis them to yourself!

Some beers are disappointing. They flirt with you in the early evening yet fold before the evenings through, after parting with your money. You might just as well have sat and drank tea whilst watching some tripe on the BBC (It rhymes!) Is this something else you shouldn’t have paid for? A lie, lie, lie, lie, lie-sense. Look out, you’re being investigated! Will you be in next Thursday? You bet your wife I will, but possibly not for the rest of the week! (Sorry, that’s an ‘in’ joke.)

Of all the things on God’s great Earth that are not worth the salt of being kept in by, the BBC is top of the pops. They forgot to investigate Jimmy. But even without a TV licence, I would do everything in my power not to be kept in by a Liebour party political broadcast, or by something equally appalling and unequivocally just as implausible, which rules in coronavirus. And I never have, at least to my knowledge, been kept in by the rogue desire to watch a game of tennis. I would rather stand outside in the street and laugh at cyclists in Lycra shorts. Yet, to be keptin by Keptinis, now that is a horse of a different colour. We won’t divulge which colour (clue, it’s nothing to do with Persil) or we may be coerced into ruining our trousers, along with our integrity, by doing something really stupid like taking a virtue signalling knee. Ho! Ho! Ha! Ha! He! He!

Keptinis (Farmhouse Beer) in Kaliningrad bottle lable

Thankfully, Keptinis is 100% hysteria free: a ‘no one size fits all’ beer that bucks (Did I get that right?) the stereotyping straightjacket. It is less insane than more well-balanced, and though it does resemble kvas, in unassuming and subtle ways, especially if you smoke, has flavours hidden deep within arranged in such cunning and clever ways that the taste bouquet only glitters (all that glitters is not Gary) by slow and teasing degrees, which is all to the ‘so say all of us’, hooray! ~ for Keptinis, it is telling us, is not a one-glass beer and that in order to fully appreciate the deluxe brew it surely is, you have to finish the bottle. I suppose it is what is colloquially known as a drink that is rather morish.

They say, and they are always saying, and I suppose they always will, that the saying about the ‘good thing’ of which, it is said, ‘you can have too much’, will, if you say it often enough, get in the way of the very thing that you cannot get enough of. But shucks (and a word that rhymes with shucks), what the hell do they know!

“Anyone for Keptinis?”

Everyone, I should think.

Disclaimer: Keptinis bears no resemblance to cyclists living or dead or to anyone else not as daft as cyclists who nevertheless would not be seen dead in a pair of Lycra shorts? (sponsored by the Save Me from Being a Sheep Society and the Campaign for Corduroy Trousers in association with Bicycle Clips)

BOX TICKER’S CORNER
Name of Beer: Keptinis (or is that ‘Keptenis’?)
Brewer: Aukštaitijos Bravorai
Where it is brewed: Lithuania
Bottle capacity: 1litre
Strength: 5.7%
Price: It cost me about 230 roubles in 2021. More recently in Kaliningrad, it cost me about 399 roubles/£3.44
Appearance: Dark
Aroma: Not unlike kvass
Taste: Predominantly caramel but with other things going on
Fizz amplitude: 3/10
Label/Marketing: Pop Art
Would you buy it again? Faster than I would buy the Labour party’s policies

Beer rating

About the beer: Aukštaitijos Bravorai | Keptinis

Keptinis is categorised as a ‘Farmhouse Beer’, a rare beer, difficult to brew, native to Lithuania. It is called ‘farmhouse’ for the very good reason that it was traditionally brewed by farmers. Rumour has it that as the special kind of malt that was needed for the brewing process was cost and distance prohibitive, the crafty farmers would create a mash and then bake it at high temperatures in order to produce the distinctive caramel taste for which it is renowned.

The brewers, Aukštaitijos Bravorai, refer to it as an ‘Oven Unfiltered Beer’ and describe its unique personage thus: “This beer stands out because it uses not only caramel and Pilsner malts, but bravura roasted malts, which give this beer a mild bitterness and aroma. Beer after fermentation and maturation has a frozen taste and a dark color.”https://www.aukstaitijosbravorai.lt/

Wot other’s say [Comments on Keptinis
(Farmhouse Beer) from the internet, unedited]
😑Taste is close to aroma, but with harsh yeasty note.
[Comment: Yeasty note, yes; harsh, no]

😊A very rare farmhouse style
[Comment: Wellies and all the rest of it?]

🤔Initial malty flavours soon got tired, it really needs some hop bite to balance it out
[Comment: Your application for tightrope walker has not been successful]

😊 Kvassy, super bready, yeasty and bit funky, bit caramelly sweet and quite bitter
[Comment: Yesy, very goody, welly saidy]

🙂Strong, baked caramel flavour, smooth mouthfeel, interesting sweet notes
[Comment: Orchestrally correct]

Now see this …
Variety of Beer in Kaliningrad

Svetlogorsk Promenade a New Chapter in its History

Promenade Apartments Svetlogorsk Showcase Stylish Living

30 May 2024 ~ Svetlogorsk Promenade a New Chapter in its History

At the point at which the new stretch of promenade on Svetlogorsk’s coastline meets the old, a broad canvas containing an evocative black and white photograph of the promenade as it appeared when Svetlogorsk was German Rauschen effectively softens the large metal fence behind which work is ongoing to upgrade the original walkway.

The photograph, which was taken in the early twentieth century at a time which we in England would call Edwardian, harks back to a quieter, more sedate and less populated period in the evolution of the modern world and in Svetlogorsk’s personal history. In those days, people dressed better (that is, those who could afford to do so), and life, at least in the pictures, had a better feel about it and seemed to move at a far more leisurely pace.

‘Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside!
I do like to be beside the sea!
Oh I do like to stroll along the Prom, Prom, Prom!’ ~ John H. Glover-Kind (1907)

Fast forward to the third decade of the 21^st century:

Walking along the ‘Prom, Prom’ ~ as there are (or nearly are) two in Svetlogorsk ~ has not been the easiest thing to do in the Kaliningrad region’s coastal town for quite some considerable time.

First, there was the Sovietised prom left behind by the Germans; then there was a quiet, narrow stretch of beach left behind by perestroika; then there was the construction of a new promenade; then the promised construction of a sparkling, spanking new set of des-res apartments hugging the new prom coastline; and then … and then it stalled.

When the first stage of the new promenade reached accessibility, those of us who had not grown impatient and swapped allegiance for Zelenogradsk, strolled along the ‘prom, prom, prom’; some of us marvelling at what was to come and some, no doubt, bemoaning the loss of the rocky ribbon of beach, with its golden memories of long hot days, the basking bodies of former girlfriends, the odd kapoosta pie or two and a couple of tins of lager.

At this juncture in Svetlogorsk’s transformation from sleepy spa retreat to resort boutique, the old legacy prom with its cafes, restaurants, outside bars and amber-selling stalls was still firm favourite.

Then, possibly a couple of years ago (the memory grows dim), one evening, when the sea was particularly tantrum prone, a section of the old prom surrendered to its attitude problem and promptly fell apart, as old proms and seaside piers have the disturbing habit of doing.

The missing piece was soon replaced, but shortly afterwards came the announcement that the old prom would temporarily close for a period of refurbishment. And that is the way it has been for a proverbial month of Sundays and considerably more than a month of sunny summer days.

Behind the ubiquitous blue and white building-site fences, obscuring both prom and the sea, an extensive restructuring programme to defend the platform from the sea’s worst excesses labours on relentlessly, incorporating a face lift which, when it is finished, I should imagine, aims to bring the old prom cosmetically into line with its glossy, upmarket protégé.

The simultaneous reconfiguration of both of Svetlogorsk’s proms led to the loss of the beach from one end of its coastline to the other. The collateral damage was marked by a substantial tourist exodus from Svetlogorsk to Zelenogradsk, the Kaliningrad regions second resort, and indeed to the other resorts that share the Baltic coastline. Fortunately ~ for Svetlogorsk that is ~ stunning sea views from the uppermost reaches of the coastline’s steep embankment and a seamless stream of investment into the town’s inland facilities and its tourist attractions cushioned the brunt of the blow. And some of us kept coming back just to see how things were progressing. I was one of those someones.

Svetlogorsk Promenade a new chapter in its history

I returned to Svetlogorsk earlier this May, approaching the seafront via the Central Staircase, the great parade of steps that since 1974 has led to the giant sundial. The steps still go where they have always gone, but the sundial, including its brilliant tessera mosaic based on the signs of the zodiac, appears to have been uprooted.

Above: Svetlogorsk Sundial in June 2021
Below: The same location as it is today, photographed from the Central Staircase

Where the sundial used to be in Svetlogorsk

In a less exuberant period, before Svetlogorsk was ‘discovered’, when a ‘permit’ was needed to enter the town by car, as it was then considered a health resort in which the ozone air was sacrosanct, the sun dial, designed by Nicholas Frolov, was counted along with the water tower as one of the town’s star attractions.

On an evening in the year 2000 ~ it was the month of December and blisteringly cold ~ I took hold of the sundial gnomon, the upright blade that casts the shadow. “I shouldn’t have done that,” I thought. “My hand is freezing to it!” And then I thought, “I am actually here. I am actually here in Russia!” That moment was quite symbolic; quite a personal moment. Let’s hope they put the sundial back. They ought to, don’t you think? If only just for me.

Svetlogorsk Promenade a new chapter in its history

As it is no longer possible to access the old promenade due to its debasement as a construction site, a temporary boardwalk filters pedestrians onto the new promenade (Novyy Promenade), where ~ lo and behold! ~ after what seems like a brief eternity, or the torturous interval we had once to endure between the opening times of English pubs, the foundations for a three-phase series of swanky new apartments are finally metamorphosising into the shape of things to come.

You can see what this stretch of coastline looked like in the earlier stages of the apartments’ construction by clicking on the following links:

> Svetlogorsk, a tale of two lifts
> Svetlogorsk promenade ~ perchance to dream
> Whenever I need a lift, I go to Svetlogorsk

This is the closet that I have been to a high-rise building site in years, and it must be said, for want of a better reason, such as getting onto the beach, it is worth toddling off to Svetlogorsk to see exactly how they do it, build buildings that high, I mean, and by becoming a casual observer catch history in the making.

Svetlogorsk Promenade artists impression

Before gawping skywards, it is interesting to study first the full-colour canvas banners strapped to the baseline hoarding, each containing artist’s impression of how the built coastline will look when the job is completed. Then, when you have matched the buildings in the illustrations to their skeletal incarnations, marvel at the blokes aloft, hauling heavy and awkward building materials from one man to another up different levels of scaffolding and the audacity of those above them, who, defying the laws of gravity, precariously perch on slim steel girders, working away with hammer or drill some seventy feet above your head. It’s enough to remind you of what you could do, although you never would.

Looking upwards is sufficiently vertiginous without the encumbrance of climbing ladders. Best to look to the sea. It does not hurt your neck, and it can be therapeutic.

Above and beyond the promenade wall, which is hefty, tall and chunky, the sea is visibly seeable, but not without a distracting impediment. Someone, when no one was looking, appears to have gone and dumped thousands of tons of granite boulders over the seaward side of the wall, completely overriding what little was left of the beach.

I was asked, as if I was the prime suspect, whether these outsized chunks of stone would remain in their present location or be used to bolster the groynes (yes, I’ve spelt it right!), the heavy pole-shaped wave-breakers that march regimentally in parallel lines from Svetlogorsk’s shore out into its sea.

I knew the answer, of course, but I wasn’t about to let on. It could be that I was busy contemplating what it would be like to own and to live in a luxury apartment overlooking the Baltic Coast.

The sunsets along the Baltic Coast rank among the most spectacular anywhere in the world. Imagine sitting in your des-res flat. Would you ever tire of the spellbinding view? It’s doubtful.

Quotes from the appartment developers’ website
“Promenade Life Health Resort
A long-awaited project in which you can live, take care of your health,
raise children, create and be proud of your heritage”

“PROMENADE is a hotel and health complex with more than 220 turnkey apartments with extensive infrastructure and a high level of service. It is located in a unique location – on the first line of the Svetlogorsk seaside – and occupies almost one and a half kilometers of coastal territory.”

“The Baltic coast is one of the most amazing and beautiful places on Earth. Both romantics and pragmatists will find refuge here. The first will be inspired by amazing seascapes, the second by the undoubted convenience of geography (the Baltic coast connects 9 countries). A place of power is a place where you can relax and conduct business in comfort.”

At present, the new promenade is serviced by one bar and one restaurant only, both integral features of the embankment lift. But when the residential complex is complete, apart from and in addition to the plush apartment interiors, nature in all its natural glory and everything else that Svetlogorsk has to offer ~ eclectic bars and restaurants, good shopping facilities, tranquil woodland walks, engaging cultural and social history, convenient road and rail links both to Kaliningrad and the region’s airport ~ those lucky promenade dwellers will have right upon their doorstep the use of a pump room, spa and clinic all wrapped up in a breathtaking view inside a great location.

You can find more about this desirable lifestyle by clicking the link to the developers’ website here > https://promenad-park.ru/

In the meantime, I will bide my time in the sure and certain knowledge that any day now I will hear the sound of keys dropping into my post box, heralding the arrival of a personal invitation to take complementary possession of a deluxe apartment on Svetlogorsk’s prom.

You have to admit, it’s nice of them. My thank-you note is already written.

Svetlogorsk Promenade Posts
Svetlogorsk, a tale of two lifts
Svetlogorsk promenade ~ perchance to dream
Whenever I need a lift, I go to Svetlogorsk

Life in Kaliningrad through the lens of a camera

A few snapshots from my Kaliningrad album

22 May 2024 ~ Life in Kaliningrad through the lens of a camera

They could be curated, they could be aggregated, but I suspect that they are a random collection of photographs, some more recent than others, taken in and of Kaliningrad. Judge for yourselves.

Life in Kaliningrad

Above: Trams {Click on images to enlarge}
The new and the old ~ and I am not referring to myself. Here am I riding one of Kaliningrad’s latest trams. They are smooth and swish, and you can buy your ticket using touch-card technology. The old trams, c1970s (second photograph), good looks, as far as I am concerned. For me, these two-carriage ‘biscuit tins’ have classic kudos. I love the sounds and the movements they make. I even love the metal seats. Whenever I use these trams, our old friend Victor Ryabinin comes to mind. I can see him now, holding onto the rail at the back of the tram, observing life, as artists do, through the tram’s rear window. Rear Window! That’s a good name for a film.

Mick Hart and Olga Hart at Kaliningrad vintage car show 2019

Above: 2019 Golden Shadow of Königsberg
When things were different, and they often are, the Auto Retro Club Kaliningrad held an international and classic car show. The photo of me in a wide-brimmed trilby (a Fedora) was taken in what was that year (2019) the main arena for car competitions, the carpark of the King’s Residence, Kaliningrad’s most elaborate family leisure centre and restaurant complex. (Tweed jacket courtesy of Mr Wilcox)

Mick Hart in front of Kaliningrad's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

Orthodox Christian Cathedral Kaliningrad
The photograph of yours truly was taken in March of this year (2024) in Victory Square in front of The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Kaliningrad. In days of yore, meaning the early 2000s, this spot was dominated by a large bronze statue of Lenin, since removed to another quarter of the town. With the construction of the cathedral, the centre of Kaliningrad moved from Königsberg’s cultural and spiritual centre, directly in front of the Kaliningrad Hotel, to where it is today. In Königsberg’s days, the area known as Victory Square and everything beyond lay outside the city’s defensive walls. (Yes, I know, from a compositional perspective, it would have been much better had I stood so that I was centred in the photograph in line with the door. It annoys me as well!)

Königsberg relics at fleamarket in Kaliningrad

< Left: Königsberg Relics
A lot of Königsberg was blown into bits and pieces during World War Two, so it is hardly surprising that bits and pieces of its past keep turning up, and a good place to find them ~ in fact the best ~ is at Kaliningrad’s flea market, just to one side of the city’s central market. This photo illustrates why I love this market so much.

Below: QR Code Checkers
Here’s a blast from the past ~ and let’s sincerely hope that it remains that way. Here we have QR Code Checking Officers on duty during the Coronavirus era, not letting anybody inside the cathedral unless they had a QR code proving they had been ‘jabbed’. Looking back on this sinister period of history makes walking in and out of doorways unchallenged instantly gratifying.

Life in Kaliningrad

QR Code checkers monitor access to Kaliningrad Cathedral in the Coronavirus year of 2021

Kaliningrad Botanical Gardens: an autumnal scene of the lake

Above: Kaliningrad Botanical Gardens
Unlike many cities, you do not have to travel far in Kaliningrad to enjoy nature in its natural habitat. This photograph captures the tranquility of the lake in Kaliningrad’s Botanical Gardens. It was taken in autumn 2023.

Above: Kaliningrad Sculptures {Click on images to enlarge}
Kaliningrad is renowned for its sculptures: Schiller, Kant, Lenin and the composition of two fighting bison to name but four. They may possess an attitude of assumed permanence thanks to who and what they are, but this distinction should not cancel out the ephemeral and the esoteric. This purple faceted moggy was last seen sitting statuesque outside Kaliningrad’s latest shopping centre in the central market district, and it is not everyday you will see an updated Russian samovar sitting on top of an oil drum in the grounds of Königsberg Cathedral.

Life in Kaliningrad: Three iconic buildings in Kaliningrad, but the House of Soviets is no more ...

Above: House of Soviets
A poignant picture of the House of Soviets framed between the hotel and restaurant buildings of Kaliningrad’s Fishing Village and the reconstructed ‘New Synagogue’ c.2023. Stand in the same spot today where the photograph was taken to appreciate the laws of transience by which our lives are governed.

Above: CCCP (that’s USSR to you)
As you know, because it’s general knowledge, there’s no time like the past, which is why as a collector of what’s left of it, I was thrilled to discover on a hot day in ’22 an ice cream with an historical theme. After chilling out on it, I was able to say with impunity, “ I enjoyed the USSR”.

Above: Sunny Day in Youth Park {Click on images to enlarge}
They say that ‘youth is wasted on the young’, but whenever I stroll through Kaliningrad’s Youth Park, I put this prejudice behind me and think instead ‘young at heart’. Some would say, ‘never grown up!’ I vow one day that I will attempt to complete every adult ride in the park in series. Until that day dawns, I will continue to enjoy those days when the park is less rumbustious. At the time these photos were taken (May 2024), I was more than happy simply to purchase a cup of specialty tea and sit and drink it on a park bench. The park attendants were filling the planters with flowers, and the sun had got its hat on.

Königsberg villa in modern-day Kaliningrad

Above: Königsberg Villas
It is hardly surprising that when residents of Moscow, Siberia and other far-flung places across this huge territory that is Russia, visit Kaliningrad, they fall in love with the city. Kaliningrad, in all its many and diverse facets, is, by virtue of its Prussian-Russian history, a unique experience, central to which is its surviving German buildings. Contrary to the belief that all of Königsberg was raised to the ground during WWII, many splendid, curious and fine examples of architectural merit are extant, and it is not always necessary to adopt a ‘seek and ye shall find’ approach. In the districts of Amalienau and Maraunenhof, for example, almost every street contains something of architectural significance, and some streets have enough large houses and grand villas on them to make even the most abstemious ashamed of their secret envy.

Above: Contrasting Scenes of Kaliningrad {Click on images to enlarge}
Two cityscape views: one taken from a high-rise flat complex; the other from a balcony (May 2024), to coincide with the first blooms of spring.

Ноябрь 2024
Пн	Вт	Ср	Чт	Пт	Сб	Вс
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

Bussing it around the Kaliningrad region

A town called Gusev

Could it be Dobrovolsk?

Krasnoznamensk and its museum

Seeing the Kaliningrad region by coach

Nemanskoye Museum

Epilogue

Thoughts on the fifth anniversary of the death of Victor Ryabinin

Königsberg Artist Victor Ryabinin

Farage’s victory makes Labour’s landslide look like landfill

As for the Cons …

Farage Election Victory Ruins Labour’s Big Day

Well spoken that man!

Vote Rough Speaking Parker for a Better UK!

Nigel Farage shakes up election in a bid to rescue Migrant Beleaguered Britain

You cannot trust the mainstream media. You cannot trust the UK’s old political parties. It’s the usual dirty tricks time as the pseudo-libs go running scared …

Nigel Farage: Not frightened to speak out

Nigel Farage Election Hope

Nigel Farage Election Hope

Will Labour bring it on!

Nigel Farage Election Hope

Balt Restaurant Zelenogradsk Review

Zelenogradsk Restaurant BALT

💚 Around the Kaliningrad region

Hotel Mercure Gdansk a Welcome Oasis

Getting the feel of the place

Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Keptinis (Farmhouse Beer)

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

Keptinis (Farmhouse Beer) in Kaliningrad is it good?

Promenade Apartments Svetlogorsk Showcase Stylish Living

Svetlogorsk Promenade a new chapter in its history

Svetlogorsk Promenade a new chapter in its history

Svetlogorsk Promenade PostsSvetlogorsk, a tale of two liftsSvetlogorsk promenade ~ perchance to dreamWhenever I need a lift, I go to Svetlogorsk

A few snapshots from my Kaliningrad album

Life in Kaliningrad

Life in Kaliningrad

Svetlogorsk Promenade Posts
Svetlogorsk, a tale of two lifts
Svetlogorsk promenade ~ perchance to dream
Whenever I need a lift, I go to Svetlogorsk