Архив рубрики: DAILY LIFE in KALININGRAD

Daily Life in Kaliningrad

Daily Life in Kaliningrad is a category of my blog expatkaliningrad.com. It is, as the title suggests, devoted to observations, thoughts and opinions of what it is like to live in Kaliningrad, and it is written from the point of view of an expat Englishman. Unlike my diary category, Kaliningrad: Mick Hart’s Diary, the posts featured in this category are not necessarily linked to any specific timeline or date but are topic or theme oriented. For example, at the time of writing this brief description the category DAILY LIFE IN KALININGRAD contains the following posts:

A Day at the Dentists
One of the first reactions I received when I divulged to friends and colleagues my intention to move to Russia, apart from perhaps the obvious one, was what is the health service like? A not unusual preoccupation, especially with older people, because, let’s face it, as we grow older we fall to bits. I wrote this article about a trip to a Russian dentist’s partly in response to this question and partly because the experience surprised me. Well, we all have our prejudices; take real-ale drinkers and Watney’s.

International Women’s Day Kaliningrad
Now you would not think that an old and proud chauvinist like me would want to go on record as saying that I enjoy something as seemingly PC and ism-oriented as International Women’s Day, but in these days of tats, butch, Its, Others and Old Uncle Tom Cobbley, Russia’s nationwide display of affection and sentimentality traditionally symbolised by the giving of flowers to the fairer sex pulls wonderfully at one’s conservative heartstrings. Whether flower power and a kind heart were influential enough to pull at my wallet strings with regards to treating my better half to flowers is revealed in this article.

Self-isolating in Kaliningrad
Rather self-explanatory don’t you think? This, I believe, was my first article as the world entered the coronavirus maelstrom, since when expressions like ‘self-isolating’, ‘social distancing’, ‘lockdown’, ‘masks’, ‘vaccines’, ‘New Normal’ and so on have become the defining lexicon of the 21^st century. I want my money back! When I was young, and I was once, I subscribed to a Sci-Fi magazine called TV 21. It was, as the title suggests, a preview of what it would be like to live in the 21^st century. It was all about cities on stilts, suspended monorails, hover cars, people with metallic-looking hair and all-in-one shimmering silver jumpsuits. I, as with my entire generation, have been had! There was nothing in this magazine’s Brave New World prediction of open borders, social engineered societies, political correctness, sect appeasement, streets too violent to walk down, globalisation and global warming, anti-patriotism, revisionist history, stage-managed free speech or coronavirus. We were had! And, as we continue to self-isolate, there are those out there who believe that we are still being had. But I prefer to self-isolate …

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Daily Life in Kaliningrad

I am aware that Daily Life in Kaliningrad is not exactly overpopulated with articles. You can blame this on coronavirus ~ I do. Since making its debut, I, like almost everyone else who writes things, has had their focus ~ nay their lives ~ shanghaied by the why’s, what’s and therefores of this life- and lifestyle-changing phenomenon. This, let us hope it is only a, detour, is reflected in the disproportional number of posts that appear in my Kaliningrad: Mick Hart’s Diary category (sub-categories Diary 2000 & Diary 2019/2020) and my exposition category, Meanwhile in the UK, which is devoted to events in my home country, England, oh and sometimes the other bits: analysis, comment and exposés on UK media content together with cultural, historical and nostalgic subjects which appeal to my idiosyncrasies or are taken from the barely legible pages of my old and initially handwritten diaries.

We live in peculiar and interesting times, and as I consider myself to be first and foremost a diarist, it is as impossible not to be waylaid by events as they unfold as it is not to time travel. When you take the two together and place it within the context of somebody’s life, in this case mine, the impetus to write expatkaliningrad.com is not difficult to understand.

OXOTA Beer in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Published: 30 March 2022 ~ OXOTA Beer in Kaliningrad

Article 19: OXATA

I have often seen it, but I’ve never tried it, but when I saw a chap in front of me paying for two bottles of it at the local supermarket checkout, I decided that it was high time that I did. I’m talking about Ohota Krepkoye beer (OXOTA beer), a strong Russian beer from the Heineken Brewery* in St Petersburg with an OG of 8.1% and a label affirming real men, and now me, drink it.

The bottle looks as though its 1.5 litres, but when you check the small print you find that it is 0.15 litres short of the full 1.5. I know a lot of people like that.

The label tells you straight away that this is no namby-pamby, Nancy-boy brew. The bold shadow-highlighted 3-D typeface charges across the bottle against a deep red sash and above it is a man who has an awesome chest with a rifle slung over his shoulder. If you have ever harboured a secret desire to appear really incongruous, try carrying a bottle of this beer whilst attending a gay parade!

Before I had taken my first sip, I knew instinctively that this was the sort of beer that you could very easily get pissed on but not take the piss out of. Excuse my professional beer critic’s language.

The aroma struck me initially as though possessing a spicey, citrus twang, but, before decanting into my trusty Soviet glass, I paused a moment, a little affectedly I thought, took another whiff and changed my mind. It was now, I opined, decidedly sweet and disconcertingly antiseptic.

It poured into the glass with a disappointingly weak head which dissipated rapidly. Once out of the bottle, I was relieved to find that the clinical smell had gone, replaced and overpowered by the sweeter notes.

Not the dark, deep colour I had anticipated but a mid-amber, the beer had, I was surprised to find, not a rich sweet taste but a sweet tart taste laced with a touch of burnt charcoal.

OXOTA Beer in Kaliningrad

The quite glutinous finish gives way to a strong throaty aftertaste, which is not at all unpleasant, and, whilst you secretly wonder how it received a World Beer Award in the ‘Silver’ category, as the medallion on the front of the bottle signifies, there is no doubt in your mind, and also in your mouth, that the brew is persuasively moorish.

Affirmation that this is a real man’s drink is not backward in coming forward. I could feel my liver shrinking and my ego getting bigger with each successive sip.

The heady aftertaste taps into your long-term memory, summoning vague recollections of cautionless drinking sessions undertaken in the first flood of youth. How much of that memory would survive intact should you overdo an OXOTA session really does not bear thinking about.

One thing’s for certain, OXOTA is a good buy if you want to say goodbye and rather quickly to that irritating condition otherwise known as sobriety.

Footnote:🦶 I picked up the rumour from somewhere that the Heineken Brewery is one of those companies that virtue signalled their allegiance to the United States-led globalist war on Russia by buggering off. But take heart, Hart, I said. Buggering-off breweries mean a larger share of the market for those that are smart and don’t budge and a chance to expand and diversify for those that seize the initiative.😁

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: OXOTA (Ohota Krepkoye)
Brewer: Heineken
Where it is brewed: St Petersburg
Bottle capacity: 1.35 litre
Strength: 8.1%
Price: It cost me about 137 roubles (1.06 pence)
Appearance: Mid-amber
Aroma: Predominantly sweet
Taste: Tart, not excessively sweet
Fizz amplitude: 3/10
Label/Marketing: A big strapper with a large rifle
Would you buy it again? If the need so takes me
Marks out of 10: 6

*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.

Cesky Medved Beer in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Published: 19 January 2022 ~ Cesky Medved Beer in Kaliningrad

Article 18: Cesky Medved

What’s not to like about a bear drinking a pint of beer? It’s so Russian. Look at him there on the label, that big cheeky grin and that foaming, frothing tankard. But wait! There’s something not quite right! It’s nothing to do with the bear. We all know that bears have big cheeky grins and drink beer. No, it’s the big beery head. Not the big beary head, but the soap-sudded head on top of the beer.

You see, Cesky Medved does not pour like that. It has no gargantuan head, in fact, it has very little head of which to speak. In fact, it’s as flat as your hat.

Ahh, that explains it, both the grin and the froth: our loveable old bear is not drinking Cesky Medved at all, he’s supping away at something completely different.

Cesky Medved Beer in Kaliningrad

Here is a quote about Cesky Medved that was posted to a beer-review website. The website is Russian and (surprise, surprise) most of the comments posted there are in Russian. This comment may have lost something in its Google translation, but I am sure you get the drift:

“The aroma [of Cesky Medved] is artificial, candy-fruity. That’s what cheap fruity beer drinks smell like. (Malt extract?) … the same, sweet with sourness and notes of hop extract or oil … I don’t know what they use there, but the beer is very bad.”

To be brutally frank, this beer smells like … I don’t know what? When I first lifted the bottle lid and attempted to whiff it, I thought for a moment that I had forgotten to take off my face mask. (Please don’t mock. I am certain that there are some of you out there, and you know who you are, who live in your masks day and night!) But gradually, with the bottle shoved up my hooter as you would a decongestant, a pungency filtered through.

I would not describe the smell of Cesky Medved as sweet or ‘candy-fruity’, but rather more on the sour side with an indiscernible back-twang, the sort of thing you sometimes get when you are offered a drink of something and the cup that you are drinking out of has not been washed up properly.

What had not smelt strong in the bottle, however, had an accumulative effect as it was served to the glass. Thereupon, the more subtle scents evaporated, leaving in their wake a certain lingering muskiness.

As the beer poured hazy and as flat as a road-killed rabbit, the appearance and smell conjoined to produce a disconcerting thought, that of a cobbled-together recipe strained through last week’s gym sock. It did not help any that, with this thought in mind, just as I was about to take my first sip, there was Jimmy Saville peering at me from Google Images all sweaty in his track suit. “How’s about that, then?”

What was it that he had carved into his gravestone in Scarborough before some well-meaning soul scrubbed it out? Ahh yes, I remember, “It was good whilst it lasted”! I am sure that this reference was to life in general and not to a glass of Cesky Medved.

I must say that with no head, medium fizz, a dish-water haziness and the smell of Saville’s socks, somehow Cesky Medved managed to be drinkable. Certainly, for the nominal amount that I paid for the pleasure, 110 roubles (£1.06) , I was not about to complain. No, I thought, I would save that for later, when, for example, I write this review.

My last word on the subject is that there are exemplary beers, excellent beers, good beers, satisfactory beers, tolerable beers, insipid beers and bad beers. This bear wasn’t that bad.

It’s a bear-faced lie!!

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😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Cesky Medved
Brewer: Baltika Breweries
Where it is brewed: Yaroslavl, Russia
Bottle capacity: 1.35 litre
Strength: 4.6%
Price: It cost me about 110 roubles (1.06 pence)
Appearance: Light, unfiltered
Aroma: You could call it that
Taste: Acquired
Fizz amplitude: 4/10
Label/Marketing: A cheeky, grinning bear
Would you buy it again? Never ever say never
Marks out of 10: 3.5

Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Article 17: Amstel Bier

Published: 21 November 2021 ~ Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad

So, if you don’t like pilsner what are you doing buying it? That’s easy. It was on special offer at my local supermarket, and as I am saving money to buy myself a ticket to Anywhere before the whole world is renamed Vaccination to make sense of the universality of the Vaccination Passport, at 90 roubles, less than a quid, as Abba used to say, ‘how could I resist you!’

Amstel Bier’s marketing strategy relies for its gravitas, if not its gravity, on that ubiquitous word of the beer-drinking world ‘premium’. Next to ‘love’, it is probably the most overused, abstruse, misunderstood and misappropriated word of all time. Although it occupies many a ‘premium’ slot, if not an entire chapter, in the Beer Posers’ Dictionary, it would not, in its day-to-day marketing application, be permitted as much as a footnote in the Dictionary of Truth (which is not published under licence to any of the Davos set).

Gold labels and award-winning medallions are often used in conjunction with the word ‘premium’, and it does not hurt any to lend to the product a date in antiquity, thus enabling it to draw from the not-so mythical notion that everything that was produced in the past that did not need a Vaccination Passport or be stamped with a QR code was quality or, to define ‘premium’, was of ‘superior quality’ ~ as was life itself ~ once. Thus, Amstel’s bottle incorporates the lot: the gold label, the word ‘premium’ and a date when the world was real ~ 1870.

The Carlsberg Company saw the funny side of this marketing coin many years ago. They flipped the irony of it into their award-winning marketing slogan, ‘Carlsberg, probably the best beer in the world,’ proving to the world that at least they could laugh up their sleeve, which is more than can be said for Watney’s, with it’s disingenuous, ‘Roll out Red Barrel, Let’s have a barrel of fun!’ ~ which drinking it was anything but.

When you see a product labelled in this way, especially a beer, the ‘premium’ promise first supposedly sells it to you and then, before you take the top off the bottle, influences your opinion, so that, unless you are really studying it, when swilling it back with your mates, this little gold word keeps ringing around your taste buds, going ‘Premium! [yum, yum] … Premium! [yum, yum]’.

Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad

With an introduction of this nature, you could easily jump to the wrong conclusion that I am now going to say that Amstel is crap, but that would be too easy.

Let’s take the top off first and check its ‘nose’, as the pretentious like to say.

My first reaction was to reach for my NHS Do-It-Yourself Coronavirus Testing Kit, because I couldn’t smell a thing. No, that’s not altogether true. I could smell something. I think it was a rat. I am not saying that the beer smelt like a rat, because I have never snorted rat. I use the term loosely, as I might, if I was a brewster, use the word ‘premium’. In other words, I could smell nothing, no rat no premium, and certainly nothing that could justify anything approaching the notion of ‘superior quality’.

I sniffed the top of the bottle with the cap off for such an inordinate length of time that Ginger, our cat, thought he must be missing out on something and tried to get in on the act. But after the briefest second, he walked away in disgust without so much as a ‘buy it again’ or just a ‘meeoww’ for that matter.

I didn’t want to end up with the bottle stuck to the end of my nose and be rushed off to hospital in one of those little white Russian ambulances with the siren blaring ‘snout stuck, snout stuck, snout stuck’, so I gave up after five minutes, concluding that I had detected a faint something or other, an intriguing cross, you might say, between musk and tinniness.

When I eventually poured it into my glass, I found myself staring at a pale amber liquid, with very little head, which, as soon as it saw me, made a fast exit. I think this is what is known in beer reviewers’ speak as ‘having two fingers’, or should that be giving two fingers?

Most people who occasionally drink pilsners but usually drink something else, tell me that pilsner appeals to their taste in summer because served cold ~ how else? ~ it is light, crisp and refreshing. From that statement, let us extrapolate the word ‘crisp’. Amstel Bier isn’t. No matter how you drink it ~ swig, gulp or roll it around your mouth ~ crispness doesn’t come into it, so, if that is what you are looking for, you won’t find it in Amstel. Make no mistake about that! (Oooh, he can be so manly when he talks about beer!)

However, Amstel is not without flavour: it is mellow, smooth, rounded and gives the lie to the notion that it is all about tininess and not about taste. Some beers, especially some lagers, go down like a lead weight, but the Amstel finish is not unpleasant. It doesn’t really justify the self-presumptuous handshake of the two chums on the front of the bottle leaning out of their stamps of approval ~ perhaps they have just been vaccinated and are about to open a Facebook account ~ but thin and wishy-washy beers never have an aftertaste (think Watney’s!), and this one certainly has.

In fact, Amstel has a two-phase aftertaste: the first is surprising and seems to hit the spot, but as it Victor Matures it does not so much as sock it to you as socks it to you. In Amstel’s defence, pilsners tend to do this to me generally, so it is by no means unique in this respect either, but in this particular case after five minutes had elapsed, I found myself looking for words to describe the after-aftertaste in my cockney rhyming slang almanac, where all I was able to find was something to do with Scotsmen.

I am not saying that Amstel needs to pull its socks up, as I hear tell that if it is not a popular lager on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall, the Greeks can’t get enough of it. This may have something to do with the fact that the Athenian Brewery in Greece is now owned by Heineken and as Heineken brew Amstel, well, work it out for yourself.

Amstel was originally brewed at the Amstel Brewery in Dutchland. It has a proud heritage, going back to 1870 (you can see the date on the Amstel bottles). However, it was taken over by Heineken International in 1968, who moved production of Amstel to their principal plant at Zoeterwoude in the Netherlands.

I am not sure whether the Chief Brewer, Jock Strap, still works for them or not.

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Amstel Bier
Brewer: Heineken
Where it is brewed: Zoeterwoude, Netherlands
Bottle capacity: 1.3 litre
Strength: 4.1%
Price: It cost me about 90 roubles (91 pence)
Appearance: Pale-amber
Aroma: Faint
Taste: It does have some
Fizz amplitude: 4/10
Label/Marketing: ‘Premium’
Would you buy it again? If the price is right!
Marks out of 10: 4

German Recipe Beer in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Article 16: German Recipe

Published: 25 October 2021 ~ German Recipe Beer in Kaliningrad

On 26 April 2021, purely in the interests of writing these reviews and not because I have a drink problem ~ our local shop is well stocked with beers, is only a short walk away and is the same distance coming back, so no problem there ~ I wrote about Czech Recipe beer from Russian brewers, Lipetskpivo.

Finding it to be a zesty, hoppy beer with a refreshing aftertaste, I decided to improve my geographical knowledge by unscrewing the top on its sister beer, German Recipe. Disappointed that the 1.3 litre bottle did not come with a free moustache or the original helmet worn by the Kaiser, nevertheless, I was not deterred. There is something so German about drinking German beer or a beer with a German name in an old German house in Königsberg, and, although I was not expecting the taste to be earth-shattering, as I had enjoyed its sister so much, not to drink it would be bunkers.

I had already swotted up on the background of its brewery and the claims its brewers were making. They say that in 2005 the brewery underwent a large-scale modernisation programme and that, with the assistance of technologists from other parts of the world, they were able to fine tune their production to meet world-quality standards. An important end result from this investment was that it allowed them to produce beers to a microbiological excellence that negated the need to include all of the preservative gubbins often required for extending shelf-life, which, let’s not be coy about this, can only be a good thing.

My one wish is that I could find a way to extend my shelf life, but as I was drinking German Recipe in 2021, not August of 1944, at least I could drink with the relative confidence that, unless history was about to repeat itself, I would not have to grab my bottle and glass and hurry off to the shelter.

German Recipe Beer in Kaliningrad

So, settled in the attic, I ‘cocked a deaf ‘un’ to the air-raid sirens, which, thankfully, I was not around to hear 77 years ago, and boldly unscrewed the cap. No sooner had I done so than a strong whiff gave vent to the air. It was malty, peaty and definitely robust.

Putting the gas mask away, as it did nothing for my Tootal cravat or ties, I braced myself for the penultimate moment of truth and poured the liquid into my glass and then held it up to the light. Yes, I realise that this was inexcusably pretentious of me, but you must understand that in the UK real-ale devotees always do this sort of thing to elevate themselves in their own minds, whether at bar or at beer festival ~ particularly at beer festivals. Fortunately, after three or four pints they are forced to drop the ritual, partly because of alcohol-induced amnesia and also because by this time and quantity, they can no longer tell their glass from their elbow, and even if they could they are in no stable condition to prosecute the pretension further for fear of falling over. This, of course, is not the reason why I only hold my first glass of beer up toward the light, and then quickly leave it at that.

Anyway, drinking sensibly, as they say, having noted a light-brown haziness looking like the mist lifting slowly above the Curonian Lagoon, and a good dissolving head ~ beer drinkers get a lot of those, especially in the mornings ~ I went for the ultimate test: the first sip.

German Recipe Beer in Kaliningrad

The first thing I noticed from the first sip about this ‘German beer’ brewed in Russia was (shock, it’s Germanisation!) that the smell was stronger than the taste. This differential did not phase me, as the second and third sip were like ‘papers please’, and this brew had all its credentials. In fact, it could not have been more convincing had I been drinking it with my QR code tattooed on my buttock. Nothing counterfeit here! This German was surprisingly bright and fragrant (I once worked with someone like that; he was as bright and fragrant as a rainbow.) and, just like its Czech sister, was well zesty with a refreshing finish.

The after taste, and here I really mean the after-after taste, mirrored its appearance in the glass: it was a little bit clingy. It reminded me of the type of women whom I never knew but thought I would meet one day as I had often seen them in films.

With an OG of 4.7%, I felt confident that if I drank a couple of bottles I would not be clinging on to things to keep myself upright, except for the glass itself, which proved to me by the end of the session that my palate must have approved.

To be a little picky ~ I said ‘picky’ ~ after my third pint It did occur to me that the clinginess was becoming a trifle galvanised, and I hoped it would not go further so that the roof of my mouth would feel as if I’d been drinking Anderson Shelter. But the apprehension passed almost as swiftly as a low flying Messerschmidt and, before you could say the end of the war, I knew that I had enjoyed it.

So, thumbs up and chocks away. Buy a bottle of German today.

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: German Recipe
Brewer: Lipetskpivo
Where it is brewed: Lipetsk, Russia
Bottle capacity: 1.3 litre
Strength: 4.7%
Price: It cost me about 165 roubles (£1.72)
Appearance: Mid-amber
Aroma: Full bodied, hoppy and malty
Taste: Fragrant, bright
Fizz amplitude: 7/10
Label/Marketing: Suitably Germanic
Would you buy it again? I have done
Marks out of 10: 6

Kaliningrad Leaves Autumn to the Leaf Suckers

Leaves it out! I am dreaming myself to sleep

Published: 22 October 2021 ~ Kaliningrad Leaves Autumn to the Leaf Suckers

I am not precisely sure when it was, but I know that I converted to the religion of insomnia many, many years ago, during which time, having lived in numerous, too numerous to recall, properties, I have lain awake at night, or, indeed, have woken during the night, listening to the sounds of the world on the other side of my window.

Naturally, every different place in which we find ourselves sleeping, or not, as the case may be, possesses its own external world of noise, its own audible signature, and Königsberg-Kaliningrad is no exception.

For the sake of brevity and the object of this article, let us hastily pass over tempting references to unthinking ‘dugs’ and thoughtless ‘dug’ owners, both doing what they do because they haven’t the sense to do otherwise, and focus instead on a noise, or noises, the type of which are pertinent to and typical to no other but Kaliningrad at night.

During the summer months, night noises in cities and towns, wherever these places may be, are plentiful and variegated, because universally the heat of the night invariably brings forth denizens, particularly young denizens, whose expression of the first flush of yoof is noise. ‘Hey, I’m alive! I must make a racket!”: Bum, de Bum, de Bum (In case you are wondering what that is, it is the world-over urban sound of a delinquent’s ignorant base-beater.).

But even in the summer months, against the backdrop of predictable noises, such as someone staggering home with a skinful or someone with a motorbike thrust between their legs, there are strange noises, weird noises that once having entered your consciousness refuse to let go or give up, until, to the best of your ability, you either solve their mystery or surrender to their influence and fall asleep in spite of them.

For a long period, and the night is long when sleep is in an elusive mood, I focussed my deductive powers on the source of a low-humming drone. And yet it was some time, successive early mornings later, before the identity of my preoccupations decided to make itself known to me. What I had been listening to was neither a space ship nor banshee, a hover car or a hole in a trumpet, it was in fact a road sweeper or, to be more precise, a lowly street cleansing vehicle: a truck that trundles about the city sloshing water around the street when normal people are sleeping.

Kaliningrad Leaves Autumn to the Leaf Suckers

It was yesterday, at 4am. I was thinking about the usual things, the ghosts of pub crawls past, QR-coded existence, all I was going to do in life, should have done, might still do, but might not have time to do them now ~ you know how the gospel goes for we insomniacs ~ when I heard what at first impressed me as the sound of a distant street slosher. I lay there for a good twenty minutes, using the constancy of this sound, its soothing continuity, to lull me into further thoughts, tranquil and obsessive, before it eventually dawned on me that this was the month of October and that the days of summer dust-damping had been succeeded by autumn leaves.

There was the clue I needed! Fellow insomniasts will understand when I say that we who need sleep, just as much as you do, but don’t get it, are no strangers to Eureka moments that fly phantom-like from out of the darkness and keep us awake even more! That long, that mid-range humming tone to which my thoughts were singing and which had occupied my mind as if it was a reference library, was not the sound of water on dust, it was nothing of the sort. It was the steady rhythmic lilt emanating from the suction hoses of the pre-dawn leaf-sucking lorries!

Have you taken leaves of your senses?

Cast your mind back, if you please, to a post I wrote in 2020. In that post I stated that Kaliningrad is a green city, a city full of trees. Yes, in the summer of 2020, I wrote, Kaliningrad is a green city, to which I should add, and now will, that in autumn it turns yellow, as well as orange, red, russet, purple and many shades of brown. This is because trees, unlike many of us, are not known for insomnia. In the autumn they get busy, shedding their leaves in the imminent countdown to winter, when all as one will sleep. And in places where there are lots of trees about to bed down for winter, there are also lots of fallen leaves.

Thus, for the past three weeks or so, gangs of Kaliningrad leaf shufflers have been marshalling piles of leaves, stacking them at the sides of streets and raking them up from lawns and verges. Both by day, but mainly by night, when you are asleep and we are awake, the leaf-sucking lorries and flat-bed trucks crawl stealthily out of their depots to ply their trade on Königsberg’s cobbles and Kaliningrad’s highways and byways.

If you cannot shut them worry not, it is truly a sight for sore eyes, and the distinctive hum is not so bad. Think of it as an autumn lullaby, played for you and for me by the Loyal Fill Those Trucks Up Orchestra.

And so it makes you think. And lying there in the dark, steals you away to a time so far away in your youth that it may never have really happened ~ if it was not because in the night, there, alone in the dark, you have to place your trust in something, so why not your mind and its memory?

When I was a young boy, and I was never anything else when young, growing up in a small English village at a time when Arsebook and PlayStation were but devious twinkles in the ‘me, myself, I’ of a neoliberal’s bank account, I found that I was fascinated by the tarmac gangs resurfacing the road; the dustbin men collecting the rubbish; the drain unblockers unblocking the drains; the road sweepers sweeping the roadsides; and last, but by no means least, the crème de la crème of them all, the men who rode around in a tanker into which they emptied the house latrines ~ the all-important ‘Bucket Men’!

In fact, I was so took up with this last profession that when my well-to-do auntie and uncle visited us at our family home, and I was asked in an imperious voice by an omnipotent-looking lady all done up in a large fur coat, “So, tell me Michael, when you grow up what do you want to be?” Instead of answering a doctor, lawyer or banker, which is what I suppose she wanted to hear, I replied, with childlike candour, “I want to be a bucket man!”

Granted, perhaps not the most salubrious or rewarding of vocations, but at that particular time, when connection to mains sewerage was far from universal in small villages, the necessity of the bucket man, even more than the leaf-sucking lads, commanded a certain respect. However, every ‘dug’ has its day (bang!) and the day of the bucket man (I think it was Tuesday?) came and inevitably went, driven eventually to extinction by the triumphant rise of the bucket-man-free self-propelling flush lavatory.

How fortuitous then that I eventually went into publishing, and also how lucky I was to have narrowly missed working on newspapers. Mind you, if I had gone in for news media, would it have been so very much different in terms of substance, stirring and shovelling to what would have been my lot had I found an opening in bucket toilets. Let me in hindsight be thankful for one and romance lament for the other.

With the humming still in my ears, I returned from the place where my auntie still stands to this day. She has taken root in my memory; her face all shocked and dumbfounded. Meanwhile, in my thoughtful unsleep, I offered a prayer of thanks to the nocturnal Kaliningrad leaf suckers* for autumnal services rendered when everyone else, except for us, are sound asleep in their beds zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

(*sounds like the sort of lyrics Frank Zappa would have been proud of!).

Link to> Kaliningrad in Autumn Leaves it Out

Image attribution
Figure in bed illustration: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/US-National-Park-Maps-pictogram-for-a-hotel-vector-image/15796.html
Autumn leaf patterns: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Autumn-leaves-arrangement-vector-image/14926.html

Beware of the Babooshka!

Advice for free

Published: 29 September 2021 ~ Beware of the Babooshka!

It was an extremely hot day when my wife decided that as I had made the mistake of buying a new lawnmower, perhaps now would be a good time to cut the lawn. “Why whinge?” you ask. “There is nothing so easy as cutting a lawn. Modern, electric-powered lawn mowers cut lawns as if they were made for the job.”

“Ah, yes,” I concede, “but there are lawns and lawns.”

The lawn in question was big and, as it had not been cut for a year, it was intolerably overgrown and full of long, brown straggly things.

Nevertheless, not one to walk away from a challenge when there is the promise of beer at the end of it, I set to with a vengeance.

About four hours later and three-quarters of the way through it, I was just looking back over what I had done and secretly congratulating myself, when a stout and redoubtable babooshka came marching down the road.

As she drew level with me, she stopped, peered over the fence and gazed intently first at the lawn, then at the mower and then at me.

“I’ll bowl her over with my scintillating grasp of Russian,” I thought. So, I call out, merrily.

“Strasveetee [Hello]!”

The babooshka looks but says nothing.

Perhaps she was spellbound by the conquistador job that I was doing.

When she finally did say something, it sounded short and to the point. I asked my good lady to translate.

“What did she say?” I asked. I suppose I was expecting to hear a compliment.

“She said, “‘You don’t do it like that!’”

“Don’t do what, like what?” I asked

“Don’t cut lawns like that!”

Well, really, had I been in England I would have put her right and no mistake: “Listen to me my good woman, I’ll have you know that I’ve been mowing lawns man and boy …”

But that was just it. I wasn’t in England and, if I had been, would an elderly lady address me like this?

Certainly, in days of yore, when I was a nipper, they would have done. But that was then and now is now. Grandmas in the UK no longer dispense worldly advice and criticism, they are too busy nightclubbing and looking for dates on Tinder.

Having said her piece the babooshka went on her way, and I continued to cut the lawn the way that I always shouldn’t have done.

This was the same babooshka, incidentally, who had sworn blind that our statue was black when, in fact, it is bronzed-brown (I repeat the incident from my former post, Hippy Party on the Baltic Coast).

We were standing on the pavement at the end of the garden admiring the newly painted statue when who should appear but the friendly village babooshka.

“Hello,” we regaled her, cheerily.

“Why have you spoilt him?” she snapped.

I knew she could not have been referring to me, so she must have meant the statue. Before we had chance to reply, she had exclaimed: “He’s black!”

I shot a glance at the statue. Heavens, should we be taking a knee?!

“No, in fact, he is bronze,” I curtly corrected her.

Olga bent down and picked up some litter from the side of the road and placed it inside the rubbish bag we were carrying.

“Huh!” the babooshka tutted, “Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time!”

A few days later, without me, I am sad to say, my wife ran into her again.

“Hello,” Olga greeted her.

“You haven’t done much, have you?” came the oblique reply.

Who remembers Albert Tatlock from Coronation Street?

Olga asked for clarification.

She got it: “The house. You haven’t done much to it. All you’ve done is painted the statue black!”

Who remembers Nora Batty from Last of the Summer Wine?

My wife attempted to turn the tables adroitly, innocently remarking on the nice sunflowers that she had observed in a neighbour’s garden.

“What’s the use of them?” the babooshka asked, and before Olga could think of nothing in response, went on to say, “Those sunflowers are in my relative’s garden. Look at it. It’s full of potatoes, but she hasn’t looked after them properly. They’re all overgrown. Spent too much time on those sunflowers, I suppose.”

Puzzled by Babooshka — See end of post for image attribution

The next time my wife bumped into this ray of golden sunlight, she was caught by the philosopher as she was running to catch the bus.

“What are you running for?” the merry babooshka asked.

“To catch the bus,” Olga explained. “The last time I almost missed it. The driver left earlier than he should.”

“Well,” retorted the babooshka, “sometimes he gets here early, so he leaves early.”

“But he shouldn’t!”

“Why not, he can do what he likes. If he’s here early there’s no point in him sitting about. He wants to get on.”

“Yes,” my wife argued, “but there is such a thing as a timetable.”

“Timetable,” the babooshka snorted contemptuously, “what’s the point of that when he’s here early and doesn’t want to wait?”

“But people will miss the bus,” exclaimed my wife.

“That’s their problem, not the bus drivers,” concluded the babooshka.

Beware of the Babooshka!

Sometimes the most important and valuable things in life can pass you by, and when we are reminded of them we should be eternally grateful. For example, if it was not for this babooshka, it would never have occurred to me that I had spent the greater proportion of my life cutting the lawn like I shouldn’t have done; that our bronzed statue was black; that there is no possible excuse for growing sunflowers; and that impatient bus drivers had better things to do than to adhere to timetables and pick up passengers.

It is surely food for thought that I have reached the age that I have but still have much, so very much to learn.😉

Image attributions:
Elderly lady cartoon: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/kT8oprbnc.htm
Question mark figure cartoon: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/BcarELBKi.htm

Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Published: 25 September 2021 ~ Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad

Article 15: Gyvas Kaunas

Well, just look at it! I bought this lager in spite of, rather than because of, the appearance of the bottle. It reminded me of someone or something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Could it have been that brassy blonde that I had met in an East London nightclub? Was it something I had seen on an Italian reality TV show? Did someone try to sell it to me once? I vaguely remember his voice, “Oh to be sure, to be sure. ‘Tis the real thing, sure enough. On the memory of my sainted mother would I tell you otherwise …” No? Panto, perhaps? Or something in a joke shop window?

Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad

Gambling all on the forgiving notion that tasteless is not always the red flag that we take it for, I paid my 140 roubles, which isn’t cheap considering that this fairground bottle only holds one litre, and left the shop quite smartishly, as if I’d just purchased the drinks equivalent of a mucky book or had been seen with a TV celebrity.

Once safely indoors I stashed the bottle away behind the potatoes and made a mental note to forget that I had bought it, but come the witching hour, seven o’clock (and, listen you lushes, I do mean seven in the evening!), the hankerings overtook me, and before you could say, “Do you really think that this is a good idea?!”, I had whipped it out and took it upstairs.

Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad

On the coffee table, which also functions as a beer table, the bottle looked distinctly out of place, standing there as it did next to my manly Soviet tankard. I had the uneasy feeling that I was about to open a bottle of fizzy wine and that nothing short of Hinge and Bracket’s tablecloth and Liberace’s candelabra would do the experience justice.

Gee it was Gaudy, with a capital ‘G’.

Never mind. I put on my sunglasses, peeled away at the pink foil wrapper, put the corkscrew back in the drawer and slipped off the top. Now came the moment of truth. I moved slowly towards the neck of the bottle, longingly but apprehensively. The camera, had there been one, began to revolve at 360 degrees, the lighting first went dim and then became suffused. I lowered my nose to the opening. Chanel No 5 or Canal in need of dredging, which one would it be? Eureka, or You Reeka Lot! Downwind of a lav portacabin on a very warm and windy day!

Desist or resist! As I wouldn’t judge a book by its cover, neither would I allow my olfactory senses to be the sole arbitrator in the case of Pong vs Palate.

I poured the liquid into my glass, observing it, of course, with no small degree of suspicion, and then I took the plunge.

Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad

Verdict: fruity.

There was the essence of bitter grapes, tinged with grapefruit, a touch of lemon and a fondle of orange and, thanks to a long-life fizz, a loyal taste that did not immediately let you down and simply walk away.

All things considered, it would be unfair of me if I did not admit that the experience had been worth the 140 roubles that I had paid. And, yes, you may be right. My criticism of the packaging could be due to a lifetime of drinking British ales dispensed from stalwart old-world handpumps. So, was I being too hard?

I would not go so far as to say that it was Casablanca ~ the start of a beautiful relationship ~ more like a one-night stand, but I have put the empty bottle aside, as who knows one day it may come in handy should I ever want to remodel my room to resemble Del Boy’s flat.

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Gyvas Kaunas
Brewer: Kalnapilis
Where it is brewed: Vilnius, Lithuania
Bottle capacity: 1 litre
Strength: 4.6%
Price: It cost me about 140 roubles (£1.41)
Appearance: Pale golden
Aroma: Don’t ask!
Taste: Fruity mix with bitter twangs
Fizz amplitude: 7/10
Label/Marketing: Why?
Would you buy it again? Read the post
Marks out of 10: 4.5

Секретное оружие в Калининграде

Мы взлетели!

Опубликовано: 26 August 2021 ~ Секретное оружие в Калининграде

Вы знаете что британские СМИ постоянно твердят о том что Калининградская область является самой милитаризованной зоной на планете? Похоже, моя жена обнаружила то самое секретное оружие, когда однажды вечером пошла в магазин.

Его кодовое название- “Взлети”, но мы будем называть его непрофессиональным именем: Ботинком по Заднице “Земля-воздух”!

Моя хорошая жена выскочила как то из дома, чтобы совершить обычный поход в местный продовольственный магазин. Это небольшой магазин, с хорошо укомплектованными товарами и продуктами.

В тот особенный вечер в магазине находились – она сама, дама, обслуживающая ее, и ни души больше

Внезапно дверь распахнулась, и в магащин, пошатываясь, вошел чрезвычайно пьяный мужчина. Он был “в зюзю пьяный”, как говорят в этих краях.

Раскачиваясь из стороны в сторону и воняя перегаром, он повернулся к двум дамам в магазине и восстребовал денег: “Я голоден!” – гаркнул он.

Наступила тишина.

Все более раздражаясь, он повторил свое требование.

Моя жена, будучи учительницей и привыкшая отчитывать меня по поводу алкоголя, твердо посмотрела на него и сказала: “Если у вас достаточно денег на выпивку, то у вас, вероятно должно быть достаточно денег для того чтобы прокормить себя!”

Хорошо проспиртованный человек очень рассердился.

“Ты б…..!!” заорал он. – Ты меня обязана накормить ! Я буду сидеть в этом углу и не сдвинусь с места, пока ты не меня не накормишь!”

В этот момент в магазин вошел крупногаборитный мужчина. Он купил несколько товаров, и когда он собрался уходить, владелец магазина прошептала ему: “Этот человек в углу очень пьян и требует денег и еды! Я боюсь его.”

“Что? Этот паразит!!” – недоверчиво провозгласил рослый парень, после чего напрвавился к вышеупомянутому джентльмену, поднял его за шиворот, развернул лицом к дверному проему и, тщательно прицелившись, дал ему пинка под зад.

Хотя секретному оружию удалось продвинуть цель примерно на два метра или больше, цель, как будто все еще не убежденная в возможностях секретного оружья, приползла назад за добавкой. Вероятно он был каскадером?

И вновь человек, отвечающий за оборонительную силу башмаков, посчитал нужным обеспечить дальнейшую демонстрацию возможностей его оружия. Поэтому он развернул мишень, тщательно прицелился во второй раз, прицелился ботинком с земли на задницу и вновь запустив смертоносный ботинок, отправил цель в полет.

“О, спасибо, – сказала продавщица, – но я думаю, что, когда вы уйдете, он [пьяница] вернется опять”.

Она неоодоценила рослого галлантного сэра, потому что он был не только очень хорошим бойцом, оснащенным большой парой башмаков, которые, казались мргли принадлежать кому угодно, но он, по всей вероятности, имел опыт управления компании по перевозке грузов, потому что, как только испуганный владелец магазина выразил ему свои опасения, он буквально схватил пьяного мужчину за шиворот и, приподняв его на четвереньки, переправил его через оживленную дорогу, где, как он заверил дрожащего владельца магазина позже, учитывая его пьяное состояние, если нарушитель попытается снова перейти дорогу, он будет сбит проезжающей машиной и прилипнув к капоту, окажется где-нибудь в Польше.

Мораль этой истории очевидна. Если только вы не носите толстый кусок губки в трусах и не возражаете отправиться в Польшу внезапно, агрессивное попрошайничество в городе Калининграде не совсем рекомендуется.

английская версия

Image attributions:

Rocket launcher: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Army-truck-with-weapon/46990.html

Boot: <a href="/ru/”https://www.freepik.com/vectors/travel”/">Travel vector created by rawpixel.com {Link inactive as of 12/04/2022}

Russian Anecdote a Man Exempt from Coronavirus

Never a lender or borrower be

Published: 12 August 2021 ~ Russian Anecdote a Man Exempt from Coronavirus

As any of you who have read my blog post will know, I was married, here, in Kaliningrad, Russia. Before delivering my speech at the wedding reception, I passed the written draft to my wife for critical appraisal. As predicted, her response was, ‘OK but I do not think that Russian’s will understand your strange British humour’. Hmm, I thought, should I take the bit about holes in underpants out?

Nevertheless, with a little invisible mending, the speech went ahead, almost without me, which is not surprising considering the amount of vodka I had drunk, and if people were laughing at me instead of with me it did not matter as at least they were laughing at all the right moments.

Whilst some elements of British humour might miss the mark with Russians, Russian humour conveyed in the traditional form of an anecdote often ends as enigmatically as it has begun.

My first encounter with a Russian anecdote left me wondering if Tolstoy had written it to counteract criticism that War & Peace was too short. The question as to whether I found it funny or not was quite frankly immaterial. As the yanks would say, I never left first base. The plot, which had more twists, turns and red caviar in it than one of Agatha Christie’s who dunnits, was so convoluted that it is my opinion that even Poirot’s little grey cells would have struggled to have made sense of it. At the end of the anecdote, I was left with the question, ‘What?’

Since then, I have learnt to compose my own, simplistic version of the Russian anecdote, and this one, which I have the honour of presenting to you now, might even be a true story.

Now, are you sitting comfortably?

Russian Anecdote a Man Exempt from Coronavirus

A conversation with a Russian man about whether he had had the vaccine, wanted the vaccine or was avoiding the vaccine, led him to confide in me that the nature of his job was such that under the new laws he was ‘obliged’ to have the vaccine. And yet, he told me, he was vehemently opposed to it.

In this frame of mind, he attended one of the city’s mobile vaccination units. No sooner had he crossed the threshold than he demanded from the white-coated medic a vaccination exemption certificate (do such things exist?) on the grounds that since he had an allergy he could not have the vaccine.

When the medic nonchalantly replied that he need not worry as the van opposite was an intensive care unit, and in the unlikely event that he exhibited any untoward side-effects from the jab, they would rush him in there immediately, he promptly replied: “If I do not get my exemption certificate, it will be you who will need intensive care!”

It was not for nothing that this reasonable gentleman had decided that a career in the diplomatic core was not for him.

The vaccination certificate duly administered, but not the vaccine, our man with his certificate in his hand, walked into a nearby shop to purchase a bottle of peeva.

Arriving at checkout he was just in time to experience one of those peculiar mask-wearing confrontations that are unfortunately blighting our daily life. At the counter, a middle-aged woman was being lectured by the checkout girl to cover her face with a mask.

“But, I only have two items [to buy],” the woman complained bitterly, “and I have forgotten to bring my mask.”

“Then you must buy one,” said the shop assistant curtly.

“Buy one!” the woman exclaimed. “I’ve enough of the filthy rags hanging about my home already!”

The shop assistant, as shop assistants do in situations like this, kept shtum. But her pursed lips and the body language of a nightclub doorman left little doubt that no mask meant no sale!

The woman with a house full of masks but none on her person was about to remonstrate with the iron maiden again, when a nice elderly gentleman, who had just been served, lifted up his mask and said kindly from beneath it, with a bit of a sneeze and a splutter: “You can borrow my mask if you like.”

Another woman, standing in the queue seeing that no mask meant no service was searching frantically for a mask which she also did not have.

Meanwhile, the first woman, having turned down the gentleman’s magnanimous offer, suddenly found herself in the throes of one of those euphoric moments when brought to the cusp of despair by the realisation that you have no mask, you find one, thrust deep down in your jeans’ back pocket among the fluff, dust and grubby remnants of knotted old pieces of tissue.

Extracting it and holding it five inches from her nose, but not following the proprietary rules for mask application (who does?), the sight of a mask wherever it might be was sufficiently acceptable from the shop assistant’s point of view to make further objection unnecessary. The woman had a mask. The world was safe. The woman could be served.

The second woman in the queue, who, alas, had no snot-ridden mask concealed about her person, now almost besides herself with woe was promptly offered the loan of the gentleman’s mask, which was now sitting on his whiskery chin, and the first lady, who had dropped her mask twice on the floor before wiping her spectacles with it, also offered her mask. Oddly enough the second lady refused on both counts.

Now that she had left her full basket at the till and gone to the shop next door where they never asked for masks, our man fresh from the vaccination van made his debut. He, too, was sans maskee.

The shop assistant was just on the verge of exercising the only power that she had ever been invested with and was ever likely to have in her life, when our anecdotal hero stepped promptly forward, certificate proudly in hand.

“As you can see,” he asserted, “I have an exemption certificate. This means that I do not have to have the vaccine, and if I do not have to have the vaccine, then it stands to reason that I cannot catch or spread coronavirus. It also means that it is not necessary for me to wear a mask!” and with that, he slapped his bottle of beer loudly on the counter.

The shop assistant, who was a paragon of logic, immediately recognising that the validity of this argument trumped forgotten, shared and improperly worn face masks, picked up the bottle of beer as one would reverently touch the road to salvation (which, dear reader, beer most often is), and placing it into a bag allowed the wiley man to pass without further let or hinderance onto the other side. It was almost as if she was manning* the Pearly Gates like Peter (or is it Bill?) which, without wanting to spoil the end of the story, perhaps indeed she was.

*Any similarity to actual LGBT persons, living in the UK or it and otherwise, is purely coincidental

MORE

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 1-Church-Scenes-rz-595x1024.jpg

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Репетитор английского языка в Калининграде

Image attributions:

Syringe with hand: Openclipart (https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Hand-and-syringe-vector-image/3695.html)
Cute Baby: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/pi58ypdKT.htm
Sheep face: https://pixabay.com/photos/sheep-animals-cute-nature-3727049/
Donkey face: Gilles Rolland-Monnet on Unsplash; https://unsplash.com/photos/Y-gQdCSvMbo
Halo emoji: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/piqKy7qi9.htm
Middle finger: Jonny Doomsday; https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Man-in-suit-showing-middle-finger/6429.html

Zatecky Gus Svetly in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Article 14: Zatecky Gus Svetly

Published: 6 July 2021 ~ Zatecky Gus Svetly in Kaliningrad

With all this talk about the increasing incidence of coronavirus, deadly Delta variants, mandatory vaccinations and QR codes, what better time could there be for hightailing it into the churdak and hiding out with a bottle or two of peeva. If you cannot use a crisis as an excuse for drinking, what can you use?

I certainly felt the need to protect my mind from the doom, gloom and despondency that once again is doing the rounds and chose as my vaccine on this occasion a beer that is not really called ‘Fatty Guts’, although given the bizarre lengths to which brewers in the UK are willing to go to compete for offensive beer names, had it been the name of a UK beer I would hardly be surprised. I believe it was the Firkin pubs in London that kick started silly beer names back in the 1980s, and I remember only too well that Barker’s Dive Bar in Southwark served a very nice pint of ‘Bollock Twanger’ and another beer whose name was so rude that you whispered when you ordered it.

But Fatty Guts is neither a British beer or a beer brewed anywhere else ~ as far as I am aware!

The real name of the beer that is the subject of this review is part of the Baltika Breweries’ stable. It is brewed in St Petersburg and is called Zatecky Gus. You can see how easily it could be mistaken for something else. We will at last be respectful and refer to it by its full appellation, Zatecky Gus Svetly.

Zatecky Gus Svetly is a pilsner lager and as those of you who have been following my Bottled Beers in Kaliningrad reviews will know, I am no great fan of Pisner, sorry, I meant Pilsner. However, when you say that you are going to review as many bottled beers sold in the city’s supermarkets as you can, then you have to follow through. Actually, when I drink Pilsner the risk of … it doesn’t matter. Now, where was I. Ahh yes, Pilsner.

Zatecky Gus Svetly in Kaliningrad

Zatecky Gus is everywhere, so it was not difficult to pick up a bottle from my local supermarket. It cost me £1.29 for a 1.5 litre bottle, and I was happy with that.

It poured easily into my vintage Soviet beer glass ~ one of those manly types with a handle on the side. It poured pale golden and had a pale golden aroma, slightly hoppy, a bit aromatic. The process of decanting brought forth a light froth, eventually culminating in a medium head, which, although the lager itself has very little body, clings to the glass as you down it.

Some Pilsners are heavy, oily even, their high-calorie composition cunningly disguised by their light appearance and must-be-served-cold character, but Zatecky, I was relieved to find, is not one of these. In fact, it has a refreshing, sparkling nature, a commendable finish and a pleasing after taste.

Regrettably, taste in general is somewhat lacking, which is a mystery as I recall reading somewhere that Zatecky is brewed to a traditional recipe using a high-quality hop that has a dynastic reputation stretching back over 700 years.

I love antiques, but search for this as I might I could not find it, and whilst it would be disingenuous of me to write it off completely, I was left at the end of the bottle with a distinct sense of expecting and wanting more than this lager could deliver.

On a hot summer’s day, I have no doubt that refrigerated Zatecky would be better than an ice cube, but although it goes down like the Titanic, just don’t expect to travel first class.

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Zatecky Gus Svetly
Brewer: Baltika Breweries
Where it is brewed: St Petersburg, Russia
Bottle capacity: 1.5 litres
Strength: 4.6%
Price: It cost me about 131 rubles (£1.29)
Appearance: Pale golden
Aroma: Yes, just about
Taste: Not much, but it is refreshing
Fizz amplitude: 6/10
Label/Marketing: Traditionalist ~ sort of
Would you buy it again? I have bought about 3 bottles
Marks out of 10: 5.5+