Diary 2000 - Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Into Russia (27 December 2000)

Updated 12 September 2022 | First published 20 October 2019 ~ Into Russia

We had left England only three days ago but already the cheap hooch, relatively cheap by British standards, and recourse to a hip flask was taking its toll. A lot of quips and asides about British spies and gulags had joined forces with our excesses and were beginning to seep out of us in a low-brow paranoia. It didn’t help that my future wife-to-be, Olga, had started to take a perverse delight in our advertised insecurity and was adding to it by slow degrees with quips and asides of her own.

Previous article: Boxing Day in Gdansk

Farewell Gdansk!

I will never forget our exit from our hotel in Gdansk, but first our planned itinerary: Leaving Poland today, it was our intention to stay for seven days in the Kaliningrad region and then return to the same hotel by train and taxi, prior to leaving for England the following day from Gdansk Airport. We had booked our rooms in advance, so on leaving for Russia this morning the staff knew of our plans.

Meats and cheeses had not been available this morning as we were off to the railway station at 5.30am. We were travel weary and hungover. The Sausage was obviously not in the mood to be disturbed at that time of morning either, as twice on the way downstairs, once when vacating the room and then when accessing the lift, it had jammed itself at a silly angle in both doorways, necessitating a volley of imprecations and a couple of stout clouts.

We had settled the bill and were standing in the hotel doorway just as our taxi rolled up.

“Goodbye,” I called, to the hotel staff, “see you soon.”

“Or, perhaps not!” Olga retorted slyly.

The hotel staff chuckled; we looked alarmed.

Before we could even consider not being seen again once we were on the other side of the Iron Curtain, we had the train journey to contend with. A large part of my Lever Arch file containing research on our trip had been devoted to the precariousness of travelling on Polish railways. As we were driven from the hotel to the station, I wondered what I was going to use. The FCO advice was to secure your train carriage door with a piece of flexible wire, but, strangely enough, I had nothing like that on me.

Into Russia via Gdansk

It was snowing again and the train was late. The more I eyed our fellow would-be travellers roving around at the station, the more suspicious they seemed to become. On reflection, they were probably thinking the same about me. What is that bloke staring at?

At last, our magic carpet to Russia rolled in. It was a great chugging piece of clanking, rattling metal; a big old box of a tool, slow and cumbersome and stinking of diesel fumes. If ever a train was designed to house denizens from the deep, this was it!

These big old trains were high old trains and getting into them meant climbing up four or five steps. Now, the Sausage was dead set against this and had, in no uncertain terms, to be ‘persuaded’. I may have been mistaken but it seemed that three or four of our potential assailants on seeing how brutally we treated the Sausage fell back. In any event, they were right behind us when we got on ~ a surly mob if ever I saw one ~ but did not follow us when we turned immediately right into the first compartment. That is correct ~ compartment. These trains ~ or, at least, this particular train ~ are compartmentalised, with small self-contained ‘rooms’ running down the right side and a corridor on the left. In England they had more or less phased these out in preference for open-plan carriages. As Mr Woolworth once said, ‘Load them in and stack them high!’ ~ well, he didn’t really, but he did say something to this effect.

There we were in our compartment, the three of us, two bags and the Sausage. Potential assailants were still climbing onto the train, and some of them not only looked in our carriage, they positively leered ~ where’s that piece of flexible wire when you need it! But at last the column thinned out and with our compartment now full ~ two old ladies and a boy the size of a stick ~ we could breathe a sigh of relief.

I cannot remember whether we had chosen this carriage as it was close to the toilet or not, but the toilet was close, next door to us in fact. As soon as the train pulled out of the station, sounding as if it had taken half the tracks with it, I ventured to the bog, peeping furtively this way and that, as if life had suddenly become an old black and white suspense film.

The toilet certainly looked as if it belonged to a black and white something or other, or perhaps a better description would be a brown something. Like the train itself, and its passengers, it was a rough and neglected piece of equipment ~ a metal funnel sans-seat with a hole in the base where a trap should have been. I was mighty glad that I had only gone in there for a jimmy and nothing more substantial, as the icy blast up the hole was ~ would have been ~ most disconcerting. A second and third discomfort was ~ surprise, surprise ~ that the door did not shut and the place where you stood to position yourself in front of the pan seemed to be on a connection plate linked to the carriage’s hook-up system. Whatever it was, it was moving erratically, jerking from side to side and jumping up and down. I made two mental notes that day as regards Polish toilets on Polish trains (1) don’t wear white trousers; (2) bring your own toilet roll.

“That took you long enough,” brother remarked on my return to the carriage. I made a third note, ‘don’t rely on brother if you happen to go missing’.

Into Russia from Gdansk — On the way to the Russian border, 27 December 2000

Frozen lakes, snow and ice, acres of white-capped pine forests, little cottages with smoke curling out of their chimneys and red-brick Gothic castles ~the journey out of Poland had both a picturesque magic about it and an air of formidability: with each turn of the engine’s wheels Russia was getting nearer! Then, all of a sudden, we were almost there!

No laughing! You are entering Russia!

As we approached the Russian border we received strict instructions from Olga to behave ourselves: “Please refrain from making your silly English jokes. Travelling through the Russian border is a very serious business!” We composed ourselves accordingly.

The heavy old train and its rumbling carriages rolled slowly to a halt. There was nothing much to see. We couldn’t have been in the middle of nowhere, because everybody’s been there, perhaps we were a bit to the left (east) of it. We sat there for what seemed like the proverbial eternity. Olga was right. Crossing the Russian border was a serious business. Nobody said a word; all that could be heard was the rustling of bags and pockets as our fellow passengers fumbled around for their official documentation. At long last eternity ended. A string of Russian personnel, excitingly decked out in the sort of clothes that you would expect them to be wearing, full length woollen great coats, matching hats (ushankas), big boots etc, with the insignia of The Russian Federation emblazoned in all the right places, boarded the train. There were, in total, three men and two women. This was my first sight of real Russian authority, so I craned forward to get a really good look at them. They were all very young. I wouldn’t have thought that any of them were a day older than 25. Ssshhh, they were working their way down the train; they were coming in our direction.

Olga was sitting opposite us near the window; Joss and I were next to each other. We had been practising our serious expressions for a good half-hour. Joss was doing well; I had never seen my brother look so serious before, well, perhaps with the exception of the time when he accidentally bought a round in the pub.

Finally, the cavalcade of Russian authority stopped at us. We were asked, brusquely, to produce our passports. Both Joss and I did so in the most orthodox and restrained manner imaginable. When needs must, we could be as serious as the best of them. Suddenly, a rip-roaring rollocking snort, a burst of suppressed laughter, emanated from Olga. Joss and I shot surprised and alarmed glances in her direction. The young man who had taken our passports did the same. Now we were smirking, and he was as well, whilst the rest of his crew were desperately trying to keep straight faces. No one could really have known what they were laughing at. Least of all us; we didn’t have a clue. As if connected by an invisible string we all regained composure at one and the same time. The young military gentleman quickly returned our passports and the line of authority went travelling by, trying to look as if nothing had happened.

When asked why she had laughed, the only explanation that Olga could give was that we ‘looked so stupid’. If that was the case, I thought, she should be laughing more times than she wasn’t.

It took a proverbial age for the big old train to up anchor and trump off again in a Kaliningrad direction. As we rolled away from the border checkpoint, there stood one very lonely Russian soldier. He was standing there in his big coat and hat with flaps on. Now he was in the middle of somewhere, and it wasn’t very hospitable. He was surrounded by snow; behind him there was nothing but a lot of barbed wire; and as the train went slowly past him ~ clunkety, clunk, clunk, clunk ~ my last and lasting impression of the lonely Russian border guard was the sight of his bright red nose glowing refulgently like a Belisha beacon.

Boxing Day in Gdansk

Is it just me, or does it get increasingly difficult to enjoy yourself on Christmas Day as you get older? And, as you get older do you find yourself looking forward more to Boxing Day than to the day before? One thing I can say about this Christmas in Poland, it may have been my first year away from Blighty during the festive season but at least in Poland I was in for no surprises. And as Boxing Day is an improvement on Christmas Day in England, so it came to pass that the same step up was replicated here.

It was Olga’s idea that we should redress our sedentary yesterday with a leg-stretching stroll along the sea front. Another similarity between Christmas rituals in England and those in Poland was, apparently, that after overdoing it in the grub department folk assuaged their conscience with a morning constitutional before returning to the table and overdoing it again.

Boxing Day in Gdansk

Olga must have had an informed knowledge of Polish people’s Christmas habits since she correctly predicted that we would not be alone on the beach this morning. The sight was most unusual. The sand was frozen solid, the pools of water where the sea met the sand had iced over and some were coated with a fresh sprinkling of snow, and yet, as far as the eye could see, a line of people, a well-dressed procession of folk of all ages, were promenading along the edge of the seafront. I remember thinking to myself that I had never seen such an outstanding display of real fur hats and coats. The women’s coats were long, opulent and luxuriously trimmed; they shone magnificently in the luminous air, the darker and lighter shades of pelts both in the coats and matching hats catching the sunlight, holding it for a moment and then reflecting the nuanced patterns beautifully. Looking back, this was possibly my first introduction to the futility of political correctness.

Promenading on Gdansk beach, year 2000

A little further along the coastline my eyes alighted on a quite different scene. Shivering on a low wooden jetty stood three red lobsters laughing. One, who had just taken a meaningful swig from a vodka bottle, was about to dive back into the icy cold sea. I was not ignorant of such peculiar goings-on in country’s such as these, but what a carry on; you certainly would not catch us Brits doing this in the middle of winter in Heacham or Hunstanton ~ in fact, come to think of it, we wouldn’t most likely be doing this in Heacham or Hunstanton in the middle of summer!

The site of lobsters in trunks and a fresh flurry of snow gave us just the excuse we’d been waiting for to investigate the probability that the impressively large red-brick hotel in front of us might be concealing a bar. I cannot remember the name of this place and I never entered it into my 2000 Diary, but after a bit of research on the internet I am of the opinion that it was more than likely The Grand.

MIck Hart & Olga, Gdansk, 2000

I did write in my diary that the lounge bar was a tad disappointing, a little bit run of the mill, but compensation comes in the most unusual of places ~ the toilet. Yes, the bog was magnificent! It was tiled from top to bottom in contrasting hues of green marble and had urinals that dated back to Edwardian times. They were ~ if you know your urinals ~ deliberately contrived with modesty in mind. Big, tall, impressive curves of sparkling white vitreous enamel built into brickwork pillars, more than enough to ensure the absolute privacy expected by the widdling Edwardian gentleman, who could have virtually stood inside them, tuxedo, tailcoat and all. What was most thrilling, however, was the fact that they were British made, each urinal inscribed in blue with the name of Armitage Shanks!

It had been so edifying, this discovery of a real Edwardian rest room, English designed and so far from home, that no sooner had we returned to the bar than we ordered another round of vodkas.

No doubt seeing where this was going, too much drink too early, Olga interrupted our celebrations suggesting that we should visit some place cultural, somewhere on the edge of town. The proposed destination was a small museum. We bowed to her better judgement, finished our vodkas, vacated the hotel and were whisked off by taxi to the place that she prescribed. Sadly, however, her culture-verses-drinking gamble didn’t pay off. We ended up, having left the taxi, in a rather drab and sorry-looking urban backwater, with nothing much to see but row upon row of lack-lustre flats. The museum, or any museum, was never located and stranded as we were we had the miserable misfortune of having to take refuge in yet another bar.

A railway platform somewhere in Gdansk

This place was not a haven. It was a modern glass and metal-framed structure parked in the intersection of a busy road; it was pokey, with a small Coca-Cola dispensing machine which, given the size of the room, was the inverse ratio of Dr Who’s TARDIS. We only stayed for one gassy pint of Polish beer, having learnt that the railway station was just around the corner. This turned out to be a rewarding ~ as in different ~ experience in itself. I don’t believe that I had ever stood on such a cold, miserable, basic railway station in my life, and I certainly haven’t since! It was simply a low slab of crumbling, decaying concrete, with three buckled metal seats, six poles ~ which once belonged to a canopy since gone ~ and three dented and weather-stained signs. Poland may well be fighting for cultural survival since joining the EU, but surely by now someone, someone like George Soros, for example, must have donated benevolent money to make Polish railways better?

How good or bad Polish railways were, we would soon find out, as early next morning, at the crack of dawn, we’d be leaving Poland by train and crossing over the border into Russia.