Summery Scenes in Kaliningrad and its region 2024-2025
26 June 2026 – Kaliningrad weather? – A What You Need to Know Post!
Brr, that’s all I can say. That was a quick post, wasn’t it? My allusion, as distinct from illusion – that’s one of those that everyone who voted for Starmer has since become acquainted with and will no doubt once again with the installation of Andy Burnham; oh, how fools are easily fooled – is to my last post (It’s sounding over Britain!), the one in which I appear to ratify the collective delusion (delusion this time) that it always snows in Russia, which it most certainly does in a good many Frederick Forsyth and Len Deighton novels and in most mainstream spy films based upon their books. It even snowed in the pop video used to promote Elton John’s Nikita. I almost said Akido, but I’ve practised that enough (ooh, my aching joints!), and very nearly Akita, but that’s my brother’s dog, neither of which, as I recall, are remotely connected to snow. Do you remember Peter Snow and his infamous ‘swingometer’, replaced today by Sky News’ military analyst Michael Clarke, who is a hybrid of Peter Snow and a friend of mine called Greg? Sorry, it’s all getting so confusing. That’s flux for you.
In order to demonstrate, therefore, that it always snows in Russia, but it doesn’t, well, not here in Kaliningrad at any rate, I’ve whipped out the old photo album and borrowed from myself some lovely, summery, sunny pictures that rather prove my point.
Kaliningrad Weather? – A What You Need to Know Post!
My previous post was built around snowy scenes in Polessk, so I thought it only fair in order to dispel notions that it always snows in Polessk that I contrast those images with their summer counterparts. These photographs show the Deyma River and Polessk Canal, together with the landmark Eagle Bridge. The sun is shining, the snow has gone, the ice has melted, and the boats are out.
Here am I, sitting outside Königsberg’s Rossgarten Gate, outside the Rossgarten Gate restaurant. It’s not that they wouldn’t let me in, but the restaurant’s name, Solnechny Kamen, which, as you students of Russian know full well, translates to ‘Sun Stone’, subliminally inspired me to capture the first rays of summer, which were breaking prematurely over the city in the last month of May 2024. Incidentally, I’ve not gone mardy and am not refusing to eat my food because, instead of a pint, I’ve been given a cup of coffee; I’m just thawing out after a long, hard winter.
Summer in Kaliningrad and its region is not all about beer and sun lounging – more’s the pity. On the contrary, it’s a time to get things done! Do those knee pads suit me? I’m doing a real conquistador job on upcycling that old open-arm bench, and our good friend, artist and conservationist, and, quite frequently, Immanuel Kant, is treating our historic Soviet statue to a summer makeover.
When the sun’s out, you want to be outside with it, but as my friend’s father, Mr Wilcox, used to bawl at me whenever I was ‘holidaying’ at his farm in my youth, “We’re fighting a war against human nature, Hart!! There’s work to do!!” And you couldn’t say fairer than that, because you daren’t. As his ghostly voice echoes across the decades, I assuage his wrath by turning my hand to a little shabby chicing in the country house hallway. Alright, alright, I admit most of the ideas were Olga’s.
And when the work is done … (most of these ideas are mine.)
Celebrating summer’s divine attributes.
Am I responding to the dulcet tones of my authoritarian guardian Mr Wilcox, or is it just excellent weather to be doing it? All my own work? Leave it out!
And when the work is done … it’s time for a libation with the neighbours.
Going German bunkers on a hot day in Kaliningrad. Meanwhile, Ginger teaches himself how to hide behind a flower before venturing out onto the terrace to assess how invisible he has become.
Late summer: the last rays of sunlight falter over the Curonian Lagoon.
18 June 2026 – Polessk in Winter is Rather More Than a Frosty Atmosphere
Do you know there’s a rather rude English expression that goes, ‘I don’t want to piss on your fireworks’, wryly meaning ‘I don’t want to spoil it for you’, which, being a gentleman, I would never use, particularly as the opening line for a blog post, in the same way that I would never say, in the first month of summer, that in ‘less than six months’ time it will be Christmas’; for who, after a long, drawn-out, bitterly cold and exhausting winter, such as the one Nature treated us to in Kaliningrad this year, would want to be reminded at this escapist juncture of the unravelling seasons of the cold, ice and snow, from which it seems we have only just emerged, when we are yearning, body, mind and soul, for sun, warmth and pretty women wearing summer dresses?
You might well consider it perverse, therefore, that in the midst of my understanding almost all I profess to understand, I go ahead willy-nilly in the contradictory manner of a British politician doing exactly the opposite of what he promised before he was elected, but, as it is with politicians, memory rarely recognises the virtue of fidelity, so that being unfaithful to one season whilst embracing quite another suggests an equal portion of love for those devoutly courted in the past and for those with whom contentment brightens life at present, permitting you to pick and choose as and when and how you choose with self-proclaimed impunity.
Thus it is, without further, if any, considered apology, unless to make allowances for the damp condition in which you find your fireworks, that a perverse pleasure falls to me to introduce to you an unseasonal series of photographs that recollect a winter’s day in and around Polessk, a Kaliningrad regional town, which, long ago in German times, was known by the name of Labiau, with one or two appended photos taken somewhere else but on that same petrified day and not so dreadfully far away as to make my inclusion of them beyond the remit of my title.
Polessk is situated at the confluence of the Deyma River, which branches off from the Pregolya River, and the Polessk Canal (pre-Soviet, the Grosser Friedrichsgraben). When winter temperatures plummet, sections of both waterways can morph into super-thick ice plateaux, allowing the intrepid, the experienced, and those who are determined whatever the climatic conditions to dangle their rods in the water, to stroll across it nonchalantly as if the doing of the action were the natural consequence of a rash desire. Our camera spies a local chap sauntering back to terrafirma over the ice-bound waters, where his comrades have been perched for hours in pursuit of a fisherman’s tale.
Eagle Bridge
The following view is a glimpse of the historic Eagle Bridge, which spans the Deyma River on the edge of Polessk. Built in German times, between 1919 and 1922, when Polessk was Labiau, its landmark construction, immediately recognisable from its twin operating towers, accommodates a restored ancient mechanism which hoists the bridge in two to permit the transit of river traffic. Down-to-earth blog readers will from my brief description most likely, and correctly, visualise a drawbridge, whilst bods with technical minds are liable to protest, ‘The term that he is searching for is a double-leaf bascule bridge. Don’t you just love an engineer!
Here’s me, standing on Eagle Bridge. I’m glad I invested in that thermal-lined coat– and pants!
Curonian Lagoon, Frozen
This ice-bound scene is not in and of itself Polessk but, recorded on the same day when the other views were photographed, it captures the fate of the Curonian Lagoon in its transformation to a frozen expanse, as seen from the coastline of the former German fishing village Labagienen, renamed Haffwinkel in 1938 and renamed again Zalivino by the Soviets after World War Two. Look carefully at the photograph: those little human specks lurking in the distance are by virtue of their courage akin to something like ice warriors, or you might presume just nuts. Observed in the twilight hours, with a low of minus 30 degrees nipping at your nose and with your eyes misting over, an eerily atmospheric sense replaces objectivity, inducing me to half expect a figure ominous in proportion skimming past on a dog-pulled sled followed in frenzied pursuit by Baron Frankenstein.Does it affect you this way, too? No, I didn’t think it would.
On your bike! It’s the Phantom Cyclist!
Stone the crows! I’m not sure about them, but you’ve got to handlebars it to him, he certainly frightens me. As scarecrows go, he is a lot more original and effective than a plastic bag hanging on a stick. The only time you have to worry is when, on your own and in the dark, you hear the sound of the cycle wheel whirring close behind you. Er, let’s walk back via the other route; it’s been such a long while since we went that way…
The Ponart Brewery Beer Shop
Now, this is a very interesting place. It stands on the corner of a narrow, weaving road, hemmed in by old German apartment blocks, overlooking the combined waterways of the Deyma River and Polessk Canal (historical name, the Grosser Friedrichsgraben). A local distribution outlet for the historic Ponart beer brand, brewed again to traditional recipes at the restored Königsberg brewery complex, which was built in 1839 and converted in recent years into a multipurpose cultural centre of which Kaliningrad is rightly proud, this worthy Polessk trading post is a convenient stopping-off point for stocking up on vital goods before and after excursions.
I imagine that this photograph is self-explanatory. Here am I inside the Ponart beer shop, situated at Zavodskaya Ulitsa, 1, Polessk, Kaliningrad Oblast, ordering one of their fine draft ales. Better than soup with a hot water bottle, it’s just the job after a two-hour stint of walking around in conditions that mimic those of the Arctic.Can you see my nuts?
A water tower cast in the image of a Gothic castle
11 June 2026 – Water Tower Otradnoye (Georgenswalde) is outstanding
Among the Kaliningrad region’s many examples of red-brick Gothic architecture, water towers are an interesting group. Towers in a broader architectural context are one of Gothic’s principal aesthetics. It is these that best achieve the soaring vertical and steep perpendicularity by which structures in this genre, be they standalone or an integral part of more complex compositions, are canonically determined.
The Kaliningrad region’s water towers, whilst sharing design characteristics of a fundamental nature, are, when considered on a one-to-one basis, by no means indistinct.
Each tower is engendered with structural and stylistic traits that lift them out of rigid conformity.
Water Tower Otradnoye (Georgenswalde): a functional folly
K. Fischer’s Otradnoye (formerly Georgenswalde) tower is of a standard rectangular tapering build, with a four-section, snow-arresting flanged-metal triangular roof. Elevated to a height of approximately 147 feet, the mediaeval replica exhibits typical red-brick Gothic elements but with distinct and personalised variants, such as, in its mid-section, lancet-inspired indentations which, although they are tall and narrow, are capped with rounded ends and used to produce a sunken frame in which to display conforming windows arranged in a vertical sequence. Other arrangements of note include a recessed crenellated frieze, a triangular pediment with matching corner buttresses, cement-rendered horizontal bands which divide the building into vertical sections, blind niches of different dimensions, and deep, stepped-back door alcoves typically arched but wide in form.
As with many civic buildings of this type and of this period, the overall exotic impression borrows for its impact from romanticised notions of picturesque castles, bold and grand in stature, whilst concealing behind its fortified mask a utilitarian purpose which, at the time of its inauguration, was rarely excelled in practicality and, in contradiction to its appearance, more modern and useful in application.
K. Fischer’s Georgenswalde tower is a prominent local landmark in the Soviet-renamed coastal town Otradnoye. Its historical and architectural value is reflected in its official status as a protected cultural heritage monument.
Otradnoye is one of those places you cannot have enough of
31 May 2025: Otradnoye Kaliningrad – a little gem on the Baltic Coast
In my previous post, I wrote about an evening spent in the Villa Gretchin, a guest house of which I cannot speak highly enough; its interior, accented with East Prussian Baroque influences, makes it a thoroughly immersive base for exploring Otradnoye’s history and enjoying its beautiful beach.
Otradnoye, which before the end of the Second World War was known as Georgenswolde, is a small coastal settlement founded east of Svetlogorsk on the Sambia Peninsula.
Svetlogorsk, the larger of the two resorts and therefore the more popular, developed and commercialised, is serviced by umpteen bars and restaurants and by stalls and shops specialising in the sale of one of the region’s most precious commodities, amber. It is also home to a futuristic multifunctional cultural centre, the Amber Hall Variety Theatre, otherwise known as Yantar Hall, and is currently undergoing a major mixed-use, residential, pier-side construction programme which runs 1.5 kilometres along the length of its Baltic seafront.
In comparison, Otradnoye has a café, a handful of hotels/guesthouses and a small hut overlooking the beach selling beer and light refreshments. Although this difference is a striking one, obviously making Otradnoye the smaller of the two resorts, it doesn’t necessarily follow that Otradnoye is steeped in solitude. On the contrary, an unpretentious swathe of white sandy beach, set against, on one side, steep forested banks and, on the other, the foaming blue Baltic, acts as a seductive magnet to folk addicted to sun, sea and sand. Come late autumn, however, and throughout the winter months, visitors naturally fall away, turning the less-developed Otradnoye into the much-prefered destination for those whose tastes excel in out-of-season beach resorts.
^^ The winter of 2004/05 was extremely wet, and the banks along Otradoyne on the Baltic Coast were landsliding chaotically beachward. That’s Olga Hart with her umbrella and handbag and Victor Ryabinin with an umbrella and briefcase. The photo is by me, unseen here with my umbrella and bowler hat. We were all well-prepared for the weather and terrain.
Indeed, my own, personal introduction to this atmospheric seaside village took place in the winter months. It was January 2005. Under the knowledgeable instruction of our late, lamented friend, Victor Ryabinin, an expert on Kaliningrad history, including that of its region, and a well-known local artist, we paused for a while at Otradnoye. We were en route to somewhere else, whose destination I cannot recall and which we never reached – but that’s another story. However, I do clearly remember rendezvousing before we set off to Otradnoye in a café somewhere on Svetlogorsk’s outskirts: Victor with his map of the local area, and I with Olga and a friend called Barry.
It was during this first visit that I made the acquaintance of the German sculptor Brachert and toured his former house and gardens, now the Brachert Museum. It was also on this occasion that I learnt firsthand (or should that be foot?) that the woodland descent to Otradnoye beach was unforgivingly precipitous and that the return journey by the concrete road laid in Soviet times was, far from being less precipitous, if anything considerably more arduous.
^^ The Hermann Brachert House Museum in Otradnoye
Nowadays, walking from the beach to the upper reaches of Otradnoye is a marginally less daunting prospect, thanks to a series of well-planned paths that zig-zag their way across and through the tree-dense, sloping land and which have at various stages seats on which to park yourself should a labouring constitution importune an advisable rest.
At beach level, there is lots of sea and sand, but what conspicuously isn’t there are swish hotels, swanky restaurants, specialist boutique shops or any other tourist bolt-ons – at least not for the present!
^^ Otradnoye Beach, c. September 2022
A single hut presides, raised on a small grassed promontory, fronted by a seating area of simple appearance and modest proportions, yet availing patrons of the myriad sights and delights typically associated with summer beach activity and maintaining a year-on-year monopoly as the only outlet for snacks and drinks other than those which the thrifty and, simultaneously, practical may have prepared and carried with them inside their bags or rucksacks.
Svetlogorsk, being not that far away, indeed right there on one’s visual doorstep, throws down a provocative gauntlet, suggesting a leisurely beachside walk, but before the challenge is taken up, one would do well to remember that sand is no immediate friend to the calves or upper legs, neither of which may thank you later for any decision made in haste. So before giving in to that little, that shrill, that insistent voice, which is so insouciantly urging you to throw caution to the wind, “Go on!” it is goading. “A walk on the sand will do you good!” You might want to pause for a moment, long enough for a second thought to give credence to the consequences.
The other way to flit on foot between the two resorts is to take the woodland route, using the proper hard-surface paths which in recent years have been laid for this purpose. This option is a rewarding one, as not only does it combine the health-promoting qualities that walking is said to bestow with an appreciation of the natural habitat, but by passing around the perimeter of a former Soviet Young Pioneer camp, long ago abandoned and now in a state of overgrown memory, for people lured by social history, of which, I confess, I am one, if you forgot to bring that flask and sandwiches, there could yet be sustenance in food for thought.
^^ Remains of a Soviet Young Pioneer camp between Otradnoye and Svetlogorsk
For those among you whose footwork is strictly limited to the sensible practice of getting on and off buses, it won’t, I am certain, hurt you to know that public transport visits both Otradnoye and its alter-ego Svetlogorsk frequently and in both directions.
The road that these buses tootle along is a reasonably busy throughfare and is pictured in my mind, which may or may not be accurate, as a band that dissects Otradnoye village into two distinct and separate parts.
The area that lies immediately above the seafront descent, the location of the Brachert Museum, contains very little by way of amenities, ordinary or otherwise; almost nothing, to be exact, should one somehow commit the grave injustice of overlooking the Georgenswalde, a tall and stately hotel with a likeness in its character reminiscent of Art Nouveau. My impression when I stayed there, possibly now a little more than four years ago, was that in general appearance and overall style of service it rang a Soviet bell; particularly, I recall, its breakfast-room experience, which, me being typically me, I typically enjoyed without regret or reservation, rather more than not, I would say, had it been anything different.
^^ The Georgeswalde overlooking the Brachert House Museum in Otradnoye (c. 2022)
Up the hill aways, a short but not entirely effortless stroll from where the Georgenswalde is situated, a walk which takes in magnificent villas, ancient and modern, gentle and loud, there stands on the right-hand side a large but unassuming guesthouse appropriately entitled Vysokij Bereg (English translation: High Bank), ‘appropriately’ entitled because the bank on which it stands is indeed a very high one, providing its owners, guests and customers with a commanding view of the Baltic Sea, which could only be more commanding if the bank from which it claims its title were not so liberally fringed with trees. Vysokij Bereg’s café welcomes resident guests and non-guests alike and is held in high regard by some within our exclusive circle for the excellent pizzas it purveys as part of its wider meal selections.
The entrance to the café occurs at the back of the guesthouse, where a hard-surface terrace is just the job for dining outside and peeping through the trees at the Baltic’s expanse beyond. This particular view is no less properly available should the weather and/or the time of year nudge you gently or propel you keenly towards the café’s sheltered interior, but on clement and sunny days, the option to sit at a patio table or lounge in a canopy swing out on the grass, whilst the smaller ones among you enjoy the children’s playground, is for those of us who believe we are normal a choice too logical to just pass up.
^^ Mick Hart doing something different for a change at High Bank guesthouse in Otradnoye
On Otradnoye’s opposite side, the one across ‘the road’, the intrepid explorer is guaranteed to stumble upon a gathering of other cafés and restaurants, including in the mix, one or two shops of a specialist nature and an assortment of handy convenience stores, good for all sorts of groceries, including snacks and drinks for picnics.
^^ German villa in Otradnoye awaiting restoration
Both sides of Otradnoye are united architecturally, each one offering commentary and teasingly tempting glimpses into the region’s pre-war history. If you like your domestic buildings large and gothically asymmetrical with lots of interesting, imaginative features both in wood and masonry, inspirational houses which take on a fairytale essence when tucked away in woodland glades or built surprisingly yet sympathetically into the pine and silver birch landscape, then the sights Otradnoye lays before you will either have you wishing that you could live in a house like this or whisper to you that perhaps you once did.
Whilst many of these abodes have over time regained their individual, one-family, exclusive villa status, and some rub broader shoulders with overpowering contemporary mansions, others, those which in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War were hurriedly converted into three- or four-family homes or communal family units when the Soviet population replaced the region’s German populace, are hived off to this day but in the manner of flats.
In this respect, Otradnoye is no different from almost anywhere else in the Kaliningrad region; the sight of early-twentieth-century grandeur sharing relative space with the conspicuously lavish, sitting next door to a Soviet conversion and, next door to that, a more recent block of flats becomes less and less incongruous the more that it is witnessed, and the same can be said for those wonderful homes and gardens, again within the mix, which are as rustic as rustic can be. The build variations on any one street can be really quite astonishing, and though you may take a liking to one particular type, you cannot help but like the other also and experience a certain fondness for something much the same as you do, comparatively speaking, when it is something just the opposite.
^^ Rusticity meets character in Otradnoye
Among the various interesting buildings asserting architectural and historic merit dotted around Otradnoye, I recommend you take time out to hunt down the former railway station. Dilapidated currently and waiting on conservation, it is yet impressive for what it once was, for what it is now, for what imagination working on its behalf lends aspiration to what it may be, and for what, if correctly restored, it may in time amount to.
^^ Ye olde railway station in Otradnoye
Another intriguing landmark deserving a trip to Otradnoye, with or without a packed lunch, is architect K. Fischer’s red-brick Gothic water tower. The Kaliningrad region contains a number of such towers, each conforming in its own right to the Gothic revivalist style but equally invested with its own distinguishing characteristics, of which Mr Fischer’s is no exception.
Six tiers and square in formation, Fischer’s Tower towers at an approximate height of 147.6 feet. It is proudly endowed with distinctive attributes conformational to its undisputed place in Gothic architecture. When built, it was also equipped with hot and cold water tanks and a bath room at ground level. I am not sure whether the bathroom has withstood the test of time, but just in case it is still in situ, don’t forget to include in your travelling pack a bar of soap and your favourite loofah.
To find this emblematic structure, asking the way won’t come amiss, for, as far as I can remember, and as tall as the tower is, we were granted access to it via someone’s garden, from which we could see its triangular roof thrusting up out of the trees. The natural seclusion in which the tower quietly reposes makes the first approach to it all the more novel and fascinating.
^^Old re-roofed German house in Otradnoye, with Fischer’s water tower peeping over the treeline
Of the two seaside towns mentioned in this brief essay, Svetlogorsk is the place to go if what it is you are after is an historically attractive coastal resort whose town has been brought up to spec with every conceivable modern convenience. Otradnoye, on the other hand, is the destination of choice for those who hold with the maxim that as ‘less is often more’, those who seek will surely find. Beachside, during the height of the season, Svetlogorsk becomes a bustling hub for Russia’s domestic tourist trade, while down the beach a little, Otradnoye bristles with Kaliningrad locals, but whether on the seafront or away from it, if what you want is quieter, less is more in Otradnoye.
^^ Mick Hart sitting on ‘rock armour’, Otradnoye beach, winter 2025
Getting to and from Otradnoye from Kaliningrad by bus
Bus No. 116 departs from Kaliningrad Central Bus Station 6 to 8 times daily and, likewise, from the Otradnoye bus stop. The journey takes about 1.5 hours, and the fare is 70–120 roubles, as determined by route and departure point.
Buses No. 118 and No. 125 run more frequently, about every 20 minutes, between Kaliningrad and Svetlogorsk. Walk, take a taxi or catch a bus from the Oytradnoye stop into Svetlogorsk and use connecting services there. The fare from Kaliningrad to Svetlogorsk and vice versa costs between 155 and 180 roubles depending on the route taken and place of embarkation.
The official Kaliningrad Bus Terminal portal for regional travel is avl39.ru
What I didn’t know I soon did, and I liked it very much
20 May 2026 – Villa Gretchen in Otradnoye – what you need to know
We arrived in the small seaside town of Otradnoye (formerly Georgenswalde) in an area with which I am not acquainted. It was one of those hotch-potchers, consisting of large, two-storey Soviet concrete buildings, most likely houses of culture or sanatoriums; post-Soviet residential flat complexes; and small, by comparison, and dotted here and there, detached family dwellings, once the abodes of native East Prussians.
The guest house, Villa Gretchen, which was our destination, had been donated for the evening to Mr Chileekin and his party by Mr Chileekin’s friend, who was, in fact, the owner of the property.
Villa Gretchen in Otradnoye – what you need to know
From the outside, the front of the guest house looked little different from any other ordinary pan-tiled classic German house, but from the side street into which we and our vehicle had pulled, it was plain to see by the modern but architecturally in-keeping porch, the nearby brick-built grill cabin – let’s go Scandinavian and call it a ‘grillkota’, and the smart and well-kept service buildings that, if you had missed the guest house sign as I had successfully done, you might go all Miss Marple, deducing not incorrectly that there is more to this place than meets the eye, as the visual introduction was less than it appeared to be.
Once across the threshold, the impression changed immediately, and what an impression it made!
“It’s your sort of place,” Olga remarked, observing my observation.
She hadn’t got that wrong. The entire building had been restored; convincingly decked out in a successful attempt to capture the Gothic-Baroque German style that at one time had reigned supreme in this former Prussian territory. The impact was surprising and instantaneous.
There was nothing on the outside to prepare one for this change of scenery. The porch through which we had passed had led to a dark and heavy door with an inset, bulbous, smoked-glass window. On the other side of this door, the entrance hall was small but large in first impressions. On one wall hung a sizeable mirror in an elaborately carved and moulded frame, and on the other, small and neat, a dark wood hat and coat rack belonging to a distant era, together with two framed sepia photographs of couples in their middle age, who, had they been alive today, would be getting ready to celebrate their 156th birthdays.
As the door to the adjoining room was open, or possibly just an open aperture, the centrepiece of the house, as seen from where I stood, could easily be identified as the two-tier, ceramic-tiled, traditional German stove, but whilst this indeed was a strong contender, it was the staircase in its mid-blue livery artfully distressed by hand, which, striding up behind us and turning sharply through ninety degrees, stole the stove’s immediate thunder.
Stairway to Heaven
The staircase was constructed of good, solid planks of wood. It had shaped apron embellishments and panels lining the stairwell walls, patterned with scrolling mouldings. The ‘worn’ cobalt blue colour encompassed rails, steps and panelling, creating a simple yet effective visual and atmospheric bridge to a highly credible living past. This masterpiece of time engineering was assisted in its effect by archivolt inclusions and by the stylised manner of the wooden framework, which, extending from floor to ceiling where the steps led down to the basement, blended complementary elements of rustic, fairytale and Art Nouveau.
Simplicity and intricacy were happily co-existent, sometimes restrained and sober and at other times quite flamboyant. For example, the bold, organic cutaway shape of the wooden ceiling spandrel formed a quaint freehand feature at the juncture where the third flight of steps, those leading to the attic, disappeared from view. This third level of steps, continuing the theme of cobalt blue, rises above and away from the landing, concluding at its summit in a series of supporting spindles surmounted by a handrail. From the first step in the hall to the last step into the roof, design and decor continuity contribute to the time inflection as the 21st century falls away and a sovereign past takes over.
Standing on the landing, just beneath the attic stairs, a graduated stack of archaic leather travelling cases seemed to say, ‘Hello. Remember me? ”. In type and in arrangement they reminded me of their useful ubiquity when requisitioned as props for stage and TV period dramas and in real life for the part they play in adding nostalgic credibility to photographic backdrops, especially when the photoshoot, be it for personal or professional reasons, chooses as its venue quaint Victorian railway stations, often well-preserved thanks to the efforts of steam enthusiasts. Graduated travelling cases form a tried and trusted staple in the creation of the obsolescence we freely equate with the past and of which we are particularly fond when used with a certain exactitude in living history dioramas at England’s 1940s’ events.
Sharing space on the same landing as the Villa Gretchen’s travelling cases was a small, polished rectangular table playing host to an old-fashioned telephone. It was a phone quite different to the obsession we have today – that nasty little rectangular thing that hitches a ride in our bag and pocket like an insistent, chattering parasite to which we are habituated to honour and obey.
The telephone on the small, rectangular table was big and bold and bulky, deliberately made not to be mobile, made of metal with a Bakelite handset and delightfully surmounted by two brassy conical gongs. Whilst its consummate authenticity demanded the kind of closer attention I was not prepared to indulge in today – it was already long past beer time – the switchboard of poetic licence connected me to the reflective thought that no matter what its actual age, it and its suitcase mates did what they were supposed to be doing, and doing it rather well.
From the landing, sharing the phone and suitcases, a corridor ensued, giving access right and left and, at its farthermost end, to a total of four guest bedrooms.
Olga immediately seized on one containing an imposing double wardrobe and a broad, open swathe of shelves that had been imaginatively positioned beneath beams of some antiquity, cleverly recessed into the folds of the building’s natural contours, and which ran the entire length of one wall. For a moment it seemed as if we had arrived and we were settled, but indecision being what it is – I suppose you could say it is indecisive – temptingly raised its not-untypical head when, on opening the door of a second room, which, though nominally smaller than the first, was even more atmospheric. So enchantingly struck we both were by the enticing old-world beauty of a bed whose head- and footboards were richly and lavishly carved and opposite by a wardrobe in sumptious high-flown, full-blown Baroque that we felt obliged to run, two or three times at least, back and forth between the two rooms in order to get the flavour of each. Needless to say, the final decision of which of the rooms we should take was delayed for a good ten minutes or more by the tedious repetition of “Take a photo of me!” – the compromise to which became “Take a photo of me as well”. I imagine you need no introduction to that adage for all ages: ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ‘em!’
Villa Gretchen’s owners had spared no small deliberation and, with it, I would say, expense, pursuant to their quest to reconstruct, as far as they were able, an atmospheric and convincing facsimile of how a German residence may have looked in the early years of the 20th century. Even the crest rail on the bedstead’s headboard and the adjacent linen press pediment conformed in style to one another. I couldn’t have felt more at home than if I had landed here by TARDIS.
Meanwhile, downstairs, for that’s where we would eventually be when we had ceased singing songs of praise, it had not been possible to pass insouciantly from the decade-deeming entrance hall into the wooden-beamed and leather-chaired lounge without pausing en route to admire the scene-stealing presence bestowed by that chunky, German stove, to which I alluded earlier, or, as it is called in German, a Kachelöfen.
These glossy or matte-tiled monoliths are unlike anything ordinarily found in any 19th-century or early 20th-century English residence, but in Königsberg and its provinces and throughout traditional German homes, their functionality at that time would have been considered as indispensable as they are highly prized today, and just as their look and composition attracted attention then, they are equally, if not more so by dint of age and curiosity, desirable objects to have and to own in one’s home today.
It needs to be remarked upon that way back when in the days of yore, those Germans had a certain knack; they knew a thing or two, as the construction and effectiveness, not forgetting visual appeal, of the Kachelöfen bears witness to. They might, to the novice, incite trepidation, but all it takes to operate this particular brand of dinosaur is a small but intense wood fire, hot enough to propel a steady stream of heat into a complex network of brick cavities, saturating the internal masonry beneath the Kachelöfen’s heavy tiles, and the whole caboodle is thus transformed from a showcase ceramic stack into a giant storage radiator, capable of releasing constant and uniform warmth for, depending on the size of the stove and its consequent built-in efficiency, a time of no-mean duration, extending from 12 to 24 hours, long after, in most cases, the fire itself has turned to dust. I think we can safely say, especially with regard to Britain, a country in which we cannot afford either gas or electric heating, where we are sitting on tonnes of coal but not allowed to mine it, that every home should have one; the only problem is that we cannot afford to burn wood either. Now, where on earth did I put them? Those low-cost handy hot water bottles?
Villa Gretchen in Otradnoye – what you need to know
Had I not been rushing to get into the social hub of things and open a bottle of beer, I might have tarried long enough to take photographs of the magnificent stove, but, as noted on the landing page, this blog is not intended to be anything like a typical travelogue, so until I do acquire photographs I shall leave the latter to germinate in the well-manured soil of your fertile visual imaginations.
From the comfortable lounge I haven’t described in detail, in spite of it containing a nice settee and chairs in leather and disporting on the wall the most remarkable mural depicting the city of Königsberg, we sallied through the kitchen, emerging thereunto to take our place inside a sizeable room fashioned for all intents and purposes like a mediaeval banqueting hall, although you could just as well describe it as a congregational chapel. This public hospitality space lent itself most admirably to gatherings such as ours, which, as previously not divulged, was Mr Chileekin’s birthday bash.
In addition to infusions of an intoxicating nature, there was a lot to absorb in here, such as the long refectory table, bygone furniture from various periods, a marvellous oversized red-brick fireplace and many other choicely curated bits and bobs and curios intended, as they did, to divert, distract and delight.
Potential enjoyment might also be gained from the maestro tinkling of a parlour piano, an instrument much loved and, for my liking, too often attended by the wilful fingers of enthusing children, which hammered away relentlessly on the ebony and ivory keys, greatly to the detriment of unamused adult ears, not to mention their delicate dispositions; and over there, behind me, covering one entire wall, was another source of enjoyment, but one which would never jangle one’s nerves. It was the most elaborate painted mural, which I think you can just about see peeping out from over my shoulder in the photograph below. You know, I really think it is high time I got myself a photographer!
Our sojourn at Villa Gretchen took place in the deep midwinter, which is to say, it was cold. But this did not deter us from wandering out at midnight and making use of the brick gazebo.
It was dark, and my eyes were bleary – I have no idea why – but they still retained sufficient sense to discern in the feeble lamplight the astounding extent to which the patrons of this fine building had enclosed a fireplace within a wall whose red-brick arches and bowed crenellation would not have looked out of place had they once occupied a great hall belonging to Königsberg Castle.
The open sides of this wine-and-dine palace were protected by polythene sheets of the heavy-duty variety, which are perfect for making walls which don’t object to the light coming in. It also contained a barbecue fire, which helped stave off a modicum of the crisp December air on the eve of our patronisation. A construction such as this must be a boon in summer, with the plastic sides rolled all the way up and the sun granted full permission to join the throng inside.
Throng or no throng this evening, I eventually reached a stage when I knew it would be wrong of me to succumb to another drink, so I only had one more, a quick snifter, so to speak, and then, like Captain Sensible (almost), made my autopilot way to where I could hear my baroque bed calling. I even remembered where this bed was; oh, there to lie in Gothic style and there to dream of Camelot (I think I’ve got that right?), with its winsome damsels in distress, which is where, on this cognac- and beer-full night, I decided I would leave them – bold Good Knight, this night, good night.
Useful Information
Villa Gretchen, Sanatornaya Ulitsa 4, Otradnoye, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, 238563
8 January 2026 – Art Village Vitland: beautiful beachfront on the Baltic
I was no stranger to this track; to call it a road would be too complimentary. I had walked it once before, but, on the last occasion of doing so, the going had been dry underfoot, dry and extremely dusty. Then the woodland to one side and the open, tangled ground to the other had been at their most verdant, densely leaved and vegetated under a sun-crowned clear blue sky.
Contrast that idyll with the scene that lay before us today: mud, potholes filled with water, the trees on either side stripped naked of their leaves, the woodland bed soaked and sodden, the air rich and pungent with vegetative decomposition, hanging as thick and heavy in one’s inquisitive nostrils as the accumulating droplets of damp clinging to one’s clothes. This was the natural world in its post-autumnal shift. A long, damp, desolate, barren lane, delivering us inexorably into winter’s clutches, or, dear reader, as those delicate poets amongst you might be inclined to say, for the sake of reviving a well-known phrase, into winter’s cold embrace.
The last time we had travelled this route, we had no strict idea where it would come out at, and thus we ended up somewhere else entirely; exactly in that not unfamiliar place, to wit, where everyone it seems, at one stage in their life or another, ends up inadvertently, and where some, as the story goes, end up not impermanently. You’ve probably been there yourself and hopefully returned: it’s called the ‘Middle of Nowhere’.
Today, however, with precedent as our guide, memory as our compass and others to consult with, there was little danger of that. It might have felt like the road to Nowhere, but it was, in fact, none other than the beaten track to Vitland.
Art Village Vitland
It was not yet fully past the middle hour of noon, but visibility, such as it was, and enclosed as we were by trees, was already turning mind and matter into a deeper and darker shade of grey.
A gaunt, tall and wooden monumental cross, unseen but pointed out to me, rising from an eminence, then suddenly turning eerily visible through a twilight web of branches, followed me down the slope, not the metaphorical one down which I have been sliding since the beginning of being trapped in this life, but a less-kind-on-the-soles variety, not the metaphorical souls which were soaring piously heavenwards in acknowledgement of this cross, but the ones that were having difficulty coping with the squishy leaves impairing traction beneath my boots.
The cross, I was told, I think by someone, was a monument to the martyred Adalbert, who long ago had journeyed to these pagan lands to convert whom he later discovered the hard way were an obstinate tribe of people, much the better to be left alone than lectured on Christianity. A delusion which might have turned out well had the subjects of his plan been desirous of such enlightenment, only, as bad luck had it, as it often does when callings of this type usurp the restraining influence of prudent commonsense, they were, unfortunately, anything but; and rather than be converted, they bumped him off instead. Such is the occupational hazard of devoting yourself to missionary zeal.
The morbid imp within me wanted to steer me into the trees and capture this cross on film – taking photographs is an inveterate habit that few can resist these days, and who am I to buck the trend – but as the light grew darker and the air considerably colder, owing, I convinced myself, to our nearing proximity to the sea, I meekly followed the others down, leaving the immortalised Adalbert to his eternal ruminations upon what in life is worth it and what on reflection is not.
A settlement of some considerable age
We were now approaching the ancient settlement, Vitland, escorted by its past but arriving at our destination as it is today. Landmarks, artistic ones, to which in an earlier time I had been graciously introduced, loomed larger than life in my memory. There again was the metal man conceived in his iteration from a carefully welded choreography of tubes, struts, plates, nuts, bolts, a number of other interesting things and a veritable maze of wires; the striking-a-pose arrangement of otherwise everyday wooden pallets; and the thrusting-upwards panpipes, for this is what I fancied them for, assembled from prodigious sheets of corrugated metal. And rest assured, it would not have been right had there not been a giant fish….
In any artistic environment, especially those by the sea, there’s always a painted fish – have you ever not noticed this? And so as not to disappoint, there it was alright, together with other colourful hieroglyphs, painted on the roughly hewn and unashamedly handmade fence. Through this delightful fretwork of wood knocked up from spliced branches and panels borrowed from various sources, a blazing fire burnt, and over it the smoke was rising, and on its other side the hummocky knolls and dells that comprise the Vitland café’s garden welcomed me from memory with the sight of the various wooden structures built into its contours, a novel collection of venues in which to eat and drink, to sit and smoke and barbecue, and dotted here and there and it seemed almost everywhere, for you never knew where one might be, yet more artistic symbols, which, when viewed in their entirety, converted this patch of grassy wilderness into a veritable home from home for the commune-minded boho set.
Like people whom you haven’t seen for as long as you remember but whose impressions you are likely never to forget, nothing was less familiar to me; but the devil, as they say, was in the detail, which, over the passage of our estrangement, had grown remarkably worn, taken on an aged appearance and was, for there simply is no kinder way to put it, succumbing to gentle decay. I felt a twinge of rheumatism emanate from my hip and was, by a mutual sympathy, consoled. It takes its shape from the march of time, and nothing, my friend, not even Botox, or anyone, be they so thought of by themselves and others as so powerful, has the will or the means to stop it.
Unlike the good St Adalbert, I had no need to prevent myself from converting anybody or anything. I respect Vitland for what it is and what it always will be: a genuine piece of Prussian history, which could have fared far worse in these overbuilt times of ours had it not been rescued from a fate worse than concrete when someone with taste and conservative vision decreed that it should become a unique and earthy retreat for the cohabitation of art and nature.
Bringing the two together within a sea-beach and rustic sequestered environment has turned the one-time ancient settlement into a rare fusion of space in which to exhibit art and to offer to the discerning guest a no-frills, honest-to-goodness blend of accommodation.
Accomodation at Art Village Vitland
Vitland’s guests are offered a choice of unpretentious hostel-style lodging in the main building’s loft rooms or a chance to stay glamping-style in wooden-constructed standalone units. I have seen the latter described as ‘bungalows’ and elevated as ‘guest houses’, but those descriptions are way off mark; they put me erroneously in mind of places of a quite different type, such as Auntie Mable’s house in Wigan and Mrs Musson’s Sandy Lodge at Wells-not-near-the-Sea, both of which in the strictest sense don’t fit the Vitland experience. I shy away from referring to Vitland’s ancillary lodgings as provision made in wooden huts, as it might evoke unhappy memories of that hard-to-explain and much-gossiped-of time when the wife, having locked you out, left you with little choice but to sleep in yonder allotment shed; so in search of a suitable substitute, I will christen these small wooden structures ‘chalets’.
Knowing what I’m talking about comes from having stayed in one. I entertain no delusions of tackling them in winter; such an endeavour as bold as that is the prerogative of constitutions considerably more adventurous and of greater durability than anything I own, but my summer sabbatical spent at Vitland some four years or more ago was memorably marked by a three-night stopover in one of these wooden units. The one we hired was fully equipped. It was wanting in no facilities. And as small as it was inside (it certainly wasn’t a TARDIS), nevertheless it was quaint and cosy.
The chalet slept two in virtual comfort: one, that is, at ground level, and the other, that being me, up a ladder and in the loft. On any other occasion, such as sedated by several beers, it might have been a case of out of sight, out of mind, but with the ambient outside temperature simmering not much far below a corking 30 degrees, inside our wooden abode, one of us was baking whilst the other one was basting. Being well skilled in the art and science of getting out of bed, certainly more than remaining within it, I was not surprised at all that I ended up at 4am perched on the chalet’s veranda, enjoying the thrill of the morning breeze whilst listening to the amazing sound of the sea crashing home on the shore.
Vitland’s principal hub, its rather more substantial building, is what traditionalists are likely to expect. Homely and inviting, it multifunctions perfectly as a café, restaurant, bar and sometime art exhibition space, and the rentable rooms above are all that the heart could desire.
Meanwhile at ground level, the eating, drinking and lounging area has a welcoming, laid-back vibe and, in line with the outside seating space, is decorated beachcomber fashion; for example, by hosting items and scenes nautical and marine in nature, with the wall at the back of the first raised deck draped with a sizeable fishing net, caught in which are colourful fish, humanely and strictly facsimile.
The second outside seating deck extending from the building offers an elevated view across a gorgeous stretch of golden sand into the foaming sea. At the furthermost end of this platform stands a convenient set of steps where you can descend yourself to the seashore or sit, as the mood so takes you, with a beer and a bite to eat whilst the mermaids sway seductively past en route to or returning from that sandy stuff on which, abetted by the laws of summer, they are pleased to set out their feminine stalls or emerging from that watery thing in which they swim and frolick, then glisten in the sunbeams.
Though naturally busier in summer than it is in winter, Vitland’s remote location makes it the perfect leisure alternative to the other hustle and bustle resorts. The beach is amber territory, the surrounding countryside is rustic-wild, the area is rich in history, and the aura is mystically tranquil. Vitland is a thoughtful place and is so during summer when it is occupied by more people and remains so in the winter when visitors grow less. It makes you put your thinking cap on when the sun is shining and leave it where it is when the snow is falling. I wouldn’t say Vitland can be lonely, no, I wouldn’t want to say that, but whatever it is that dwells there is a firm believer in personal solitude and a patron to all its excesses.
On the day of our most recent visit, I could not determine whether the irresistible feel of Vitland, its entrancing and enchanting essence, borrowed from The Shining’s least disturbing scenes, yet from its most evocative, or was rooted within a line or two I had read in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. A proposed compromise could possibly be that the spell was a subtle coalescence of both confluent influences, with some magic dust thrown secretly in by a hyperactive imagination.
Those of you who are susceptible to what is commonly known as ‘energies’, those invisible peronalities demarking one place from the next, will understand instinctively what it is that Vitland does within minutes of your arrival there.
Within minutes of our arrival there, Mr Chileekin’s group, among whose lucky number I was one, was treated to an exhibition by the accomplished metal sculptor Alexsander Braga. I am tempted to say that overall I detected in his work the influence of steampunk, but in the likely event that my eye, as unaccomplished as it is, coupled with a marked lack of knowledge in such a specialist genre, should cause the artist to take exception, I will moderate my initial comment and rewrite it so that it reads ‘generates a steampunk interest’.
As with almost any art form, it is easy to overlook the complex interaction that exists between creator and creation. In order to appreciate if only the obvious intricacy of any metal sculpture, one is called upon to recognise the fine-line marriage between the inspirational impulse and the practical-technical skills required to bring the concept to fruition. It is not enough to think it through; the artist has to do it. He has to have in his possession knowledge, as well as a firm working grasp, of the processes involved and practical skills required in every applicable aspect, including cutting, shaping, fitting and the finishing in metal, of which there are many and various.
As an individual who realised at quite an early age that he was completely bereft of such talents and who chose to take a cookery course in place of doing metalwork when steered in that direction whilst he was at school and who received a clonk around the ear with a heavy metal saucepan from a hysteria-prone young lady teacher for cooking up something facetious, the extent of my appreciation for the properties of metal probably runs much deeper than the average man who works in a scrapyard and routinely feels the need to shout, “There’s a lot of metal here!”
There was not a lot of metal at the Vitland art exhibition, but what there was, was heavy man! I marvelled at the ‘Catherine wheel’ that symbolised the force of life, the public mask so universally worn and the sailing ship called Königsberg, but in the end, hands down, it was the mannequin that won me over, the symbolisation of female anger (I never asked if she once taught cookery or owned a heavy saucepan) which, at the risk of becoming fashionable by dint of alleged misogyny, pressed every button on my sniggering keyboard.
Sounding like Corporal Jones convulsed by a fit of “They don’t like it up them!”, the artist divulged to me that on acquaintance with his sculpture and its underlying meaning, there were women who became incensed not by the concept itself but rather by one aspect of the mannequin’s composition, which was its intimidating trumpet mouth. I was intrigued at this divulgence, for as objective as I was trying to be, the more I looked at this woman, the more the conviction grew in me that I had met her somewhere along the way; but then, along the way, you come across so many of them, don’t you? Quite unable to make up my mind about this female Plethora, I came away from staring at her with a second-best exultation, that of how much more disturbing her anger would have been had the master in metal who made her equipped her with two arms and hands and a pair of heavy saucepans. They say if you can’t stand the heat, it is best to keep out of the kitchen, and the kitchen is the woman’s place. Thus, if your problem is keeping out of it, you’ll just have to learn how to duck.
The heat in Vitland café met with no complaints, but on the outside the cold was taking hold, so I was not particularly peeved when someone interrupted the walk that we had been seriously contemplating, but which now would never take us along the spirited-windy seafront, by suggesting the time had come to make our way to Vitland’s main exhibition room. This apartment lies upstairs and is at the front of the building, but because of the lay of the land, with its different gradient levels, access to the room is via a short flight of steps located on the higher ground at the back of the building.
Vitalnd Art Village – a unique experience
On our way to the hall of pictures, I was reacquainted with further examples of Vitland’s garden sculptures, most of which I had shaken metaphorical hands with four or possibly five summers hence. Contiguous to this welcome went dramatically sailing past us, like a whisky-fuelled Hogmanay haggis, one of the biggest and fattest tabby cats seen this side of Wonderland. There consistently comes a time at Vitland when you forget which side of Wonderland your feet have decided they belong.
The exhibition laid before us featured a quite considerable canon of paintings by artist Alexsander Pasichniy, who has also written, illustrated and produced two children’s books and does a fine line in portraits of the German writer Hoffmann as he appeared in his younger years. The metal man, Braga by name, had not been a bragger by nature, and here we had yet another example of modesty becoming one, but when he unfairly denounced himself as not a professional artist, I couldn’t help remarking that “If this [your art] is not professional, then show me art that is!”
Would it be too pretentious of us, or judged as such by others, if, at what I consider to be a relevant juncture most opportune, we were to pause together and in that space consider how we relate to art and the value, or not as the case may be, that we accredit to it given the all-displacing digital world in which we have to live and which, in turn, lives in us?
We live today in an imagistic age, a period plastered in images. Thanks to the digital matrix in which we wallow and flounder – our smartphones, laptops, the omniscient Google and our slavish devotion to social media – we have the motive, means and opportunity to Blitzkrieg each and every facet of our post-Kodak daily existence with any image that takes our fancy. This explosion of the visual icon has the same effect on value as asking for a glass of water and getting a bucket of water thrown over you. Our eyes and our senses are soaked with imagery.
Outside of exclusive art-world circles, that self-imploding waltz occupied by cryptic critics and crusty connoisseurs, original works of art, those produced by the artist’s hand, are losing their authenticity to an authenticating culture founded on mass mediocrity. Our minds are sodden, sponge-like, with an overkill of imagery fed to us by a digital powerhouse that eschews the virtue of quality and espouses the glut of quantity.
The value of a genuine, that is, first-hand, work of art does not derive exclusively from the features of its composition, despite this being the principal force by which our inclinations are attracted to it. Intrinsically and essentially, other magnetic forces are at work behind the scenes acting upon our stolen sentiments, and these are those that cannot in any shape or form be forged or framed or fabricated, digitally or otherwise. They are so imperviously set in stone as to exist without fear of contradiction outside of the excluding scope of the critic and the connoisseur, for they are, indeed they are, the when and where and why and the ultimately by whom, and these things are immutable. There is nothing in the digital world that can replace the artist’s brush as it moves across the canvas at a given, single, specific and never-to-be-repeated moment, for it is what it is and when.
You now can see for yourselves that this is one of the joys of Vitland. It is without equivocation a thought-provoking place. In the sun at its most beautiful; in the eclipse of the sun, at its most introspective. It is natural, attractive, down to earth, a retreat into one’s own sanctuary; here you can escape for a while from the penny arcade of life.
It is also, and most essentially, the perfect marriage of art and nature, an intertwining timeless ceremony which never can grow old and where history can never repeat itself, purely because it has no need to do so. Some things, you can tell, have never not always been there, and once you have been to Vitland, you can tell that the same applies to you.
The Main Thing
Art Village Vitland Калининградское ш 43, Baltiysk Kaliningrad Oblast 238510
28 August 2025 – My Special Day Out in Svetlogorsk by Mick Hart
Don’t you just hate it when you mislay something? It’s so frustrating, isn’t it? This year I have had trouble remembering what I’ve done with summer. I recall someone saying, “Hooray, summer is here!”, and I recollect catching a glimpse of what I thought was it, but I looked away for a second, and when I looked back it had gone. Indeed, the past few days have seen rain and floods so portentous as to be almost biblical.
A couple of weeks ago — I won’t be precise — I caught summer in the act of sneaking up on me. In complete defiance of the official weather forecast, the sun was clearly violating the conditions of its parole: it was out and about and shining.
I hadn’t had my fair share for a while — well, you don’t at this age, do you? — you do? Well, lucky you! — I’m jealous of your suntan — so, I said to the missus, or she said to me — it’s one voice after all these years (ah, hem): “Why not go to Svetlogorsk for the day?”
Checking my diary for prior engagements and finding in my calendar that what was left of my life was free, I acquiesced (some people just agree), and before you could say, “I wished he’d get on with it!”, we were on our way to Svetlogorsk.
Had I found my bicycle clips, we would have gone by tandem, but there’s more to life than losing things, apart from life itself, so I consulted a very good guide written by someone of proven veracity, and taking myself at my word, we decided to go by bus.
My Special Day Out in Svetlogorsk
We weren’t working to any particular timeframe, which is a pretentious way of saying that we weren’t working to any particular timeframe, so we took a minibus, a 61, to the stop by Königsberg’s fighting bison, an imposing composition in bronze by none other than August Gaul, and walked the short distance from there to the bus stop situated on Sovetsky Prospekt (Soviet Avenue). Just as I wrote in my earlier post, and, of course, I never lie, within minutes of us being there a Svetlogorsk bus rolled in, and a few minutes later we rolled off in it.
A few minutes more saw the evidence laid before us that I was not the only one who had found a bit of summer amongst the wreckage of the season. It was just as I had written in that extremely well-researched blog post of mine: traffic build-up in the Kaliningrad suburbs on roads leading out to the coast.
Fifteen minutes into it and having been overtaken twice by the same snail in reverse, I began to wish that I had never written that post to which I keep referring; talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy!
In that post (There I go again! If I didn’t know myself better, I would accuse myself of bias!), I wrote that the time it takes to travel by bus from Kaliningrad to Svetlogorsk is one hour and fifteen minutes, and, though my eye for detail comes as no surprise, I somehow couldn’t believe that I had got it so terribly right! What I failed to mention in that excelent mother of all posts was that there is at least one bus on the Svetlogorsk route that doesn’t go where you think it is going; it does not stop in the centre. This bus enters Svetlogorsk’s outskirts and, just when you are slipping into a sense of false security, goes sailing off to somewhere else (“Next stop: Somewhere Else!”). So, if you find yourself on this bus (“Hello, Mrs Conductor, does it stop at the centre?” “The centre of what? The universe?”), you’d best get off as we did, at the stop in the dip near the lake.
This stop, hitherto unused by me, turned out to be more convenient than I first gave it credit for. On the way to the beachfront, it was our intention to call at the arts and crafts street market opposite Telegraph Café to collect and pay for a commissioned piece of leatherware. Could it be a pair of swimming trunks? Not telling you. Let’s just say that whilst most things shrink in the water, you wouldn’t want this one to ride up with wear.
The shortcut through the hills and wooded hillocks of old Svetlogorsk [sic] Rauschen made me wince at the outset as it was all uphill (funny that?), but the absolute joy of this route was that it took us through an interesting mix of dwellings old and new, from original German houses secreted in wooded gardens to glades containing mid-rise flats, adventurously medievalised by the inclusion of half-timbered uppers.
The other surprising thing about this shortcut, or cutshort as Olga sometimes muddles it, was that this ‘cutshort’ really was short. We emerged from the woodland shortly after entering it, and there, on the right, was the market. I don’t believe we’ve accomplished this before; we were exactly where we wanted to be and quickly.
The compact area set aside for traders at the confluence of two streets was packed today. Summer could run, but it could not hide!
Some stalls at this market are permanent fixtures; others are infills, with traders bringing their own folding tables, which is something that we sometimes did when standing at boot and vintage fairs in England. Ah, what memories such sights bring!
First sight of Olga was met with great enthusiasm by friends and associates alike; they also said hello to me. I was acquainted with most of these people, and as for those I had not met, well, introductions in Kaliningrad are evergreen experiences.
Speaking English in Kaliningrad
There was a time, when I first came to Kaliningrad, in the perestroika years, when the sound of someone speaking English, and the sight of an Englishman speaking it, transcended curiosity. The unwavering stares received had a polarising character: at one end of the spectrum, a deep suspicion lurked; at the other, the kind of fascination that vainer folk than I might have found quite flattering.
Eventually, I grew accustomed to the habit of being gawped at and even got to enjoy being regarded as an exotic object, apparently too much so, because as the years rolled steadily by and a new generation arrived on the scene, replacing the Soviet mindset with their internet view of the world and the more savvy grasp it gave them of the ways of different cultures, modesty forbid, but I missed the attention my simple presence had once so effortlessly generated. But one grows older, as one does, and as one does, one hopes, less needful of the spotlight. “I wanted so much to have nothing to touch. I’ve always been greedy that way.” (Thank you, Leonard.) And then, just when you least expect it, like some of the buses we travel on, the bell rings and it’s all change, please.
Hunkering down in Russia during the coronavirus period, which was a much-to-be-preferred option than returning to hysteria-blighted Britain, I discovered once again that the sound of someone speaking English and being English on Kaliningrad’s streets had overnight become something of an anomaly, more so than it would, given Kaliningrad’s exclave status, than in Moscow or St Petersburg, and that this trend would be intensified by developments in Ukraine as visitors from the West diminished, particularly those who wear cravats and speak with English accents.
But I digress (“Cor blimey, don’t you!”) Helloes, how-are-yous, introductions and curious observations over and with our business at the market done and dusted, we wended our way at a leisurely pace along Svetlogorsk’s charming streets, taking note on our way of the capital renovation that had rescued the Villa Malepartus from almost certain extinction.
A new café lifted on wooden decking at the entrance to the public space containing Yantar-Hall was designed to attract attention. We contemplated the prospect of offering it our patronage but decided not to after all, turned off by its ‘boom boom music’.
We continued our walk to the coast, strolling across the landscaped parkland be-fronting Yantar Hall, marvelling at the transformation from all it had been in my days, a soggy chunk of decaying woodland (there are some who would say that they liked it that way), and ended up for that bite to eat, which we would have had at the previous café had the volume been turned down, at the glass-plated, steel-framed and, on a bright and blue-skied day, aptly named Sun Terrace.
Strategically situated on the coastal headland on route to the Svetlogorsk Elevator, The Sun Terrace is the perfect place to pause and enjoy, as I did, over a pizza and coffee, twenty minutes of quiet repose. The sunny skies above, the green lawns all around, the garden beds with their shrubs and flowers, the birch-tree woodland backdrop, the little birds singing and chirping happily in the boughs and branches of trees – what more could one possibly ask for? Noise, it would seem, is the answer. A couple seated opposite us outside on the café’s patio was respectfully asked by the waiter if everything met with their requirements.
The male contingent replied that whilst they could find no fault with the food, the one thing lacking was music.
I wondered if The Sun Terrace were to act on his advice, what music they would opt for. Would it be, let’s hope not, the kind that had driven us quickly away from the café we would have frequented had it been less musical? Could it have been less musical? Hmm? There’s no accounting for taste.
No music is good music when that music is bad. So, Sun Terrace be advised: continue to do what you do well – provide the space, the food, and beverages and leave the music to Nature’s Orchestra.
As the Elevator’s website highlights, there is no better place to be than aloft inside its vast glass gallery if stunning views of the Baltic Coast are the sort of thing that floats your boat.
Olga likes to go there to take selfies for social media; I go there to take an interest in the luxury seafront apartments‘ latest phase of development. As you can see from the photo below, they, and the promenade on which they are based, have really taken shape.
Older than the Elevator but refurbished since my first trip on them in summer 2001 are the small suspended yellow pods, at one time Soviet red, which, capable of transporting in their enclosed and glazed interior two standing or seated passengers, are a cable car and ski-lift hybrid. Essentially, the vehicle is a funicular, conveying passengers to beachside level from the upper reaches of the steep coastal bank and, more importantly, back again. They offer a convenient and comfortable alternative to foot-slogging the uphill path that, once completed but with great difficulty, leaves even the fittest person pretending not to be out of breath.
The cable-strung contraption is a particular favourite of mine. Whenever I visit Svetlogorsk, I look forward to the prospect of sailing up and down in it, even if getting on and off, with its slightly alarming bounce and the need to open and latch two doors whilst the conveyance sways in contradiction, demands a certain degree of elasticity more suited to supple youth and to the rest-assured action of younger sinews.
The queues for this novel but practical mode of transport show no sign of getting shorter as bathers head for the only substantial open stretch of beach sufficient in capacity to accommodate their growing influx.
Svetlogorsk’s oldest promenade is still very much under wraps due to ongoing restoration, a programme that has effectively closed the greater percentage of the beach resort’s beach.
Meanwhile, at the new promenade, a ribbon of sand implanted at the point where the structure meets the shore provides an attractive, albeit limited, beach alternative. It is an integral feature of the coastline complex, which in essence, and for the present, siphons off overflow bathers from the opposite end of Svetlogorsk, but the reality on the ground is that by far the greatest proportion of sand is still very much off limits, pending the completion of the renaissance of the earlier promenade.
My Special Day Out in Svetlogorsk
Not being a beachy person, not even in the slightest (I haven’t been since Charles Atlas warned about the inherent risk of sand being kicked in one’s face.), the prospect of being barred from the beach is somebody else’s – not my – problem; whereas no bar on, overlooking or at an equitable distance from the beach, is very much my problem.
I have to say, therefore, that on my most recent visit to Svetlogorsk, I was well chuffed by the discovery that the portion of beach still open to those who like nothing more than to laze and swim, swim and laze, laze and … (It is fairly easy to see how writing about this aimless practice could become habitual, even if actually doing it could not.) has a small food and drink outlet held up to the sky on stilts.
For a man who has just descended by cable car, the challenge of climbing two flights of steps to buy a bottle of beer was a less arduous undertaking than perching on a wooden plank for the 25 minutes it took for my other half to grow tired of splashing about in the briny.
Strange things happen at sea, or so I have heard it said, and just to prove this point, whilst she was in the water, Olga made a new friend. She wasn’t a mermaid nor sea monster but a young woman with a delightful mien who had authored a book about Japan, possibly making her stranger than both those marine creatures put together, and though she failed, mercifully, to address me in Japanese, when she spoke she spoke the King’s English almost as good as Charles himself and nearly better than me. (I just can’t seem to stop these days using words like ‘like’ and ‘innit’. “Ee, mon, I haven’t the faintest where me gets de ‘abit from! It makes me eddy at me!”)
These facts alone were enough to qualify both her and her husband for an invitation to join us this evening at that well-known restaurant Wherever. We did not know where the restaurant was and would not know until later, when we would rendezvous with a friend and follow her to wherever it was that she saw fit to take us.
We met our female companion in the rip-roaring, rollicking centre of town, which, I am fairly certain, must be twinned with Great Yarmouth, where people crowd intently and to the beat of open-air music, sing, dance, eat and carouse as though they are on holiday, most likely because they are.
Although the restaurant to which we were taken was not familiar to me, the building that it occupied had, for as long as I could remember, been an object of admiration as well as one of intrigue. I could not understand for the life of me why such an obvious Rauschen relic, an edifice of historic importance, had lain for so many years in such a sad and sorry state of destitution. Shame on me, I know, but in the early twenty-tens, I had regarded its exotically planted but much neglected gardens as nothing more than a cutshort, though I always peeped inside the building whenever I went stampeding past on my way to wherever it was I must have been going, wondering why this rarified building, whatever it was supposed to be, seemed to have no other use than a place for stacking chairs. However, mystery on mystery, or simply a case of misplaced memory (it’s gone the way of the sun), for when we asked one of the waiters how long the restaurant had been open, the answer we got was ‘always’. It was a Delbert Grady moment: “You’ve always been the caretaker. I should know, sir. I’ve always been here.”
Anyway, to put you out of your inquisitive misery, the beautiful building’s restaurant goes by the name of Kurhaus. The building itself is restored-Rauschen, but the restaurant has more than a lingering flavour of what it must have been like to dine there during Soviet times. The absence of loud music is a blessing!
In describing my day at Svetlogorsk, I have unwittingly provided you with a blueprint for an excursion. It is easier to remember than trying to say ‘fiddlesticks’ fast, so put your map-head on your shoulders and get a load of this:
How to get there. Where? Precisely
Get off at the bus stop near the lake; turn left, then immediately right; keep a straight line at the back of the houses and climb the steps into the wood; keep on walking until you reach a broad glade ‘ringed’ with houses and flats; climb the steps or slope to the right; turn left at the top of the hill, past the flats with the wooden fretwork; then turn immediately right. (How are you doing so far?) From here you will see the open-air market and, across the road, the Telegraph café. From the café, hang a left and then immediately left again. The Starry Doctor Hotel is on the left and the Villa Malepartus a little further on your right. This street is a wonderful street complete with old and new-old houses of an extremely evocative nature, which any one of you or I would love to live in if we had the chance. When you reach the junction at the top of this road, Yantar Hall is unmissable — it is large, modern, futuristic and also, they tell me, multifunctional. Head along the winding path in front of this wave-like structure, and there you will find The Sunshine Terrace (as its name is written in English, you will find it hard to miss), and after you’ve taken refreshment there, it’s straight on to the lift.
To find your way to the cable cars, direct your feet towards the centre of town (you could try asking where this is!). The ticket office can be found to the right of Svetlogorsk’s railway station just inside a small, paved area where amber traders sell their wares. Treat yourself to some of this before you make your descent. (It’s more than a million years old, you know! Not the chairs, the amber.) And now that I’ve got you down on the beach, have a beer for me!
It’s quite simple, really: If you love marzipan, this is where to go
23 January 2025 ~ Resort Shop Zelenogradsk a Must for Marzipan
The reason why many people have never heard of Königsberg is that in 1945 it ceased to exist. Very few people make the connection between the Königsberg that was and the Kaliningrad that is.
One chap, for example, on espying my Königsberg baseball cap perched on my head in the pub, insisted that Königsberg is a city in modern-day Germany twinned with the UK seaside town of Cleethorpes, and he wouldn’t take ‘niet’ for an answer. Learning something new every day is an occupational hazard when drinking in English pubs.
But even those who are acquainted with Königsberg, who know something of its history, the existence of its cathedral, that it was once home to the German philosopher Kant, and that it was, in WWII, reduced to ash and cinders, are probably none the wiser regarding the city’s reputation as an erstwhile-prized production centre for an exceptional kind of marzipan.
For the uninitiated everywhere, marzipan is a sweet whose primary ingredient is almonds. It is a versatile confection, taking many shapes and forms, and is more likely than not these days when found in general retail outlets to be a chocolate-coated version companioned by other candy bars.
Königsberg’s marzipan history kicked off in the first decade of the 19th century. The main players were the Pomatti brothers, who, because of the exceptional quality of their marzipan goods, were among the first confectioners in Königsberg to be granted a Royal Warrant of Appointment, effectively establishing them as approved suppliers of marzipan products to Königsberg’s royal elite.
As the taste for marzipan grew, Königsberg’s stable of marzipan makers increased in line with trends in neighbouring countries, leading to the production of different kinds of marzipan each endowed with their own regional character, each prepared and baked in a style which identified their origin, and which eventually became the trademark of a particular type or variant.
Although traditional Königsberg marzipan does not share the elaborate traits of marzipan originating from the German city of Lübeck, its scrolled ‘C’ and ‘S’ shaped sweets, tartlets and jam-filled confections are immediately identifiable by the toasted, crispy, golden-brown finish imparted to the marzipan’s surface by preparations and techniques that remain a secret to this day.
In taste, Königsberg marzipan is further distinguished by the incorporation of less sugar and a dash or two of rose water to the quality almond paste, which, together with the toasted topping, infuses Königsberg marzipan with an unmistakeable flavour.
Resort Shop Zelenogradsk a Must for Marzipan
Today, Königsberg’s successor, Kaliningrad, continues to purvey an eclectic range of marzipan products in many different forms and flavours. However, whenever I need my marzipan fix, I toddle along to the simply named, but not to be underestimated, specialist ‘Resort Shop’ (Kurortnaya Lavka as it translates in Russian), which is located in the high street of the pretty Baltic coastal town named Zelenogradsk.
Unassuming but attractive, this cozy and compact shop is a shrine for marzipan pilgrims. Its diverse array of almond-based goodies, in ready-to-eat chocolate-bar form and presentation gift packs, many of which are slanted towards a nostalgic Königsberg theme, offer a spoilt-for-choice selection that any marzipan addict will find difficult to resist.
Putting it another way, if it’s marzipan you’re after, either for yourself, or as a souvenir for a special other, Zelenogradsk’s Resort Shop is the place to find and buy it.
Another feather in Resort Shop’s cap is that offers you the opportunity to augment your confectionary purchases with novel souvenirs and ~ surprise, surprise ~ items of silver jewellery, as well as walking away with, after you’ve paid, of course, one of several or even several exciting tea and coffee blends.
And then there’s the economics of it. For an independent retail outlet geared to the tourist market, the prices at Resort Shop are really rather reasonable.
Resort Shop Zelenogradsk
I cannot walk Zelenogradsk high street without responding to the urge to call into this shop to furnish myself with a marzipan treat and, as I become notably fussier about the coffee that I drink, to unite my marzipan fetish with my rediscovered beverage hedonism.
For marzipan hunters anywhere, Zelenogradsk’s Resort Shop takes an awful lot of beating, which is why I am banging its retail drum.
Time for a coffee, methinks; pass the marzipan, please.🙂
25 October 2024 ~ Telegraph Restaurant Zelenogradsk Wired for Quality
“It’s all so confusing,” so says a friend of mine and quite often. He’s a scientist, now retired, so he should know. And he’s referring to life. When I echo his sentiments, “It’s all so confusing,” he invariably replies, “It often is,” and sometimes he will say, “… but it is also often quite exciting.” Sometimes, when reflecting on life, he opines, “It don’t make sense!” And although, ‘it’s all so confusing’ and also ‘often exciting’, it actually does make sense that there are two Telegraphs: one I wrote about recently, which is in Svetlogorsk, and the other of which I am writing now, this one is in Zelenogradsk. The Telegraph in Svetlogorsk is a cafe and an art gallery, whilst the Telegraph in Zelenogradsk a restaurant.
Each Telegraph has a different function, but both are eponymously named after the same function their buildings had when the world was a different place.
The Telegraph Restaurant
The Telegraph restaurant in Zelenogradsk occupies the building of the old German telegraph and post office, which was established in the coastal resort in 1896. It is located at the top end of the high street. However, as the terms ‘top end’ and ‘bottom end’ are absolutely subjective, serving no useful purpose to man or beast, let me qualify its location by adding that it lies at the end of Zelenogradsk’s high street nearest the bus and train stations and not the end where the public park and sand is.
Telegraph Restaurant Zelenogradsk
The old telegraph building is one of those solid, stalwart red-brick affairs, instantly identifiable within the Kaliningrad region as being authentically German. In the summer months, a small area is set aside on the pavement next to the building for al-fresco dining and drinking; in winter, during the festive season, this same area is requisitioned for Telegraph’s contribution to the town’s impressive transformation into an imaginatively lit and magically decorated New Year’s holiday wonderland.
Whilst it occupies the ground floor of the former telegraph office, the contemporaneous Telegraph is accessed by a flight of steps. “It don’t make sense!” “It rarely does!”, with the exception of this region, where ground floors are often elevated above the basements below them to let in light from windows at pavement level.
On entering into the stairwell, the scene is set for the Telegraph experience. The walls are bare, stripped of their plaster, exposing the brick beneath. A black facsimile telegraph pole stands in sharp relief, and further along an illusory hole containing some kind of map twinkles in the muted light from illuminated markers. This introduction tells you in no uncertain terms that the Telegraph’s interior will not be run of the mill. It prepares you for an industrialised look with novel touches of retrospective modernity in keeping with the telegraph legacy from which it takes its thematic cue.
The two rooms, which are actually one room joined but visually separated by a deep, broad arch, continue the bare-brick look. The ceiling has a patchy effect, as though some of the plaster has fallen off, but as none lies on the floor below, we must chalk this up to designer licence. The lightbulbs in the industrial lampshades are the visible filament kind, they compliment the shabby chic, and the untrunked cable which supplies their power openly climb the walls.
The here and now in which we live may be the ‘wireless age’, but back in the day when the Telegraph building fulfilled its original function, the term ‘hard wired’ was literal. Appropriately, therefore, no attempt has been made to conceal the wires that link the bulbs. They travel across the ceiling in an exhibition of bold impunity.
The world of wires and plugs, the working environment of yesteryear’s telegraph offices is captured in some detail in the large, framed black and white photographs arranged around the restaurant’s walls. Study these at your leisure to see just how much times have changed.
The theme of the mechanical age continues in the restaurant’s choice of tables. Old treadle sewing machines dating in manufacture and use from the 19th to mid-20th centuries make attractive tables once the machines have been removed.
The leading manufacturer of hand-operated and treadle machines was a company known as Singer, who suspended the Singer name in the mid-section of a wrought-iron framework, bridging the divide between whilst connecting the table’s end supports. The elaborate nature of the frame’s decoration is what gives the tables their appealing clout, and it is thumbs up to the Telegraph restaurant for retaining the tables’ pivoting foot pedals. Attractive features in themselves, should you be prone to tippy tapping, as in his youth was one of my brothers, these pedals will entertain your feet at the same time as you sit and eat.
Telegraph Restaurant Zelenogradsk
Telegraph is a restaurant, it isn’t really a bar, but it has a bar of sorts, and I like that. I never feel at home and cannot quite get comfortable drinking alcohol in a barless zone. Sitting in a restaurant, seated around a table without a bar in sight just doesn’t do it for me. I liken the experience to sitting in a car which does not have a steering wheel. Without a bar something is missing; most likely it’s the bar.
For all its designer emphasis on the basic nitty gritty, Telegraph is cozy. In the all-important lighting department, which is the principal component in any attempt at coziness, Telegraph scores 11 out of 10. Excuse me, whilst I correct myself, my maths are notoriously weak; I meant to say scores 12.
In one sense, this is not good. Telegraph is so terribly cozy that it’s hard to get me out of there. Thank heavens that buses and trains work to things called timetables, which is something else worth mentioning. Telegraph is but a short walk away from the town’s bus and train stations, making it, if you time it right, and I usually make sure that I do, the perfect stopping-off place on your outward journey and a convenient traveller’s rest at which to pause on your way in.
Talking of food, as we now are, Telegraph’s speciality is the promotion of Baltic cuisine. It must be up to snuff as the restaurant is duly cited in Wheretoeat [in] Russia 2024 and in December 2022 was awarded the regional title of ‘Baltic Cuisine’.
Another award that Telegraph deserves is for its truly handsome website, especially in the category of ‘best designed for ease-of-use’. Navigate to its menu pages for a comprehensive and mouth-watering insight into the range of dishes it has on offer. And just in case you are wondering if I intend to provide you with links to the website and to the restaurant’s menu, wonder ye no more. Here is the link to Telegraph’s website: https://telegraph.rest/ and here is the link to its menu: https://telegraph.rest/menu . And whilst I am at it, here is the link to its page on social media: https://vk.com/telegraph.rest .
Ah, but it’s a grand menu to get lost in, isn’t it? But now that you are back, ask yourselves a question, are you fans of quirky? I most definitely am, particularly when it involves valuing and sustaining dying traditions. Thus imagine my delight on discovering that the present-day Telegraph salutes its earlier namesake by enabling its patrons to buy, write and send postcards directly from its premises to anywhere in the world. Who needs digital messaging and who needs things like WhatsApp when you’ve a pen, a card, a stamp and post box! WhatsUp with that? Nothing!
My scientist friend, the one whom I mentioned at the beginning of this post, has a variety of different catchphrases to suit or not to suit as the case may be the topic of almost every conversation. For example, whenever we discuss Britain’s existential threat, the not-accidental migrant invasion, he will with cynicism and irony ask: “Well, what can we do about it?” When we are feeling philosophical, ruminating together on the mysteries of time, “Where would we be without it?” And when we discuss giants of history ~ politicians, generals, luminaries of the silver screen, pop stars, authors, artists and the figureheads of the American mob ~ his concluding remark is likely to be “And it didn’t do them any good!”
Let’s try to apply these questions and statements to the Telegraph in Zelenogradsk:
What can we do about it? Go there! Where would we be without it? Deprived. It didn’t do them any good! Well, obviously it didn’t. Because they decided to go somewhere else when they should have gone to Telegraph.
You see, when you look at it scientifically, it all makes perfect sense!
30 September 2024 ~ Summer in Kaliningrad and UK as it happened in 2024
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore Edgar Allan Poe (1845)
As summer draws to a close, I made the mistake of accidently retorting, “It’s gone so fast that I hardly knew it was there!” To which came the curt and completely undeserving reply that it’s nothing short of marvellous that I knew it had arrived, the amount of time I spend locked away indoors immersed in antique and history books and spurning the light of day.
Hmm, as the collection of photographs displayed here show, the allegations against me are not entirely true.
It has also been said of me that on those few occasions when I do deign to go out, I am either surrounded by ‘junk’ or wallowing in history, locked out of the present for want of the past. Oh, and when I’m not doing that, I’m sitting and drinking beer.
Unfortunately, by some strange false-impression-giving mischievous quirk of fate, the visuals on this page would appear to lend uncanny credence to the case for the prosecution. I’ll let you, the jury, decide.
Summer in Kaliningrad 2024
Seen, and scene, on a brilliant, bright-blue summer’s day, what is it? If I was 350 years younger, I would, in referencing the shorter structure, have taken one look at the small arched windows nestled within the roof and said, “an octopus.” It isn’t. It is, of course, the Baltic coastal town of Svetlogorsk’s principal landmark (even more so now since they knocked down the Hotel Russ). It is, in fact, a water tower: a rather splendiferous example compared to Britain’s concrete plinths, designed in 1908 by Otto Walter Kukuck when Svetlogorsk was German Rauschen. Constructed in the fairytale style of German Romanticism, the tower and its rotunda meld the key concepts of Art Nouveau with architectural features native to the Königsberg region. You used to be able to have mud baths in this building, but the last I heard it was closed to the public. If they opened it up for business again, I would, wouldn’t you?
Crouching down in a field of dandelions whilst wearing a dandelion headdress may not seem like everybody’s idea of fun, but if in a former life you believe yourself to have been a shaman, have passed through the Art Nouveau stage, dallied with Art Deco and have now thrown in your lot with metaphysics and the 5th Dimension, then who can say what summer means to you?
Now here’s something that you don’t see that often, and why would you want to?: Me, armed with a paper bag not containing beer, standing outside of an avant-garde boutique, framed between some rather nice mauve and lettered heart-shaped balloons. We had, in fact, been out back, sitting at a table drinking coffee and eating biscuits, but the shop, which sells clothing and jewellery, as well as coffee, biscuits and snacks, is different enough in style and the items it has an offer to warrant a visit at any time of the year.
The greater proportion of Königsberg was destroyed in the Second World War, but seek and ye shall find architectural gems of the former German city. The Villa Schmidt, seen here bathed in summer sunlight, is one such fine example. It was constructed as a two-storey home in the Art Nouveau/German Romanticism style in 1909 by the celebrated Königsberg architect Wilhelm Warrentrapp. The villa escaped the worst effects of the Battle for Königsberg but fell foul in the years succeeding the war of the con-block, asbestos sheet and bucket-of-cement mentality by which many buildings suffered for want of sensitive restoration. Fortunately, come the 21st century, Villa Schmidt was acquired by someone who knew his restoration onions, and he has restored the property to its original spec.
Fancy meeting you here! > I was doing the shopping > And I was walking the dog
A mid-summer party, during which Soviet Constructivism’s stalwart ‘Captain Codpiece’ takes a break from renovation to enjoy the company of friends and supporters.
Above^ The technique worked superbly in the film Schindler’s List, so why not here? Enjoying a well-deserved beer (when is it not?) on a warm summer’s evening on the forecourt of a Kaliningrad bar.
Above> Nothing quite beats a late summer Baltic sunset. This one was captured this month (September 2024), location Zelenogradsk. I know it looks as though I took the photograph whilst running to the fallout shelter, but the truth of the matter is that although the sun was radiant, a stiff breeze had sneakily come from nowhere, forcing me into the nearest bar, where I continued to watch them both go down, my beer and the evening sun.
Below> This second sunset, another belter, made its way into my camera lens one late June evening from the new pier in Svetlogorsk. No wonder artists, like Victor Ryabinin, look upon this region with inspirational awe and attempt to capture the feeling using paint palette, brush and canvas.
The message is the sun is out, the skies are blue, I am celebrating, how about you? I did think of joining in, but there was quite a lot of seagulls about and, well, knowing my luck …
Summer in the UK 2024
Flint cottages and pan-tile roofs of a time-honoured street in the village of Walsingham, home of ancient religious shrines and throughout the middle ages a major pilgrimage destination. Both my brother and myself have made many pilgrimages to Walsingham, but since our last foray the chip shop had closed and on our recent visit, we abstained from visiting either of the two pubs, forsaking beer for something that was long overdue, a cup or two apiece of holy water. Just to confuse the pilgrims, and those people whose sole (not ‘soul’) interest is fish ‘n’ chips’, Little Walsingham (there is a larger one, too), is bigger than Great Walsingham, and it is to Little Walsingham the first pilgrims wended and wended again in the 20th century when the act of pilgrimaging was duly revived. Walsingham stands as the epicentre of North Norfolk’s historic and spiritual soul, without a visit to which no trip to the region would be complete.
Below: Scenes on a sunny day at Old Hunstanton. As luck would have it, we were entertained by a rare display of the RNLI hovercraft in action, although this photo captures the moment before the action took place.
You can’t have enough clutter! “Hello, operator, could you transport me back to the 1920s as quickly as possible, thank you.”
A number of pubs in England claim to be the oldest licensed premises in the country, but you have to admit that the Bell Inn, at Finedon in Northamptonshire, looks the part, and supporters of the claim’s veracity are only too willing to draw your attention to a license granted to the inn in 1042 by Edward the Confessor’s wife, Queen Edith. The pub personifies the ancient and traditional, including some of its drinkers.
Below:The tides out and the boats are grounded. A typical view across the North Norfolk mudflats and salt marshes.
Gallery above: The small, unassuming, but atmospheric village of Burnham Thorpe in North Norfolk is, as you were just about to tell me, the birthplace of one of England’s most famous naval heroes, Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson. Here we have a snapshot of the village church where Nelson’s father, Mr Nelson, by all accounts, sometimes known as Edmund, was the vicar from 1750 to 1802. The photo was taken from the forecourt of the village pub (where else!), the eponymous Lord Nelson. The last picture in the gallery is me sitting behind Nelson drinking a pint of Norfolk’s finest, Wherry. And (below decks), there I am again across the field from the pub standing next to Burnham Thorpe’s very own Nelson’s Column ~ a tad shorter than the one that used to stand in Trafalgar Square, London, before they replaced it with a figural composition of a rainbow dinghy bristling with trans-migrants. (If only Nelson was alive today. What an excellent Minister of Immigration he’d make.) From a distance, through the window of the pub (where else!), this Nelson looks as though he has been cast from bronze, but once you’ve staggered over to him you find, in fact, that some enterprising fellow-me-lad has carved him out of a tree trunk. England expects that every man will do his duty … someone did.
Above: Dusk descends over the marshland coastline of Norfolk, an area of outstanding natural beauty, and across the carpark of the vibrant White Horse pub, a pub of outstanding beers of natural beauty, situated in Brancaster Staithe.
