Kaliningrad via Gdansk
My first visit to Kaliningrad: left UK 23 December 2000

Kaliningrad via Gdansk is one in a series of posts that recount my first visit to Kaliningrad in 2000, and my first impressions of the land, the people and its culture.

Updated: 18 January 2022 | First published: 16 August 2019

It’s 7pm, 23^rd December 2000, and I am sitting nervously on a British Airways’ plane bound for Warsaw, Poland. I am one of those peculiar types that believes sitting in an aluminium tube with thousands of gallons of highly inflammable fuel at 35,000 feet is perfect insanity. Never mind about the well-meaning ‘statistically safest form of travel’.

But was it a nice place where I was hopefully going to get to?

Previous post in this series: See you in Kaliningrad, Russia!

As I said in my previous blog post, I hadn’t flown since 1971, but here I was jetting off to Warsaw. From Warsaw, we would take a bus to Gdansk and then, after a night or two there, a train to Kaliningrad, Russia.

For a non-flyer I took a perverse almost masochistic delight in the journey, overcoming much of my fear with the aid of three or four vodkas and a very complacent brother, who grinned like a jackanapes all the way.

For my own part, arriving at Warsaw Airport was not only novel in that we had arrived but also for the officialdom that greeted us. Here we were in the East, where it pleased my literary and cinematographic prejudices to discover a far more officious and militaristic reception. In London, Heathrow, it had been all suits, ties and ‘ladies and gentleman’; here, in the East, it was visor caps, uniforms, side-arms and cold stares. Passing through passport control was a stereotypical dream come true: the steely eyed and expressionless face of the man inside his little glass booth, glancing first at my passport photo and then searchingly back at me.

My first visit to Kaliningrad (year 2000) and my first impressions of Kaliningrad and Russia. Links to posts in this series arranged in chronological order:
1. The Decision: My first visit to Kaliningrad December 2000
2. Kaliningrad via Gdansk (23 December 2000) {{You are here! 😊}}
3. First Day in Gdansk (24 December 2000)
4. Christmas in Gdansk (25 December 2000)
5. Boxing Day in Gdansk: Kaliningrad 2000 (26 December 2000)
6. Into Russia (27 December 2000)
7. Kaliningrad: First Impression (27 December 2000)
8. The Hotel Russ, Svetlogorsk (27 December 2000)
9. Exploring Svetlogorsk (28 December 2000)
10. Svetlogorsk to Kaliningrad by Train (28 December 2000)
11. Kaliningrad 20 Years Ago (28 December 2000)
12. Russian Hospitality Kaliningrad (28 December 2000)

The ‘Sausage’

Somewhat disappointed that I had not been mistaken for the spy that they had been waiting for, I was then treated to what for most people I should imagine is a dull and onerous routine ~ retrieving one’s luggage ~ but which for us, thanks to a certain bag in our entourage, proved to be most entertaining.

The bag in question was a cylindrical-shaped canvas hold-all with a rubberised waterproof base. In theory it was a great piece of kit, capable of holding, well, anything really, and, when empty, folding away into nothing. Problem was, however, that when full it was very bulky, extremely heavy and extraordinarily long and, although it was well-catered-for with various handles and straps, those little wheels, which are such an indispensable feature of today’s large travel bags, were conspicuously non-existent.

So there we were with the rest of them waiting patiently at the side of the carousel for our luggage to emerge. One by one our cases appeared, and we duly retrieved them. But where was that last, that special bag?

With about six people left around the carousel excluding ourselves, we began to grow concerned. But just as we began to fear that we may have lost our exclusive bag, we caught sight of it, coming out of the luggage hold from behind the rubber flaps ~ only it didn’t. It sort of popped out, sat there for a while and then nipped back in again.

Two or three large heavy cases then came tumbling out in a kind of jumbled confusion, quickly followed by another sighting of our long and lost bag. For some odd reason, it was making its exit and entrance at a compromising angle.

Moving closer to the exit point, we could clearly hear lots of huffing, puffing and cursing from behind the rubber curtains. Our bag was now sandwiched sideways across the gap, forming a blockade with the remaining cases caught on top and behind it. From what we could make out, a lot of frustrated energy was being expended out of sight behind the scenes and then, with a thump and a cry, our obstinate bag and the others that it had bullied came tumbling into view.

Whether our long bag didn’t think much of Poland or was simply a petulant creature, this we will never know, but It was evident from the large boot prints on either side of the bag that our ‘Sausage’, as it became to be known, had put up a hell of a fight!

By bus to Gdansk

After this trauma, we no doubt took a quick snifter or two of vodka from the hip flask that I had brought with us. It was now time to lug our luggage, including our recalcitrant Sausage, from the warmth of the airport to the snowy wastes outside.

The plan was to bus it to Gdansk. We were both looking forward to the journey, to relaxing on the bus, that is until we saw what it was that we would be travelling in. Being English, we can be forgiven for believing that we would be going by luxury coach when, in fact, the carriage awaiting us was a rusting, clapped-out minibus with mustard lace curtains that once no doubt had been white.

I don’t recall being too perturbed by the fact that almost everyone was smoking on the way; my brother was a smoker and I was prone now and then to indulge in the odd cigar. Looking back on it, it must have been a right old stinker ~ the curtains weren’t yellow for nothing, although my smell memory retains a distinct essence of diesel fumes more than it does tobacco.

It was a long journey, and we were very tired. It was snowing continuously and sometimes quite heavily, but this merely added to the stereotypical image that I had nurtured, and it pleased me for its novelty as much if not more than for the differences I noted as we trundled on our way: shops and road signage, all written, of course, in Polish; the filling stations whose names I did not recognise; and, when it was possible to see through the steamed-up windows, the distinctive change in architecture.

As the open road gave way to increasingly built-up areas we knew we were travelling through the outskirts of Gdansk.

We had in our possession a computer printout identifying the hotel where we would be staying and, according to the bus driver, we were close to where we wanted to be. We alighted from the bus, cramped and stiff, on the side of a dual carriageway teaming with traffic, shell shocked from travel fatigue but anaesthetized by vodka.

My wife to be, Olga, had arrived there some hours before us and, as luck would have it, I spotted her having a cigarette in the window of the hotel restaurant across the busy street from where we were standing. Remember those wonderful days? Having a cigarette in the restaurant! {Post-normal days’ comment: Remember those days before coronavirus, ie sitting in a pub or a restaurant!}

Thus, the first stage of the journey into Russia was complete. We would stay for three days in Gdansk, which included Christmas Day, and then, on the 27^th December, leave Poland by train for Kaliningrad.

Next post in this series:
3. First Day in Gdansk

Feature image attribution: Photo by USFWS on Pixnio: https://pixnio.com/vintage-photography/men-in-the-aircraft-cockpit-old-vintage-photo#

Boxing Day in Gdansk

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

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

Boxing Day in Gdansk

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

Promenading on Gdansk beach, year 2000

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

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

MIck Hart & Olga, Gdansk, 2000

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

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

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

A railway platform somewhere in Gdansk

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

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