Kaliningrad: First Impression
27 December 2000
Strangely enough, there is nothing in my year 2000 diary regarding our first glimpse of Kaliningrad by train. Later, in 2001, when I returned to Kaliningrad via Vilnius, I did refer to the maze of concrete jutting out and across the horizon which asserted itself as our train drew near and the daunting prospect that this presented compared to the quaint medieval streets of the city from which we had departed, and which now was a long way behind us.
This omission in my 2000 diary may have been due to the fact that the scene on my arrival had such a potent effect. For we had passed through the exit of Kaliningrad station onto a Spielberg film set.
Outside the door was snow ~ a wide plateau of it. It was still snowing heavily and fall upon fall had covered melted snow that had since turned to ice. Directly outside the railway station’s door stood two old army trucks, both open backed. From one spilled a group of young Russian soldiers, the other was being filled with snow by a second group of soldiers attempting to clear a path through the drifts. The engines of the trucks were running, and the strong smell of diesel fumes wafted across the wasteland. The shovel blades beat an erratic tattoo, thumping against the snow, cracking at the ice and scraping across the concrete. Spielberg’s costume department had spared no expense. Each soldier was garbed in smart regulation great coat, thick woollen trousers, high canvas boots and those distinctive furry Russian hats with flaps (ushankas).
Nearby, two or three comrades (for that is what they looked like) squashed inside big heavy coats, black peaked caps with folding side flaps stuck upon their heads, all bewhiskered and dragging on fags, huddled around a big old oil drum that had been requisitioned as a source of warmth. Another of these makeshift braziers burned a few feet away. Red and orange flames funnelled from their tops together with bright little firework sparks, which danced, crackled and exploded loudly in the frozen atmosphere.
In front of us, across the expanse of white, stood a three or four storey procession of grey concrete flats. This was not Kaliningrad 2022, so our view was virtually unimpeded, the only large object being the statue of Kalinin, his arm and hand outstretched as if commanding the heavens to stop dropping snow. Behind him, along the top of the not-so venerable buildings, giant metal letters spread out along parallel bars, the imposing Cyrillic script traversing the entire block in a wonderful piece of letter spacing. At one end sat a large Soviet star, at the other, I was thrilled to observe, a gigantic hammer and sickle. And then it actually struck me: “Oh dear,” I thought, “we’re here!”
Three big, old, Mercs, battered and rusting, with little white ‘Taxi’ signs strapped to their roof-racks, stood idly by, waiting for instructions.
The little band of men, which I had observed earlier, were taxi drivers.
Don’t let them know you are British!
Olga whispered to me that she was off to negotiate a price with them. She instructed Joss and I to stand away and not to speak, warning us that should they, the taxi drivers, get the slightest inclination that we were foreigners the taxi fare would double.
Five minutes of negotiating later, a fare had been agreed, and we were off. But where to? The plan was to ferry us off to the nearby (about 44 kilometres away) coastal resort of Svetlogorsk. Olga was very conscious of the rundown condition of Kaliningrad, and she had made plans for us to stay in what was then the only 4-star hotel in the region, which was Svletogorsk’s Hotel Rus. Nothing else would be good enough for two well-to-do Englishmen like us!
The journey by taxi was an interesting one. The big old Merc, coughed, belched and spluttered almost as much as its driver did. We roared through the snowbound streets of the city, a combination of abject fear and snow working in Olga’s favour, as we were much to alarmed to take anything in and even had we wanted to all we could see was snow.
Out on the open road the conditions were worse, but it was OK because no one had told our taxi driver. For a while, whilst we were stuck behind a truck with a snow blade on the front, our confidence returned, but it soon took a hit, for in overtaking the truck, as the driver pressed his foot down hard, the car slewed erratically on the snow and ice beneath. From that moment our knuckles were destined to be as white as the pure-driven. Relentless snow, drifting snow and an old German road lined on either side with trees ~ big, gnarled trunks perfect for colliding with ~ dismayed the driver not a jot. On and on we sped, as though Danger had taken a holiday.
To be fair, give or take one or two slippery moments of panic, our chain-smoking driver seemed to know what he was doing, and I do believe that had not the road surface changed beneath the wheels without us realising, we could have boasted later that by the time we arrived in Svetlogorsk the journey had been a piece of cake. The cake collapsed, however, when tarmac changed to cobbles. We were not endangered in any way, well no more than we had been, but the sudden rumbling and jolting gave us the right old KGBs. In hindsight, I actually believe that it brought back nerves to our nerveless driver, for he slammed on the anchors a little too hard, swinging the car to the right and then back again to the left before bringing the vehicle under control.
“Ah, we’ve arrived in Svletogorsk,” Olga announced.
Svetlogorsk by night
At this time (before Svetlogorsk became commercially exploited) it was designated a health resort, a place where people went to take the air and rehabilitate. This meant that cars could only be taken into Svetlogorsk if drivers were willing to pay a tariff, the ostensible logic being that it would reduce the numbers of cars entering Svetlogorsk and by limiting exhaust emissions keep the atmosphere pure. You know the routine, that nice Mr Sadiq Khan has done something similar in London, to help with congestion and massage our lungs ~ shame about our pockets!
Thus, we stopped, and money was handed over to someone sitting in a little concrete building at the side of a pull-in just off the road. Boy was it good to have stopped! This must be what they meant when they said Svletogorsk was good for your health!
Dusk had begun to fall as we continued our journey. We were now travelling through the streets of Svetlogorsk. Once again, with the snow still falling and much of the little coastal resort enveloped by it, and with deterioriating light and travel-weary minds, we could not make much out. The streets in the town itself were very poorly lit, and what light there was peeped out timidly, but cosily from little orange-hued windows in houses set back from the road tucked within pine-tree glades. Indeed, no sooner were we in the town than we seemed to be travelling out of it. I distinctly remember a long, dark road lit by one lonely streetlamp and, shortly after that, a sensor-activated light coming on as we approached a crossroads or junction. At this point we swung left, the lights of the houses on either side comprising the only illumination, apart from our headlights, of course.
The Hotel Rus, Svetlogorsk
We had travelled along this road but a short distance when darkness was dispelled by two floodlights pointing at and exposing what appeared to be a steep, broad ski slope from which multiple shards of light stabbed out through the whirling snow into the night sky. It was, in fact, Svletogorsk’s, and indeed the region’s, much-celebrated Hotel Rus.
As the taxi drew to a halt ~ a happy halt as far as we were concerned ~ a better view of the Rus was afforded. We were parked adjacent the gable end of the building. It was a tall perpendicular invested with large windows. The ski slope was its roof. In fact, that might have been a better name, Hotel Roof, because there was far more roof than walls. Roof, walls, what did we care! All we wanted to do was wave farewell to our driver and say hello to our 4-star luxury.
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