Архив метки: Winter in Kaliningrad

2025 that was the year that was: UK and Kaliningrad

Mick Hart’s 2025: a nostalgic review in photographs

30 January 2026 – 2025 that was the year that was: UK and Kaliningrad

As the photographs immediately below illustrate, Kaliningrad has been and is experiencing a real winter this year. Snow fell on cue, a week or so before the New Year celebrations, and its festive debut at this time was very much appreciated. Three weeks into the New Year, however, and like that ‘long time, no see’ distant relative, who, out of the goodness of your foolish heart, you invited to stay for the Yuletide season, snow, ice and formidable temperatures hovering somewhere between minus ten and minus 14 are beginning to overstay their welcome.

With spring and summer still out of sight, one way of looking forward to more hospitable climes is to look backwards. Hiding in the house is, I think, a lot less disagreeable than struggling into heavy boots, thermal coats, hats and gloves and braving the great outdoors. If I wanted to be a snowman, I would never defrost my heart. Moreover, shutting the door on the outside world provides the excuse and opportunity for stepping inside your computer and doing a bit of digital spring cleaning ahead of the leaves and buds returning to the trees.

I don’t know about you, although I’ve heard what others say, but both my smartarse phone and laptop are like pictures at an exhibition after a hurricane has gatecrashed.

In days of old our forebears seemed to have been smitten by the optical difficulty in seeing the wood for the trees; today, in snappy la-la land, the wood has become the photograph and the trees a forest of images forever growing more expansive across the finite landscape of digital storage.

Like you, I can think of better things to do whilst whiling away my time indoors, but computers and digital storage systems, like overburdened, unkempt woodland, need to be attended to, lovingly tidied up and judiciously pruned back.

The estate managers among you will appreciate what I say, when I do say that there’s a lot to be said for ridding oneself of dead wood (not to mention fallen trees), for rolling up one’s sleeves and trousers, and with knotted hanky on your head in lieu of the summer to come, buckling down to some good old-fashioned lopping, chopping and admin work.

In practising what I preach, whilst waiting for the snow to melt, I have sifted, sorted, catalogued, carefully reassigned and refiled chronologically a prodigious number of scattered images; a making-me-smug endeavour, enabling me to extrapolate those which feature in this post; images which, in my opinion, open a retrospective window on the nature of my personal world in 2025.

Kaliningrad Upper Pond frozen over — Kaliningrad, January 2025

2025 that was the year that was: UK and Kaliningrad

As you can see, January 2025 in Kaliningrad was not much different than January 2026, except that in 2026 the temperatures have been hovering around minus 8 degrees and minus 14 degrees. It was not quite that cold back in 2025. At least not cold enough to prevent one from indulging in the fully explainable practice of falling backwards into the snow. Something for you to try sometime. And no, that’s not me dressed as a woman.

As spring approached in 2025, we took the opportunity to indulge our philosophical/mythological side by visiting Ponart Brewery’s Creation of the World Exhibition, after which, with no excuse intended, we side-stepped into the Art Depot Bar , which is part and parcel of the Ponart Brewery complex. Here, you can enjoy the historical ambience of one of the brewery’s original beer cellars and have your beer delivered to you in the trucks of a model train.

Creation of the World exhibits at Kaliningrad's Ponart Brewery

Creation of the World giant globe at Ponart Brewery exhibition

Mick Hart at Art Depot Bar and Restaurant, Kaliningrad

Back in the UK, my Gothic alter image was inspired by a susceptible reaction to the living and studying conditions in which, I am grateful to say, I entrancingly immersed myself:

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore …” – Edgar Allan Poe

Such volumes of ‘forgotten lore’ were indeed forthcoming, complete with ink inscriptions, naming the person or persons to whom each book belonged, those who had lived out their mortal sentence in the early 20th, late 19th and even 18th centuries.

Antiquarian book inscription, 19th century

Well-handled leather-bound 19th century book

It was still officially or unofficially winter, and though not so excessively cold that it could hold a candle to Kaliningrad’s temperatures, the UK’s outrageously high utility costs made, and continue to make, candle-burning the second option to staying in bed until spring – which is not that far away; just a couple of paragraphs down.

The only way to keep warm in Britain in these troubled times is to rail at those wrongly elected who have all but destroyed our homeland, some by incompetence, some by design, but all by disavowal of the suicidal part they have played in orchestrating the migrant invasion.

Into spring we go, where it’s time once again to dust off one’s antiques. In the early 20^th century, a celebrated chat-up line, at least on the stage of the music hall, was, “Would you like to come home and see my etchings?” but in the twilight years of one’s spent youth, or in my case misspent youth, “Would you like to come home and help me to polish my antiques?” seems somehow more appropriate, if admittedly rather tawdry when paired with the grace of early spring.

Mick Hart dusts off late Victorian slate mantle clocks

2025 that was the year that was: Mick Hart with antique painting in summer 2025

An 18th century ceramic-cased clock with hand-painted panel

With the buds returning to the trees and it being warm enough to escape the inclement weather of one’s sparsely heated house, it was away we went to conduct business of a sort that I wont bore you with, stopping off on one’s return at the atmospheric Brampton Mill.

Wollaston, Northants. Outside The Hill pub.

At the curiously named ‘The Hill’, a public house in Wollaston, where they serve, I don’t mind saying, a fine and revolving array of ales, the night scene outside the pub was hauntingly English Gothic. Yet, nearby Rushden by night is infinitely more unnerving; come to think of it, not only by night. Take a drive down Rushden High Street (prudently with your doors and windows locked!) and let me know what you think. The theme of Gothicism and antiques persisted as long as spring existed and followed us into the warmth of summer.

Summer (Ah, sun and warmth – sometimes …) saw us set sail in 2025 on a monumental, intriguing and adventurous voyage of discovery to Cornwall and North Devon, calling on the way, and whilst we tarried there, at, among other places, Tintagel, Port Isaac (Portwenn of Doc Martin fame), Boscastle, Padstow, and, following in the footsteps of her much-devoted fans, the Agatha Christie trail; taking in the Art Deco and earlier historic wonders of Burgh Island and then onto Christie’s adored 18th-century summer home, the reclusive-seclusive Greenway House.

2025 that was the year that was. Mick Hart recalls his trip to the Burgh Hotel in Devon

Olga Hart waves from sandy cove in Cornwall

Agatha Christie's Greenway House. Photo: Mick Hart 2025

2025 that was the year that was: UK and Kaliningrad

Summer in Kaliningrad found me undertaking grossly inadvisable experiments of a selfie kind, as seen here in the photo, which was snapped out front of Kaliningrad’s vast and intricate Baroque fantasy, the multiple entertainment and bar complex, Residence of Kings. Like the historic Blue Anchor in London’s Southwark, bars sufficient there are inside this gargantuan establishment not to venture outside if a ‘pub crawl’ is what you’re after.

Residence of Kings entertainment centre, Kaliningrad

Mick Hart takes a selfie, and wished he hadn't, outside the Residence of Kings in Kaliningrad

On a return trip to the Art Depot Bar (Ponart Brewery), Olga and I went bananas. Let me rephrase that: on this occasion, she elected to join me. We also did a spot of amber dredging along the Baltic beach and shabby-chiced the entrance hall to arty-fart the dacha. Later, we solicited the assistance of real artists to illustrate the outside paint job.

2025 that was the year: Soviet stove and shabby chic decor

Olga Hart collects amber on the Baltic Coast

Vladimir Chileekin, artist, outlines wall motif

2025 that was the year that was: Vladimir Chileekin's mermaid

Arguably the best month of the year for me – the glorious and sadly soft transition from extraversion to mellow introspectiveness. Having said that, the famous Königsberg monument depicted below, as captured in September, is not bull-orientated, so you haven’t discovered a worthy joke there. Neither will it assist you should your first name be Bill and your last name Cody. The famous bronze creatures locking horns on Prospekt Mira, opposite the Regional Scientific Library, are, in fact, Bisons, sculpted by August Gaul in 1910 and valued as well as intrinsically for having survived the city’s destruction at the close of World War II.

The chap standing there with an anchor in his hand and pointing at me as if he is trying to tell me something is, as if you didn’t know, the one and only Peter the Great.

2025 that was the year that was: Mick Hart goes tree hugging

Mick ‘the very rarely even close to great’ polishes his tree-hugging skills, which he does in one of the photographs here, to a very grateful tree, which has very little else to do but stand the test of time on a hilltop deep in the North Beds countryside. Staying with the Bedford theme, there’s also a picture above of the state-of-the-art Gothic revivalist De Parry’s Avenue D’Parry’s hotel, framed within the gathering hues of autumn’s transitionary season.

Coincident with the autumn school term, when, presumably, there would be less family convergence on Poland’s Sopot resort, we stole away for a five-day break. This was my second visit to Sopot, in which I discovered architectural gems Art Nouveau in nature and, wouldn’t you just know it, gems of a different but not indifferent kind to a man of my discernment: ‘Bar, Bar, Black Sheep’. For some people it was sea and sand, and how does that expression go, ‘like a kid in a sweet shop’.

2025 that was the year that was: Olga Hart let loose in a sweet shop ...

This time of year also found Mick Hart giving an impromptu address to Kaliningrad’s lucky ProSchool students.

Mick Hart addresses students at Kaliningrad's ProSchool

Late November ushers in, with a defining sublimity that never grows old, the dying shades of verdure, taking a last, impressive bow before, come the final encore, they leave the seasonal stage, handing over the act to winter. There are more deep, dense, poetically invocative and graduated praiseworthy colours in a typical autumnal scene than you and I could shake a stick at, and as November plays itself out, less on high upon the sticks than are woven at ground level into a semblant natural Axminster, the wonderful reams of golden yellows, astonishments of auburns and the artists’ palettes of burnished browns waft us gently away on a seasonal magic carpet into the swan-song realm of Christmas and its boisterous prelude to the end of the year.

What goes around comes around, and here we are, back again in winter.

Kaliningrad’s Svetlogorsk, its premiere Baltic resort, which, in summer, is a hubble bubble of touristic jostling bustle, with streets teeming, beaches embattled and popular bars and restaurants bursting at the seams, is, in the earliest throes of winter, an altogether different, essentially meaning quieter, place; for, as many of you likely know, out-of-season resorts, when experienced as a solitary cloud might enjoy its singular company, are like the recuperative restoration, the danger past in the aftermath, that follows in the wake of a raging distemper akin to flu.

2025 that was the year that was, as Olga Hart recalls Svetlogorsk out of season

Thank Heaven! the crisis
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last
And the fever called “Living”
Is conquered at last – Edgar Allan Poe

Aw, come on, Edgar, old mate, I’m with you totally on this kind of sentiment in its relation to mortal existence, but it’s a bit strong in this context, isn’t it!

Excuse him, if you will; he’s rather given over, you know, to lifelong fits of self-indulgence in the addictive vagaries of bleak melancholia. Let’s merely fall back on words and phrases that do to seasides out of season no conventional harm, such as ‘deserted’, ‘quiet’ and ‘reflectively peaceful’.

One thing that covers all seasons, and has been for me for the past 54 years, is the daily writing of a diary. Not content, however, by exhausting the present with thoughts of the past, in 2025, I stepped up the arduous process of scanning in, and thus digitally converting, 40 years of handwritten copy. Bless him, that’s what I say! It keeps him out of mischief – “And not before time!” say those who know him!

Mick Hart's diaries being scanned for digital storage

Image attribution⬇️

Hello Spring: <a href="/ru/”https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/fancy-lines-dots-hello-spring-lettering_6992212.htm/#fromView=search&page=1&position=16&uuid=42aab2a9-9c0f-4fa6-83d7-c57dc3e4d659&query=spring+antique+typographic+image”">Image by freepik</a>

Hello Summer: <a href="/ru/”https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/summer-background-design_1084447.htm/#fromView=search&page=1&position=42&uuid=e75660f9-e7ca-4ad9-b222-fcc3664d6f3d&query=Hello+Summer+antique+typographic+image”">Image by mariia_fr on Freepik</a>

Hello Autumn: <a href="/ru/”https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/elegant-hello-autumn-lettering-composition_2659814.htm/#fromView=search&page=1&position=16&uuid=781c1b5d-05f1-46f2-8e85-c0dbe722dc9d&query=Autumn+antique+typographic+image”">Image by freepik</a>

Hello Winter: <a href="/ru/”https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/hello-winter-lettering-with-leaves_10612573.htm/#fromView=search&page=1&position=39&uuid=056e05c8-7285-4de1-b3c5-3cdbeaee5a94&query=Hello+winter+antique+typography”">Image by freepik</a>

Book with glasses: <a href="/ru/”https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/top-view-book-flower-glasses_4881633.htm”/">Image by freepik</a>

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.

Previous article: Into Russia

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.