{"id":1363,"date":"2025-05-02T22:34:22","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T20:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/?p=1363"},"modified":"2025-05-02T22:52:25","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T20:52:25","slug":"kaliningrad-a-green-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/kaliningrad-a-green-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaliningrad a Green City"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 65 [23 May 2020] ~ Trenches & Trees<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Revised 1 May 2025 | First published 23 May 2020 – Kaliningrad a Green City<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apprehensive that May may not be the merry, merry month that it is cracked up to be? Put your memory in reverse gear and trip back to the coronavirus spring of 2020. I cannot guarantee that things can only get better. I cannot guarantee that they could hardly be worse. But, relatively speaking \u2026 {This post originally published May 2020 | Revised 2 May 2025<\/em>}\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike in the UK at present<\/strong>, there is no sudden uplift in the weather; nothing to tempt and entice one to cast caution to the wind, ignore the restrictions and warnings and go wassailing off for a day at the coast. It is true that in the past few days Kaliningrad has been granted a nominal hike in temperature, pushing it up to 15 degrees, and this long-awaited blessing combined with a light but still fresh breeze in\u00a0association with Mr Blue Sky and a sun that has condescended to at last come out from behind the clouds, were sufficiently alluring to prise myself from self-isolation for the novel pleasure of stretching my legs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous articles:
Article 1: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 1 [20 March 2020]<\/a>
Article 2: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 6 [25 March 2020]<\/a>
Article 3: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 7 [26 March 2020]<\/a>
Article 4: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 9 [28 March 2020]<\/a>
Article 5: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 10 [29 March 2020]<\/a>
Article 6: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 16 [4 April 2020]<\/a>
Article 7: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 19 [7 April 2020]<\/a>
Article 8: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 35 [23 April 2020]<\/a>
Article 9: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 52 [10 May 2020]<\/a>
Article 10: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 54 [12 May 2020]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To effect our home exit strategy, we first had to run the gauntlet of passing without mishap from our garden to the road beyond. For the past three weeks or more, our house, and those around us, have been subject to \u2018trench warfare\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Trenchmen cometh … I can’t help thinking that we would have been better laying that new block paving later …<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Cable-laying has been going on. A narrow but deep trench, hazardous enough to dislocate or break something vital should a miscalculated step occur, dissects the pavement at the front of our property and, running at right angles to it, extends along the neighbours\u2019 boundary to the gate at the end of the cul-de-sac, behind which, you might care to know, sits a very large dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the vantage point of my bedroom window, I have been able to observe (intermittently, you understand, as self-isolation has not left me wanting in occupations of an interesting kind), this cable work in progress and mentally bookmark whilst doing so the differences that might exist between how a job of this nature is handled in Kaliningrad compared with similar tasks undertaken in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the outset, and for most of the initial period of work, the workforce has consisted of three lads and a young woman, armed with two spades, two shovels and the indispensable trusty wheelbarrow. The blokes have been doing most of the digging, whilst the young woman, with her workman\u2019s gloves neatly folded and tucked to dangle professionally from her jeans\u2019 back pocket, appears to have had an overseeing role, an inference later corroborated when a clipboard suddenly sprung into her hand. Praise where praise is due, however: at one stage in the laborious game, she, too, rolled up her sleeves and took a turn on the shovel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weather conditions ~ cold and raining ~ have been generally unsympathetic, hardly conducive to the job in hand, but this small group of sappers, equipped with nothing more mechanical than the arms that God has given them, unless you include the wheelbarrow, struggled valiantly on alone until, after a week\u2019s hiatus, the cavalry arrived. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reinforcements are a hardy bunch of chaps, not only are they seasoned trenchers but also capable cable layers. The cables they are laying had been deposited along with piles of aggregate prior to their arrival. They now reside on the oval island, a compelling grass-covered landmark at the centre of confluent streets, which marks the spot of a German bunker constructed in World War Two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The temptation at this juncture to go off on a historic tangent and waffle on about the many wartime installations surviving in Kaliningrad and across its Prussian region is difficult to resist, but as global tourism has some way to go before it can get back on its feet from the damage done by coronavirus, I will wait for a more propitious moment to elaborate on this and continue for the present with my narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kaliningrad
Green & cobbled streets of Kaliningrad<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Kaliningrad a Green City<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We had crossed the trench in front of the house and this delicate feat accomplished were now walking along, as if coronavirus was not our shadow, the original cobbled streets that once were K\u00f6nigsberg.\u00a0Victor Ryabinin, the artist and historian<\/a>, had assured us that \u2018green\u2019 K\u00f6nigsberg was essentially a myth. K\u00f6nigsberg, he said, at least the oldest parts of the city, never had been green.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The streets were narrow, the buildings high and the order of the day had been red brick and grey cobbles. The city\u2019s outlying districts, those laid down in the early years of the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century and expanded in the 1920s through to the mid-1930s, had been designed with green in mind. The houses and plots on which they stand have their English equivalent in the UK\u2019s 1920s\u2019 suburbs, whose properties sold on the back of the clever and catchy advertising slogan, \u2018A country home in the city\u2019, or words to that effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every home in Britain\u2019s new suburbs came complete with a small front garden and a larger plot at the rear, and on the wide and curving streets where these airy houses stood, a row of trees lined either side, augmented, where space allowed, with narrow but neat grass verges, demarcating pavement from road and bringing a little more green into the urban environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In K\u00f6nigsberg\u2019s equivalent districts, as contemporary photographs and postcards show, though most new streets of the day were tree-lined like their English counterparts, such trees as there were, were, of course, but saplings, which doubtlessly formed visually graceful vistas but with nothing like the leafy foliage that adorn those self-same streets today, now that these trees, like me, have reached maturity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see, what happens to you when you subject yourself to self-isolation: every simple detail, every once commonplace thing, every taken-for-granted and overlooked minutiae undergoes a process of scrutinised amplification, so acutely rendered to senses locked away indoors that before you can wryly say \u2018I believe in coronavirus\u2019, you cannot see the wood for the trees \u2014 or, in my particular case, the trees for Kaliningrad\u2019s leaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should old acquaintance be forgot<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Our leafy walk through Kaliningrad\u2019s suburbs, along the canopied tree-lined streets with their flower and foliate burgeoning gardens, had brought us after a while within viewing distance of a most eccentric sight \u2014 that peculiar waterside caf\u00e9, that semi-abandoned confection, which, with its facsimile rooftop lighthouse, Captain Ahab perched on the balcony doing I don\u2019t know what and a lot of marine-like crustaceans daubed upon the walls, resembles something that sneaked into Russia during the 1970s from an amusement park in Skegness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cafe<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I have seen postcard photographs of the building that stood here in earlier times. Admittedly, it, as with the pond and everything around it, was saturated monochrome \u2014 obviously in the 1910s the world was waiting for colour \u2014 but even in this black and white existence (things used to be black and white before coronavirus was invented) the former K\u00f6nigsberg building had all the ennobling features that Gothicity could bestow and was, in its waterside setting, a proverbial sight for sore eyes rather than an eyesore for eyes reduced by its sight to tears, which, omitting novelty out of context, is as good as it gets today. [Note, although Captain Ahab went down with his ship two years after this photo was taken, the demolition pirates have failed to launch their own version, which stands as forlorn and half-built in a spot which Heaven reserved for a restaurant, but which seems to have become Kaliningrad’s ghost ship graveyard.<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kaliningrad
Across Kaliningrad’s lakes (ponds)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Kaliningrad a Green City<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Passing quickly by this \u2018thing\u2019, which in spite of my reaction I have a sneaky affection for, we wended our way, notwithstanding, happier now that it was behind us, along the block-paved path that runs around the pond\u2019s perimeter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Old photographs demonstrate that on both sides of the lake (my apologies purists, I know I should say \u2018pond\u2019, but ponds are so small in England and K\u00f6nigsberg\u2019s ponds so large that the appelation seems incongruous) the banks had, for the most part, been left to their own devices, accumulating vegetation and fringed throughout with wetland trees. In the black and white world of old photography atmosphere reigns supreme, but detail can in time, and as a result of time, often call for magnification. I had thus to resort to a lens to pick out from these old photographs the presence of a narrow winding path, most probably gravel surfaced, curling in the early 1900s, through the ribbon of trees and foliage skirting the edge of the pond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subsequently lost, this beaten track is now hard paved and in a character and colours favoured by, and thus typical of, 21st<\/sup>\u00a0century urban planners. Much of the original foliage, by that I mean the wild and natural, has long since been dug out, substituted with mown grass lawns and carefully tended municipal flowerbeds. But whilst block paving of every kind, in all its imaginative shapes, its patterns and its sizes, along with children\u2019s\u2019 play parks, public lavs, a skateboard space and even an exercise quadrangle, has colonised the past, the K\u00f6nigsberg trees that form a boundary along the side of the adjacent road and the odd gnarled or venerable specimen dotted amongst the later additions, some Soviet others millennial, endorse the attribution that Kaliningrad unlike K\u00f6nigsberg is as green a city as a city can get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As much as I was enjoying and being overly distracted by that which I am phenomenally good at \u2014 daydreaming \u2014 today had its objectives, and this meant putting my dreams on hold and focusing for a moment on finding a wall with graffiti on it. Not that this endeavour would prove difficult in Kaliningrad. Graffiti is just one, sadly, of a number of contagious viruses that has made its way from the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mick
Mick Hart with Anthony Hopkins and Nadezhda Rumyantseva in Kaliningrad<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The graffiti we were looking for was not one of your run-of-the-mill, deface, vandalise, spoil, degrade and then talk it up as \u2018urban art\u2019 jobs. It was truly an original piece, a bona fide work of art, featuring the actor Anthony Hopkins in his role as Hannibal Lecter and the Russian actress, Nadezhda Rumyantseva, star of The Girls<\/em>, a classic Soviet romantic-comedy drama \u2014 but more of that on another occasion. We found what we were looking for, and my wife made good with the camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kaliningrad:
There is graffiti and graffiti \u2026<\/strong>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Work
Mine’s a vegetarian<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And then she said, For old times\u2019 sake.\u201d What could she be suggesting?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She wanted us to walk closer to the lake, taking in Flame restaurant as we did so. The \u2018old times sake\u2019 referred to recent history, but a recent history which in the New Normal was as lost to the world as dinosaurs. Ah, those glorious days \u2014 so happy and carefree \u2014 when we would walk to Flame on an afternoon or stroll down on an evening for a meal and a pint of brew. What had become of those days? More to the point, will they ever return?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like every other bar, Flame was a victim of coronavirus. There it stood, shrouded in darkness, doors barred, patronless and yet for all this desertion not quite extinguished. A nice and reassuring touch was that in keeping with its tradition, Flame, though closed to the public, continued to project music into and across the surrounding recreation area via external hi-fi speakers stationed on its alfresco forecourt. In these grim and troubled times, the music struck a chord that resonated inside one\u2019s soul. It was the bittersweet sound of the band playing on as the\u00a0Titanic<\/em>\u00a0hit the watery skids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that the shops \u2014 some of the shops \u2014 had officially opened their doors again, we had a small chore to fulfil, which was to buy a part for the vacuum cleaner. We might fall foul of coronavirus and die as a result, but heaven forbid we would do such a thing in a house with a mucky carpet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we crossed the road from the pond, emerging at the side of Flame, it was evident that whilst we had been hibernating Kaliningrad\u2019s construction workers had been doing no such thing. The shopping centre that has been taking shape at the end of the city market had gone, in the space of days, from a shell of incomplete concrete pieces into an impressive three- or four-storey series of ascending profiled platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ordinarily, way back when in the Old (and familiar) Normal, something as mundane as this seen on a day-to-day basis would have excited little more than a passing glance, but incarceration, self-imposed or otherwise, seems to have the tendency to sharpen the edge of the mind, so much so in my case that in regarding this evolving building, its Phoenix-like transformation, I felt a kindred spirit in Rip Van Winkle, or rather an affinity with the bemusement he had felt on waking from a sleep of hitherto unknown proportion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vacuum cleaner part in pocket, we set off on our homeward journey, not by retracing our steps \u2014 having to pass Flame again now that it was clam-tight shut would be more than the drinker in me could withstand \u2014 but with a view towards returning on the opposite side of the pond. This route would necessitate, however, walking past yet another well-frequented, landmark bar: the one in historic Rossgarten Gate \u2014 CLOSED \u2026 just like the rest!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, by way of profound distraction, on the opposite side of the road, in one of Kaliningrad\u2019s public squares, I saw a man with his hose in his hand. He was leaning nonchalantly from his truck, playing his hose in the sun over some of the city\u2019s prettiest flower beds. \u201cHmm,\u201d I thought to myself, \u201cIt\u2019s not only the bars that are dry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Watering
A lovely day on which to have your hose out<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Kaliningrad a Green City<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Our walk back around the lake had proven itself a pleasant detour. There is only so much of novelty to be found in strolling back and forth days and weeks upon end from your kitchen to the living room, and, let\u2019s be honest about it, the water features of bath and bog, though unarguably indispensable, hardly compete or come close to the natural scenerific beauty imparted by rippling pond under a clear blue sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this side of the pond as upon the other, trees in abundance abide, and in such variety and of such different ages that they did not have to ask me twice to indulge my obsessive passion for retrospective reverie, inviting me to determine which of them had been planted during Kaliningrad\u2019s Soviet era and which belonged to K\u00f6nigsberg. I suppose you\u2019d do the same if you were me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The wise old trees of K\u00f6nigsberg-Kaliningrad<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trees, ponds, brand-new shopping centres rising up from out of the ground like mysterious midnight mushrooms, bars with no people inside them, sepia memories of long ago, men with their hoses dangling quaintly out of civic truck windows, a light breeze, a blue sky and off to the shop to buy some tomatoes. Very nearly and almost back home; just the trenches to cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9 2018-2025 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 65 [23 May 2020] ~ Trenches & Trees Revised 1 May 2025 | First published 23 May 2020 – Kaliningrad a Green City Apprehensive that May may not be the merry, merry month that it is cracked up to be? 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Well, you would think so from the aggregated hype bubbling furiously over the\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0412 "Diary 2019\/2020"","block_context":{"text":"Diary 2019\/2020","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/category\/kaliningrad-mick-harts-diary\/diary-2019-2020\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Happy 2021 from Zelenogradsk Russia","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Happy-New-Year-FROM-ZELENOGRADSK-russia-2021.png?fit=554%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Happy-New-Year-FROM-ZELENOGRADSK-russia-2021.png?fit=554%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Happy-New-Year-FROM-ZELENOGRADSK-russia-2021.png?fit=554%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10088,"url":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/kaliningrad-house-of-soviets-melts-into-the-past\/","url_meta":{"origin":1363,"position":4},"title":"Kaliningrad House of Soviets Melts into the Past","author":"Captain Codpiece","date":"29 \u043c\u0430\u0440\u0442\u0430, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"What goes up must come down, but it took 50 years to do so 29 March 2024 ~ Kaliningrad House of Soviets Melts into the Past I go away for four weeks, and this is what happens! In my absence, someone has nipped off with three-quarters of the House of\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0412 "Kaliningrad: Mick Hart's Diary"","block_context":{"text":"Kaliningrad: Mick Hart's Diary","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/category\/kaliningrad-mick-harts-diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Kaliningrad House of Soviets Kaliningrad","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/House-of-Soviets-min.jpg?fit=675%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/House-of-Soviets-min.jpg?fit=675%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/House-of-Soviets-min.jpg?fit=675%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1294,"url":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/isolation-restrictions-change-in-kaliningrad\/","url_meta":{"origin":1363,"position":5},"title":"Isolation Restrictions Change in Kaliningrad","author":"Captain Codpiece","date":"12 \u043c\u0430\u044f, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 54 [12 May 2020] Published: 12 May 2020 A round-up of coronavirus news in Kaliningrad It is official: \u2018universal self-isolation\u2019 in the Kaliningrad region is no longer operational1 and many people are back to work. Restrictions still apply for people over 65 years of age\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0412 "Diary 2019\/2020"","block_context":{"text":"Diary 2019\/2020","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/category\/kaliningrad-mick-harts-diary\/diary-2019-2020\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Isolation Restrictions Change in Kaliningrad","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Old_cathedral_of_Kaliningrad_in_Russia-Resized.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Old_cathedral_of_Kaliningrad_in_Russia-Resized.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Old_cathedral_of_Kaliningrad_in_Russia-Resized.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Old_cathedral_of_Kaliningrad_in_Russia-Resized.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Old_cathedral_of_Kaliningrad_in_Russia-Resized.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}