Svetlogorsk to Kaliningrad by Train
28 December 2000
There are a plethora of travel guides out there on the internet that like to make sweeping statements about Russian people, as if the people of the largest country in the world can be whittled down to fit ~ like a misconceived square peg into the round hole of consolation. After much negative stereotyping, these articles tend to intimate that in spite of what you have heard, when you meet them Russian people are not so bad after all. It is suggested that they come across as brusque, even rude, but, guess what! ~ when you get to know them they are just as superb and wonderful as any English, German or American person. And what is more, despite having been brought up cooking behind an Iron Curtain, their food is no less delicious.
Related: Exploring Svetlogorsk
Armed then with this image of a bear with sandwiches, we had not the slightest misgiving or uncharitable apprehension that later today we would have the extraordinary experience of meeting and dining with Olga’s mum.
Previous article: Exploring Svetlogorsk
Svetlogorsk to Kaliningrad by Train
First, we had to get to Kaliningrad, because remember, Dear Reader, Olga had been so concerned that her English visitors would baulk at the imperfections there that she had taken the precaution of squirreling them away in the coastal resort of Svetlogorsk, had installed them in the Hotel Russ, where everything was obvious and the fitness centre was minus its wheel.
Yesterday, we had travelled by taxi from Kaliningrad to Svetlogorsk, but today, whether to save money or merely to be brave, Olga suggested that we go by train.
We had returned to the Russ from our afternoon drink in the bar, which had no toilet, got changed ~ rugged ourselves up ~ trudged our way back through the new fall of snow, it was snowing as we did so, to arrive at Svetlogorsk’s railway station just as dusk was gathering. We were right on time: a big, old solid lump of a train was making its way ponderously along the track to where we stood at the end of the line.
Quickly ~ as quick as it was possible with conditions as they were ~ we hurried along the length of the platform, passing this beast of a train’s bull-nose front until we reached the first carriage door. Unlike British trains where, in getting on and off, you are constantly advised to ‘mind the gap’, here it was a case of mind the small, narrow, rusty iron steps up which you have to teeter if you want to get inside. As the doors were shut when we arrived, there was no small amount of dexterity involved in ascending, balancing and opening them, but teamwork won the day, and before you could say ‘arse over head’ we were on board and, a few seconds later, on boards. Through no fault of a well-illuminated carriage we could have been forgiven for believing that British vandalism had arrived in Russia at last, but it soon dawned on me, with the cold comfort of a Cold War documentary, that Western decadence would simply not be countenanced, that there really were not any cushions or padding upon the seats, just two long rows of slat-back wooden benches.
I ignored what I thought was my brother saying something like “who’s going to pick the splinters out” and made my way to the seat at the other end of the carriage. There may not have been neon lights above our heads saying ‘Look at us, we’re foreigners’, but the inhabitants of the carriage were gawping at us all the same.
They continued to gawp, as if all were one, even though it necessitated some backward craning on their part, whilst we found that we could not hear each other speak below the sound of our peculiar whispering. Fortunately, unlike Max Bygraves, the train never lingered longer, for, with a sickening, unannounced jolt, which took the audience as much by surprise as it had us, wrenching their heads in the other direction, we and the hulking train lurched clumsily out of the station.
Within a few moments of rolling along we had to admit to each other that although the seats had looked hard, cold, hostile and uninviting they were all that and more besides. There was no heat in the carriage; a couple of young scruffy looking blokes were taking it in turns to drain a bottle of vodka; two old babushkas, who simply could not refrain from turning their heads every now and then, gave us a withering stare; a gnarled old man, his coat pulled up over his ears, rocked back and forth with the rhythm of the train, one minute asleep, one minute not; and almost everyone without exception was dragging on a fag, ~ not that this bothered us, tobacco smoking had not quite yet become the wretched victim of self-proclaimed health zealots. I cannot remember whether we lit up or not, but we most likely did. Brother Joss always had a packet of roll-ups with him in those days, and besides, the complete and utter absence of any detectable heating system made striking the match appealing.
Svetlogorsk to Kaliningrad by Train: Tickets Pashalsta!
I was just wondering when and how we would pay for this magic carpet ride, when a fierce-looking babushka armed with a large leather handbag waved that secret weapon menacingly in our direction and snarled something at us, which might have meant anything, such as ‘Hand over your roll-ups’. Such was her fierce demeanour that we would have quite willingly handed over anything had not Olga, taking money out of her purse and passing it to the handbag waver, received in exchange three slips of paper. Ahhh, so these were our tickets to ride.
In spite of the excitement, Kaliningrad seemed an age away. The old engine and its ‘ready for retirement long ago’ rolling stock, rocked, swayed, groaned and complained every snowbound inch of the way. The undernourished light cast a yellow shroud over the carriage windows through which nothing could be seen except darkness and small rivers of snow, which stretched out across the opaque expanse and collected in miniature drifts along the lower edge of the sills. It was a long journey; a hard-on-your bum journey; and a very cold journey; but we got there in the end ~ we actually made it.
The No Frills Travel Company operated from a station which was not in the least different from what you would expect: it seemed that no expense had been spared in reinforced concrete and metal struts.
We alighted, a little undignified, from the steep, narrow and rickety steps, onto a slab. A bitter wind was channeling through the yawning end of the station canopy and what signs there were to tell us how to escape from it were all, of course, in Russian. As this was Olga’s home town, she did know the way, and although nothing softening or unremitting greeted us in the station’s concrete underside, simply evading the wind’s cutting edge was consolation enough.
We were now passing along the same subterranean passages that we had traversed yesterday when we arrived in Kaliningrad, from which we would cross the vast rectangular concourse, and out through one of a number of wonderfully arched Gothic doors. We had done this, and were now standing, ankle deep in snow, on the perimeter of that vast concrete plain where yesterday my senses had been so seductively stimulated by a scene so typically Soviet.
This evening, however, there were no shoveling soldiers and all but one lonely taxi driver. All was quiet on the Eastern Front.
Fortunately, we had done our bit with public transport for the time being and were now all together looking out for Olga’s friend, the man who was going to meet us. We did not have long to wait.
Antiques & collectables
Andrew was a big man; you could not make out his features as he had a muffler over the lower half of his face and a woolly hat pulled firmly down on his head. He shook our hands warmly, exchanged a few short words with Olga, laughed and embraced us and then beckoned for us to follow. Olga had confided my love of history and antiques to him and he was now leading us to an antique and collectables shop some few yards away on the edge of the station carpark.
The antique shop was located in a large room in one of the relatively few remaining original Königsberg buildings. Access was gained by passing through a large, heavy, metal studded door, on the other side of which was a veritable cornucopia of Soviet and pre-Soviet Königsberg relics ~ I’ve stopped short of claiming that it was Aladdin’s Cave, as Aladdin would most likely have found it difficult to get a visa here and is most likely on his way to England as we speak in the back of a Co-op lorry.
I shall not dwell on all the goodies I was interested in here, or what I would have liked to have bought. In a couple of days’, we would return to this shop and make three or four purchases. Suffice it to say, that for someone who had spent a lifetime involved with antiques and curios this was a place far beyond Aladdin and his half-brother Ali Barber (since arrested in Rochdale).
We were actually on our way to Olga’s mums, but our driver, Andrew, had been asked by Olga to wheel us around via Königsberg Cathedral, at this time one of the few historic buildings to have been given the green light for restoration.
Königsberg Cathedral
As we drove, I remember passing by a great concrete monolith, softened by and shrouded in snow, and thinking to myself, what on earth is that? (I was later to learn it was the ‘House of the Soviets’). But the soon-to-hove-into view Gothic turret, high perpendicular gables and broad sweeping roof of Königsberg Cathedral erased all other sentiments, save for that inspired by the sublime scene in front of me. Now when I look back on my first impression of Königsberg Cathedral, its haunting profile sketched against a whiteboard of snow, I gain some insight into the extent to which already the dark and troubled past of this place had begun to draw me in. But whilst the vast silhouette stamped its indelible mark, my recollections of the interior of Königsberg Cathedral in the year 2000 are vague to say the least. I was entranced by my first view of the external edifice but wrote very little in my diary about what lay behind the great oak doors. I mention renovation work to various wall monuments and note that it was not possible at that time to venture further than the ground floor, but much more than this I did not register, although the impression I have is that unlike today the doors opened into one very large rectangular room in which seating and other appurtenances seemed to be at a minimum.
And that, strangely enough, is all that I can recall of Königsberg Cathedral on the inside; whilst the memory of its outside has never let go of me … and never let me go.
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