Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)
Published: 25 September 2021 ~ Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad
Article 15: Gyvas Kaunas
Well, just look at it! I bought this lager in spite of, rather than because of, the appearance of the bottle. It reminded me of someone or something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Could it have been that brassy blonde that I had met in an East London nightclub? Was it something I had seen on an Italian reality TV show? Did someone try to sell it to me once? I vaguely remember his voice, “Oh to be sure, to be sure. ‘Tis the real thing, sure enough. On the memory of my sainted mother would I tell you otherwise …” No? Panto, perhaps? Or something in a joke shop window?
Gambling all on the forgiving notion that tasteless is not always the red flag that we take it for, I paid my 140 roubles, which isn’t cheap considering that this fairground bottle only holds one litre, and left the shop quite smartishly, as if I’d just purchased the drinks equivalent of a mucky book or had been seen with a TV celebrity.
Once safely indoors I stashed the bottle away behind the potatoes and made a mental note to forget that I had bought it, but come the witching hour, seven o’clock (and, listen you lushes, I do mean seven in the evening!), the hankerings overtook me, and before you could say, “Do you really think that this is a good idea?!”, I had whipped it out and took it upstairs.
Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad
On the coffee table, which also functions as a beer table, the bottle looked distinctly out of place, standing there as it did next to my manly Soviet tankard. I had the uneasy feeling that I was about to open a bottle of fizzy wine and that nothing short of Hinge and Bracket’s tablecloth and Liberace’s candelabra would do the experience justice.
Gee it was Gaudy, with a capital ‘G’.
Never mind. I put on my sunglasses, peeled away at the pink foil wrapper, put the corkscrew back in the drawer and slipped off the top. Now came the moment of truth. I moved slowly towards the neck of the bottle, longingly but apprehensively. The camera, had there been one, began to revolve at 360 degrees, the lighting first went dim and then became suffused. I lowered my nose to the opening. Chanel No 5 or Canal in need of dredging, which one would it be? Eureka, or You Reeka Lot! Downwind of a lav portacabin on a very warm and windy day!
Desist or resist! As I wouldn’t judge a book by its cover, neither would I allow my olfactory senses to be the sole arbitrator in the case of Pong vs Palate.
I poured the liquid into my glass, observing it, of course, with no small degree of suspicion, and then I took the plunge.
Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad
Verdict: fruity.
There was the essence of bitter grapes, tinged with grapefruit, a touch of lemon and a fondle of orange and, thanks to a long-life fizz, a loyal taste that did not immediately let you down and simply walk away.
All things considered, it would be unfair of me if I did not admit that the experience had been worth the 140 roubles that I had paid. And, yes, you may be right. My criticism of the packaging could be due to a lifetime of drinking British ales dispensed from stalwart old-world handpumps. So, was I being too hard?
I would not go so far as to say that it was Casablanca ~ the start of a beautiful relationship ~ more like a one-night stand, but I have put the empty bottle aside, as who knows one day it may come in handy should I ever want to remodel my room to resemble Del Boy’s flat.
😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS Name of Beer: Gyvas Kaunas Brewer: Kalnapilis Where it is brewed: Vilnius, Lithuania Bottle capacity: 1 litre Strength: 4.6% Price: It cost me about 140 roubles (£1.41) Appearance: Pale golden Aroma: Don’t ask! Taste: Fruity mix with bitter twangs Fizz amplitude: 7/10 Label/Marketing: Why? Would you buy it again? Read the post Marks out of 10: 4.5
*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.
It is with great sadness that I report that our dear friend Stas (Stanislav Konovalov) passed away recently from post-operative complications whilst undergoing hospital treatment.
My wife, Olga, and I met Stas in January 2019. We were introduced to him by a mutual friend, Victor Ryabinin the artist. Stas told me later that Victor had said to him, “There is an Englishman moving to Kaliningrad. You should meet him. He is an interesting man, and I think you will find a common language.”
I am not altogether certain that I deserve the appellation ‘interesting’, but we did find a common language in our love of history generally and specifically for Königsberg-Kaliningrad and the surrounding region.
An important element in that common language was the inspiration we both received from our friend and mentor Victor Ryabinin.
A short while after Victor Ryabinin’s death in July 2019, I told Stas that I had found two paintings by Victor among my possessions in England. He replied, with characteristic modesty, that whilst he did not have a signed painting by Victor Ryabinin the artist, it was enough that he had a “secret pride”, which was that he had been “close to this great man”. “I was his student for many years,” he said.
When I ventured to suggest that Victor had also been his friend, he replied, once again with characteristic modesty, “Victor knew a great many people and associated with a great many people, but he probably would not have considered them all to be his friends. I can say that I was his student, that I admired him and enjoyed his company …” He then paused, before saying, “But I would like to think that he thought of me as his friend.”
Stas was a modest man. He was modest about all of his achievements, when it was quite obvious that he had as much right, if not more, to blow his own trumpet with the ‘best’ of them.
Stas worked extremely hard on his tour guide projects, honing and perfecting them, making several YouTube videos and always asking, “What did you think of this aspect?” “Was that alright?” “Is there anything in my tour guide script that you think needs clarification?”.
Like Victor Ryabinin before him, Stas’ death has robbed Königsberg -Kaliningrad of yet another great ambassador.
It has robbed us of so much more.
Stas was a straight-talking, open, sincere individual. He was a kind man, always ready to help and good company.
Together, we shared the common language of the past, and I, through him, the common but all-important language of humanity.
In summation, Stas was that most precious of all commodities ~ he was the indispensable friend that we could ill afford to lose.
A sunny afternoon with Stas Konovalov, ‘Stas’, [right of picture] Kaliningrad Königsberg Guide
We never did keep that appointment we promised ourselves and go for a picnic this summer in Königsberg’s Max Aschmann Park, but prompted by the delightful autumnal weather, all sun and blue skies, we did walk to the park today and, because it covers a large area, managed at least to stroll through one section of it.
Autumn in Kaliningrad
Our route to the park would take us through some of the most quiet and atmospheric streets of the old city. These are cobbled streets lined with great trees on either side. In spring and summer these trees are a silent explosion of green leaves, and although they have begun to shed them profusely in anticipation of winter’s dawn, sufficient remain to act as a filter to the last rays of the summer sun, which scattering through them illuminate their various hues and shades like a giant back bulb behind an origami screen.
Olga Hart photographing autumn in Kaliningrad, October 2020
Below the sunburst, across the humpty dumpty road surface, the grass verges ~ neat or overgrown ~ and on the pavements, where there are some, the leaves lay strewn like so much wedding confetti ~ yellow, brown, auburn and gold. They would form carpets were it not for the hardworking road sweepers, who are out and about at the crack of dawn piling the leaves into heaps ready for the administrations of the follow-up leaf-sucking lorries.
The street we are walking along is, like many in this neighbourhood and in other parts of remnant Königsberg, a cavalcade of architectural opposites. We pass by the Konigsberg signature flats, a series of long but detached blocks, three or four storeys in height, each one re-equipped with its Soviet steel door and, in this particular instance, curiously clad in wood.
If you know Kaliningrad you are ready for contrasts, but ready does not mean less surprised. In two steps we go from the scene I have just described to another quite improbable, yet not quite so improbable in the light of the status quo.
A large bushy tree rolls back at the side of us and there, of course, they are ~ the new-builds. We were half-expecting them, but not at any moment. They are three or four in number, big brand-spankers; demure-brick faced in parts but striking in their adaptation of Neoclassical principles. They shine and they sparkle with pride in the sun; the sun polishes them and casts an autumnal eye along the neat, trimmed verge evenly planted with shrubs, the upright expensive fence and the ever-imposing gate. The sun seems to wink at me, but perhaps in my admiration I failed to notice the slightest breeze and the way it secretly shifted the branches across my line of vision.
Some of the houses along this street conform to the more conventional and some, which must be flats, are hefty great slabs, albeit with nice arched windows. And then, just when you have stopped thinking ‘phhheww they must have cost a bit’, you reach the end of the road, and there in the corner, at the junction, you immediately fall in love with what once would have been an almost-villa ~ a lovely, lovely property, with its original pan-tiled roof virtually conical in form and with one of those small arched windows typical in Königsberg peering out of its rooftop like the hooded eye of an octopus.
For a few moments I stand in the road looking from my present, as its past looks back at me.
Königsberg house on the corner, autumn 2020
We have no choice but to leave Königsberg at this junction, making our way along a busy thoroughfare where the concrete battery of flats left us in little doubt that we were back in Kaliningrad ~ they in the 1970s and we, by the sight of a facemask or two, again in 2020.
We instinctively knew that we were on the right track for Max Aschmann. We did have to stop and ask someone, but immediately afterwards landmarks from our previous excursion remembered themselves to us, and it was not long before we recognised the lemon church and one of the entrances to the park, the one we had used before.
On our previous visit, we only had time to venture as far as the first group of lakes, but today we wanted to broaden our horizons, so we pressed on. We had not gone far when Olga, always on my left side, relinked her arm through mine.
The broad swathed track curved and as it did another expanse of water opened up to us on our right, set against a verdant backdrop of trees, some still green, others in autumnal garb. The leaves were thick on the ground, but not all of them had fallen, and those that were still aloft painted autumn across the skyline in nature’s soft and mellow brush strokes. It was as if we were walking into the heart of a picture.
At the front of a lake stood a fir tree, anchored to the ground by three or four ropes. It was a Christmas tree, bracing itself for the world’s first coronavirus Christmas. Close by, there was a great pile of tree trunk sections. We wanted one of these for our garden. We had the samovar, the juniper twigs and each other, all we needed now was the log, so that we could sit on it and count the stars like Meeshka and Yorshik in Hedgehog in the Fog (Russian: Ёжик в тумане, Yozhik v tumane)
Christmas comes early to Max Aschmann Park ~ Kaliningrad, October 2020
We walked on. Whatever Max Aschmann Park had been, and it was really something in its day, for all intents and purposes, its modern incarnation is more Max Aschmann forest.
On the hard-surface paths, long and straight that criss-cross the woodland, lots of people were walking. They were people of all ages, babushkas and derdushkas, family groups and teenagers, but no matter who they were or how old they were, a peaceful unification prevailed. There was nothing fast, nothing loud, nothing out of place or obtrusive, certainly no coronavirus madness or any other menace to interfere with the calm repose. And yet here we were in the midst of dense woodland, itself in the midst of a bustling city. The experience was simple but memorable. There was something wonderfully alien about it, not only by what there was but thankfully by what there was not.
An Autumn Walk in Kaliningrad
It does not matter where I roam; wherever I am, something old, something from the past comes forward and makes itself known to me, and that something this afternoon was the remains of a building, here, in the centre of the park. I had read somewhere that in its day the Max Aschmann Park had been a haven for the German well-to-do and a holiday destination for those who by virtue of wealth and status qualified for its privileges, so the sight of this leftover dwelling did not entirely surprise me.
What remains is little more than a great slab of concrete, but closer inspection reveals metal reinforcing rods and the remnants of one or two steps that lead down into a small recess beneath the concrete floor, now silted up with earth and woodland debris but which would presumably once have been a cellar or, perhaps, a subterranean garage, as these are standard features of houses in this region.
Mick Hart sitting on and surrounded by history in Max Aschmann Park, Kaliningrad, October 2020
Before I sat down on the concrete remains to have my photograph taken, as thousands had done before me and would continue to do so afterwards, I discovered one of the house gate piers lying prostrate among the leaves. There would have been a time when it was doing something practical, but it was doing nothing practical now, having relinquished its incipient function for matters of mind and heart.
Next on the voyage of discovery was another lake, this one more expansive than those we had passed already. The ground tapering gently to the water’s edge made an approach quite possible, and three or four people were gathered there feeding a bevy of swans. There were also two or three trees, not many, but just enough to satisfy the idyl along this picturesque border.
Olga Hart at the side of the lake in Max Aschmann Park, October 2020
Waterside trees always possess an anachronistic architecture, and these were no exception. Complementing the natural contours of the lake, and with the trees and bushes in their variegated shades rolling and billowing around it and into the distance, they and the scene they belonged to put me in mind of a 19th century lithograph, which, if it was mine to own, I would hang on a wall, preferably in my personal bar, in Mick’s Place, where I could sit and savour the view whilst sipping a glass of beer.
A beautiful autumn-leaf hat in Max Aschmann Park, Kaliningrad
But time was ticking on, as it has the habit of doing, and it was time to be making tracks. For this purpose, we chose instead to return through the woodland itself, at least for a short distance before we re-joined the path.
Under the trees, the ground was a little bit squelchy, but this natural hazard of woodland walking was only objectionable as far as our boots were concerned, and it had certainly made no difference to a small group of woodland wanderers who had removed themselves into the fringe of the wood for a spot of al a carte lunch. I wondered, had they carried that old metal barbecue on stilts with them, or had it been donated by an unknown benefactor who had staked out that spot on a previous occasion?
Even deeper into the wood and perched on wooden roundels cut from sizeable trees were people enjoying a picnic. Now that’s an idea, I thought, we really must do that and do that one day soon: go for a picnic, here, in Max Aschmann Park.
