Badger club Kaliningrad live music - Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

I wasn’t Badgered into going enough!

Published: 8 December 2022 ~ Badger Club Kaliningrad a Bohemian Night on the Tiles

My wife, Olga, went to a concert recently (see the photos below). I know exactly how my eloquent and highbrow musician friend in the UK will respond when he attempts to equate ‘concert’ with the images from that evening: “WTF?! Let’s go there!”

Now I am not the world’s most mainstream guy, but I have to admit when I saw the photos and heard an account of the evening, which did not happen until the following day because my wife rolled back at some ungodly hour in the morning, they made me feel positively ~ as the American author Henry James might say ~ ‘Ground into the mill of the conventional’.

It is not clear from the photographs whether the establishment is cavernous, but it certainly looks covenous ~ all that dim lighting, candles, hanging masks, dolls, natural-wood sculptures, enchanting (and possibly enchanted, Gothicised cabinets), and, moreover, wild and whacky costumery! Right up my surrealist street!

The top hat and tailed gentleman, the owner of the club, Aleksandr Smirnov, is obviously a ‘quick-change’ expert ~ one minute impresario, the next an updated rock-star figure from the minds of the Brothers Grimm. He, I am told, is a chimney sweep, only he isn’t, he is an accomplished and original artist who produces highly detailed bronzed relief plaques (apologies if I am slightly less than accurate, but I am having to base my opinion on mobile phone snaps) and, as you will see from the photographs, is also a bit of a wizard in the costume creation department. That’s him in the photo with his chopper in his hand. I’ve never seen one as big as that before; and me having been active in the antiques and militaria trade!

Choppers aside, this particular evening was dedicated to accomplished musicians and good music: There was a soulful and original indie art-folk band, Sfeno, first-rate singer guitarist and a young lady violinist, a virtuoso of her craft, who was on the fiddle a lot that evening. Vodka was not rationed, people got up and jived and my wife, much to her great surprise, if not unalloyed delight, was both chatted up and propositioned, which is always good for the ego (I’ve lost count of the number of times that the same has happened to me (you wish!)). The location, in fact the whole evening, was so spellbinding that it reduced Harry Potter to as much comparative magic as a meeting of the Women’s Institute at the local village-hall on a wet afternoon in the 1930s.

***Indie Art-Folk Band, Sfeno, on YouTube***

Never one to moralise, even when occasion justifies, whilst all this frivolity was going on in Kaliningrad’s answer to Alice’s Wonderland, I was at home with the cat, genning up on Königsberg and the history of East Prussia by reading (both the cat and I) that excellent publication Legends of the Amber Land, by Andrey Kropotkin.

Although I must say, with my wife rolling in at some unseemly hour of the morning ~ we won’t say when! ~ I would have been quite within my conjugal rights had I demanded of her, “And what time do you call this then!?” or have cast myself in the role of the heavy-handed Victorian husband, with “Why, you dirty stop-out.” But I contented myself with the elevating thought that if I have learnt one thing and one thing only in my brief visit to this muddled world, it is reflected in my born-again status as a stay-at-home Captain Sensible. Stout fellow that I assuredly am: resisting the lure of the bright lights nightlife in order to set the perfect example of how people of a certain age are expected to, and should, behave.

Thus, by the time my wife had sneaked in from her evening of ‘reasonable refreshments’ ~ making it difficult to imagine that she had been brought up in the social climate of anti-decadent Soviet-Russia! ~ I had read my book, patted the cat, drunk my cup of cocoa and with teddy tucked snugly under my arm had taken myself to bed: zzzzzzzzz.

Have you ever had the feeling that you are missing out on something?🤔

**Made in Kaliningrad: Exclusive Badger Underpants**

Badger Club Kaliningrad — **Aleksandr Smirnov introduces singer guitarist Andrey Berenev**

Olga Hart with Impresario Aleksandr Smirnov Badger Club Kaliningrad — **Olga Hart with** **Aleksandr Smirnov**

Olga Hart Bader Club Kaliningrad — **Olga Hart in the Badger club**

Band Sfeno performing at Badger Club Kaliningrad — **Band Sfeno performing**

Andrey Berenev Badger Club Kaliningrad — **Andrey Berenev**

Olga Hart in esoteric surroundings — **Olga Hart surrounded by the esoteric**

Olga Hart Fairy Tale Furniture made by Chimney Sweep — **Olga Hart with vintage oil lamp and fantasy fairy tale furniture made by ‘Chimney Sweep’ Aleksandr Smirnov**

Inara horny in Kaliningrad — **Inara looking horny**

Man with big chopper in Kaliningrad — **Confronted with a large chopper**

Additional Information

Badger ( Barsuchek) Барсучёк club
Sverdlova, 33, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, 236006
Tel: +7 909 777‑97-75

Aleksandr Smirnov
By all accounts*, Aleksandr (Chimney Sweep) Smirnov is an artist, costume designer and consummate wizard at conjuring up interior design of a distinctly unusual and exotic nature.

Able to work with all kinds of material, including wood and metal, much of what you see in the photographs in terms of fixtures and fittings are said to have been made by his hand, the same hand that has orchestrated the natural, historical and decorative elements that set apart the club’s interior from any other you may have encountered. The syncopated fairy tale feel that you get from all of this is no coincidence. A little fairy tells me that he writes fairy tales as well.
*Дом трубочиста или выходные в сказке (turbopages.org)

The Badger club, Kaliningrad
The Badger club has a dedicated clientele who value not only the décor and entertainment but speak with great warmth and affection about the club’s welcoming ethos and its friendly, inviting atmosphere. Why not go and see for yourself? You may just become a regular in the process?!