Tag Archives: Kaliningrad

Spare Some Change Makes Beggars out of All of Us

Change, Spare Change, All Change, Why Change?

22 September 2024 ~ Spare Some Change Makes Beggars out of All of Us

Have you ever noticed that when you go away for a few weeks, on your return not everything has changed, but some things have and subtly. For example, after my recent sojourn in the UK, I returned to Kaliningrad to find that the vacuum cleaner appliances had strangely disappeared, that someone had half-inched the mat from my office/study/drinking den, that the water jug had vanished, that a small table was where it wasn’t, and that the cat’s bowls had turned from plastic to ceramic. On a not so subtle and more depressing note, I learnt that the neighbour’s cat ~ I used to call her ‘Big Eyes’ ~ had scaled her last plank backwards. She used this technique to descend from a flat roof on the second storey of her owner’s house after her owners cut down the birch tree along whose branches she used to scramble.

Unlike our stay-at-home Ginger, she was an out-and-about sort of cat, a brave and intrepid adventurer, who, alas, was to put too much faith in the mythical tale that cats have nine lives and met with the truth abruptly whilst she was crossing the road.

The old philosophical question is there life after death is problematic enough without appending to that question are cats accorded a similar privilege?

“Of course, cat heaven exists,” cat lovers cry indignantly, but does it follow from this assumption that parity heavens exist for pigs, cows, sheep, chickens and every other animal species that are brought into this world merely to be slaughtered for the tastebud pleasures of carnivores?

Abstractions of this nature, though they may well have once occurred to me in some distant, cynical, cerebral past, found no room in my consciousness on returning to Kaliningrad, for soon I would be fretting about an entirely different dilemma ~ is there life after YouTube?

In the short while I had been away not only had my rug gone west but also YouTube with it, or to be more precise, had thereto been confined. “That’s buggered it,” I thought ~ I am prone to moments of eloquence like this ~ for though I could not give a monkey’s for the loss of Western mainstream media, where would I go with YouTube gone for my daily fix of music, for documentaries of an historical nature and for classic pre-woke TV dramas like 1960s’ Dangerman, filmed in glorious black and white when the use of the term black and white was not endowed with racial undertones and even if it had been nobody British at that time would have given a monkey’s f.ck. Ah, Happy Days indeed!

Sixty minutes searching Google for credible alternatives to the sort of content with which I engage on YouTube was enough to reassure me that whilst life without YouTube was not as we know it ~ YouTube is but one place in the internet’s vast and expanding universe but in itself it seems infinite ~ life without it was not unsupportable.

I found a site I had used in the past which offered a reasonably good selection of archived TV dramas and classic black and white films, and I also upturned a second site which, although containing the sort of stuff I would not touch with a barge polack ~ modern, glossy, tacky and geared to a left-leaning audience ~ tendered the consolation of half a dozen history programmes of a fairly reputable nature.

I was conscious that I was doing something that the so-called entitled millennials are only just coming to terms with in these rapidly changing times: I was having to ‘make do’. The derivation actually precedes the generation to which I belong. It has its origins in wartime slogans, and was born out of the real necessity of making the best of a bad situation, using whatever scant resources were at hand. Making do in the age of misinformation/disinformation, the cast offs and the hand me downs of second- and third-best websites represent a collateral revision of the quid pro quo arrangement of if you show me yours, I’ll show you mine, rehashed by modern politics as so long as you let me show you mine then I’ll let you show me yours.

I sometimes wonder if any of our contemporary politicians have bothered to read Gulliver’s Travels, written and published by Jonathan Swift in 1726, and if the answer is yes, did they find it illuminating. I for one believe that Swift’s seminal work should be made mandatory reading for anyone who is contemplating taking up a career in politics.

Ping Pong You’re Not Wrong

Ping pong, aka table tennis, is a game like many other games, such as cricket, rugby, tennis and football, I can honestly say I have never much cared for. I don’t care much for the tit for tat and the way in which the ball, be it big or small, gets passed back and forth with monotonous regularity between two opposing but rules-based players or carefully hand-picked teams, with no apparent benefit to anyone else outside of the game, give or take a cheer or two, which quickly fade in euphoria’s twilight.

Above: Ping and Pong. It’s batty.

At least in the UK when the sad illusion Democracy has been stripped down naked like the tired old whore she is, which many, out of trained submission or a sense of misplaced respect, shy away from doing, the rules of the game, whose they are and who it is that benefits from them are as transparent as a Nylon negligee (What happened to that in my absence?). Thanks to long experience of the electoral system’s hocus pocus, the who will it be first past the post, we know that whether we make our mark or not, we are guaranteed for the next five years to be saddled with one or the other bunch of ineffectual dunderheads and that, give or take a nuance or two, whichever party claims Number 10 as its prize will be singing, rather badly as usual, from the communal globalist hymn sheet: Money, Money, Money. Please to sing along now. You are all familiar with the refrain.

During my last assignment in the UK, I was treated to the spectacle of this perfectly meaningless political role play, the changing of the old guard ~ ping pong, ping pong … pong, pong, pong. Out with the old and in with the old: the Tories on their way out, Labour on their way in, but significantly rather more out than in and with many of them clearly quite out of it. Bring on the men in white coats. (Sorry I did not mention women; I’m taking a course in misogyny.)

This rotational, completely predictable, seesaw-moment momentum has less to do with change than it does with continuity, as most of the Tories’ acclaimed centre right are so way left of centre that they ought to be in the Labour Party, as many of them effectively are, whilst the Labour party itself knows no longer what it is, what it wants to be and least of all where it is going. Shame it is taking the nation with it. Half of Labour is hard left, half of it is half hearted and the other half is clearly insane (and clearly possess a triple ‘A’ in Maths). Neither Labour or the Cons ever recovered from Tony Blair. Both exhibit incurable symptoms, and the plague they exhale collusively is addling minds and destroying the country.

Nowhere is this emergency better illustrated than when the media cries exultantly that one or other of the old two parties has ‘won it by a landslide’.

The only landslide the public sense is that things are slipping away from them, that things are going from bad to worse. And yet as catastrophic as British life now is, many in the UK are yet to grasp the intelligence that by hook or by crook the old two parties need to be put out to grass. Change is as good as a rest, as they say, and a rest from them is badly needed and, more to the point, excessively overdue.

The Labour and Conservative parties: two old horses out to grass

Above: I think it’s self-explanatory …

To be fair, if that is the same as being honest, Liebour did in its accession usher in some changes, albeit typically hurriedly, typically without much thought and typically in the process breaking most if not at all of its pre-election promises. But as the changes so far instituted are typically Labour in character, they have in the absolute sense changed very little at all. For example, if a Labour government did not raise taxes what a momentous change that would be. But then if Labour did not raise taxes would anybody know they were there?

Whoever it was who thought to dub Labour the party of taxation was a percipient man indeed, so much more than just perspicacious that the chances of him being a woman are nil (Excuse me for being sexist, you see I’m taking this course in misogyny.). But don’t you dare complain, not about being a man when you would rather you were a woman (it’s something you cannot change) and don’t complain about Labour’s tax hikes. You were warned that Liebour would tax you, and tax you into the ground, so why did you vote them in!

It is a fact of life that some things change and some things plainly don’t (Come on now transvestites, don’t get those knickers into a twist!); some things change a lot and others don’t change that much; some things get done for a change, and just for a change some things don’t; and there’s not a lot of change to be had out of six quid for a pint. But there are some things that will never change, though given time they probably will, but by the time they do will it be too late? Let’s talk immigration. Somebody ought to, has to, as it should be abundantly clear by now that that somebody is not Starmer.

Immigration is possibly the one issue that leading up to the General Election the Liebour party did not lie about; perhaps they simply forgot. Those of us who did not vote Labour were right, not far-right mind you, but right that we did not do so, if only for this reason, since with depressing predictability Labour has not done, and has no intention of ever doing, as much as diddly squit to resolve the immigration crisis, a dastardly weaponisation programme which represents the one real threat to the stability of the British nation and the safety of its indigenous people.

Spare Some Change for immigration: the elephant in the political room

Where Labour has excelled itself is channelling more resources into the conflict in Ukraine at a time when we need to squander it least on globalist-led agendas. Do you ever ask yourself what it is that they do with your money which they take in the name of ‘council tax’? Could it be used to foot the bill for conflicts in which we have no legitimate role, even if we started them, and for paving the way for dinghy migrants to live it up in luxury?

Immigration has changed and also it has not. It has not changed in that we still have it, has not changed in that we don’t want it, but has changed inasmuch that want it or want it not, there is a lot more of it than there used to be. Central to this change is that the major EU powers no longer deem it necessary to conceal their complicit role in organising and facilitating the migrant invasion of Britain.

The infectiousness of this invasion is far more virulent and far more lethal than any contrived plandemic could be. Perhaps we should call on dear old Bill. Come on Bill, old boy, whip us up a jab or six to provide the British people with the immunity they so desperately need to protect themselves from Coronomigrant. Violent crime is rampant, acts of terrorism sweep the nation, the police are no longer a force but a branch of the social services and the government is so dismally limp it is crying out for a shot of moral Viagra.

White fight not far right

One thing that was markedly different during recent months in England, which was not necessarily good but understandably necessary as an alternative stay of civil war, was that when the riots came, as come they did and come they will, it was the whiteys on the war path. Now that did make a change!!!

It was no change at Notting Hill Carnival. Yet again it proved to be London’s annual ethnic stab fest. Any other event with a history resembling the mind of an on-the-rampage serial killer would have been banned years ago, as would the Notting Hill Carnival if it was anything other than black. It is patently inconceivable that a white British festival with a similar record of bloodlust would be allowed to continue year on year. Murder or no murder, it would have been denounced from the outset as unfit for ethnic consumption and that without equivocation would have rapidly been the end of that. This year’s Boot Hill incident cost two more people their lives, adding to the festival’s ever increasing death toll. Meanwhile, the Labour government is contemplating doubling down on the British tradition of fox hunting. It seems that rural blood sports must be banned whilst urban ones are tolerated, encouraged one might say. Brrr! it felt as if something just walked over the United Kingdom’s grave. Could that something be two-tier policing?

Over to our new prime minister. He may resemble a disciplinarian, a 1950s’ schoolmaster parachuted strategically in from a time when Britain was really Britain, but as far as ethnics are concerned looks can be deceiving. Did he give the carnival organisers the six of the best he gave the white rioters? Did he give them lines to write, “Thou shalt not stab at the Notting Hill Carnival”? Did he heck as like. He caned himself instead, by forgetting the lines of condemnation the public were waiting to hear from him, either that or the savage events and the fear of being called racist deprived him of his left-wing backbone and left him morally speechless. He eventually did cough something up, but before you could say one rule for them and a different rule for us, and before some impudent scallywag could raise the uncomfortable spectre of policing on a two-tier level, he was banging the same old distraction drum about the number one priority being the need to protect society from the heinous actions of right-wing thugs. As for random knife attacks by men whose names we can’t pronounce and acts of organised terrorism by medieval hostiles (I’ve just had a call from my stockbroker ~ invest in inflatable dinghies), the message from Britain’s political elite is as masters of the hen house they have every right to fill it with as many foreign foxes as the ECHR permits, so just sit back and enjoy your fate.

Immigration: the Fox in the UK hen house

I began this post from the perspective of change and seem to have moved mesmerically into the realm where déjà vu governs the laws of momentum, and yet not everything in the world is as predictable as we would like to think. Those who live in a certain street in Kaliningrad thought they would never see the day when they would get themselves a brand-new pavement, but that day eventually dawned, despite one woman tutting, “It’s taken thirty years!” and now that vital change for which we had all been waiting seems as though it was always thus, that the pavement has always been there.

The same could be said of a certain sub-post office in a certain UK shire town. The post office seems to have been there for as long as memory itself, and mine is quite a long one, but it’s ‘all change’ when you scratch the surface. I am sure that this has got nothing to do with the fact it is run by Asians ~ which British post office isn’t! ~ but everything to do with the erratic hours it keeps. It is the first post office I have ever encountered that opens when it likes, making it an excellent venue whenever you catch it right, because since nobody trusts its opening hours very few people use it, hence the absence of queues. Not having to stand in line makes such a welcome change from a trip to your average post office, where you need to go armed with a sleeping bag and enough provisions to last you a fortnight, and yet it is such an odd phenomenon that it has you asking the question, could this peculiar post office that is more often shut than not, in fact be a front for something else? Like all these foreign food stores that pop up overnight and the multitude of barber’s shops purporting to be Turkish when the owners and all who work in them look and talk Albanian. Perhaps the owners of these businesses are engaged in some other activity, such as laundering, for example. There’s no hard left sign visible outside the coven of Hope Not Hate, but just because you cannot see the twin tubs does not mean that they are not there and the country is not being rinsed.

Whilst every street in every town and every city in England have fallen forfeit to immigration (you may have heard the phrase ‘Our cities have changed beyond recognition’), the streets of Russian Kaliningrad have decidedly changed for the better, that is to say materially and, with the restitution of law and order and regaining of self-respect, which had been partly laid to waste as a repercussion of perestroika, in matters of social decorum.

Whenever I walk the perimeters of Königsberg’s ancient ponds, this variance in urban life does not leap up and out at me like something dark on a no-go street in Peckham but is inviting enough to assail my senses with what we have lost in Britain. The contrast in the cultural climates is visible, audible, palpable, and it starts with the way in which people dress.

From New York to the South Pole, almost everybody these days is hardwired to dressing casual. I suspect that I am one of the few remaining sartorial standard bearers who espouses cravat, frock coat and top hat ~ not forgetting silver-topped cane ~ rather than wear a pair of trainers.

Above: “I don’t as a rule wear any, but I always make sure not to go out with, or in, a strong wind”

Kaliningradians and Kaliningrad visitors from other parts of Russia tend to follow a smart-casual trend. Whereas, as in every other sphere of cultural life, dress code in the UK has taken a turn for the worse and worst, going from ultra-smart to smart-casual, to trendy casual, to half casual, to dumb-down casual to bags of shit.

Who is not acquainted with that funny old Asian man? Let me point him out to you: that’s him there, there, there, over there and over here … See how he wears all sorts of oddments, everything thrown together: the workshop apron, pantaloon trousers, corny ill-fitting jacket bought from yonder charity shop and, of course, a pair of iridescent trainers ~ what lovely colour combinations, orange, yellow and purple. And he is indisputably the best dressed man in Bedford.

Now turn around and cast your gaze on those beautiful English ladies amorphously squashed in over-tight leggings, all bums and large tums, with cattle rings through their noses, shrapnel embedded in brows and lips and covered in head to foot with tats. Isn’t their language colourful: f*ck, f*ck, f*ck. And what is that pervasive smell, no not that smell, this smell! Pooh! It is the town centre gently marinating in the stench of stale and smoking Ganja. Look up, it’s a live one, and he’s heading in our direction! Time to take evasive action! Cross to the opposite side of the street and quick!

UK's city centres are filling up with Zombies

The fundamental difference between Britain’s streets and the streets of Kaliningrad is not confined to sartorial consciousness: manners maketh man (they seem not to maketh UK women). Public behaviour on Kaliningrad’s streets, give or take the inevitable exception, is generally better than it is England. And, with the Russian accent on family values, traditional family groups of traditional Russian heritage freely and with confidence enjoy the streets of their city. Contrast homely scenes like this with the kind of groups you can expect to find, and more’s the pity do, hanging around in England’s cities and degrading its small-town centres.

Lefties would have us believe that the gangs of blacks and Asians, and the johnny-come-lately tribes flooding in on the promise tide of benefits, rights and endless freebies from far-flung parts of the world’s subcontinent are an enriching sight for monocultural eyes. But such postulations are unconvincing even through their glasses. Excelling the attitude and behavioural problems evinced by their white ne’er-do-well counterparts, a pervasive air of ‘up to no good’ hangs above the Ganja cloud and fills the vacuum on Britain’s streets left by the absence of coppers with an ‘at any moment it could all kick off’ incertitude. Menace and apprehension rule. Britain’s streets are not just uncouth, they are gravely infected with passive aggression.

Yes, things have certainly changed from the Britain I once knew and loved. I wonder what the Victorians and Edwardians would make of it. I wonder what those who fought for their country and died in two world wars would make of it. What would Sir Winston Churchill say? We know what Enoch Powell would say, since he said it back in the 1960s. Lord, if only someone had listened to him!

Spare some change, please!

I read somewhere (please tell me that this is not true) that housebreakers in the UK do not qualify for prison sentences until they have been convicted of 26 successive accounts of burglary. It is an indisputable fact that you have got more chance of winning the lottery or stopping the boats at Dover than getting arrested for shoplifting. It’s take your pick skanky ladies and nothing resembling gentlemen, you’ve really nothing to lose. In the unlikely event you get caught in the act, just give the merchandise back and have it away from the shop next door. Nice one, mate: Ha! Ha! Ha! Easy-touch-Britain, innit!

I have no idea if shoplifting is as prevalent in Kaliningrad as it is in every British town and city. I somehow feel it is not. But I do know, as I have witnessed it personally, that Kaliningrad has a boy-racer problem and that those that race are not all boys. Thankfully, however, one of the more applaudable changes has been the city-wide installation of efficacious pedestrian crossings. Gone are the days when we used to huddle in groups of five or more on the opposite sides of the four-lane roads and then, on the count of 10, make a nervous dash for it. Oh, how the drama of youth gives way to prudence in later life!

If someone was to ask me, and I don’t suppose they will, what is the one thing you would like to see changed in Kaliningrad, the answer without a second thought would be the introduction of a law to stamp out dugs that bark incessantly or, better still, to penalise their owners. These must-be mutton-jeff mut-lovers can never have heard of noise pollution, possibly because like the rest of us, they can hear precious little above the row that their barking dugs are making. It’s a dugs life, as someone said, someone who couldn’t spell dogs correctly.

Since the subject of this post is change, I expect that you expect that at some point in the narrative, at this point, for example, the temptation to make some corny remark about change in relation to underpants would finally prove too much for me, but I hate to disappoint you that I am about to disappoint you, because someone might pull them up on me, I mean pull me up on it, and I do not intend to stoop so low, so let’s instead be briefs.

Ringing the changes is happening in a negative way on the Polish border. Always slow and unhelpful, the Polish border authorities are excelling their own track record for putting obstacles in one’s way where none should be encountered, thus holding up one’s journey as though suspending it in empty space by a very strong pair of invisible braces (we’re suspiciously close to pants again!). The object of the exercise appears to be none other than to subject the weary traveller to the torment of terminal boredom or failing in that ambition to simply delay one long enough to make one miss one’s flight. If you have been an unhappy recipient of this apparent change in policy and believe you are being short-changed by conditions of an adverse nature at the Russian-Polish border, here is where you can lodge your complaint:

Against the intolerable conditions on the Russian-Polish border (Kaliningrad)!

I was going to finish this post on change by saying something profound, like ‘things change and that’s a fact, and very often not for the better’. And then it suddenly occurred to me that women in leopard print tights rarely change their spots. So, then I revised my ending to read, ‘if it don’t change it will stay the same’, but whilst I know it will not change anything, I went and changed my mind.

Something for the weekend, sir?

UK Anti-immigration Riots Herald New Dystopian Era
Lies & Democracy are they now the same thing?
Don’t Kill Cash
Britain a Nice Place to Live on the Telly

Image attributions

Beggar: <a href=”https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/homeless-man-sitting-ground-flat-vector-illustration-desperate-hungry-poor-male-person-sitting-street-near-trash-bin-asking-help-getting-into-financial-trouble-poverty-concept_24644540.htm#query=street%20beggar&position=0&from_view=keyword&track=ais_hybrid&uuid=af6b8f40-80ae-4929-ae9a-94b805e40e71″>Image by pch.vector</a> on Freepik

Suit: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Wedding-suit-on-a-stand-vector-clip-art/20642.html

Outline map UK: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/UK-silhouette/55420.html

Playing table tennis: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Kids-play-table-tennis/87262.html

Scotsman: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Orator-in-black-and-white/77202.html

Two horses grazing: https://garystockbridge617.getarchive.net/media/two-horses-grazing-3dbc66?action=download&size=1024 [Arthur B. Davies (American, Utica, New York 1862–1928 Florence)]

Elephant: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Elephant-contour-vector-clip-art/7929.html

Empty room: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Empty-room/70655.html

Fox in the hen house: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Fox-in-hen-house/81729.html

Zombie silhouette: <a href=”https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/zombie-silhouettes_805714.htm#fromView=keyword&page=1&position=8&uuid=31cda339-13bb-4ae8-b7a7-d96bb5b9b834″>Image by freepik</a>

Life in Kaliningrad through the lens of a camera

A few snapshots from my Kaliningrad album

22 May 2024 ~ Life in Kaliningrad through the lens of a camera

They could be curated, they could be aggregated, but I suspect that they are a random collection of photographs, some more recent than others, taken in and of Kaliningrad. Judge for yourselves.

Life in Kaliningrad

Above: Trams {Click on images to enlarge}
The new and the old ~ and I am not referring to myself. Here am I riding one of Kaliningrad’s latest trams. They are smooth and swish, and you can buy your ticket using touch-card technology. The old trams, c1970s (second photograph), good looks, as far as I am concerned. For me, these two-carriage ‘biscuit tins’ have classic kudos. I love the sounds and the movements they make. I even love the metal seats. Whenever I use these trams, our old friend Victor Ryabinin comes to mind. I can see him now, holding onto the rail at the back of the tram, observing life, as artists do, through the tram’s rear window. Rear Window! That’s a good name for a film.

Mick Hart and Olga Hart at Kaliningrad vintage car show 2019

Above: 2019 Golden Shadow of Königsberg
When things were different, and they often are, the Auto Retro Club Kaliningrad held an international and classic car show. The photo of me in a wide-brimmed trilby (a Fedora) was taken in what was that year (2019) the main arena for car competitions, the carpark of the King’s Residence, Kaliningrad’s most elaborate family leisure centre and restaurant complex. (Tweed jacket courtesy of Mr Wilcox)

Mick Hart in front of Kaliningrad's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

Orthodox Christian Cathedral Kaliningrad
The photograph of yours truly was taken in March of this year (2024) in Victory Square in front of The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Kaliningrad. In days of yore, meaning the early 2000s, this spot was dominated by a large bronze statue of Lenin, since removed to another quarter of the town. With the construction of the cathedral, the centre of Kaliningrad moved from Königsberg’s cultural and spiritual centre, directly in front of the Kaliningrad Hotel, to where it is today. In Königsberg’s days, the area known as Victory Square and everything beyond lay outside the city’s defensive walls. (Yes, I know, from a compositional perspective, it would have been much better had I stood so that I was centred in the photograph in line with the door. It annoys me as well!)

Königsberg relics at fleamarket in Kaliningrad

< Left: Königsberg Relics
A lot of Königsberg was blown into bits and pieces during World War Two, so it is hardly surprising that bits and pieces of its past keep turning up, and a good place to find them ~ in fact the best ~ is at Kaliningrad’s flea market, just to one side of the city’s central market. This photo illustrates why I love this market so much.

Below: QR Code Checkers
Here’s a blast from the past ~ and let’s sincerely hope that it remains that way. Here we have QR Code Checking Officers on duty during the Coronavirus era, not letting anybody inside the cathedral unless they had a QR code proving they had been ‘jabbed’. Looking back on this sinister period of history makes walking in and out of doorways unchallenged instantly gratifying.

Life in Kaliningrad

QR Code checkers monitor access to Kaliningrad Cathedral in the Coronavirus year of 2021

Kaliningrad Botanical Gardens: an autumnal scene of the lake

Above: Kaliningrad Botanical Gardens
Unlike many cities, you do not have to travel far in Kaliningrad to enjoy nature in its natural habitat. This photograph captures the tranquility of the lake in Kaliningrad’s Botanical Gardens. It was taken in autumn 2023.

Above: Kaliningrad Sculptures {Click on images to enlarge}
Kaliningrad is renowned for its sculptures: Schiller, Kant, Lenin and the composition of two fighting bison to name but four. They may possess an attitude of assumed permanence thanks to who and what they are, but this distinction should not cancel out the ephemeral and the esoteric. This purple faceted moggy was last seen sitting statuesque outside Kaliningrad’s latest shopping centre in the central market district, and it is not everyday you will see an updated Russian samovar sitting on top of an oil drum in the grounds of Königsberg Cathedral.

Life in Kaliningrad: Three iconic buildings in Kaliningrad, but the House of Soviets is no more ...

Above: House of Soviets
A poignant picture of the House of Soviets framed between the hotel and restaurant buildings of Kaliningrad’s Fishing Village and the reconstructed ‘New Synagogue’ c.2023. Stand in the same spot today where the photograph was taken to appreciate the laws of transience by which our lives are governed.

Above: CCCP (that’s USSR to you)
As you know, because it’s general knowledge, there’s no time like the past, which is why as a collector of what’s left of it, I was thrilled to discover on a hot day in ’22 an ice cream with an historical theme. After chilling out on it, I was able to say with impunity, “ I enjoyed the USSR”.

Above: Sunny Day in Youth Park {Click on images to enlarge}
They say that ‘youth is wasted on the young’, but whenever I stroll through Kaliningrad’s Youth Park, I put this prejudice behind me and think instead ‘young at heart’. Some would say, ‘never grown up!’ I vow one day that I will attempt to complete every adult ride in the park in series. Until that day dawns, I will continue to enjoy those days when the park is less rumbustious. At the time these photos were taken (May 2024), I was more than happy simply to purchase a cup of specialty tea and sit and drink it on a park bench. The park attendants were filling the planters with flowers, and the sun had got its hat on.

Königsberg villa in modern-day Kaliningrad

Above: Königsberg Villas
It is hardly surprising that when residents of Moscow, Siberia and other far-flung places across this huge territory that is Russia, visit Kaliningrad, they fall in love with the city. Kaliningrad, in all its many and diverse facets, is, by virtue of its Prussian-Russian history, a unique experience, central to which is its surviving German buildings. Contrary to the belief that all of Königsberg was raised to the ground during WWII, many splendid, curious and fine examples of architectural merit are extant, and it is not always necessary to adopt a ‘seek and ye shall find’ approach. In the districts of Amalienau and Maraunenhof, for example, almost every street contains something of architectural significance, and some streets have enough large houses and grand villas on them to make even the most abstemious ashamed of their secret envy.

Above: Contrasting Scenes of Kaliningrad {Click on images to enlarge}
Two cityscape views: one taken from a high-rise flat complex; the other from a balcony (May 2024), to coincide with the first blooms of spring.

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro in the House of Soviets

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro with a Heart of Gold

It’s a venue which immortalises the House of Soviets, serves good beer, hosts music evenings and likes you, the customer.

13 April 2024 ~ Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro in the House of Soviets

Do you believe in coincidences? In my most recent post I wrote about the gradual disappearance of Kaliningrad’s most infamous and controversial landmark, the House of Soviets. Less than a week later, I find myself in a subterranean bar dedicated to that very building.

Bar Sovetov is located in what once was, during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the residential quarter of choice for Königsberg’s affluent citizens.

On foot, it is something of a trek from the city centre to this still sought-after district, but it is one I made on numerous occasions in the days when a bar, long since gone, the enigmatically named Twelve Chairs, exercised a consistent influence and justified the effort.

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad

Whilst in the character of its rooms, Bar Sovetov does not possess the intricacy or the old-world charm that gave Twelve Chairs its je ne sais quoi, it is no less thought-provoking in the nature of its decoration and appurtenances of thematic quirk.

The two-roomed bar, with its truncated corridor leading to the lavs, is very much a pop art haven. Victor Ryabinin, former artist and local historian, would have adored it! Symbolism abounds: ‘Look Out!’ the slogan reads. ‘Big Brother is Watching you!’ You see it above the full-sized wall mirror in which you are watching yourself.

A white face mask framed between two suspended lamps exudes from the wall. Wearing a baseball cap in such a way that it partly conceals its features, it holds to its lips an admonitory finger attached to a long white arm. As with the face above it, the arm emerges from solid brickwork as it would through the fold of a curtain. Both face and arm are whimsical, especially in the matter of their relative dislocation, but irony and surrealism are the uniting forces that bring them together.

These are just two of many examples of Bar Sovetov’s camp milieu. Wherever you look, be it high or low, another element of the quaint and fanciful leaps out to greet and surprise you.

With the obvious exception of Aleks Smirnov’s Badger Club, lovers of the out-of-the-ordinary will be hard pushed to find even among Kaliningrad’s most unconventional watering holes anything that surpasses Bar Sovetov’s quaint burlesque. But for all that it camps it up, the nostalgia has a genuine ring; it springs from a source of real affection. And the humour the props elicit, be it aimed at you and me or tailored to the refined perception of the discerning intellectual, leaves plenty of form intact for the inquisitive mind of the history buff.

The genesis, erection, completion and the long-standing but idle years of the House of Soviets’ occupation are captured step by step in a series of timelined photographs. The images of the building in its promising phase of construction, with cranes on either side, are particularly poignant memories, given that in its obliteration almost identical cranes in almost identical places stand either side of the shrinking structure.

On the opposite side of actuality, a wall in the bar’s first room is a bold painted visual replica, close up and in your face, of the House of Soviet’s exterior. The effect is profoundly Gotham City, gaudy, haunting, claustrophobic but seminally cartoon, a perfect piece of ‘dark deco’ kitsch. Further urbanisation occurs not in the question itself, which is off the wall whilst on the wall, but in the way it is daubed across the wall, which reflects the mind of graffiti man stretched to its utmost limit: “Who,” it asks, “killed the House of Soviets?” If we didn’t laugh, we’d cry.

More real photos of the fated hulk that over its 53-year existence dominated Kaliningrad’s skyline, exciting in its awesome prospect, ambivalent and contentious in what it actually stood for and why it stood for so long, can be found in the bar’s back room.

Mick Hart and Inara at Bar Sovetov in Kaliningrad

It is here that the structure’s rightful place in the socio-political era into which it was given a sort of life or maybe a life of sorts is given historical context. Framed copies of Soviet art, amusing, powerful and all iconic, visually break up the hard brick-wall to which they are attached, whilst in one corner of the room a little shrine pays tribute to the final days of Sovietism.

There, upon a shelf, rubbing shoulders with the printed word and a quaint assortment of nick-nacks, sits a large portrait photograph of if not the architect of perestroika then the man who is widely considered to be its chief executive officer, former General Secretary Gorbachev, twinned in the opposite corner with a replica set of traffic lights, which, for some exotic reason or perhaps no reason at all beyond their anomalous presence and illuminative oddity, cast a lurid reddish glow across the whitewashed brickwork.

The seats in this comic-strip memory, when not authentic 70s’ vintage, are made from wooden pallets, painted to look distressed, put together as benches and kindly equipped with padded seats. However, recalling the slatted wood benches with which Kaliningrad’s trains were furnished twenty-three years ago, such convenient cushioned luxury may be but the useful product of indulgent historical revisionism. Whilst the past is unrelenting in its prescribed but often unforgiving and impractical perpetuity, concessions ought to be made, don’t you think, to our poor post-Soviet posteriors. Historical accuracy has its virtues, but is it worth corns and blisters?

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad

The bar itself, that is the thing on which when you buy your beer it temporarily rests on top and the area to the rear of it, is a content-managed zone, where normal things normally sold behind bars share more than their fair share of shelving space with the weird, the wild and the whimsically whacky. Note the hollow concrete blocks shown in the photo below that have been used to comprise the wall of the bar. Is that or is it not a passing nod to the House of Soviets?

A conforming principle of all such bars, that is to say craft-beer bars, is that the beer selection is written in chalk on good old-fashioned blackboards. What is it, I ask myself, and I suppose you ask yourself too, about this rudimentary practice that makes it so applicable, so pleasingly, conventionally and fundamentally right and so well received in its prime objective, which is to call to our eager attention the dispensation of quality brews? When you’ve found the answer to that one, you might go on to answer the question ‘Who killed the House of Soviets?’ I have a hunch that in both cases we will discover the hand of Old Father Time.

From the six or so beers on offer, I ordered myself a ‘Milk of …?’ Er, a ‘Milk of …?’ What was the name of that beer? Ah yes, now I remember, I bought myself a ‘Milk of Amnesia’. How could you not drink a beer like that, with a name so unforgettable?

In summing up the Bar Sovetov experience, the beer is good. The atmosphere is atmospheric. The people who run the bar are real; in other words, they are genuinely friendly and they are also good at what they do. They effortlessly embody and earnestly convey the qualities prerequisite for fulfilling the role they have given themselves, that of convivial mine host, in an age when many are either not up to it or simply not fit for purpose.

Those who earn their living in the hospitality trade at customer-facing level, would do well to bookmark this truth, that the bar or pub in which they perform is as much a stage as any other and their customers are their audience. Once the curtain goes up, if you cannot manage authenticity, you must put yourself out there, put on a smile and remember that it’s show time! If the act is one the punters like or at least is one that they can believe in, and the beer is good and well kept, they’ll keep on coming back. Loyalty is everything, and that applies to the service industry as it does to everything else, and I cannot think of a better bar more deserving of it than Sovetov.

The main thing:

Bar Sovetov
Prospekt Mira, 118 ground floor, Central District, Kaliningrad, 236022

Link to street map: https://2gis.ru/kaliningrad/firm/70000001082036462

Tel: +7 921 616 36 26
Telegram: https://t.me/barsovetov
VK: https://vk.com/barsovetov

Opening times:
Mon: Closed
Tues to Thurs: 4pm to 12 midnight
Fri, Sat & Sun: 4pm to 2am

Kaliningrad House of Soviets Melts into the Past

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 Soviets!

I must confess (no, it wasn’t me), as I sat on a bench with my coffee and sandwich, looking across the Lower Pond, that the sight of the House of Soviets dwindling into nothing plucked in my nostalgic heart a sentimental chord.

Kaliningrad House of Soviets Melts into the Past

Like it or not, the great concrete monolith has dominated Kaliningrad’s skyline for more than 50 years. Photographed arguably more times and from every conceivable angle than any other structure in Kaliningrad, in spite of itself and for all the wrong reasons, the towering, bulky edifice, with its plethora of empty windows achieved cult status, most notably, ironically and cynically, as a prime example of the best in Soviet architecture, and with its unfortunate reputation for being the house that never was occupied, haunted itself and the city with the cost of taking it down.

Its huge rectangular cross-bridged frame, which had incongruously, but none the less defiantly, replaced the splendour of Königsberg Castle in all its baroque and historical glory, had idled away the years as an unlikely city-centre successor to the 13^th century Teutonic castle, later residence of choice for the region’s Prussian rulers, which eventually became the point of convergence for the city’s cultural and spiritual life.

Conversely, the House of Soviets never became anything more than an object of curiosity and a convenient hook for western media on which to hang derogatory.

In my 23 years of visiting and of living in Kaliningrad, I have to say I have never heard anyone admit to loving the House of Soviets, and yet, to balance that out, likewise, nobody ever committed themselves to hating it

In its lifetime ~ fairly long lifetime ~ I suppose we can conclude that the inhabitants of Kaliningrad neither revered nor reviled the building. It was simply there and where it was, and very soon it won’t be.

<It’s Curtains for the House of Soviets>

Published 2021: It is official: 51 years after its construction and the same number of years of non-occupation, arguably one of Kaliningrad’s most iconic buildings, and ironically one of its most lambasted, especially by the western press, is about to be demolished. I am, of course, referring to the House of Soviets, ninety per cent of which was completed in 1985 on a site close to where once stood the magnificent Königsberg Castle, the East Prussian city’s jewel in the crown, which was extensively damaged in the Second World War and then, in 1967, dynamited into oblivion.

Kaliningrad and things that go clank in the night

Lifting the lid on Kaliningrad’s nocturnal noises

Published: 25 January 2023 ~ Kaliningrad and things that go clank in the night

From the same wonderful chap who brought you Kaliningrad’s midnight leaf suckers (that wonderful chap is me, by the way, just in case you failed to recognise me by the accuracy of the description), we have something at 2am …?

I was just off into slumberland, lulled into this blissful state, which is an exotic and privileged condition for a confirmed and inveterate insomniac, by a series of smiles set in motion by a composition of novel remarks discovered in the perusal of a news report on Yandex.

In this report*, the Press Secretary of the President of Russia, Dmitry Peskov, was responding to the head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky (you know him, he’s the man with whiskers who perpetually wears a green T-shirt) who said, when addressing the World Economic Forum (you know them, the Davos cartel, a super-rich globalist gang obsessed with resetting the world for their benefit at everyone else’s expense), that he doubted the existence of Vladimir Putin. Peskov replied: “It is clear that purely psychologically, Mr Zelensky would prefer that neither Russia nor Putin exist, but the sooner [that] he realizes ~ the sooner the Ukrainian regime realizes ~ that Russia and Putin are and will be, the better for … Ukraine.”

As a roll-call of ghastly phantom-like images, including Tony Blair, Bill Gates, George Soros and other nightmare villains, such as might have been applicably cast in the 1970s’ pot-boiling series the Hammer House of Horror, slipped mercifully from my mind, I was suddenly dragged, hauled out as it were, from the luxury of impending sleep into a yet to be expunged existence, where the Davos set still are but hopefully soon will not be, by disturbing sounds in the street of an incomprehensible nature.

Kaliningrad and things that go clank in the night

It is a selfish but incontrovertible fact that people in my age group can afford to entertain, with less regret than the young, sounds that could be mistaken for a global nuclear incident, but the sounds outside my window seeming rather less than might be imagined for an event on such a scale, had more to do with engines running, metal wotnots clanging together and men calling out to each other in a distinctly blokey and workman-like fashion.

Whatever was occurring it could not be truthfully said to be keeping me awake, as I had mislaid the art and science of sleeping many years ago. No, it was the presence of these perplexing sounds at this fairy-tale-time of the morning that had me all agog.

It was not very long before fantasy overtook me ~ you know how it is in the early hours ~ suggesting I believe that in response to my recent post on pavements some receptive spark in authority acting on the hint had decided to ship the requisite materials needed for renovation, and that even as we slept ~ and even whilst some of us didn’t ~ shipments of hardcore and other materials ferried in by moonlight were being deposited on the grassy knoll in the centre of the street.

This theory had a near-firm basis in a previous early-morning chorus of indefinable noises, the source of which it transpired was a working party busily engaged in the not unreasonable occupation of vacuum-cleaning the grass gone midnight.

The fallen leaves of autumn having been whisked away, it was a small step for an imagination accustomed to leaps of fancy to envision the wartime bunker lurking below the knoll earmarked for refurbishment, contingent on the unlikely event that should the sirens go off all would never hear them, because someone up our street delights in keeping a witless dog that hardly ever stops barking.

Unable to contain myself, and my curiosity, any longer, I slid out from my bed and made my way to the window. I had it in my hand, my camera, and you’ll never give me credit for it, but with it, it was I that took this unreasonably awful photo, which ~ and you’ll have to take my word for this~ shows two or several men mingling with the morning shadows at a time when every abnormal person, those without guilty consciences, are snoring and farting deep in their sleep; they were busy, were these men, busy thrusting big thick pipes down drainholes, sucking stuff out with gusto as if their very jobs depended on it. Yes, there they were, I am tempted to say, waking up the entire street, but that would be a fallacy, as often there is that shitty dog (with an owner whose name must be Mutton Jeff) that barks and barks and barks and barks. And if you can sleep through that, then presumably you’ll sleep through anything: “Did you hear that siren?” Woof! “Did you hear that burglar?” Woof! Did you hear that …? What? Woof! … Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof! What did you say? I said “Woof”!

I consider it fortunate that I’m an insomniac, or I could have trouble falling asleep.

Pleased to look out the window and see things going on which in my youth, that is my very young youth, would fill me with fascination ~ drain suckers, dustbin men, bucket men, tarmac gangs ~ oh, and Robert Brothers’ Circus’ lorries cavalcading for winter quarters ~ I crawled back into the pit, thinking now that I know what it is they are up to should I block out those naughty men’s sounds by recourse to soothing ‘White Noise’ (and just how racist is that!), but before you could say ‘you’re a strange bugger’ and before I could ‘take a knee’, I had bucked the insomnia trend. I was slipping faster than soap on ice into a hallelujah dream fest, a film noir, They Worked by Night! starring noises of a nocturnal nature, hundreds of Königsberg manhole* covers and the gangs of men who go around in the dark lifting those covers up when we are fast asleep or, when we are not, we should be. What more can we say at the end of the day than bring on the ZZZ…

Source:
*Peskov responded to Zelensky, who doubted the existence of Putin – RIA Novosti, 19.01.2023

**Manhole: This is one of those words that we need to be particularly careful of when sycophantically brown-nosing woke in an absurd aberration for gender inclusiveness.

Christmas in Gdansk

Updated: 11 February 2022 | First published: 5 October 2019 ~ Christmas in Gdansk

Christmas in Gdansk is the fourth article in a series of posts that recount my first visit to Kaliningrad in 2000, and my first impressions of the land, the people and its culture.

The idea to celebrate Christmas in Gdansk, Poland, and not Kaliningrad, Russia, was taken because Christmas according to the Russian Orthodox Church takes place on the 7 January. This meant that the 25 of December would be just another day. In Russia, New Year’s Eve is the main event of the festive season and Olga had forewarned us that for Russians this was the big one!

Previous article: First Day in Gdansk

Unwrapping the presents that we had bought for one another in the Gdansk hotel was a first, but after that, followed by a cold meats and cheeses breakfast, the novelty of Christmas quickly wore off. It turned out that being in Poland was no different from being in England: there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. At least in England you can stuff yourself on the much-vaunted Christmas dinner and then collapse in a heap in front of the good old goggle box, but our dinner was another round of exciting meats and cheeses ~ left under towels by the hotel staff who had all gone home ~ and the good old goggle box with its three different channels was broadcasting only in Polish. I couldn’t understand why?

My first visit to Kaliningrad (year 2000) and my first impressions of Kaliningrad and Russia. Links to posts in this series arranged in chronological order:
1. The Decision: My first visit to Kaliningrad December 2000
2. Kaliningrad via Gdansk (23 December 2000)
3. First Day in Gdansk (24 December 2000)
4. Christmas in Gdansk (25 December 2000) {{You are here! 😊}}
5. Boxing Day in Gdansk: Kaliningrad 2000 (26 December 2000)
6. Into Russia (27 December 2000)
7. Kaliningrad: First Impression (27 December 2000)
8. The Hotel Russ, Svetlogorsk (27 December 2000)
9. Exploring Svetlogorsk (28 December 2000)
10. Svetlogorsk to Kaliningrad by Train (28 December 2000)
11. Kaliningrad 20 Years Ago (28 December 2000)
12. Russian Hospitality Kaliningrad (28 December 2000)

Bored stiff, we did venture out into the city in between meats and cheeses, but the closest bar was closed and the next and the next and the next …

Fortunately, we were old enough to have experienced a good many English Christmases, so we hunkered down for the evening with hooch we had stockpiled earlier and nibbled our boredom away on the meats and cheeses left over from lunch.

Perhaps Boxing Day would be better?

Секретное оружие в Калининграде

Мы взлетели!

Опубликовано: 26 August 2021 ~ Секретное оружие в Калининграде

Вы знаете что британские СМИ постоянно твердят о том что Калининградская область является самой милитаризованной зоной на планете? Похоже, моя жена обнаружила то самое секретное оружие, когда однажды вечером пошла в магазин.

Его кодовое название- “Взлети”, но мы будем называть его непрофессиональным именем: Ботинком по Заднице “Земля-воздух”!

Моя хорошая жена выскочила как то из дома, чтобы совершить обычный поход в местный продовольственный магазин. Это небольшой магазин, с хорошо укомплектованными товарами и продуктами.

В тот особенный вечер в магазине находились – она сама, дама, обслуживающая ее, и ни души больше

Внезапно дверь распахнулась, и в магащин, пошатываясь, вошел чрезвычайно пьяный мужчина. Он был “в зюзю пьяный”, как говорят в этих краях.

Раскачиваясь из стороны в сторону и воняя перегаром, он повернулся к двум дамам в магазине и восстребовал денег: “Я голоден!” – гаркнул он.

Наступила тишина.

Все более раздражаясь, он повторил свое требование.

Моя жена, будучи учительницей и привыкшая отчитывать меня по поводу алкоголя, твердо посмотрела на него и сказала: “Если у вас достаточно денег на выпивку, то у вас, вероятно должно быть достаточно денег для того чтобы прокормить себя!”

Хорошо проспиртованный человек очень рассердился.

“Ты б…..!!” заорал он. – Ты меня обязана накормить ! Я буду сидеть в этом углу и не сдвинусь с места, пока ты не меня не накормишь!”

В этот момент в магазин вошел крупногаборитный мужчина. Он купил несколько товаров, и когда он собрался уходить, владелец магазина прошептала ему: “Этот человек в углу очень пьян и требует денег и еды! Я боюсь его.”

“Что? Этот паразит!!” – недоверчиво провозгласил рослый парень, после чего напрвавился к вышеупомянутому джентльмену, поднял его за шиворот, развернул лицом к дверному проему и, тщательно прицелившись, дал ему пинка под зад.

Хотя секретному оружию удалось продвинуть цель примерно на два метра или больше, цель, как будто все еще не убежденная в возможностях секретного оружья, приползла назад за добавкой. Вероятно он был каскадером?

И вновь человек, отвечающий за оборонительную силу башмаков, посчитал нужным обеспечить дальнейшую демонстрацию возможностей его оружия. Поэтому он развернул мишень, тщательно прицелился во второй раз, прицелился ботинком с земли на задницу и вновь запустив смертоносный ботинок, отправил цель в полет.

“О, спасибо, – сказала продавщица, – но я думаю, что, когда вы уйдете, он [пьяница] вернется опять”.

Она неоодоценила рослого галлантного сэра, потому что он был не только очень хорошим бойцом, оснащенным большой парой башмаков, которые, казались мргли принадлежать кому угодно, но он, по всей вероятности, имел опыт управления компании по перевозке грузов, потому что, как только испуганный владелец магазина выразил ему свои опасения, он буквально схватил пьяного мужчину за шиворот и, приподняв его на четвереньки, переправил его через оживленную дорогу, где, как он заверил дрожащего владельца магазина позже, учитывая его пьяное состояние, если нарушитель попытается снова перейти дорогу, он будет сбит проезжающей машиной и прилипнув к капоту, окажется где-нибудь в Польше.

Мораль этой истории очевидна. Если только вы не носите толстый кусок губки в трусах и не возражаете отправиться в Польшу внезапно, агрессивное попрошайничество в городе Калининграде не совсем рекомендуется.

английская версия

Image attributions:

Rocket launcher: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Army-truck-with-weapon/46990.html

Boot: <a href=”https://www.freepik.com/vectors/travel”>Travel vector created by rawpixel.com {Link inactive as of 12/04/2022}

Secret Weapon in Kaliningrad

We have lift off!

Published: 3 June 2021~ Secret Weapon in Kaliningrad

You know how the UK media is always going on about the Kaliningrad region being the most militarised zone in the universe, well here’s a secret weapon that my wife discovered when she was out shopping one evening.

Its code name is Lift Off, but we shall refer to it by its layman’s name: the Ground-to-Air Arse-Seeking Boot!

My good lady wife had popped out of the house to make a routine trip to a local food store. It is a small shop but well stocked with a variety of different products.

On this particular evening, there was herself and the lady serving her in the shop and nobody else.

Suddenly, the door opened and in staggered an extremely drunken man. He was mnoga peearni, as they say in these parts.

Swaying this way and that and reeking of booze, he faced the two women in the shop and ordered them to give him some money: “I’m hungry!” he exclaimed.

Silence ensued.

Becoming more agitated, he repeated his demand.

My wife, being a teacher and used to addressing me on the subject of alcohol, looked at him firmly and said, “If you’ve got enough money to booze, then you ought to have enough money to feed yourself with!”

The well-oiled man became extremely angry.

“You b…..s!!” he shouted. “You must feed me! I’m going to sit in this corner and won’t move until you do!”

At that moment, a man of no small proportions entered the shop. He purchased three or four items, and just as he was about to leave the shopkeeper whispered to him, “That man in the corner is extremely drunk and demanding money and food! I am frightened of him.”

“What, this vermin!!” the strapping fellow proclaimed in a tone of disbelief, whereupon he marched over to the gentlemen concerned, hoisted him up by the scruff of the neck, turned him around to face the doorway and taking careful aim gave him a ground-to-arse boot send off.

Although the secret weapon had succeeded in propelling the target some two metres or more, the recipient, as though still unconvinced of its capabilities, crawled back for more. Was he a stunt man?

Once again, the man in charge of the defensive booteries found himself obliged to provide a further demonstration of the weapon’s capability. So, he turned the target around, took careful aim for the second time, launched the lethal ground-to-arse-seeking boot and sent the target flying.

“Oh thank you,” said the shopkeeper, “but I am of the opinion that when you leave he [the drunken man] will simply return.”

She could not have underestimated the strapping Sir Galahad more, for not only was he a very good shot equipped with a big pair of boots that anyone would be envious of, but he also seemed to operate his own road haulage company, for, no sooner had the fearful shopkeeper expressed her concerns to him than he had literally collared the drunken man and, hoisting him on all fours, proceeded to ferry him across the busy road where, he assured the tremulous shopkeeper, given his drunken state should the offending object attempt to re-cross the road he would be swept away on the front of a passing car bonnet and end up somewhere in Poland.

The moral of this story is plain to see. Unless you are wearing a thick piece of sponge in your underpants and don’t mind going to Poland, and going there very suddenly, aggressive begging in the city of Kaliningrad is not entirely recommended.

Репетитор английского языка в Калининграде:
Развивайте cвои навыки английского языка с преподавателем Oльгой Коростелевой–Харт, имеющей 20-летний опыт преподавания в Великобритании (квалификация выдана Палатой Учителей Великобритании, сертификат за номером 0614508)

Image credits:
Weapon: Andreas_G / pixabay.com (https://freeimg.net/photo/1558247/human-man-military-weapon)
Boot: The Clown A laugh every day (https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=168343&picture=boot-with-teeth)

9th May Kaliningrad Victory Day 2021

Kaliningrad Honours its Veterans

Published: 14 May 2021

9 May Victory Day 2021, and in Kaliningrad, as in the rest of Russia, young and old turned out in thousands to pay their respect to their forebears ~ those who survived and those who died in the awesome and bloody struggle to deliver their country from Nazi tyranny and to honour the inestimable contribution made by the Soviet Union to the defeat of Hitler’s Third Reich.

Last year Victory Day was a rather muted affair owing to coronavirus, but this year Russia’s second most important holiday after Easter was firmly back on track, led by the traditional Victory Day parade in Moscow and marked elsewhere throughout the country with celebrations and remembrance services.

9th May Kaliningrad Victory Day 2021

At 12pm, Olga and I rendezvoused with our friends, Arthur and Inara, at the Home for Veterans on Komsomolskaya Street, Kaliningrad, a large complex of buildings which, as the name suggests, provides homes to veterans who no longer have kinfolk to support them.

Although the service is a private affair, held behind closed gates, it was still possible to see something of the formal ceremony and the cadets of various denominations who took part in acknowledging the debt that is owed to one of the most remarkable generations in modern history.

Cadets in Kaliningrad Victory Day 2021 — Cadets at the Home for Veterans

Cadets Victory Day Kaliningrad 2021 — Cadets at the Home for Veterans

From the Home for Veterans, we walked the short distance to the Мass Grave of Soviet Soldiers and placed red roses on the eternal-flame-lit monument, before driving to the city’s foremost WWII remembrance site, the Monument to 1200 Guardsmen, an impressive obelisk and statue-flanked shrine to the soldiers of the 11th Army who died in the assault on Königsberg.

9th May Kaliningrad Victory Day 2021 — **Mass Grave of Soviet Soldiers**

Mick Hart & Olga Hart Victory Day Kaliningrad 9th May 2021 — **Mick & Olga Hart placing flowers at the Mass Grave of Soviet Soldiers, 9 May 2021**

9th May 2021 Kaliningrad: British & US flags fly with Soviet flags — **Russians do not seem to have the same problem that Brits and Yanks have**
**when it comes to remembering** **their allies!**

Victory Park, an elaborate, grassed, landscaped area criss-crossed with winding pathways and studded with series of steps, lies at the foot of the Monument to 1200 Guardsmen. Today, it was a sea of people, many of which were family groups, proudly carrying the national flag, and also in many cases the flag of the USSR, along with placard-mounted portraits of their relatives who had taken part in the battle of Königsberg or the wider conflict.

Russians carry portraits of war veterans in Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad Russians carrying photos of war veterans

As well as photographs, flags and flowers, numerous participants wore medals and many more were wearing the black and orange striped Georgian ribbon, one of Russia’s most powerful symbols of national pride and patriotism. Some children were dressed in the type of military uniform that their grandparents would have worn during WWII, or, as the Russian’s refer to it, the Great Patriotic War, and both children and adults alike had in some instances donned the Soviet army side-cap, the olive-green pilotka, with its red or green-painted Soviet star badge.

Russians wearing the George Ribbon as a mark of Victory Day respect 2021

Olga Hart & friend Inara place roses at Soviet war monument 9 May 2021 — **Olga Hart & Inara place roses at a monument in Victory Park, Kaliningrad** (9 May 2021)

Sadly, but inevitably, with each passing year the veteran population diminishes, but today we were fortunate to meet a 91-year-old lady veteran, who had braved the crowds and temperamental weather to attend the annual ceremony.

WWII Lady Veteran Kaliningrad Victory Day

During the Second World War, she had contributed to the war effort by providing vital work in the Soviet munition factories. Today, she wore her medals with pride.

Her husband had been amongst those Soviet regiments that had fought their way across the East Prussian region, a punishing military campaign that had culminated in a ferocious artillery assault on Königsberg followed by gruelling street-by-street close-quarter combat in and out of the web of ruins.

One of the lady’s granddaughters, who spoke perfect English, told me that in recognition of her grandfather’s bravery during the Königsberg campaign, not only had he been highly decorated but also a street had been named after him in one of the region’s outlying towns.

It was an honour and privilege to have met and talked with this veteran and her family today and to have had the opportunity to witness such a profound and open expression of respect and patriotism here in Kaliningrad extending across the entire generational spectrum.

Monument to 1200 Guardsmen, Kaliningrad, Victory Day 2021

Vaccines’ Healing Powers Better be Better than Biden’s

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 239 [8 November 2020]

Going down the Pandemic ~ or just when you thought it couldn’t get much worse …

Published: 8 November 2020

With all the gushing, fulsome and hypocritical talk in the western media of a ‘new dawn for democracy’, clearly it is time to steer clear of Google News for a few days until the gloating and rhetoric subsides, and the ‘New Management but Business as Usual’ sign resumes its rightful place among the beer cans and spliff ends of yesterday’s party aftermath. As sure as the Devil finds work for idle hands, he is sure to find soundbites for delusional minds. Best to keep busy.

My wife, Olga, and I are busy translating and editing a book from Russian into English about a young Russian soldier’s experiences as a prisoner in Austria’s notorious Mauthausen Nazi Concentration Camp, known at that time as the Bone Grinder. Not exactly bedtime reading, but it serves to remind us that the privations and hardships endured by the wartime generation puts our gripes about lockdown and the associated inconveniences of Covid-19 firmly into perspective and underlines the difference between the Grim Reaper’s mortality harvest now compared to then as one of existential proportions ~ a difference on the scale of a sniper’s bullet and the bomb that they dropped on Nagasaki.

I am not saying that the situation is good, far from it. You may be of the opinion that it is not good that ‘Healing’ Joe Biden is the new incumbent in the Whitey House, but it is one of those awkward things that we have to live with, and when we think of it in relative terms, coronavirus that is, not the resuscitation of globalism, we would do worse than recall Phil Collin’s words, “Hey, think twice. It’s another day in paradise.”

I am sure those migrants think so, those that are escorted across the English Channel first by the French Navy and then by the British, and when they land at Dover are chauffeur driven to 4-Star hotels. Home and dry, you might say! But it is not such plain sailing for the rest of us.

With summer having waved goodbye and taking with it further opportunities to socialise outside, in, as we have been led to believe, the relative coronavirus safety of pub gardens and on bar decking areas, and with the media everywhere ramping up second-wave horror stories, the imposition of lockdown in the UK and here, in Kaliningrad, self-isolation, or at best cautious socialising, is back with a vengeance.

Vaccines’ healing powers better be better than Biden’s

So, what do you do? Your mother who is about to turn 80 has been looking forward to celebrating this significant milestone in her life with friends at a restaurant. Arrangements have been made, but as the date approaches, one by one her friends shy away, taking the view that discretion is the better part of valour, that there is clear and present danger in social mixing. This is the coronavirus conundrum for older people, is it not? The older you get the more precious time becomes? So do you go for it, regardless? Get out there and live life whilst you can or allocate the time you have left for hiding in the house? It is, to say the least, a difficult trade-off.

The media repeatedly tells us that the infected world is on the cusp of vaccine roll-out, but what does that mean, exactly? A recent article in The Moscow Times¹ claims that “The share of Russians unwilling to vaccinate against Covid-19 has risen to 59% in October from nearly 54% in August, according to the Levada Center pollster.” The same article makes the claim, “almost half of Russians would never vaccinate against the coronavirus regardless of whether it’s produced in Russia or another country.”

They are not alone. People in the UK who I know personally are on the same wavelength. When I spoke to a friend recently, a retired biochemist, a scientist, aged 81, he said that he had never been vaccinated for anything and would not be now. Mind you, I suspect that he owes his longevity more to a frugal diet of muesli and oily fish than to his lifelong avowal of the risk of medication-taking and his strict regime of non-medication use, but then on second thoughts …

Vaccines’ healing powers better be better than Biden’s

In an article from The Lancet², it is affirmed that “Vaccination is widely regarded as the only true exit strategy from the pandemic that is currently spreading globally.” But, “Hold Hard!!” as my auntie used to say (unfortunately, and I am not sure why?), as we read on we find, “… we do not know that we will ever have a vaccine at all. It is important to guard against complacency and over-optimism. The first generation of vaccines is likely to be imperfect, and we should be prepared that they might not prevent infection but rather reduce symptoms, and, even then, might not work for everyone or for long.”

Having read this, you could be forgiven for believing that the vaccine has about as much chance of warding off coronavirus as Biden has of ~ according to the liberal media ~ healing America’s rifts, which the ideology that he represents ironically created. Why else did so many Americans vote for Trump initially and continue to vote for him now?

The vaccine vote still hangs in the balance, but not wanting to take it or, conversely, dying to take it (so to speak) is not a Russian phenomenon, it is global not Russian roulette.

Vaccines’ Healing Powers Better be Better than Biden’s

What we need now is a plethora of articles elevating science with the same degree of shameless enthusiasm as that used to hoist Joe Biden to a level that he does not really deserve. Or do we?

The tone of the liberal media on Biden’s election victory has Biden cast in the image of a crusading saintly Other, ordained by the deity and sent to earth, his divine mission being to restore the neoliberal globalist vision of an incongruous imperialist democracy. If Trump was the pantomime villain that kept oons of leftist scribblers in feverish employment during his term in office, and how entertaining their toil has been, Jo Biden is the Second Coming, America’s last great hope for the salvation of a dying doctrine, everything and nothing that stands between the meltdown of the melting melting pot.

On every American dollar you will find the words, “In God We Trust”. With Uncle Joe Biden about to be installed (they need a couple of days to attach the strings), these words could take on an entirely new and ominous meaning.

Over here, the Almighty is held in no less high regard, but it is also generally believed that vodka cures everything.

For the time being, at least, I think I will stick with that!

References (Vaccines’ Healing Powers Better be Better than Biden’s)

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/11/02/mistrust-grows-for-russias-coronavirus-vaccine-poll-a71929 [Accessed 8 November 2020]
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32175-9/fulltext