Tag Archives: Kaliningrad City of Contrasts

See you in Kaliningrad Russia!

The Decision

My first visit to Kaliningrad in 2000: 23 December 2000

See you in Kaliningrad Russia! is one 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.

Updated: 11 January 2021 | First published: 8 July 2019

I am not, and have never been, a traveller, so my first trip to Russia was as much a surprise to me as it was to everybody else.

The story of my first trip to Russia has been told so many times that it is almost legendary, but for the uninitiated it goes something like this. From my unlimited knowledge of the country, having grown up in the late 60s early 70s on Len Deighton’s and John le Carré’s Cold War thrillers, Michael Caine spy films and Callan, and having been force fed Solzhenitsyn’s novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, at school, as far as I was concerned Russia was the USSR and in deciding to go there I was off behind the Iron Curtain.

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 {You are here! 😊}
2. Kaliningrad via Gdansk (23 December 2000)
3. First Day in Gdansk (24 December 2000)
4. Christmas in Gdansk (25 December 2000)
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)

In the weeks leading up to my departure I took advantage of the internet, using computers in the offices of the publishing company where I was supposed to be working to research my travel arrangements and Russia in general. In those days I was not particularly switched on to the British establishment’s trashing of everything Russian, so I took all of the warnings and don’ts very seriously. Admittedly, it was not all fabrication. This was the year 2000 and the catastrophic after effects of perestroika were still ricocheting throughout Russia.

It was my intention to access Kaliningrad, Russia, via Gdansk, Poland, about which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) warnings were also dire. At this time Poland was independent. It had its own sovereignty and had not yet become a vassal state of the European Union.

The end result of my internet research was that I ended up with a hulking great Lever Arch folder bursting at the seams with the scariest stuff imaginable ~ not a reassuring read for a novice and nervous traveller.

Why Go?

My decision to fly to Russia had not been made on the basis that I wanted to discover Russia or anywhere, for that matter. As I said earlier, I was no traveller. The thought of flying was anathema to me. I had not flown since a school trip to Switzerland in 1971. But, in the summer of 2000, all that was to change.

I met a woman who was later to be my wife. Her name was Olga. Olga was an English language teacher. She was spending a month in London, having brought a group of Russian students on a cultural trip to England. We met, I showed her around London ~ mostly around the pubs of London ~ a relationship developed, and when she had to return to Russia as her visa had expired, and I was faced with the unthinkable prospect of never seeing her again, I decided that if she could not come back to England then I would go to Russia. That this decision was taken after several pints in Clerkenwell’s Wetherspoon’s pub in London is immaterial. I had made a promise, and I had to stick to it!

But I would not be going alone. My fear of flying was so ingrained that I needed a co-pilot. I found one in my younger brother, whose flippant, frivolous and devil-may-care attitude was exactly what was needed on a dangerous mission like this.

See you in Kaliningrad Russia!

What Brits don’t know about Russia you could write on a postage stamp ~ billions of them ~ but one thing we do know is that it snows out there: Russia is very cold.

I cannot recall a single Russian spy film or television series made in the West where there is not a surplus of snow and furry hats, so you can be certain that we spent the weeks leading up to the trip equipping ourselves for Siberia, filling our oversized bags with woolly jumpers, great thick socks, big hulking overcoats, thermal shirts and the must-have cotton long johns. As it happened, even though we were travelling to Russia’s westernmost point, where the climate is not dissimilar to England’s, on this occasion we had been wise to take precautions, as the temperature sank whilst we were there to minus 29C.

In addition to clothing baggage, there was another type, the kind that comes with security. Having read over and over again that we were likely to be robbed at knife point or, at the very least, succumb to spates of pickpocketing, we had taken every precaution and more.

Credit cards were stashed away in various places; credit card company emergency numbers had been written down in at least two pocket books; the names of family, friends and close associates, all of whom could help us if we found ourselves in a jam, were meticulously listed along with contact numbers and emails (where they existed!); and money? ~ we were taking US dollars, some of which I had cunningly concealed in a money belt.

The money belt that I would be using to keep my dollars safe was no ordinary, bog-standard traveller’s belt. Having read somewhere that savvy robbers went straight for the type of belt that you buy from travel-clothes shops, I had acquired from an old army friend an ordinary leather belt which had a zipped liner at the back into which notes could be threaded. This belt wasn’t additional; it was the one that held your trousers up; the notes were very tightly stashed in a thin threaded line, so you can imagine the difficulty of paying for something, especially in somewhere busy such as a supermarket! Still, the currency that I had stuffed inside the leg of one of my socks was not such a difficult enterprise.

After a month of fretting and dwelling masochistically on what it would be like to be plummeting earthwards in a doomed airliner, I was ready to say goodbye.

Before departing (I was inclined to say ‘leaving’), a close friend of mine did all he could to reassure me: “After all,” he said philosophically, “it’s not the flying you have to worry about, just the crashing.”

Next post in this series:
2. Kaliningrad via Gdansk

Awesome Königsberg Cathedral Organ Concerts

Culture on a cold evening

Published: 8 February 2021 ~ Awesome Königsberg Cathedral Organ Concerts

We recently received a kind invitation to attend an organ concert at Königsberg Cathedral. This was the first time that I had been to a concert there, and I was keen to discover if the sound of the cathedral’s pipe organ was as impressive as it looked.

With temperatures outside falling to as low as -17 degrees, we were surprised, happily surprised, to discover that in spite of the capacious size of the cathedral it was warm and comfortable. For a cathedral that had been reduced to a shell in the Second World War by RAF bombing and subsequently and painstakingly restored, the atmosphere and ambience is superb. Lighting is important in any environment, but particularly so in exhibition and concert halls, and here it cannot be faulted.

The colonnades, sturdy walls and Gothic vaulted ceiling served the acoustics well, the hard surfaces reflecting the quieter notes distinctly and the deeper tones with generous resonance. The organ rolled, rumbled and reverberated, the multiple dense sounds thundering spectacularly from numerous points within the buildings chambers.

I will admit that I am not much of an opera aficionado, but on this occasion I felt that the dulcet tones of the singer complimented and contrasted perfectly with the rich and varied tones of the pipe organ.

At the close of the concert, we chose to walk around the back of the cathedral, past Kant’s tomb. My wife, Olga, rightly commented that here, outside and within the cathedral, you can still feel the spirit of the city of Königsberg.

This was so true, and I felt rather guilty that I had not visited the cathedral more frequently since moving to Kaliningrad.

I confess that since the death of our friend Victor Ryabinin in the summer of 2019, I have been purposefully avoiding the cathedral and the surrounding area. The cathedral and Kneiphof island are only a stone’s throw away from Victor Ryabinin’s former art studio and as such constituted the epicentre of his cultural and historical world. There were so many memories that I did not want to face, and so many more, like this evening’s, which he may once have been a part of but now never will ~ at least in person.

But you cannot hide forever, and I was glad that I had agreed to go to the concert.

Even in the falling temperatures and with noses like beetroots, Olga managed to snap off some photos of the cathedral on a cold winter’s night, which capture the magical quality of the external lighting and how it is used to imaginative effect.

Brrrr: It was time to rattle back home on the number 5 tram and, once indoors, make with the cognac!

Königsberg Cathedral Organ Concerts:
Königsberg Cathedral website: http://sobor39.ru/

Concert details for 6th February 2021

Titular organist of the Cathedral, laureate of international competitions, Mansur Yusupov

Soloist of the Kaliningrad Regional Philharmonic, laureate of international competitions, Anahit Mkrtchyan (soprano)

Music and song featured works from the following composers:

A. Vivaldi
A. Scarlatti
G. F. Handel
J. Pergolesi
J. S. Bach
V. Gomez
M. Lawrence,
A. Babajanyan

An Autumn Walk in Kaliningrad

A walk to Max Aschmann Park

Published: 31 October 2020

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.

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.

Original Königsberg house with pan-tiled roof and octopuseye window — 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)

A Christmas tree, Max Aschmann Park, Kaliningrad 2020 — 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 in Max Aschmann Park ~ An Autumn Walk in Kaliningrad — 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.

A walk to Max Aschmann Park — 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 19^th 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.

Autumn trees, Kaliningrad, Russia — Olga Hart ~ Kaliningrad sunlight

Olga Hart Kaliningrad sunlight — Olga Hart ~ Kaliningrad sunlight

Before autumn:

Kaliningrad Green & Adorned with Flowers

Kaliningrad Green & Adorned with Flowers

Link to> Kaliningrad in Autumn Leaves it Out

Kaliningrad Ferris Wheel at Youth Park

Published: 30 September 2020

When I was a nipper, I would like nothing more when we visited the seaside than spending my parents’ money on the funfair rides. Sea and sand are OK to look at, but I like water in tea, and I am no beach lizard.

If you live in or are visiting Kaliningrad, you can get your funfair fix at the Youth amusement park, which is a spacious and well-equipped amusement park across the road from the Upper Lake.

Recently, on my birthday, I was smitten by the regressive desire to go oscillating on the park’s big wheel. This is quite unlike me, as I gave up heights in preference for the sure-footedness of good old terra firma many moons ago. But it was my birthday, I had eaten an ice cream by the lake, and the wheel, which I had often regarded with curiosity whilst partaking of beer at the front of the Mercor Hotel, must have said something to me today like, “you’d better do it now, before you get too old!”

Kaliningrad Ferris wheel at Youth Park

I have never argued with a Ferris wheel before, have you? And today was no exception. But had I have been inclined to do so nothing would have come of it, because Kaliningrad’s big wheel is not one of those fast-moving fairground attractions where you sit with your friends suspended in chairs and when the wheel stops at the top your friend begins to rock it and is no longer your friend anymore, it is, in its construction and spirit of revolution, more akin to the London Eye ~ big, solid, friendly and sedate.

Nevertheless, at 50 metres it is high enough for me, and as we stood on the departure platform waiting for one of the empty cars to descend and allow us to board, I caught myself thinking yet again how unlike me this is, even on my birthday.

Kaliningrad Ferris Wheel at Youth Park

The cars roll around at a gentle pace but even so you clamber quickly aboard goaded to do so by the Imp of the Perverse who is whispering in your ear, “Quick, imagine your trouser leg getting caught on the edge of the car; how embarrassing that would be, to go hopping off towards the end of the platform!”

Mick Hart about to board Kaliningrad's big wheel — Mick Hart about to board Kaliningrad’s Ferris wheel

This thought, or thoughts similar, have you jumping aboard in no time. The car lurches and swings in response to your opposing momentum, but it is alright: the thing seems sturdy enough, and before you can say ‘motion sickness’ you have plonked yourself down on the bench seat.

Olga Hart on Kaliningrad's Youth Park Ferris wheel — Olga Hart not at all frightened on Kaliningrad’s Ferris wheel

The wheel’s cars are in fact quite spacious and would, I imagine, hold six people quite comfortably. The cars have glass doors, so you are fully enclosed, and the wide windows offer an awesome and spectacular view not just of Kaliningrad from an aerial perspective but of the steel lattice-work fabric, nuts, bolts and bearings from which the revolving contraption is made.

Kaliningrad Ferris wheel — View of Kaliningrad’s Ferris wheel and Kaliningrad itself from one of the wheel’s cars

As we levelled out at a 45-degree angle to the ground, the angle of the dangle incidentally causing you to feel more vulnerable than when the car reaches the summit, this is when both the wheel’s superstructure and park layout below are at their most dramatic; and then, slowly, very slowly, as the car begins to rise, Kaliningrad in all its (as I have said before) green glory and contrasting urban extensiveness folds quietly out beneath you inciting a landmark-spotters epiphany.

Königsberg district of Maraunenhof from Kaliningrad Ferris wheel — Looking out across the once Königsberg district of *Maraunenhof* from Kaliningrad Ferris wheel

Away with apprehension and out with the camera, I get some fairly good shots of the wheel itself and some admiral ones of the city. Yes, the photographs would have been better had I come prepared with a proper camera instead of relying on the mobile phone’s, but spur of the moment decisions respect nothing but opportunism so, as I did not plan ahead, I have to be contented.

View of Kaliningrad Upper Lake — Kaliningrad Upper Lake

Kaliningrad boating lake from the Ferris wheel — Kaliningrad Upper Lake

The view from the wheel’s highest point is nothing short of breathtaking, and for 200 rubles a ride (£1.99), presuming you do not own a microlight, this is the next best way to reach the dizzy heights, in other words to see the city of Kaliningrad as you have never seen it before.

Next on the bucket list is a spin on the wheel as dusk settles, when the wheel and the cityscape are bedecked with illumination.

Whereabouts

The Youth Park of Culture and Recreation is located in the Leningrad district of Kaliningrad at 3 Telman Street, opposite the Upper Lake.

Kaliningrad Green & Adorned with Flowers

As summer fades …

Published: 13 September 2020

It only seems five minutes ago that I was remarking on the welcome novelty of buds and leaves appearing on the Königsberg-Kaliningrad trees, and now here we are in September, the leaves turning brown and yellow and falling to the ground.

Early yesterday morning I was alerted to this fact by our cat, who jumped off the sideboard and scampered out of the room. Gin-Ginskey is extremely intrepid when it comes to hunting flies but anything that sounds like a vacuum cleaner is bound to send him dashing for cover, and in this instance the vacuum cleaner was of the large lorry variety, sucking up leaves from the old cobbled streets and pavements in front of our house.

Kaliningrad a green city adorned with flowers

In spring and summer Kaliningrad is one of the greenest cities imaginable, a feature which the art-historian Victor Ryabinin noted was not true of its predecessor Königsberg. In what was the Maraunenhof district of Königsberg and in other areas developed during the first years of the 20^th century through to the 1920s, the streets are lined with Königsberg trees. Now they are old and gnarled, venerable survivors of a brutalised city, but back in the day when they were mere precocious saplings they would not have provided the streets of Königsberg with the leafy green vistas and avenues of which Kaliningrad is the fortunate benefactor.

Indeed, Kaliningrad is a city of green open spaces: along the banks of the Pregel river where warehouses once have stood, surrounding the cathedral on Kneiphof Island, around and in front of the House of Soviets, that most controversial of Kaliningrad’s structures, in the numerous grassed quadrangles between the flats, and around the banks and perimeter of the upper and lower ponds.

Three or four large public parks, each endowed with their own distinctive character, contribute copiously to the leafy green landscape, creating rural backwaters in the heart of the city, which in the spring and summer months form natural retreats from the relentless pace and energy of urban living.

Kaliningrad green & adorned with flowers

Kaliningrad in the kind seasons is also a city rich with blooms and flowers of seemingly endless variety. You will find them everywhere: in the enviable gardens of the Maraunenhof villas, along the banks of the river, in municipal planters and thoughtfully planted flower beds, in the small border gardens that front the old German flats and the cottage gardens lovingly planted and tended at the foot of the Khrushchev flats ~ these borders can be surprisingly large and full of the most eclectic variety of flowers and flora.

You will find flowers adorning balconies, in window boxes and hanging baskets, some so prodigiously and impressively arranged that they are left to spill over on their own accord or are trained to cascade imaginatively into the garden below.

Shrubs, bushes, silver birch, pine, all manner of fir trees ~ even blue ones! ~ are thrown into the mix. Evergreen hedgerows tower above and push their way through perimeter railings, forming dense thickets for garden privacy, whilst fences new and old act as impromptu trellis work for climbing plants of every denomination.

And even though Kaliningrad is a bustling modern city, one of its more appealing attributes to my mind is that here and there you can stumble upon curious pockets of wild naturalistic vegetation, small friendly jungles that turn otherwise neglected spaces and mundane objects into inherently picturesque compositions ~ an old garage door, for example, biffed and battered through age and use, transformed by climbing foliage into a quaint vignette of antiquity or a ropey looking fence entwined with vines instantly elevated to photographic status~ the very stuff that artists delight in for its authentic old-world charm.

Although, as summer retreats, the pines and firs will not forsake us, in a few weeks from now the deciduous varieties will lose their foliage, the scene will shift to winter and the built-on urban landscape will assert itself again.

Hopefully, however, our collection of photographs taken during the spring and summer months will remind you how blessed Kaliningrad is to possess such examples of nature’s beauty and will help to sustain and lift your spirits through the winter months to come.

Kaliningrad Green & Adorned with Flowers

Kaliningrad City of Contrasts

No Laughing Matter!

Continuing with our theme of Kaliningrad City of Contrasts, I was out walking the other day and I came across this rather splendiferous example.

On one side of the road you have this spanking new block of flats; on the other, this rather sad and sorry ruined Königsberg cottage.

Kaliningrad City of Contrasts

Could the latter be restored, I hear you say? Or, is that just the sound of my own Romanticist fantasy ringing inside my head?

If I had a flat which faced the street in the new apartment block pictured here, every day I looked out of my window and beheld this ruined abode, I would be confronted with the question, is this building restorable?

I would need you there to laugh at me.

But something has to be built on this site at some time. So, let us rephrase the question: would it be possible to salvage something from this former home and integrate it into a new build as a historic feature?

You are laughing at me again!

But look at those marvelous chimney stacks, and is that an enamel sign peeping through the trees on the right-hand side? And who knows what may still be lurking on the inside under the debris? Perhaps one of those remarkable tiled Königsberg stoves; 1920s’ door handles; additions and renovations from the Soviet era. If nothing else, the red bricks have to be a reusable, recyclable commodity?

What’s that you say?

It would be easier to keep the curtains shut or buy a flat on the other side of the building.

Philistine!