Tag Archives: Kaliningrad region architecture

On the Polessk Canal Road to Matrosovo Kaliningrad

or how we got there and how interesting it was when we did

Published: 11 July 2022 ~ On the Polessk Canal Road to Matrosovo Kaliningrad

Out on the single-track road that runs along the canal from Polessk to wherever it was we were heading, there’s a sense of going somewhere, which is good enough in itself. The canal, which links the rivers Deyma and Nemunas, provides a mostly parallel route to that place where, when we eventually got out of the car, I would call our destination.

The narrow road, no doubt constructed on the canal’s one-time tow path, is a cambersome experience, dipping, rolling and bowling along. The route takes in vast tracts of overgrown land which, at this time of year, is fifty shades of green, or even more, across and through which the Polessk Canal holds a straight and steady course.

Dotted along both sides of this sweeping tract of water, stand, in varying degrees of stability, old German cottages, typically composed as single-storey abodes but with attic space more than sufficient for filling up with all sorts of things.

On the Polessk Canal road to Matrosovo Kaliningrad

The canal road is like all roads of this nature, unambiguously elevated, and often the humble cottages built on the opposite bank to the water’s edge lie at a lower level. Those homes that abut the road are so close to it that an occupant stepping outside could in any unguarded moment find themselves swept away or knocked for six by a passing vehicle. The cottages in the hollow, in the cut below the bank, are exempt from this particular problem but arguably not from others; they can be so tightly sandwiched against the edge of the road that their windows are nearly contiguous.

Mick Hart Matrosovo shed — **They made stout hinges those Germans did!**

At this time of year, the trees, wild bushes and virile foliage are so profusely laden with leaves ~ embracing, entwining and intimately enmeshed ~ that the houses seem to lose their way. It is not unusual, for example, to see entire portions of house appropriated by nature, swallowed up by all manner of creeping and climbing plants, whilst small trees and saplings jostling for space in front of the windows lead one to conclude that for all its idyllic rusticity subtract the picturesque and what you are probably left with is a multitude of sins, ranging from light-deprived interiors to issues with rising damp.

For the traveller, however, bouncing and bounding along without a care in the world, such phenomena, where they may or conversely may not exist, are of little or trifling consequence. One of the joys of travelling this road by car is that the presence of such houses often makes themselves known to you when you least expect them. The point at which two walls meet (the right angle of a cottage) can lean out from the natural shrubbery where nothing is, or seemed to be, only a moment before, followed quickly by a gable end and then the building in its entirety; only sometimes it does not, as you see as much and no more as the foliage permits.

A good many of these cottages are in states of disrepair that border on amazing qualities of things that refuse to fall down, their ability to remain standing testifying to construction techniques of old, where the need for durability and ‘everlasting’ strength are indubitably all that they should be.

The unifying deterioration is one, however, that could be remedied without considerable outlay, this is to say where painted walls have turned blotchy and brown with age and in some places on higher and lower planes where the substrate screed has fallen away, leaving irregular patches of brickwork exposed to view and the elements. In some instances, however, the pan-tiled or asbestos roofs have given up the ghost: rafters have resigned and the lot has sunk and plummeted inwards. This is not to say the ‘whole lot’. Indeed, the greater proportion of any one structure may have generally held its own against the concerted depletions inflicted by time, weathering, neglect and despair, thus rendering what remains if not exactly practicable to live in notwithstanding liveable.

As this condition is one that marks the fate of detached premises, you can imagine how much more acute the situation can be with regard to the semi-detached, where one half is maintained and the other lies forgotten, even to the extent of appearing, or actually being, abandoned. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish which of the two applies.

**An old German barn with some signs of ageing and later additions**

We travelled the canal route twice over one weekend, enabling me to get a closer look at two buildings in particular. One, a property with torn sheets of polythene flapping from collapsed windows, surrounded by blistered brick and flaking woodwork and bound by a garden resembling that of my friend’s garden back in Bedfordshire, only revealed its occupied status when on the second day of passing a venerable old rustic gentleman, swarthy faced and of matted grey beard, pausing conveniently at his rusting gate to gawp at the awesome sight of a motorised carriage with us tearing past in it, inclined us to believe that here indeed was the owner.

The second of the two buildings that prompted further attention was one which did so on account of its size and shape and also in possessing something more substantial and aesthetic in its character. I stop short of pronouncing it grand, speculating that it may once have been a school or chapel, its cruciform outline and the series of arches framing its entrance suggestive of civic importance and lending to it an air that asserted a presence more commanding than most.

One suspects that the majority of the buildings that I have described are hand-me-downs from the Soviet era, gifted on by folk who had been given them themselves by power of the authorities after Königsberg and its outlying region fell in World War II; in other words, they are family homes passing along and down the generational chain.

Houses that overlook the canal do so from large picture windows and some from the envy-making platforms of dark-wood fretwork balconies

Of course, the picture that I have painted is only one half of the canvas. Although they would be considerably less shiny and new, considerably less conspicuous should they exist in a hypothetical exclusivity created by the absence of their impoverished German neighbours, accomplished restoration projects and executive-status mouth-watering newbuilds share the same verdant space along the quiet, sleepy, secluded banks of this reclusive strip of water.

Kempt and curated, the freshly seeded lawns, attractive outbuildings and accessory dwellings blend neatly with the master home, offering tantalising glimpses into near perfection. Houses that overlook the canal do so from large picture windows and some from the envy-making platforms of dark-wood fretwork balconies, and always these and lesser properties whose gardens touch the canal have a jetty of some description and a motorboat moored nearby.

Such houses stand out like a sign saying, “See what you can do, if you’ve got the lolly!” Let’s take a break and put that idea to music: Dr Feelgood As long as the price is right. “If you’ve got no bread, you’re as good as dead”; “If you’ve got no loot, you just can’t shoot”; “If you’ve got no cash, then you’ve gotta dash”.

Off to Matrosovo in the Kaliningrad region

At the risk or repeating myself, I will say again that out on the single road that runs along the canal from Polessk to wherever it was we were heading, there’s a sense of going somewhere, which is good enough in itself. I suppose it is a fait accompli that sooner or later the canal veers off and that when it does it takes with it the narrow track that was originally its in the first place.

The road continues, but now is wide enough to accommodate oncoming traffic with ease. The wheels dip and the suspension rocks across the slightly less than level tarmacadam but soon rumble and jog respectively as the relative smoothness is abruptly replaced by sequential concrete sections. This type of construction always puts me in mind of a certain approach road that may still exist, and which was certainly there in the 1970s, on the way to Norwich, although in this geographical neck of the woods a road consisting of concrete slabs would, I guess, have been laid back in Soviet times.

I cannot remember exactly whether the road changed before or after we crossed a broad sweep of rapid rippling water, which I presume is the Deyma River, but there is no forgetting the bridge. It is a heavy metal-plate affair, with the ability to pivot on a mechanical mechanism. Lower than the road it services, when vehicles pass over the access slope it throws them slightly off-balance producing at the same time a mildly alarming clunkety-clank, likewise at the opposite end when leaving. The bridge appears to be solid enough but could do with a coat of paint.

On and on and on and on and then hoving into view is the signpost for Matrosovo. So, could this be where we were going and had we now arrived?

Matrosovo Kaliningrad region

On entering the village Matrosovo to the right you will see a quite substantial, attractive German house. It has been professionally reroofed using either terracotta tiles or their modern metal equivalent. The gable end, the end that faces the road, has a chevroned woodwork finish, and the house stands in its own grounds amidst a very nice cottage garden. Just beyond it, by the side of a silted brook, is something rather more down to earth, meaning decidedly earthy. A patch of ground, grazed relentlessly into dust is home to some rather whiffy cows and chickens as well as the paraphernalia required for sustaining them, such as wooden shacks full of hay and, scattered about in no particular order, various metal feeding troughs, buckets and the like. Suddenly I was young again, back on the farm in my youth!

On the whole, Matrosovo village has stood the test of time.

And now for something completely different; for across the road from this veritable Ponderosa looms an abnormally high metal fence and poking out above it is a rare, colourful if not grotesque very large plastic what-have-you ~ an inflatable how’s your father? It most resembles a bouncy castle but if that is what it is, it must have been made for giants. Moving on, as we were, we can discuss this curious contraption and other astonishing Matrosovo things at a later and more convenient date in my follow-up post on Matrosovo Park.

The road, that by now has turned into a dusty hardcore track, wends along a little until it meets a junction. Here you have a choice, which is either left or right, as before you lies the wide, the deep and the rather fast-flowing Matrosovka River, the mouth of the Neman River, destination Curonian Lagoon.

There are such a lot of waterways, rivers and the like, criss-crossing in these here parts that it is hard to determine who is which, but if at this point in my post you were to drive straight on the name of the river would matter less than the sound of going plop and feeling incredibly wet.

Avoiding this fate by turning right we followed a twisting hardcore lane with buildings on either side; this comprising the greater part of Matrosovo village, a village that instinctively feels like one with a genuine East Prussian heritage. (You have no idea what one of them feels like? Then you have to visit Matrosovo.)

On the whole, Matrosovo village has stood the test of time. Yes, there are modern renovations of older buildings that could have been more sensitively restored in order to vouchsafe original features as well as newbuilds recently landed from the planet Super Affluent, but by and large along this meandering lane the houses of Matrosovo have managed to escape the worst excesses of insensitivity during periods when conservation was as alien a concept as ridiculous things like women prime ministers.

Matrosovo Kaliningrad region

The German cottages of Matrosovo are predominantly wooden-clad structures. Detached or semi-detached each possesses bilateral features and a sense of uniformity in the relative space that they occupy, both vertically and horizontally, with one or two exceptions. Some are super-simple, standard pitched-roof jobs, their longest dimension aligned with the road but can be gable-end facing, a not unusual arrangement, in fact typical in this region but inversely so in England. Others, a little more posh, have a large, pitched dormer-style window intersecting geometrically, which, in the semi-detached variation, is the dividing point between the two properties.

Not all of the houses in Matrosovo conform to the wooden-clad principle, but plank cladding is certainly prevalent. Where it is employed, it is usual for the cladding to stand proud along the upper portion of these buildings, sometimes with no embellishment, in other words it starts as a plank and ends that way, but others are pointed, like the upturned staves of a traditional picket fence, or even nicely rounded so as to form a decorative apron.

Wooden clad house Kaliningrad region — **Wooden cladding with ‘pie crust’ finish**

Hardly any of these domiciles, whether partly hidden behind the trees or exposed to view, have escaped the make-do-and-mend and aesthetic-free philosophy of Soviet DIYers, who during the era of their tenure thought nothing of tacking a porch on here or amending a section of pan-tiled roofing there, usually from the loan of a ubiquitous piece of asbestos or by recourse to any number of unremarkable materials but admittedly novel techniques that may have conceivably rectified but certainly not improved, and yet when they are beheld today cannot fail to gratify with their touches of eccentricity and unique dedications to social history.

A number of these establishments are still endowed, if only just, with their original German barns. Here, in the former province of East Prussia, German barns can be as big as their imperialist ego or as small as there … (please send your answer to Mick Hart on a postcard). In Matrosovo, they are generally, and may I say delightfully, less alpha in their bearing, but notwithsatnding no less endowed with the universal characteristics of the whoppers you find elsewhere.

Former East Prussian German barns are built on the following principles: The lower parameters are composed of red brick, which make them solid, sturdy and handsome to say the least, but the upper sections are made of wood, simple wooden planks nailed to a framework of beams and supports. The roofs, which are pan-tiled, are heavy and seem to press down forcibly, much to the detriment of the load-bearing structure beneath, causing the wooden mass to assume a splayed or bowed effect. But without wishing to delve too deeply into principals of design that are better left to the experts or for you to research at your leisure (I shall be asking questions, later, children) a revisionary approach implies that perhaps these barns are made this way to spread the load as needed.

German barn of typical construction Kaliningrad region — **A buckling barn of typical German construction**

If so, time, neglect and Soviet hap-hazardry has tested them to the limit. Many have succumbed to various states of collapse ~ roofs stoved inward, walls buckling, bits missing, doors as unhinged as Justin Turdeau, and even when this is not the rule but rather the exception, proletariat bodgery is written on almost every surviving quarter like a vandalistic antecedent to the gunge that liberals delude themselves is ‘street art’ but those who live in the real world routinely condemn as graffiti.

Notwithstanding, the buckling barns of imperialist Germany are inspirational remnant art-forms from the hands of Father Time meant to give living artists something bold to emulate. They are a concomitant of hieroglyphics each one firmly rooted in its era, each with a story to tell for those who know how to read them. And what they may have ceased to be from a utilitarian standpoint they more than make up for in visual delight and empathising Romanticism.

Matrosovo Kaliningrad region on the Deyma River

Along the side of the village riverbank, at the back of the houses and land adjoining, old boats can be found, some which with their happy occupants would have come whistling in to dock many years before but, for reasons we may never know, have whistled nowhere since. Lamentably becalmed, strangled by waterside plants and the encroaching branches of trees, their fading blue and yellow paintworks (they are invariably blue or yellow) and weather-cracked mouldering windscreens project on the first encounter a sad and silly impression. Wanted once, will they ever be wanted again? There they sit, like single mums abandonned (even bereft of benefits), dull and dowdy, water-logged, without engine and nowhere to go. No matter where in the world you trek, be it by river or sea, rest assured you will always find that old boat sitting somewhere: becalmed, sad, no longer needed, possibly taking in water, largely forlorn, resolutely forgotten.

East Prussian house with nice garden — **Up the garden path**

Gardens, unlike boats, are not so easily forgotten but, like most things known to man, you can either devote your life to them or live your life and let them live theirs. In Matrosovo both philosophies and the nuances that derive from them are open to conjecture. It all depends on how you like your gardens: traditional, cottage, formal, pre-planned, secret, maintained, natural, exotic or simply not at all. They are all here in Matrosovo.

Country Cottage neat garden Matrosovo Russia — **Lovely wooden shutters and a nice garden**

Reconditioned and new houses tend to go for reconditioned and new gardens. Many contain supplementary/ancillary buildings and seem to go on forever. They remind me of our cat: they have been tended, pampered, revitalised, put down to new grass (even our cat has grass) and may contain a pond or two or a stream that runs gently through them embroidered by trees large and mature that attest to a natural border. (My word, that’s some cat you’ve got there, Mick!)

Yet Spick and Span is but one short band on the overall garden spectrum. Others have become repositories of overspill modernity, among which, and noticeably, is the human compulsion not to recycle when one can simply discard. Old tin buckets, fridges, enamel bowls and any number of garden implements and ornamental wares that have ceased for some reason or other to provide either the useful or novelty value for which they were intended, peep sleepily out from behind clumps of yellow dandelions, play hide and seek in the long wild grass or prop themselves up wearily against the separating sides and quiescent, weed-fringed borders of geriatric sheds that have seen it all and more and may just go on seeing it when we have long since gone.

Heaven forbid, however, that you would find anything of this nature in the exalted gardens of immaculate conception. But don’t worry; it does forbid. Not that the shuffling, folding, falling sheds complain. Like old folks that have been leaving home since the day that they were born but never got further than the garden gate and will never go anywhere now, except in one direction, they belong to a realm of static contentment upon which no amount of the present has neither the will nor authority to intrude.

On a hotter than usual summer’s day this then is the village of Matrosovo, offering all that the senses could wish for ~ a time-honoured rustic seclusiveness on the balmy banks of the Matrosovka River.

Next up: Would you Adam and Eve It ~ the contrast on the other side of the village! (Wait a mo, I’ve yet to write it …)

Places to visit Around the Kaliningrad region
Angel Park Hotel
Fort Donhoff (Fort XI)
Architectural surpises along the Zelenogradsk coast
Amber Legend Yantarny
Zalivino Lighthouse

Architectural Surprises on the Zelenogradsk Coast

Surprising but true

Published: 22 April 2021 ~ Architectural Surprises on the Zelenogradsk Coast

The following photographs were taken whilst walking the Zelenogradsk coastal route, starting from the promenade end and heading away from the town. To the left lies the land; to the right, on the other side of the hedge, the Baltic Sea.

See: An Introduction to the Zelenogradsk Coastal Route

The route is divided into two sections, as indicated by different shades of block paving. One of these is the pedestrian walkway; the other accommodates all manner of locomotion. Which one is which is given away slightly by the presence of broken lane markings that run along the centre of the narrower strip.

Whilst this ‘road’ is closed to conventional vehicular traffic, among the roller bladers, skateboarders, bicycle and electric-powered scooter riders, small open-sided ‘buses’ can be seen trundling past at regular intervals crammed with tourists and those just unwilling to walk the not insubstantial distance that lies between the end of the prom and the white sandy beaches beyond. From one end of this route to the other is quite a trek, so if you are not much of a walker, all you need to do is hop onto one of these charabancs and away you go.

Architectural surprises on the Zelenogradsk coast

The first building to be photographed was this modern hotel peeping through the silver birch trees from behind a rather impressive wall of brick and granite construction, which has a wrought-iron railing top backed by translucent polycarbonate privacy panels. Such screens are ubiquitous in this part of the world, as is block paving. Whoever it was who introduced them it was not me, but, from a commercial viewpoint, I sincerely wished it had been.

Architecture Coastal Route Zelenogradsk — **Photograph 1: First hotel on the Zelenogradsk coastal route**

I suppose as modern buildings go, from the angle of this first photograph it all looks fairly prosaic, the functional attraction lying in those long, sweeping, curved balconies, which, I should imagine, guarantees discerning hotel guests a magnificent sea view.

Moving along a little, it soon becomes apparent that what we have been looking at a moment ago is merely a wing extending from the main body of the building (photo 2).

Hotel on Zelenogradsk coast — **Photograph 2: A wing of a very capacious hotel**

Photograph 2 is a shot looking back at the wing, detailing both the curved balconies mentioned earlier and, above them, in the roof, recessed balconies of the sort that feature extensively in the design of the Hotel Russ, Svletogorsk’s premier hotel, which, sadly, if my informants do not deceive me, has recently closed.

Grand Entrance Hotel Zelenogradsk — **Photograph 3: Hotel entrance**

Photograph 3 reveals the front of the hotel, a solid-looking establishment with large arched windows, a tier of ‘porthole’ windows above and a grand entrance extension, the curved top an enclosed balcony in glass and below a recessed entrance hall fronted by a colonnade which supports the upper balcony.

The fourth photograph shows the cloistered effect achieved by the colonnades and gives some indication of the not inconsiderable space occupied by this building.

Architectural feature of Zelinogradsk hotel — **Photograph 4: Side view showing the cloistered extension of the entrance**

Photograph 5 is taken looking away from the corner of the last building depicted. The brick pier wall continues and behind a solid gate, accessible via intercom system only (they like that sort of thing here, as well), sits another hotel, set back from the road, its central tower and turret paying appreciable homage to the architectural Gothic legacy from which it is descended, a striking feature reflected in and harmonised by the pitched window gables surmounting the rooftop balconies.

Modern Gothic on Zelenogradsk coastal route — **Photograph 5: In the Gothic style** ~ **Architectural Surprises on the Zelenogradsk Coast**

As in the first hotel, the second design also favours roundel windows, and these are apparent yet again, but on a much larger scale, in the massy and incomplete edifice looming out of the background.

Vast Arcade of Windows Zelenogradsk Hotel — **Photograph 6: Windows aplenty through which to see the sea**

Photograph 6 depicts the curvilinear glass and steel structure of the furthermost point of the first hotel, whilst 7 gives you a fuller perspective of the Gothicised structure as seen above the entrance gate.

Modern Gothic Zelenogradsk — **Photograph 7: Closer look at Gothic styling**

The hulking monolith captured in photograph 8 reminds me of the J-hangar still resident on the site of Polebrook Aerodrome in the UK, a former US air base left over from World War II.

Hotel Svetlogorsk Coast like an aircraft hangar — **Photograph 8: Big and yet unfinished** ~ Architectural Surprises on the Zelenogradsk Coast

In this picture, the building takes on the appearance of two half segments of a giant arch but as a later photo reveals (photo 11), taken from the opposite end of the building, the effect is an illusory one, as the unfinished project is missing its central vertical section which, had it been in place, would have completed the visual aspect of single-span uniformity.

From the distance, it appears as if the hulk is wearing my Uncle Son’s string vest, but at closer quarters it looks the same. The green string undergarment, which must have once been used, I presume, to screen the unfinished structure, is somewhat tattered and torn and now simply hangs there, adding to the forlorn neglect with which the building is heavily imbued. There is little doubt from the round tower, half risen at the front of the building (photo 9), that at its conception ‘big’ had gone hand in hand with grand, but unless something dramatic happens and happens fairly quickly, call me presumptuous if you will, I feel that there is little chance of booking a room in this hotel at any time in the near future.

Photograph 9: A would-be grand entrance
Photograph 10: Not quite complete

After this cavalcade of large and impressive, it is odd and oddly reassuring to discover that the landscape suddenly changes, revealing two normal-sized single residences, both senior in years to the previous buildings, sitting favourably in decent-sized plots behind a lush, green privet hedge. (photo 10)

German Houses on Zelenogradsk Coast — **Photograph 10: Houses of some age along the Zelenogradsk coastal route**

The first house has had a recent makeover. Its original terracotta pantiled roof, which may have been replaced after the war with asbestos, as is the case on the house adjacent, having been fitted with a metal roof of tiled terracotta profile. Note the use of pretty carved edging boards, picking out the gradient of the Dorma windows and the nuanced roof levels, a theme accentuated by the blue and white fascia boards that run along the recessed gabled ends and emerge again in the blue window shutters, all of which make for an attractive cottage effect.

Large Hotel Small Cottage on Zelenogradsk Coast — **Photograph 11: Different scales, different times: cottage & hotel**

Photograph 11 also gives you an accurate idea of the scale differential between the J-hangar and the house I have just described.

The next house along (photo12) is obviously nowhere near as quaint and fetching as its neighbour, and may in fact be flats, but the roof format is novel and so far the building has survived land grab for development.

**Photograph 12: A residential property overlooking the sea in Zelenogradsk, Russia**

We now come to that part of the coastal route where a conglomeration of different buildings vie for visual attention, the scene dominated by one incredibly large but incomplete hotel, which out-scales everything else around it (photograph 13).

Massive Unfinished Hotel Zelenogradsk — **Photograph 13: One of those ‘you can’t miss it’ hotels** ~ Architectural Surprises on the Zelenogradsk Coast

Disequilibrium of scale is nowhere more easily demonstrated than in the stark juxtaposition of the towering grey colossus with its single domicile rectangular neighbour (photograph 14).

Modernist house on Zelenogradsk coastal route — **Photograph 14: Built in the Modernist style**

Built in the contemporary Modernist style, David is to Goliath what light is to dark, and whilst I am only guessing mind, since the owners have not asked me round to consider the finer points of their property, from ergonomics to materials used, in fact everything about this house, speaks to me of ‘smart home’. Take the precedence, for example, of the cut around in the fence to make way for the pampered bough of that tree (photos 15 & 16). How many trees either have their more assertive branches lopped off or have to wait a100 years or more before they can force their will upon a constraining fence? Not many trees can boast the patronage of such an ecologically enlightened owner as the one who designed, planned, built or simply resides and enjoys this light, airy, modern abode.

Photograph 15: Tree with a view
Photograph 16: A tree-friendly fence

Three paragraphs back I used the phrase ‘conglomeration of different’ buildings, and you can see what I am getting at in photographs 17 and 18. Photograph 17 reveals a building defined by steel, glass and cladding, which mixes its angles with its curves in such a way that it would not be out of place situated among the first of London’s Dockland’s building’s that popped up futuristically above the lines of Victorian terraces during Maggie Thatcher’s reign.

Architecture Zelenogradsk coast — **Photograph 17: Not London Dockland’s but a building on Zelenogradsk’s coastline**

The commercial building in photograph 18 follows the lines of the former, but the brick fascia softens and traditionalises the general impression, and the pale colour scheme, quite by chance I am sure, falls satisfactorily into the company by which it is overshadowed.

Surprising architecture Zelenogradsk coastal route — **Photograph 18: A gallery of windows from which to see the sea**

Putting things into perspective, photograph 19 provides a view of the commercial building framed against the back of its ‘Dockland’s’ neighbour, whilst the long shot in photograph 20 freezes two people in time on their bicycles and pins down the scale differential of the adjacent buildings.

Architecture Zelenogradsk coastline — **Photograph 19: New-builds in relation to one another**

Architectural Surprises on the Zelenogradsk Coast — **Photograph 20: Putting it into perspective**

Next on the list, photographs 21 and 22 spell tasteful. This house, houses, apartments ~ what do you think? ~ synthesise modern lines with a diamond-shaped brick-infilled frieze, the type of which is evident on a number of Königsberg buildings extant in Kaliningrad.

Photograph 21: Architectural surprises on Zelenogradsk coastal route
Photograph 22: A residence of class

The overall impression is an amalgamation of the past and the present; bold but not brash; and you have to like the look and feel of those three-section big arched windows.

Whilst there is no shortage of different, alternating, archaic, modern, breathtaking, surprising, lavish, opulent, historic and ‘you name it, it’s here’ type of architecture in and around Kaliningrad, what is surprising, given the rest of the prolificity and sweeping variation in design and style, is the indisputable fact that the region as a whole finds itself extremely fence-challenged ~ more about that in a later article.

I would like to think that the old, tin, corrugated fence that encloses the properties in photograph 23 is not a woeful misjudgment made both by restrictions of budget and limited DIY skills but is merely a temporary fixture, knocked up to conceal ongoing building or garden work. This may well be the case, although whilst construction site hoarding in this part of the world is commonly metal and corrugated, it is usually identified by rather garish alternating blue and white panels, whereas home-owners’ fences can be anything in the same material from glistening silver to chocolate brown. In this instance, along this exclusive stretch of beautiful coastline, let us pray for respect and sanity and keep our fingers crossed!

Surprising architecture in Zelenogradsk — **Photograph 23: Lovely houses ~ shame about that fence!**

The first house that rises in tone as well as substance above the offending fence is not the heretic that you might think it is. It could be a remodelled German house or a new-build that has been given the half-timbered look, either by adding the requisite woodwork or painting it on to achieve the desired effect (photo 23). Along this coastal strip it is, by virtue of its standalone difference, yet another example of the energised eclecticism that devolves to the individual if left to his own devices, free, that is, from the overwhelming behests and underwhelming mediocrity imposed by stolid planning restrictions.

Whilst this may be the only example of a love affair with medievality on this particular route, it is not alone. A number of revamped and new-build properties in and around the Kaliningrad region are in receipt of half-timbered dressing, and even high-rise tower blocks have not been deemed exempt.

The house depicted here wears it well, and heralds at this point on our route a return to in-scale housing, as illustrated in photographs 24 and 25.

Photograph 24: Attractive house on Zelenogradsk coast
Photograph 25: An individual approach

Admittedly, the intervening presence of a compact castle, built of or faced with red brick, intrudes somewhat (photograph 26), but for me and all like me who went Gothic when Goth subculture and steampunk were just a twinkle in a fad-fashion eye, the question what is not to like about a building overlooking the sea which has a tower to the front and flanking turrets on all four corners is one that need not be asked. One presumes, however, that the roofline has yet to be finished, and one would hope that such completion will entail the suitable erection of conical rooves on top of the central tower and the four adjoining emplacements. Photograph 27 shows the ‘castle’ from the return direction of the coastal route with the half-timbered residence to its left.

Photograph 26: A Russian man’s home is his castle!
Photograph 27: A castle & a half-timbered house

To end this tour, I include for your delectation three more photographs exemplifying the widely contrasting nature of architectural genres with which this magnificent stretch of the coast has been populated.

The first (photograph 28), is what I think of as the route’s halfway house. It is a hotel/restaurant/bar, whose architectural style is a flamboyant composite, a self-contained contrast that reflects the divergent compositions of which it is a part. For example, the balconies on the first floor could have mirrored those above them, not only in style but also in materials, but why not have Art Deco curves made from masonry on one level below a platform base supporting angled wrought-iron fencing on the next? More angularity is achieved in the vertical triangulated stairwell window, which is escorted on either side above eaves level by a pair of Gothic parapet piers surmounted with sloping tiles, whilst the roof itself manages a low pitch profile thanks to the two hulking chimney stacks that rise up from the back like mighty sentinels.

The penultimate photograph (29) shows what happens when true juxtaposition is given free reign. The neoclassical addition in the background, which rubs shoulders with the angular pastiche in photograph 28, is yet another surprise on the architectural catwalk along which we have walked together. It is referred to in a previous post: An Introduction to the Zelenogradsk Coastal Route.

And the last photograph in this post (30) is reserved for what used to be and thankfully still is — a survivor of the ever-changing present. It even has a proper wooden fence!

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Svetlogorsk Promenade a New Chapter in its History
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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

Support the Restoration of Zalivinio Lighthouse Kaliningrad

A Cold Day at Zalivino Lighthouse

Published: 7 January 2021 ~ Orthodox Christmas Day in Russia❤: Support the Restoration of Zalivinio Lighthouse

You might think that the last place you would want to be on a freezing cold winter day, with the wind whistling round the Baltics and shivering your timbers, would be perched on top of a derelict lighthouse. You might feel the need to ask why? Why would anyone in their right mind want to do this? And you might believe that the answer lies notably in the psychological reference above ‘in the right mind’. But there are at least two other factors that need to be considered: one, history and a love of it; two, that in the right mind or not, we happened to be in the right place ~ I think it is called nearby.

Zalivino lighthouse is located in Zalivino ~ where else? Ahh, but it is not that simple. Zalivino is a village nestled against the Baltic Coast in Russia’s Kaliningrad region. Now, if you were to conduct a search on the internet for the exact location of the lighthouse, you might find that lighthouse or no lighthouse you run aground on the rocks of all sorts of name changes and district alterations, so, for the sake of simplicity, let us say that the original (German/ East Prussian) name of the village was Labagiene, which, after the Second World War, when the region fell into Soviet hands, then became Zalivino.

The lighthouse, however, is named Rinderort, after Labagiene, renamed as Haffwinkel, merged with the settlement of … and if that has not confused you, I do not know what will.

But moving swiftly on: The first lighthouse to be constructed on this spur of land at the edge of the Curonian Lagoon was made of wood. Erected in 1868, it was illuminated by a simple kerosene lantern. The brick tower that replaced the wooden structure was built in 1908, extending upwards to a height of 15 metres, with a cottage appended for the lighthouse caretaker. In the intervening years, between the tower’s construction and World War II, subsequent modernisation was sporadically enacted.

After the war, when the former East Prussian region passed into the hands of the Soviets, the lighthouse and the land it occupied fell under the auspices of a local fish farm, and the ruined building next to the tower was an occupied dwelling. From what people say, the lighthouse continued to function during this period, but ceased to do so in the post-Soviet era.

Whilst some of the dilapidation evident today has accrued from common disuse and neglect, rumour has it that in the 1990s the building was cannibalised. Bricks, always a sought-after commodity, went missing as did the bronze lantern and other metal parts from inside and around the dome of the tower. Inevitably, as the tower and surrounding buildings fell steadily into ruin, it soon attracted the unwanted attention of vandals, among whose number were also arsonists.

By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, lighthouse romanticists and those interested in the history of the region in which they lived had seen their numbers swell substantially, as tourists, both from further afield in Russia and from other parts of the world, travelled to Zalivino to pay homage to the lighthouse. In 2020, this influx received greater impetus by the closed-border restrictions caused by coronavirus and the Russian government’s related incentive to boost domestic tourism.

In recognition of the site’s heritage status and its destination as a tourist attraction, in July 2020 it was acquired by the Museum of the World Ocean, whose remit it is to preserve, conserve and renovate the structure as a place of historical interest. The renovation will include restoration of the bronze lantern, the tower, caretaker’s cottage and the rare weather mast.

The estimated cost of renovation is somewhere in the region of 18 million rubles (approximately £179,575.47), and a fundraising campaign is already underway.

Support the restoration of Zalivinio Lighthouse

When we arrived at the lighthouse site on this very cold day, we found the lighthouse and its associated buildings at the end of a winding track. We parked up in front of some long, old, German buildings, which I presume were once part of the fish farm complex, and then walked the short distance to the rickety gate and compound fencing behind which the tower resides.

A large banner, pictorial and text-laden, told me in Russian all I wanted to know about the future plans for the site, and had my command of the Russian language been better, I would have been well informed.

As we approached the compound two people donned their coats and emerged from a little blue mobile hut. These were the caretaking staff and representatives of the World Ocean Museum.

If we had been in England this site would have been strictly out of bounds due to the ongoing process of renovation, coronavirus and the fact that it was winter and therefore out of season and off limits, but we were not in England so we were not told to bugger off! Instead, we were cordially welcomed, and, after five minutes of jumping up and down on the spot to keep the circulation going, we were taken on a tour of such as there was to see.

First, we were invited to contribute something to the renovation fund, which was a bit embarrassing as we had to have a whip round. We were carrying plastic, naturally, but otherwise we were cashless on the Curonian Spit. It was not much, our 500 roubles, but as the old lady says, every little helps (That is a saying, by the way, not a reference to my wife!).

The roubles having been procured and placed for safe keeping into a very attractive antique lamp placed on top of the sites’ well, the guide began her talk. The historical background of which she spoke is augmented and illustrated by four or five display boards attached to the wall of the larger of the domestic buildings. Alas, however, these signs are all in Russian, but, with the timely assistance of my wife, I was able to capture the tour guide’s gist.

Support the Restoration of Zalivinio Lighthouse Kaliningrad — History boards at Zalivinio Lighthouse Kaliningrad region, Russia

Moving around to the bay side of the buildings exposed us to the full frontal of the rude breeze, where, to tell you the truth, we had difficulty concentrating. I hopped around on one foot, and my wife’s nose had turned so red that it could easily have stood in for the lighthouse lamp. However, I refrained from suggesting that my wife’s nose would make an excellent money-saving alternative to a replacement lantern out of concern for my personal safety, that and the fact that my teeth were too chattery to formulate the words.

Olga Hart at Zalivinio Lighthouse, Kaliningrad region, January 2021 — Olga Hart feeling cold in front of Zalivinio Lighthouse (Jan 2021)

Olga Hart on the shore at Zalivinio Lighthouse, Baltic Coast (January 2021) — Olga Hart feeling colder a few feet from Zalivinio Lighthouse next to the sea

Although the outbuildings offered little in the way of shelter, much of the roof is missing and the doors and windows have gone the same way as a substantial proportion of bricks, inside proved kinder for our bones than shivering outside on the water’s edge.

Keeeper's cottage at Zalivinio Lighthouse, Kaliningrad Oblast — Zalivinio Lighthouse Kaliningrad region: much work to be done …

For all the ravages of time and misappropriation of materials, the building itself appears to be quite sound and the massy wooden beams strong and durable, and, with a little imagination ~ a lot, if you have not got much ~ it was not difficult to envisage these rooms reconstructed and reinstated to their former glory.

I did not expect that we would have access to the tower in its present condition, my conclusions based once again on precedent in my native country, England, where Health & Safety and all that jazz would most likely have stymied any such fancy, so imagine my surprise as well as untrammelled delight when the question was put to us, ‘Would you like to climb the tower?’

The guides warned that the last stretch of the staircase was almost vertical, so be careful, and that was it, off we went. It was so refreshing to be allowed to do something that relies for safety on your own common sense.

Mick Hart in the tower of Zalivinio Lighthouse, Kaliningrad region — Climbing the tower of Zalivinio Lighthouse (Mick Hart, 2021)

View from the unrestored lighthouse Zalivinio — Out of the window all at sea

The lighthouse tower is by no means wide, and the mode of ascension is by a stone-stepped spiral staircase. Windows at regular intervals permit you to gaze out at the increasingly elevated scene as up you excitedly go. Suddenly, you feel the cold breeze on your face, alerting you to the fact that you are almost at the top, and there, in front of you, is a short metal ladder. To gain access to the lamp room and viewing tower, it is necessary to climb these steps, so, although I am not a great fan of heights, it had to be done and up I went.

Zalivinio Lighthouse, Baltic Coast — Metal ladder leading to the lighthouse dome and viewing platform (January 2021)

Mick Hart in the dome of Zalivinio Lighthouse, Kaliningrad region, January 2021 — Where better on a freezing cold day? Mick Hart, top of Zalivinio Lighthouse (Jan 2020)

Already inside the dome was a gentleman dressed in a woolly hat, overalls and thick white gloves. He was busy wrapping webbing around his body and adding and fastening buckle attachments to a series of belts. Surely, I thought, he is not … But he was.

He looked up at me looking at him, and I said, in my best Russian, “Stratsveetee,” to which he replied with the same. He gave me a lingering look and smiled, as if he had worked out what it was I was thinking: “Rather you than me!”

Lighthouse restorer — Heritage restorer at Zalivinio Lighthouse

Restorer Zalivinio Lighthouse — Heritage restorer at Zalivinio Lighthouse

The dome, which is windowless and open to the elements, can easily accommodate three people. In its centre stands a solid brass or bronze stanchion, which would, I surmised, once have supported the warning lantern. Some of the dome’s outer wall panels are absent, nicked, I imagine, but the decorative metal railings that encircle the platform looked present and correct enough.

To say that the view from the top is breath-taking, particularly on a day like today, would be as predictable, I predict, as coining the phrase that Zalivino lighthouse is located in Zalivino, but look at the photos and judge for yourselves.

Zalivinio Lighthouse view from the lantern tower (Jan 2021) — Zalivinio Lighthouse, Kaliningrad region, Russia. View from the top (January 2021)

Whenever I visit a conservation/restoration site, I never fail to be impressed by the commitment and dedication of the people involved, and today was no exception. Many would have taken one look at that fellow hanging on his harness doing whatever it was he doing at a height of 15 metres in temperatures well below freezing and their response would be, rather you than me Gunga Din.

Mick Hart Baltic Coast — Just hanging around at Zalivinio Lighthouse Kaliningrad. (Mick Hart, Jan 2020)

I am sure that the suspended man’s name was most likely Valordia, Sergey or Vladimir, but all the same in my estimations he was up there all right and doing it ~ whatever it was he was doing. I bet not even Gunga Din himself would have left his Indian restaurant in Bethnal Green to do such a thing as that!

Support the restoration of Zalivinio Lighthouse

Eighteen million rubles is a lot or rubles to muster, so if you could see your way to donate to this worthy cause it would be most appreciated. Not only will you have the satisfaction of knowing that you have done your bit to preserve an important heritage site, but through the donation incentivisation programme you will be eligible for certain rewards, which include tours of historic places and other cultural and entertainment benefits.

Please click on the following link for more details on how to donate and for further information on the restoration programme: Old Lighthouse Zalivino

Outline of the lighthouse restoration programme

Restoration of the bronze lantern
Restoration of the lighthouse tower and caretaker’s house
Restoration of the weather mast, complete with navigational signs
Repair the pier and undertake dredging work along the coastline
Improve the quality and appearance of the grounds around the lighthouse
Create an exhibition of the history of navigation and business in the region.

A regular report on the collected funds and completed works of the Museum of the World Ocean in conjunction with the foundation Beautification and Mutual Assistance will be posted on the official website of the museum: www.world-ocean.ru

Examples of donation rewards

Donation: 1,000 rubles
Exclusive tour, with a tea party for 2 people. Choice of one of the following destinations:

Royal Gate
Friedrichsburg Gate

Donation: 5,000 rubles
A collective tour on a fishing boat, a ‘Rusna’ kurenas (invitation ticket for 2 people), approximate duration 2 hours. This service is available in summer from 1 June to 10 September.

Exclusive tour, with a tea party for 2 people. Choice of one of the following destinations:

Lighthouse in the village of Zalivino
Royal Gate
Friedrichsburg Gate
Maritime Exhibition Centre (Svetlogorsk)

Donation: 50,000 rubles
A collective tour on a fishing boat, a ‘Rusna’ kurenas (invitation ticket for 2 people), approximate duration 2 hours. This service is available in summer from 1 June to 10 September.

An exclusive tour for 2 people of the ‘Depth’ exhibition, with a visit to the GoA ‘Peace-1’ accompanied by a hydronaut.

Exclusive tour, with a tea party for 2 people. Choice of one of the following destinations:

Lighthouse in the village of Zalivino
Friedrichsburg Gate
Royal Gate
Maritime Exhibition Centre (Svetlogorsk)

Donation: 500,000 rubles
The opportunity to hold two corporate events at the Museum of the World Ocean (up to 30 participants; maximum duration 3 hours each), choosing from the following venues:

Sea Hall NIS Vityaz
Royal Gate
Friedrischburg Gate
Warehouse
Maritime Exhibition Centre (Svetlogorsk)

The opportunity to stay in a guest cabin on the NIS Vityaz (invitation for 2 people) (1-day duration).

A collective tour on a fishing boat, a ‘Rusna’ kurenas (invitation ticket for 2 people), approximate duration 2 hours. This service is available in summer from 1 June to 10 September.

Exclusive tour, with a tea party for 2 people. Choice of one of the following destinations:

Lighthouse in the village of Zalivino
Friedrichsburg Gate
Royal Gate
Maritime Exhibition Centre (Svetlogorsk)

An unlimited number of free visits to the lighthouse exhibits in the village of Zalivino.

Awarded the Beacon Friends Club sign.

Invitation to the annual ceremonial meeting of the members of the Beacon Friends Club (June 8, the day of the Lighthouse Service, on the territory of the lighthouse in the village of Zalivino).

>>>>More culture>>>> An Englishman at Schaaken Castle

Addendum
Have you spotted the deliberate mistake? Zalivino Lighthouse is, of course, in Zalivino and not ‘Zalivinio’ as it sometimes appears in this text. I apologise unreservedly to anybody to whom this mis-spelling may have caused inconsolable and even terminal distress, especially to those who may have incorrectly assumed that Zalivinio is somewhere in Italy (is it?) I know of many wordsmiths who sadly may never recover ~ shame that …
I wrote this piece whilst I was perfectly sober, which might go some way towards explaining why I have got my words in such a mucking fuddle. However, after careful consideration, I have resisted the desire to rectify the mistake on the grounds that it may incriminate my permalink, an occupational hazard of blogging that fellow bloggers are sure to empathise with even if the rest of the universe will forever stand in judgement. Er, sorry.

An Englishman at Schaaken Castle Russia

Castle, Cheese and Church in the Kaliningrad Region

Published: 28 October 2020

{See Feature image attribution at the end of this article}

Schaaken Castle is located in Nekrasovo, Kaliningrad Oblast. The castle, which was built for the Teutonic Knights in c.1270, was built on the site of an ancient fort and consisted of an octagonal walled-enclosure with two outer baileys. In the first half of the 14th century the original building, which was of wood construction, was replaced with stone. It was atypical of most of the castles constructed by the Teutonic Knights in that its perimeter wall was curved, almost round in formation, a feature that remains to this day.

(Photo credit: Caspar Henneberger, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schaaken_Henneberger.jpg)

(Photo credit: Mmdocent, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%A8%D0%B0%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D0%BD_2.JPG)

In 1270, the castle defended the coast of the Curonian Lagoon against attacks from a Baltic tribe known as the Skalvians, who, by 1277, had been defeated and subjugated by the Teutonic Knights. Towards the end of the 13th century, Schaaken Castle’s defensive role took on greater significance in protecting the border and coast from repeated raids by Lithuanian pagans. It became one of a number of castles strategically positioned to prevent the Lithuanians from storming through the Curonian Lagoon. Towards the end of the 14th century its military function was controlled from Königsberg. The castle was destroyed by fire in the early years of the 17th century and only partly rebuilt. One of its greatest claims to fame is that Peter the Great and Catherine stayed there on three separate occasions between 1711 and 1717.

During the 19th century it was remodelled in the Romanticist-Gothic style, and it was during this time as part of that refit that the distinctive corner towers, which can still be seen today, were added.

(Photo credit: Сергей С. Петров – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73135063)

At the end of the Second World War, the castle, which in 1945 was a family farmhouse, came under Soviet state control. The land was requisitioned and used until the 1960s as a collective farm, the castle’s rooms hived off as domestic units. For a short period of time, the castle acted as a children’s home.

By the mid-1970s, the castle had begun to fall into ruins, but one family salvaged the rooms that were inhabitable and continued to live there.

In the early 21^st century under a joint Russian-German venture some renovation took place, and the castle was opened as a small museum exhibiting medieval artefacts. In 2012 the museum was damaged by fire.

And on 10 October 2020, it was visited by an Englishman in Kaliningrad, Mick Hart (I don’t suppose they would welcome a wall plaque?).

An Englishman at Schaaken Castle, Russia

Today, Schaaken Castle sits red-brick, gaunt and broken on a small eminence on the curve of a sharp bend overlooking the village of Nekrasovo within the Kaliningrad region, Russia.

To be perfectly frank, the first glimpse of what was left of the castle was one of unalloyed pathos, and getting out of the car into the damp-cold air, on the poor little bit of waste-ground that served as a make-shift carpark, and the sight of the wooden hut, the pay gate, knocked up of old odds and ends of ill-fitting boards, and the dog next to it, rather less than a thoroughbred, hanging off a piece of rope at the front of a homemade dog kennel, perpetuated this first impression. It had not taken me long to work out that this establishment did not enjoy the privileges and patronage of either the state or a private consortium, in other words that it was not part of the National Trust or any other such august body, which is a crying shame as Schaaken Castle has a rich and noble history, both in its East Prussian and Russian context.

Today, there was a man at the castle gate. He came out of the rather sad little hut in his jeans and baseball cap and, after some money had exchanged hands, we were allowed inside.

We passed through the entrance into the enclosure. To the right and close by to us was what remained of the castle’s living quarters. The functional building is little more than a narrow strip of red brick, not battle scarred but weathered and distressed from years of neglect and, from what I have been told, actions amounting to cultural vandalism.

For the sake of our hosts, and Victor, I tried to look and sound interested, not an easy thing to do as I was busy wondering if, apart from the narrow remains and crumbling exterior, there was anything here to see.

Had I been on my own, however, what there was would have been enough. It only takes an old brick or two to get my nostalgic flails turning, but, amazingly enough, we were not alone. There were four or five small groups milling around in the courtyard and, I would soon discover, about 20 more visitors at subterranean level.

This was where we went first. I had perplexed myself enough wondering what the proper name was for the small Gothic ‘towers’ erected at either end of the castle building, high upon the roof level, and going down underground seemed like a good idea.

No sooner had I begun descending, down the steps under the low curved brick ceiling, than out came my wife’s, Olga’s, mobile phone, and I was instructed to pose for a photograph. Needless to say, this would be one of many photos, but I restrained my natural inclination to criticise her illicit love for the camera, reasoning that should I write a piece for my blog on our visit to the castle, photographs would be needed and besides, no matter how much I complained, if 10 years of Arsebook-incentivised photo-snapping had taught me anything it was that such remonstrations are just about as futile as asking a liberal to examine his conscience.

So, I posed for the photograph graciously, grimaced just a bit and eventually life resumed.

Mick Hart going underground at Schaaken Castle, Kaliningrad, Russia — Mick Hart going underground at Schaaken Castle

Down below, we found ourselves in one of two vaulted chambers. Space was relatively limited and the floor uneven. This was no dungeon by any stretch of the imagination, but the curators of the castle had seen fit to imply that it had been by using what space there was to mount an exhibition of medieval torture. You cannot blame them. Castles and dungeons go together like beer and hangovers; the two are inseparable, and there is nothing like an excursion into the dark side of human nature to draw in the punters and make them feel normal.

There were two chambers in this vaulted basement. We were in the first and in the second, the group of about twenty people I mentioned earlier, who were gathered together listening to the commentary of their guide, who was a young, stocky, bearded fellow. On hearing us talking in English, the guide called out to me in English. He addressed me as if I were an English gentleman (which, of course, I am) and I replied in kind, causing some of his audience to chuckle. On the way out, I was able to get my own back by addressing him in Russian, at least enough to state that “Excuse me, I have to go now as I want to drink vodka.”

Although the diabolical apparatus exhibited in the underground vaults are knocked-up scaled-down examples accompanied by photographs and text, if this sort of thing appeals to you there is enough to see, and from what I could make out the guide was doing a very good job of engaging his congregation.

Later, this same guide, on finishing his tour and we finishing ours, presented me with two small gifts outside the castle gate; one being part of a red brick from the castle itself, with the name of the manufacturer impressed into the surface, and the other a long, crooked smithy-made nail.

An Englishman at Schaaken Castle Russia — Mick Hart with Schaaken Castle guide and historic iron nail

On reflection, I do feel more than a little guilty for accepting these gifts. There is not much left of Castle Schaaken, and it is evident to me that it needs giving to and doing to rather than taking from. “Conscience. What a thing. If you believe you got a conscience it’ll pester you to death,” Humphrey Bogart’s Fred C. Dobbs once said. And am I not very proud to have these artefacts displayed on the shelf in my attic? “Ahh, hypocrisy, who needs it?” ~ I said that.

Inside the walls, the living quarters, constituting three rooms and an entrance hall, are enclosed and complete, but the taller structure to which they are appended is a narrow, crumbling shell, the wing extending to the rear in a state of open collapse. The surmounting crenellation of the main structure has survived, and the Gothic interest it stimulates is further assisted by the balancing presence of two turrets raised at either end to form the highest points of the building.

**End towers to the extended section of Schaaken Castle.**
(Photo credit: Сергей С. Петров, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File)

Inside the three rooms, the curators have done their best to mock-up exhibits pertaining to the days when knights fought each other in armour and chain mail. There are a number of historical wall charts that map the history of the castle and of Königsberg, and a small diorama depicting a Soviet living room comprised of real artefacts and furnishings.

Outside, in the oval courtyard, other exhibits can be found demonstrating the skills of medieval artisans, and you can try your hand at archery. The centre of the courtyard contains what appears to be a combat ring, an area of ground set aside for re-enactors to demonstrate their skills of medieval martial arts. At one side, and close to the wall, a viewing stage complete with canopy has been erected, and in front of this, on a lower platform, a chair has been affixed where, no doubt, during tournaments the adjudicator presides and who, at the close of the contests, hands prizes out to the victors.

In one corner of the compound, stands a large, brick building, which has undergone extensive renovation. It contains the castle’s cafeteria, but, as enticing as it was on a chilly day like today, we reluctantly avoided it in keeping with the official guidelines to limit association in the wake of coronavirus. My wife, who lives by her Facebook images, made sure that a couple of photographs were taken of us standing next to the window shutter, on which the skin of a wild pig had been nailed (not a good advert for a vegetarian! ~ not too good for the pig either).

Mick & Olga Hart at Schaaken Castle, Kaliningrad region, October 2020

There are more buildings that run along the end of the defensive wall, but these are hollowed out ruins. Beneath them, however, lies another chamber containing the castles well, and this is well worth a visit (ah hem).

To speak honestly and plainly, it does not take you long to see what there is and what there isn’t left of Schaaken castle. And yet, if you are a Time junky like me, this is irrelevant, as it is enough to visit and to rub shoulders with so much history. Having said that, however, even on an inclement day like today there were 30 or so visitors in the short time that we were there. Imagine how many more there would be if funds were allocated, first for a comprehensive programme of renovation and then for the installation of a fully fledged East Prussian museum!

Cheese-making centre

The second leg of our trip today involved using our legs to walk the short and pleasant distance from the castle to the local cheese-making centre. The friendly guide, who had presented me with gifts earlier, advised us to follow the castle wall into the meadow and cut across it to the cheese-making plant from there.

This route allowed us to take in just how massy the granite-boulder perimeter wall was, how high and thick and curved. It also allowed our friend Sergei to introduce me to some concrete silos in which at one time hay would have been stored for farm animals. I had always wondered what these concrete cylinders were and was slightly disappointed to find that they were not some kind of rocket launcher.

From these disappointments, it is only a short walk from the castle to the cheese-making plant, which is housed in a long, large, old brick building. From the looks of it, I conjectured that in a previous life it had most likely been a cattle barn. Inside, the presence of iron rings in the original wooden uprights and walls seemed to lend my supposition credence. The supports and cross timbers were a mixture, some extant to the original structure others added in sympathetic style, replacing, no doubt, earlier ones that had gone too far down the road to decay to bring them back to life.

Nekrasovo cheese-making factory, Kaliningrad Region, Russia — In here they make and sell lots of delicious cheeses!

In the centre of this capacious barn stands a rectangular counter where one can purchase all manner of cheeses, whilst on the left a central display unit and shelving extending around the L-shaped perimeter overflows with what they used to call up North in England ‘suckers’, but which we more civilised on our way down South colloquially referred to as sweets.

At the opposite end of the room, and to the right of the entrance, the brick wall ends at waist height, the remainder finished in glass, allowing visitors to look inside at the cheese-making process at work.

During my appreciation of the finer elements of the building and its history, my wife, Olga, had been procuring an adventurous selection of sweets and cheeses, which she passed to me for carriage as we emerged from the front door. On the shop forecourt stood a large decorative … “What do you call it in English?”

“Millstone,” I replied. “I’ve got one of my own; it’s called a wife!”

Our Russian friends enjoyed this sleight, as they had my previous remark, when, concerned that I might find the castle wanting in things to see, they asked me, “Is it [the castle] interesting enough?” To which I replied, “It’s fine. I love anything old … that’s why I love my wife!”

Fortunately, after 20 years together my wife makes allowances for me, and as long as I was carrying the chocolate and cheeses and doing an excellent job of alerting our party to the pavement presence of sheep droppings (Smartree Gavnor!!), which is where my knowledge of Russian language really excels, she was happy to let me babble inanely.

I shut up for a few moments whilst we were walking back through the village of Nekrasovo. It may only have one street, but now I had the opportunity to see at closer quarters, and therefore in more detail, the humble rusticity of the low-build German cottages and, of course, later domiciles that reared out and above the natural and cultivated vegetation, a little too obtrusively for scale and historical comfort.

The circuitous route we had taken also permitted us to see the castle from the opposite side of the enclosure, looking now at the perspective from the road to the T-shaped structure with its crumbling external walls and collapsed interior. It was obvious from this angle that to safeguard against further and irreparable dilapidation precise and extensive remedial work was urgently required.

Schaaken Church

From the castle, we drove the short distance to Schaaken Church, another ruined edifice of historical importance. Had it been built as a Gothic folly it would have been a wonderful evocation, but although its degenerated condition inspired reveries of a Romanticist nature, as the ruin it actually is, and as with all ruined churches, it was wreathed in a sense of loss that transcended the fault lines in bricks and mortar. What happens to all those prayers, all that hope for salvation once a church is abandoned and dies?

Through nature’s reclaiming influence ~ spindly trees, climbing plants and bushy overgrowth ~ the rectangular tower and outer walls, though partially screened from the road, are visible still. As with all ruins, the sight triggers an irresistible yearning to explore and, as with most ruins, when you get there you realise that so much human traffic has been there before you over the years ~ spot the early graffiti ~ and so much time has elapsed that it is an enduring mystery how the accumulative and many moments invested in the building are still able to exert such a powerful stimulus upon the imagination.

From a distance, this particular building looks less desecrated than it actually is. Close up comes the discovery that the roof is missing, the gaping holes in the walls are not all vestiges of former windows and much of the brickwork spalled on the outside are, on the inside, hollowed out in parts exposing the rubble core.

Adding greatly to the Romanticist ideal of the atmospheric ruin is the thick carpet of undergrowth that reigns supreme where once stone slabbed floors and pews would have been. The photograph that we had taken of us in the nave from inside the tower serves to illustrate the extent of the church and the extent to which nature is capable of re-asserting its claim over man-made structures, whatever they set themselves up to be.

Mick & Olga Hart inside Schaaken's ruined church, October 2020 — Mick & Olga Hart inside Schaaken’s ruined church, October 2020

Mick Hart Englishman in Russia at Schaaken Church — Mick Hart going up in the world at Schaaken Church, Russia, October 2020

It was just as well, then, that from the church we were taken to enjoy the view from an outcrop of land looking out over the bay. Our journey took us through an interesting and altogether uneven tract, which we would not have been able to traverse had we been travelling in anything else but a 4×4.

I cannot claim that we were off the beaten track, because the track was very beaten, but the joy was that it took us through one of those wild, densely vegetated areas that you stumble across now and then in this fascinating region, which bristles with all kinds of dwellings from different times of origin in all conceivable states of disrepair or stark modernity and whose spanned periods reflect the ethos of each epoch, with a heavy accent on Soviet make-do and esoteric improvisation.

I particularly liked the small series of boat houses, stamped with the individualism of their creators and imaginatively constructed from tin, asbestos, wood and concrete and/or made from the requisitioned back of trucks. These monuments to the Mother of Invention in association with build from what you’ve borrowed, which once would have looked so bold and brash, had, courtesy of the softening effect of time, settled in very nicely, achieving a singularly peculiar and yet quaint harmony in the leafy back-stream settings in which they had come to rest.

When we reached the end of our road (as we all must), the water-front opened out from the narrow stream against which the proud boat houses sat into a wide stretch of water, beyond which a distant Curonian Spit could be seen.

A slight breeze lifted a chill from the surface of the water, a coincidence of no deterrent to the two or three fisherman congregated at the waters’ edge, who, nevertheless, were complaining bitterly about the size of their catch, nor did it seem to worry the boating fraternity, several of whom were coming to shore in a small flotilla of motorised dinghies.

Inland, close to where we were at, a monument had been erected, typically demarcated by a heavy metal chain in black, testifying to the fact that back in the 1940s’ Russian lives had been lost along this stretch of water in running battles with the incumbent Third Reich. During WWII, Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg) and its region was the scene of many a fierce battle and is therefore of special interest for anyone having a keen regard for military history.

All this history today had made, and was making, me thirsty. Anticipating that this would be the case, I had taken the wise precaution of bringing along a couple of bottles of Lidskae, whose contents I was destined to enjoy later this afternoon when we returned with our friends to their home.

An Englishman at Schaaken Castle, Russia

Schaaken Castle reminds me of a larger and ‘more grand on scale’ replica of a friend’s flat ~ it is being tarted up but needs a lot more doing to it. Having said that, I enjoyed my visit to the castle today. It really is hats off to those people, such as our guide, who put in so much time and effort in maintaining, running and raising funds in order to bring such unique heritage treasures as Schaaken Castle to the notice and appreciation of the public at large. It has not escaped me that with the right sort of planning and investment this modest attraction could be transformed into something monumental, something of a feather in the cap of the region’s cultural history. It already has the makings of a success story; all that it needs now is Vision, Support and Commitment ~ and there is your happy ending.

Essential Details

Schaaken Castle Heritage Museum
Ulitsa Tsentral’naya, 42, Nekrasovo, Kaliningrad Oblast, 236008
Tel: 8 (906) 211-73-00

Opening times:
Monday:        Closed
Tuesday:        10am–6pm
Wednesday: 10am–6pm
Thursday:      10am–6pm
Friday:           10am–6pm
Saturday:      10am–6pm
Sunday       10am–6pm

(Feature Image Attribution: Dordoy, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_schaaken2.jpg)

Zelenogradsk New Sea View Apartment Blocks

Zelenogradsk’s new sea-view apartment blocks are duneright amazing!

Revised 1 April 2024 | First published: 19 August 2020 ~ Zelenogradsk New Sea View Apartment Blocks

Now, whilst in Zelenogradsk, Russia, if you take the coastal route written about in my previous posts, you will eventually come across what could with accuracy be described as an architectural wonder of our modern age.

As noted in those previous posts, the block-paved thoroughfare runs parallel with the sea, but on walking it you reach a point where a series of low-level private flats, not so terribly old, obstruct you from making further progress. At this juncture, you have no option if you want to proceed but to continue your walk in land, a route that very soon brings you before a rather prosaic development residential in nature, most of whose flats which were up for sale last year are up for sale this year (2020). But as you turn to the right a most amazing visual thing happens, helped not a little, I suspect, by the mediocre tenor of the flats you passed a moment ago. In less than 18 months a new development has sprung from the ground, which, in its domineering height, prodigious bulk and latitude and by dint of its sheer proliferation in a relatively short space of time, really knocks you for six.

Completely out of scale with everything around it and consuming more ground than a migrant camp in Calais is the most enormous high-rise residential estate that I have ever encountered. With your senses still reeling from scale fright, the foreground flats and those behind them marching regimentally down the steep fall of the hill, grab you by the Gothics. If, like me, you are a Gothic freak, adore Gothic almost as much as drinking a pint of real ale in the company of Nigel Farage, then you will put aside any prejudices that you may have adopted against kitsch and lap what you see before you up like a Westernised Bela Lugosi on a boy’s night out in Butlins.

Gothic towers in Zelenogradsk Russia — **Gothic ~ get the point!**

Here, there are more than enough perpendiculars, faceted angles, towers, turrets and pinnacles to give every Gothic addict the fix they crave and need. Yes, I know that these structures are modern, but I have personally consulted with Tom Cat Murr in whom, he has assured me, no catatonia has been induced by their 21^st century origin.

**Zelenogradsk Apartment Blocks with a touch of Gothic**

I am not sure, however, that either he or I feel the same way about the estate’s alter ego, those just as massy structures that run in line with their Gothic neighbours along the unfinished roadside and which extend at right angles from them.

**Zelenogradsk flats, Russia: two styles face off against each other** ~Zelenogradsk New Sea View Apartment Blocks

The flip side to the Gothicised coin is a vast battery of impressive apartments built, correction embellished, in the Neo-Classical and Neo-Renaissance spirit. Designed with corners, angles and twists enough to thwart prescribed conformity, and assisted in this respect by the natural decline of the landscape, along whose downward curve this Goliath series of buildings march in the most dramatic manner, the stacking effect of shelves and ledges, inclusion of white panels, many adorned with relief motifs, and woven into the frieze a colonnade of arches strike a Kensington/Chelsea chord in me, chiming, whilst not exactly in tune but all the better for it, with a nuanced note in their juxtaposition against the light-brick infill. The icing on top of this pastiche cherry has to be the recessed oval, a final flaunting touch of extravagance clearly seen at the front and centre of the classic Dutch-styled gable.

**The icing on the top** ~ Zelenogradsk New Sea View Apartment Blocks

Whatever your feelings towards these 21^st century additions to Zelenogradsk’s built and natural environment, you have to admit they are a big improvement on the experimental, rectangular-limited, mass-housing pre-fab models constructed during Stalin’s reign and the clunky pre-cast concrete jobbies, known as the Khrushchyovka, that went up at an alarming rate in the late 1940s and 50s.

Nevertheless, for all their ubiquitous uniformity and quick-assembly triumph over the lauded principles of aesthetic finesse, they, these seemingly once drab predecessors, have, with the re-evaluation that typically comes with the passing of time and hindsight, acquired, especially in recent years, an era-defining nostalgic status similar in intrinsic import to the cult of personality.

However, whether today’s apartments that are changing Zelenogradsk’s shoreline profile into a high-density urbanised landscape will be accepted so sympathetically by tomorrow’s generations depends on values we cannot predict. As with everything in our immediate lives ~ only time will tell.

Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

An Englishman's Experiences of Life in Kaliningrad

Tag Archives: Kaliningrad region architecture

On the Polessk Canal Road to Matrosovo Kaliningrad

or how we got there and how interesting it was when we did

On the Polessk Canal road to Matrosovo Kaliningrad

Off to Matrosovo in the Kaliningrad region

Matrosovo Kaliningrad region

Matrosovo Kaliningrad region

Matrosovo Kaliningrad region on the Deyma River

Architectural Surprises on the Zelenogradsk Coast

Surprising but true

See: An Introduction to the Zelenogradsk Coastal Route

Architectural surprises on the Zelenogradsk coast

Awesome Königsberg Cathedral Organ Concerts

Culture on a cold evening

Support the Restoration of Zalivinio Lighthouse Kaliningrad

A Cold Day at Zalivino Lighthouse

Support the restoration of Zalivinio Lighthouse

Support the restoration of Zalivinio Lighthouse

Outline of the lighthouse restoration programme

Examples of donation rewards

An Englishman at Schaaken Castle Russia

Castle, Cheese and Church in the Kaliningrad Region

An Englishman at Schaaken Castle, Russia

Cheese-making centre

Schaaken Church

An Englishman at Schaaken Castle, Russia