Tag Archives: Kaliningrad

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro in the House of Soviets

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro with a Heart of Gold

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

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

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

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

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

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mick Hart and Inara at Bar Sovetov in Kaliningrad

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

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

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

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad

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

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

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

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

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

The main thing:

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

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

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

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

Kaliningrad House of Soviets Melts into the Past

What goes up must come down, but it took 50 years to do so

29 March 2024 ~ Kaliningrad House of Soviets Melts into the Past

I go away for four weeks, and this is what happens! In my absence, someone has nipped off with three-quarters of the House of Soviets!

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

Kaliningrad House of Soviets Melts into the Past

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

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

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

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

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

<It’s Curtains for the House of Soviets>

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

Kaliningrad and things that go clank in the night

Lifting the lid on Kaliningrad’s nocturnal noises

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

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

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

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

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

Kaliningrad and things that go clank in the night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christmas in Gdansk

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

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

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

Previous article: First Day in Gdansk

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

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

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

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

Perhaps Boxing Day would be better?

Секретное оружие в Калининграде

Мы взлетели!

Опубликовано: 26 August 2021 ~ Секретное оружие в Калининграде

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

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

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

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

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

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

Наступила тишина.

Все более раздражаясь, он повторил свое требование.

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

Хорошо проспиртованный человек очень рассердился.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

английская версия

Image attributions:

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

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

Secret Weapon in Kaliningrad

We have lift off!

Published: 3 June 2021~ Secret Weapon in Kaliningrad

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silence ensued.

Becoming more agitated, he repeated his demand.

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

The well-oiled man became extremely angry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9th May Kaliningrad Victory Day 2021

Kaliningrad Honours its Veterans

Published: 14 May 2021

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

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

9th May Kaliningrad Victory Day 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Russians carry portraits of war veterans in Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad Russians carrying photos of war veterans

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

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

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

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

WWII Lady Veteran Kaliningrad Victory Day

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

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

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

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

Monument to 1200 Guardsmen, Kaliningrad, Victory Day 2021

Vaccines’ Healing Powers Better be Better than Biden’s

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

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

Published: 8 November 2020

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

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

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

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

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

Vaccines’ healing powers better be better than Biden’s

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

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

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

Vaccines’ healing powers better be better than Biden’s

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

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

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

Vaccines’ Healing Powers Better be Better than Biden’s

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.