30 April 2024 ~ Kaliningrad Celebrates Kant on his 300th Year
Of the many things that Kant and I do not have in common, two stand out more than others. The first is that he was one of the world’s great philosophers, considered to be the third wheel behind Plato and Aristotle, the second he did not like beer. The first is an accomplishment worthy of applause; the second we will let quietly slip away, as it does not behove a gentleman of such intellectual stature whose name is synonymous with logic and reason.
Not widely read today, because his style of writing does not conform to the SEO prescription for sentences of 20 words or less, it is indeed a sobering thought that had Kant lived in the early 21st century, the systematic dumbing down of language and generational attention deficit attendant on this rule, would seriously have obstructed him in his quest to play linguistic games on paper. Instead of engaging the intellect with works of a ground-breaking nature, he would most likely be biding his time posting snippets to Twitter, taking selfies for social media, and pinning pictures of cakes on Pint-rest (incorrectly referred to as Pinterest). Deprived of these unspeakable pleasures, he had to be content with the lesser mental dynamics required to come to grips with epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics.
300 Years of Kant
Immanuel Kant was born on 22 April 1724 in Königsberg, East Prussia, where he lived until he died on 12 February 1804. Hardly venturing from his home city, Kant, nevertheless, through philosophical thought based on transcendental idealism, is largely credited for changing the way that people think around the world. So, if you have ever wondered why it is that you think the way you do, just think Kant and you have the answer.
Kaliningrad Celebrates Kant on his 300th Year
In life, Kant was a professor at Königsberg University, specialising in logic and metaphysics; in death, he lays entombed near Königsberg Cathedral on the appropriately named Kant Island ~ Kneiphof Island in Königsberg times.
Did you know? Kant was German. I bet you knew that. But did you know that for seven years he became a Russian subject? During the ‘Seven Years’ War’ in Europe, Austria’s allies, Russia, captured the East Prussian city of Königsberg , whereupon Kant, along with other Konigsberg citizens, pledged his allegiance to the Russian empress, Elizabeth. It was an allegiance he would not renounce even after Königsberg was returned to East Prussian rule.
As a philosopher of universal acclaim, a distinguished member of Königsberg ’s academia and one of the city’s most prominent citizens, Kant was fully qualified to be buried inside the cathedral itself. In 1880 that honour was extended when his remains were exhumed and rehoused in a chapel purpose built for him at the cathedral’s northeast corner, opposite the then prestigious Albertina University.
Was he boring, Kant? History has it that Kant was so regular in his routines that Königsbergians could set their watch by him. His habit of walking the same route at the same time each day earnt him the nickname of ‘The Konigsberg Clock’. However, contrary to his stereotype, that he was dull and prone to reclusiveness, Kant, by all accounts, possessed an uncommonly good sense of humour, loved to drink red wine and was a congenial host of dinner parties.
The university perished in the heavy Allied bombing of World War Two, but the mausoleum that would eventually replace Kant’s chapel, the one that we know today, whilst not escaping damage entirely at least escaped it sufficiently to allow for restoration.
Described by some as ‘minimalist’, the simple column and canopy structure has a certain aesthetic elegance and a dignity not detracting from the cathedral’s Gothic profile. The chapel, built in 1924, is the brainchild of Friedrich Lahrs, renowned East Prussian architect.
“The anniversary of the philosopher will be celebrated by the whole of Kaliningrad and guests of the city. The International Kantian Congress, various lectures, presentations, seminars, concerts, excursions, performances, as well as several exhibitions are planned here. Events dedicated to the 300th anniversary of Kant will take place in the city throughout 2024.”
Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Kanapinis (dark)
Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad
30 January 2024 ~ Kanapinis Dark in Kaliningrad How Good is It?
Leonard Cohen named his valedictory album You want it darker. Certainly, there were two periods in my own life when I wanted nothing more. The darkness of the two epochs were not exclusive to themselves, they commingled with each other, but the impulse to which they responded rose to prominence at separate times and the realm of human existence in which they dwelt could not be more distinct, or instinctively categorical, for one had to do with thought and feeling, the other with carnal desire.
As for the first, my predilections were helped not a little by the dulcet tones and soul-venting lyrics that Mr Cohen excelled in, but the inspirational spring that fed the river of melancholia arose from the deep and dark Romanticism of the celebrated American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The second instance I will leave unread, preferring for the moment to consign it to the incubation of your fetid and, I suspect, already bated penchant for perversion, and whilst you are trying to work it out, we will think of and also drink another outstanding beer, one that is dark but sweet not bitter.
Kanapinis Dark, easier to drink than to say!
The beer in question, and there is no question in my mind that in the land of beautiful beers it is the half-sister of Aphrodite (clue!), is the dark and dusky version of a Lithuanian beer whose unalloyed and succulent pleasures I sought to describe in my last review. I refer, of course, to that wonderful brew Kanapinis (light).
Kanapinis Dark in Kaliningrad How Good is It?
Santana Abraxas sang, “I’ve got a black magic woman” (clue!); Leslie Phillips, that smooth, saucy old English philanderer of the British silver screen, was forever forgetting the Black Tower (clue!) and forgetting to put his trousers on; the Rolling Stones told loyal fans they wanted to ‘paint it black’ (clue!); Deep Purple rocked ‘Black Night’ (clue!); Black Sabbath were black by name and also black by nature (clue!); and in the blackout during the war to numerous men-starved English women Americans came as Errol Flynn and left as Bertold Weisner (clue!).
Kanapinis dark is one of those brews that contains no additives. Water, caramel, barley malt, hops and beer yeast, that’s what’s in it. The brewers, Aukštaitijos Bravorai, have remained faithful to the traditional brewing method for many years, honouring the original recipe, open fermentation and a lengthy and assiduously monitored maturation process.
The Kanapinis siblings, the pale and the black, remind me of black and tan, not the one you can’t say in Ireland but the one you can make in a glass. They co-exist as though in the unification of innate quality, they are irredeemably colour blind, as though no one or the other vie to be thought of as anything more, and thought about together, as a lovely potable, quite inseparable, palate-tactile portable pair.
Taking the top off a Kanapinis ~ and remember, Kanapinis has one of those lightning toggle tops otherwise known as a Quillfeldt after the excellent chap who invented it ~ the air apparent is aerosoled with a sweet and musky smell, an enticing natural blend infused with heady caramels subtly tinctured with flavoursome malts, and when the beer pours into the glass it does so with a rich, a prepossessing chocolate head, the sort of thing that would be hard to sip if you had recently taken to wearing an RAF moustache and had as yet to learn proficiency in how to manoeuvre it properly.
“Please excuse my presumption, sir, but do you possess a licence for that hairy thing above your top lip?”
Without a Freddie Mercury or anything of the like to impede your drinking progress, the frothing foam incurs no danger, and once you have taken the plunge and dived headlong right in there, having sampled (and thus pre-judging) the quality of its paler version, the first sip is exactly as you know it should be, and had no doubt it would be. It is as promising as it smells, as seductive in taste as it looks and as satisfying from fart to stinish as any beer that you’ve ever made love to, and you can’t say darker than that!
Kanapinis Dark in Kaliningrad How Good is It?
Frank Sinatra, I’m sure, would be monotoned pleased to hear you say that Kanapinis goes ‘all the way’. Still, there’s little to choose between the two sisters, as both are full-bodied brews, and if ever colour was not an issue, then here is the perfect example: Sup! Sup! Sup! Ahhh!
If I had to choose between light or dark, the choice would be a difficult one, but should you care to bank roll me to a bottle of the dark stuff, I would thankee most kindly, sir, and do my best to get stuck in.
Old beer drinkers never shrink (except on the worst occasions) when it comes to revealing their true colours.
BOX TICKER’S CORNER Name of Beer: Kanapinis (Dark) Brewer: Aukštaitijos Bravorai Where it is brewed: Lithuania Bottle capacity: 1litre Strength: 5.3% Price: It cost me about 288 roubles (£2.62) Appearance: Dark and charcoally Aroma: Musky malts and burnt caramel Taste: Yum Yum Fizz amplitude: 3/10 Label/Marketing: Pop Art/Cartoon Would you buy it again? And again
Beer rating
About the beer: Aukštaitijos Bravorai | Kanapinis The brewer’s website has this to say about Kanapinis dark:
“CANNABIS unfiltered dark beer: This beer is brewed using only natural ingredients ~ water, malt, hops and yeast. The combination of caramel malts used in the production of this beer gives this beer a rich ruby colour and a light burnt caramel bitterness.”
Wot other’s say [Comments on Kanapinis (dark) beer from the internet, unedited] 😑Taste is close to aroma, but with harsh yeasty note. [Comment: Yeasty note, yes; harsh, no]
😐Kanapinis Dark is, frankly, so-so. If you can still feel the taste in the first half of the sip, then there is practically nothing left of it. [Comment: A man with a rather peculiar tongue!]
16 January 2024 ~ Honey House Kaliningrad is the Bees Knees
Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow wrote the lyrics, and the Beatles commercialised it. It was called a Taste of Honey, and the memorable refrain went, “A taste of honey / A taste much sweeter than wine.”
Frank Sinatra got it right when he sang, “You can drink the water, but I will drink the wine.”
OK, so no contest between wine and honey and wine and water, but water is good for washing wine glasses and honey is delicious and, they say, extremely good for you, especially when it is not compared with wine but used as one of the main ingredients in the preparation of mead.
Honey House Kaliningrad
The Murd House, not to be confused with the English ‘Murder House’, roll out Vincent Price, is an excessively large, palatial and unmissably bright yellow-coloured mansion of a place, which, in spite of its flamboyance, is oddly concealed along an early twentieth century street in an erstwhile suburb of the East Prussian city of Königsberg.
There was a time that as big and as bright as the building is, it still achieved relative anonymity, due to its partly concealed location. For example, a mid-rise block of flats makes it virtually invisible to cars passing by on the main drag. Thankfully, about three years ago, some bright spark came up with the idea of pinning a large sign on a nearby fence with ‘Murd House’ written on it and an arrow pointing in the right direction, an initiative one hopes that has gone some way towards alleviating comparative obscurity.
In Russian the word ‘Murd’ means honey (There you are, you see, there is a connection!) In English, ‘Murd House’ becomes Honey House or the House of Honey.
Honey House Kaliningrad
Whilst in itself vast, the Baroque pastiche that is the Honey House would dwarf a good sized supermarket, and whilst I have no idea what goes on in the majority of the building, I do know, as I have used it often, that secreted at a corner of this extraordinary building sits one of the best stocked honey shops in Kaliningrad.
Kaliningrad’s central market is hard to beat for almost everything, and that includes honey. It has a spacious and brand-spanking-new food hall that is exclusively given over to many different types of honey, sold in many different sized tubs. But the Honey House’s diminutive size is nothing if not deceptive. This small shop stocks an unbelievably exciting range of honey. Consider this, if you will: Acacia Honey, Mountain Honey, Yellow Sweet Clover Honey, several varieties of Buckwheat Honey. And these are just a small sample of the different kinds of honey offered by the Honey House, either scooped into tubs at your behest or sold in prepacked jars. How do those clever bees manage it!
The products purveyed by the Honey House are not confined to different flavoured honey, it also sells chocolate, confectionary, breakfast cereals, honey straws, biscuits, cosmetics and a whole lot more, all rich in the magic versatility of one of the healthiest natural substances known to man, honey.
Not that alcohol holds any interest to me, I’m strictly sarsaparilla, but the Honey House even purveys an alcohol-infused beverage simply known as Honey Drink, which to you and me is mead. Have I tried it? Have I ever put on a pair of shoes?
Why don’t you put on yours and buzz off down to the Honey House.
The Honey House The House of Honey/Honey House/Murd House (take your pick) began life in 2000, the objective being to popularise beekeeping in the Kaliningrad region. Initially, the mainstay of the enterprise was to provide beekeeping farms with equipment, medications and breeding material.
Today, the Honey House is a bio-shop, which means that it only sells natural products. Thus, products bearing the ‘Slavyansky Medovar’ trademark guarantee consistently high production standards and tasty food from natural ingredients.
Also available from the Honey House: Bee-keeping equipment Medications for bee keeping Bee-keeping clothing Hives and components
and:
Fragrances for candles Candle-making moulds Candle extinguishers
The main thing:
House of Honey Ulitsa Nekrasova 18А, Kaliningrad Kaliningrad Oblast, 236016
Updated: 13 January 2024 | First published: 15 September 2022 ~ Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, new Garden Cafés
A few moments ago, you said in your bestist Russian, ‘Short pashalta’ (bill please), hopefully paid when you got it and have just legitimately left the Seagull by the Lake café, which was the subject of one of my earlier reviews. Turning right, you are now strolling along the side of the Upper Pond opposite a cobbled Königsberg street in the direction of Youth Park.
If you keep walking, you will arrive at a point where the presence of a fenced garden reduces the pavement to a narrow strip. Pedestrian activity is fairly busy here, and as the walled and railing boundary to your left, hedged in with dense confers, prohibits leeway, in order to make headway you will have to play kerb-hop, which is like kerb-crawling but without the fringe benefits.
When the walled and confer garden slips away, at the point where the pavement widens, you would, had you been walking here in the spring of 2022, have found yourself confronted by a disused café/restaurant, a rectangular slab of a building, covered all over in wave-like crustations, one corner surmounted by a metallic lighthouse, another by Captain Ahab, as I saw fit to anoint him, looking proudly over the rails of his elevated quarter deck with a massive globe, the world, at his feet.
Captain Ahab aloft the old Prichal Restaurant // Demolition in progress 2022
Before demolition commenced // Roofless in September 2022
Forever curious and not a cat, I wondered in my previous post on Ahab, whatever would become of him and the gardens that he presided over. Both the marine-themed café/restaurant and its gardens had been sinking steadily, year on year, into dismal destitution. Decay had moved in where trade had left off, and decay, dreariness and impending doom were the avatar of its fate.
The oriental garden went West first (every pun intended). The reed-thatched roofs turned green and mouldy, fell in upon themselves and then collapsed. The shrubs and bushes, once the beneficiaries of a culture of assiduity, exploited the dearth of supervision and in its absence had reverted, like children bestowed with too many rights and a woeful lack of moral guidance, to the clarion call of the wild.
And yet, even at its height, when all in the garden was rosy and the restaurant to which it belonged, although a most peculiar spectacle, was not quite the eyesore it eventually became, to contemplate the whole with anything else but regret was a feat so tremendously difficult that it challenged you to do so in contradiction of every tenet you had ever considered complied with good taste.
Indeed, if an oriental garden overlooking a man-made pond, which once belonged to the German city of Königsberg in what used to be East Prussia but now is Russian Kaliningrad, set against the side of a curious but somewhat tawdry building, which would look decidedly more at home in an amusement park on the north coast of England, failed to provoke the question WTF is going on? ~ then you might as well give up entirely, welcome the immigrant boats at Dover and, Heaven forbid that you could be so reckless, put your faith in the Labour party. On the other hand, with a little charitable latitude of thought, there is room for the hypothesis that having sailed the seven seas, Captain Ahab, believing by appearances that he must be off the coast of China, decided to drop anchor.
It looks like Chinagrad?
Not that it matters a fig. The garden, with its reed-thatched gazebos, which went the way of neglect ahead of Ahab’s building, possessed a certain twee appeal, and there was unity of composition in the design of the man-made structures, the choice of materials used, the natural blending of bushes and shrubs and the seemingly inorganic, but actually carefully planned arrangement, by which each and all of its components had been scrupulously laid down.
Then ~ I believe it may have been early in 2021 ~ a large tree came crashing down in the wind, smashing its way through the wall and railings. And the garden once so cultivated, so trimmed, so neat and expressly inviting was reduced from what many believed to be an object of mastered near perfection to the most inexpressible mess.
In the twelve months before Ahab and his Mablethorpe arcade hit the demolition skids, the beautiful gardens that were, but which, alas and wistfully, entered the realm of no more and never will be again, began to be ruthlessly cleared, and as the sounds of chain saws died away, replaced by the rhythm of hammers and the high-speed whines of angle grinders, it was clear to the not-so-innocent bystander, me, who was gawping there and quite on purpose, that alterations were underway.
Roadside view of garden, September 2022The garden as it appeared in September 2022Pond in the garden next to Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, September 2022Small terrace, work still in progress, Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, September 2022
Even as a passer-by, I saw shrubs being pruned, new vegetation planted, pavements taking shape, and two large and rather bland slope-roofed garden sheds rising above the perimeter, and, at the centre of all this make-good mayhem, Patrick McGoohan’s (The Prisoner’s) dome, or so I was pleased to fancy, only to be brought down to Earth with the phlegmatic explanation that the dome was an igloo geodesic constructed around a stainless-steel frame comprising triangular sections which supported a membrane of stretched PVC. Just as I said, The Prisoner’s dome, the home of the New Number Two (Didn’t see Rover, however?).
Hello, Hello, Hello and what do we have here?
The Phoenix that has arisen from the ashes is quite unlike anything that I have ever beheld. To say that there ‘aint no rhyme or reason in it’ is not necessarily pejorative. You see you’ve got these two big wooden sheds, one selling snacks and coffee and the other with a floor to ceiling plate-glass window through which youngsters sit a-gawping; a large geodesic igloo thingy; a piazza with tables and chairs; two small elevated terraces snug-fit to the lake side; and a long lake-facing and canopy-covered seating area, providing space for several groups sitting on low divans, each around their own personal coffee table.
The latter seating area is a peach; the haunt of the delectable; mainly affluent trophy girls who ostentatiously flaunt themselves by sharing the pipes of their hookahs.
Hookahs: everyone should try one!
These single or multi-stemmed smoking instruments, which cool and vaporise tobacco smoke prior to inhalation by passing it through a water reservoir, were better known to the pioneers of 20th century hipster fashion by the nickname hubbly bubbly pipes.
During the swinging sixties, hubbly bubblies were chiefly associated with the facilitation of opium consumption (naughty!); today, they are the limelighters for a new generation of fadists, some young, some not-so-young, but agelessly would-be trendy (Some believe just by smoking the hookah they qualify for this perfumed club.). They puff away conspicuously on these rather flamboyant instruments, using highly scented shisha tobacco (different flavoured molasses). Now, throw arty-farty lighting into the mix and the smoke exhaled appears to change colour. Wow, even more people will see you! And don’t you look extra cool!
Health experts disagree. Forever seeming to forget that life is bad for your health and is never almost but always fatal, they share no interest at all in egocentric fashion, routinely condemning the hookah as just another sure-fired way of inviting lethal respiratory problems to call time prematurely on an existence already imperilled and grievously overtaxed by vice. What a hookahless bunch of killjoys!
The Mercure from the terrace
On my first visit to this wonderous place, where one can eat, drink, relax, gaze out over the pond and attach one’s self to a hookah or two, it seemed as if whoever had thought of it had forgotten to give it a name. I therefore decided to christen it the Discombobulated Gardens? But since that ambiguous day in 2022, I have learnt that it goes by the name Soul Garden.
On my first and subsequent visits to Soul Garden, I gave the hookers a miss, content to sit back on the terrace, staring out and into the pond at the bold, mirrored and distant reflection of the irradiated Mercure Hotel, whose trademark zig-zag luminosity levitates in a limbo state high upon the Kaliningrad skyline, also hanging motionlessly within the depths and darkness of the pond’s expanse, achieving what we have yet to accomplish, where we like to say we never can be ~ in two places at once.
From the vantage point that the gardens offer, this view across the pond, particularly on a warm summer’s evening, is positively captivating, but with the summer of 2022 (and now 2023) as gone as Captain Ahab, you’ll have to take my word on this.
View from completed garden terrace across the Upper Pond; Mercure Hotel in the distance
During my premiere visit to Soul Garden, the view from the pond side had been so mesmerising that I almost failed to notice that in the time it took to order a beer and have it brought to my table, my hands had grown considerably larger. This Soul Garden phenomenon was explained to me by the waitress. Don’t worry, she reassured me, the reason why your appendages suddenly look much more impressive than they actually are in real life is that the glass in which your beer is served is less than the usual half litre.
Now, I am not suggesting that smaller glasses are indicative of sharp practice; I was just a little surprised, that’s all, what with my hands growing larger and my glass getting shorter, but there really is no need for alarm. Verily, all of Kaliningrad’s bars and restaurants clearly state the volumes in which their beer is served, it is clearly marked in the drinks’ menu. But should the need ever arise, don’t be afraid to ask: “Please could you show me your glass!” I am sure the staff will be most obliging.
In summing up, what I used to like to think of as a place called Something Gardens, but which I now know is Soul Garden, the word intriguing must be applied.
Like me, you’ll be intrigued by the layout and facilities as well as by the name, and you’ll also be intrigued by what they have planned for Ahab’s building. Like the gardens before they had soul, the carcass of the former construction is borderline identity crisis. Since the first stages of partial demolition, in which its tower, globe and ship, and come the day Captain Ahab, were mysteriously wafted away, throughout 2023 the shell of the building has sat on the banks of the pond teasing us one and all with its day-by-day month-on-month suspended animation.
Perhaps this is the reason the captain slung his hook: whilst he had no objection to Moby Dick, he foresaw in Jonah’s whale a completely different kettle of fish. But until the day dawns when all is revealed, it’s premonition to the starboard bow! Barrelman to the crow’s nest, and steady as she goes!
Arty Crafty it is and all the better for it! 17 April 2024~ Craft Garage Kaliningrad a Pit Stop for Good Beer On the same evening that we happened upon the Beer Bar on Prospect Mira and Bar Sovetov, we stumbled upon and into Craft Garage. You’ve guessed it! Whereas it could be argued that… Read more: Craft Garage Kaliningrad a Pit Stop for Good Beer
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… Read more: Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro in the House of Soviets
Good beer in a vintage-inspired bar 13 March 2024 ~ Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad Those of us in the UK who are firm believers in the importance of preserving traditions and the history of our country, and who do their bit in this regard by paying homage to, and overpaying for… Read more: Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad
Light, bright and affordable ~ Pattison Markt 24 February 2024 ~ Patisson Markt Restaurant Kaliningrad Good Value It’s one of two buildings that flank the entrance to what was once Königsberg Zoo, now the Kaliningrad Zoopark. Once upon a time, it was an old eatery with a distinctly Soviet feel. In 2004, I nicknamed it… Read more: Patisson Markt Restaurant Kaliningrad Good Value
Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, garden cafés replace Prichal Restaurant Updated: 13 January 2024 | First published: 15 September 2022 ~ Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, new Garden Cafés A few moments ago, you said in your bestist Russian, ‘Short pashalta’ (bill please), hopefully paid when you got it and have just legitimately left the Seagull by the Lake… Read more: Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, new Garden Cafés
Basically one of the best beer bars in Kaliningrad 28 December 2023 ~ Yeltsin Bar: The Best Craft Beers in Kaliningrad There’s an awful lot written about Kaliningrad’s number one specialist craft ale bar, Yeltsin, named after Russia’s first post-Cold War president. Most of it is good; and much of it correct. The essential ingredients… Read more: Yeltsin Bar: The Best Craft Beers in Kaliningrad
A Trip Around the Caucasus Updated 10 December 2023 | First published 2020 ~ Kavkaz Restaurant Kaliningrad Housed as it is on the ground floor of a rather large building across the road from Victory Square and directly in front of the colossal shopping centre built in Königsberg style, it would be inaccurate to say… Read more: Kavkaz Restaurant Kaliningrad
The art, science and agony of waiting: a round trip from Kaliningrad to the UK via Gdansk, Poland
Updated 5 January 2024 | Published: 19 January 2023 ~ Kaliningrad Gdansk London Luton Tips for Survival
In November 2022, my wife Olga and I travelled from Kaliningrad to the UK via Gdansk. It was the first time I had made this journey since the advent of coronavirus.
This account should be read in conjunction with my post How to Get to Kaliningrad from the UK and treated as an addendum to the information contained therein. It is hoped that it may help you to decide whether or not to take this route in the future and what to expect if you do. To be forewarned is to be forearmed ~ not that to be forearmed will do you any good.
Passage to and from the UK to Kaliningrad via Gdansk Airport is, in the post-apocalyptic coronavirus world, now the era of unprecedented sanctions, a realistic if not tedious alternative to the other options available to you. By no means the most traveller-friendly route, nevertheless as an A to B expedient, with a great deal of fortitude and more of patience you will eventually arrive at your destination without incurring the need to navigate every letter in the traveller’s alphabet.
Recently, in November 2022, this was the route we took to travel to the UK. Pre-coronavirus we always took a taxi from Kaliningrad to Gdansk. At a cost of approximately £100, of the two options, bus or taxi, the latter, of course, was the more expensive, but what it lacked in economy it more than made up for in comfort, door-to-door convenience and, most importantly, a smoother, less traumatic transition at the Russian-Polish border.
Our November trip was the first in which I would take a bus from Kaliningrad to Gdansk. Kaliningrad Central Bus Station is a wonderful Soviet incarnation, built, I should imagine, circa 1970s. It is neat, tidy, user-friendly and surrounded by shops and refreshment facilities.
There’s nothing to bussing it from Kaliningrad: You just pass yourself and your luggage through a scanning system, buy your tickets in the usual way from the counter ~ thankfully staff-manned, not machine-oriented ~ and when it is time to catch your bus, brandishing your barcoded ticket, off you go through the gates.
Not one for using minibuses on any journey except in town, I was relieved to find on the day of travelling that we were blessed with a proper coach.
We were required to load our cases into the luggage compartment ourselves, which was no great shakes as we were travelling light. Even so, if you happen to be an old codger suffering from comorbidities or a damsel in distress, you may find that you need to enlist the kindly services of a fellow-travelling Sir Galahad, since loading luggage of any kind does not come under the driver’s remit.
Kaliningrad Gdansk London Luton Tips for Survival
The journey to the Russian border in Kaliningrad is an effortless one, taking around 30 to 40 minutes in all. From the other direction, Gdansk Airport, the distance is the greater of the two. But travelling isn’t the problem; it’s the waiting you have to worry about.
Whether you travel by car or by bus, prepare yourself mentally for an indescribably protracted period of boredom at both border checkpoints. I sometimes wonder if there isn’t a competition between the Russian and Polish authorities to see who can make your stay at the border more drawn out and uncomfortable. In days gone by, when Russians flocked to Poland to buy sausages and the Polish nipped back and forth to Kaliningrad to smuggle in cheap vodka and fags, crossing from either direction, Russia to Poland, Poland to Russia, was a traffic-queuing nightmare. But at least then it was understandable why it took so long.
Now, in the New Normal ~ in the coronavirus aftermath and knock-on effect from the troubles in Ukraine ~ queues at the border, which is to say magnificent queues, are largely a thing of the past, but interminable waiting is not.
For example, on the day that we travelled, there were two cars in front of us and no one behind us, but still it took four hours to cross from Russia into Poland.
By taxi the process is quicker, not substantially so, but it is quicker and a lot less painful. On both sides of the border, Russian and Polish, our driver would take it upon himself to hand over our passports to the authorities whilst we sat in the car until summoned to appear before the border officer’s window.
This procedure is strangely daunting. It has its equivalent in the unfounded guilt you feel (and I am certain that you do) whenever a copper walks by (“Evenin’ all!”). I find that it both helps and doesn’t if, whilst standing under the border officer’s partly hidden officious eye, you imagine yourself in the leading role of one of Len Deighton’s spy novels.
One other thing, other difference between the taxi and the bus, is that when you take a taxi your bags are checked in the car. A uniformed man or woman with stern features out of a can, asks you to open your bags and then studiously looks at your underpants (hopefully those in the case, not the ones you are wearing!). He, or a colleague, will also bring a dog along to sniff around for drugs (in your cases not your underpants) which, of course, we never have (drugs, that is, not underpants) except, perhaps, if you can call them drugs, a vintage bottle of Bile Beans which, through force of habit as well as nostalgia, I carry for good luck. Get away! You don’t! Do you?
By bus the procedure though similar is far more demanding, obviously because the vehicle you are travelling in contains more people and more people means more documents to process but also because each passenger is required to lug his, her or its own luggage out of the bus, across the tarmac and into a bland and impersonal room.
Here you queue obediently, waiting for the inquisition before the border officer’s cubicle. No smiling, this is serious business, so why on earth do I always feel an uncontrollable urge to laugh? Eternity comes and goes and suddenly stamp, stamp, stamp, they are inking little official things in the pages of your passport. This is music to your ears, for next they will dismiss you, and you’ll suffer to drag your heavy cases across to the waiting conveyor belt in order to have them scanned for all those things that you shouldn’t have stashed, and didn’t stash, inside.
Admittedly, this hiatus in your journey does provide you with the opportunity to pay the bog a visit, making it not entirely a waste of time. The problem is, however, that you can almost guarantee that one or more in your party are either not in possession of the prerequisite travel documents or are carrying something in their bags in contravention of regulations. When this happens, as it did for us, your wait at the border can be delayed to such a frightful extent that by the time you eventually move, you have forgotten what movement was. Thus, do not be surprised if you have read War and Peace from cover to cover, experienced a couple of birthdays and your restless arse is covered in cobwebs by the time the bus starts rolling. Naw, it’s not as bad as all that; but believe you me, it is bad enough!
Whilst we all know from experience that the wheels of bureaucracy tend to grind slowly no matter where we are, what kind of mentality is it that oils the cogs of rudeness?
It is sad to admit, but all the same a regrettable fact, that border security on both sides of the fence, be it the Russian or Polish side, can be, and mostly are ~ with one or two exceptions ~ how can I put it? ~ beyond officious. Let us just conclude that anyone working for border control is unlikely to be considered for a post in the diplomatic core and prudently leave it at that.
Kaliningrad Gdansk London Luton Tips for Survival
So, you have been stared at, stamped and waved on, survived death by terminal boredom and at last the wheels are turning. The bus that you are travelling in, which contains people a lot more stressed and impatient than the ones you started out with, trumps off up the road, gets stuck, for extra harassment measure, at two or more sets of traffic lights and then trundles forward a few more yards before grinding to a sickening halt on the Polish side of the border.
And it’s here we go again: the only noteable difference being the cut of the uniforms and insignia on them.
By the time we arrived at the airport we were veterans in the waiting game, but even our rigorous introduction was insufficient to prepare us for what was yet to come.
I will say that as far as design is concerned, I personally like Gdansk Airport ~ all those tubular steel struts, asymmetrical folds and sweeps and the way that the ceiling soars like giant birds in flight. Great visuals and expressive atmosphere; shame about the security staff. They are as rude as rude, but there is entertainment to be had in being to them what Manuel was to Basil in Fawlty Towers: “Qué?”
Above: I can’t stand the waiting any longer; you’ll have to go by yourself!
On the day that we travelled through Gdansk Airport nothing short of utter confusion reigned. The flight was scheduled for 3.10pm and our bus driver, who would normally have deposited us at Gdansk bus station, realising that those of us who required the airport were in danger of missing our flights because of the long delay at the border, drove us on to the airport terminal. We sailed through Gdansk airport security system, bought a couple of bottles from the duty free and checked the electronic flight boards. Everything was fine; but then it wasn’t. The flight at 3.10 had become the delayed flight to the UK departing at 4.30! A Jack Daniels with ice helped.
We were sat close to gate 27, where we should have been, when, suddenly, it was ‘all aboard’ but at gate 28! The flight time has also changed to 4pm, but at 3.50pm they are opening the gates, and we are all on our feet and queuing. Our so-called priority passes, which do nothing more than allow you to queue lower down the stairwell than those who have been smart enough not to pay for the privilege, put us in this position, where we stood with mounting impatience for nigh on fifteen minutes, before it was announced that we had to return to the waiting area.
As we passed one of the company’s representatives, I asked why? What was happening? His reply: “We are waiting for a new captain!” Good heavens, I thought, I hope he qualifies before next spring. I did offer to fly the plane myself. Humouring me, the man asked if I had a licence. “Dog or TV?” I replied. Flying licence! “Well,” I said, “I’ve got a kite and an airman’s hat.”
Back in our seats, where we were fast becoming super-waiters, I hoped that the ‘new captain’ was not in fact the old captain, whose delay was due to one too many. I disclosed my fears to Olga, who thought she had caught a glimpse of someone wearing a battered captain’s hat and nothing else, being dunked in a bath of ice-cold water behind the airport’s dustbins, which is only a stones (or stoned) throw away from the airline’s Lame Excuse Department.
The electronic score board now informed us that the next flight from Gdansk to the UK was rescheduled for 5.30pm but, as before, it lied. Lucky for us we were far too tired to be somewhere else in the airport, for at 5pm we were off again, through the checkout and down the steps.
By now everyone without exception was suffering from chronic waiting disease. Many of our fellow passengers had found consolation in the bottle and as a result resembled zombies hired from Rent a Misfit.
At long last, it happened, but it didn’t: We, and the worse-for-wears were sitting on the plane but wait a moment … a moment … a moment … the pilot had not arrived. Was he waiting to be awarded his model aircraft flying diploma or had he got stuck in the bathtub?
At last it did happen! We had lift off! Shame that the same could not be said for the airline’s credit/debit card system. I presume it must have died from something like airport terminal waiting. And why was there no vodka on board? Hiccup! This is your captain slurring.
Kaliningrad Gdansk London Luton Tips for Survival
We landed at Luton Airport ~ now there’s a relief ~ where everything, I was pleased to find after almost three years’ absence remained delightfully British. Of course, there are obvious visual exceptions to the definition of what constitutes British, but the prevailing wind continues to blow in the direction of British standards. One contributory factor is that apart from the airport’s security guards, who are tooled up and reinforce-vested, London-Luton’s border control and its customs officers do not do military; smart and corporate is the name of the game and even the airport’s immigrant staff can scrub up satisfactorily when they put their mind to it. I’m not sure if the airport retains classic British salutations such as ‘Sir’ and ‘Madam’ and ‘Ladies’ and ‘Gentlemen’ or whether it has succumbed to pseudo-liberal pressure for gender-bending woke alternatives. But what I can say categorically is that as far as first impressions count, London Luton hits the spot.
The second thing you will notice at Luton Airport, indeed any airport in the UK, apart from the majority minorities, is that no sooner have you retrieved your cases than mugging your purse and wallet begins. UK airports are hideously expensive. London Luton’s Airport carpark must be run by the mob, as the cost of a two-minute stay in the so-called drop-off and pick-up zone is protection-racket extortionate. Yes, I think we can all agree that there’s nothing like England’s welcome mat, but once you have crossed the threshold you know that the meter is ticking.
Return journey
A piece of cake our trip to England certainly had not been, but the return journey took the biscuit. When we were outward bound, we had purposefully travelled light, but going back our extremely large cases were stuffed to the gills with items unobtainable in Kaliningrad, such as 40 jars of marmite, decorative retro metal wall signs, plus numerous gifts and souvenirs.
Having overdone it on shopping sprees, on visits to the pub, on workouts, on late nights and on generally trying to cram too much into too little time, our cases may have been full, but I was travelling on a half empty health tank ~ nothing like a good holiday to set you to rights, I say! And it was grim: the 4.30am start required to catch our flight from Luton was grim, but at least it was uneventful.
The real problems for us began when we arrived in Gdansk ~ and here is something you should bear in mind, especially if you are Russian.
Olga’s daughter had booked our return from Gdansk bus station using an online booking system. The bus was scheduled to depart at 6pm, but it was about 11am Polish time when we arrived at Gdansk airport. This disparity between the flight’s arrival and the bus’s departure had been purposefully contrived, as, although there was an earlier bus at one o’clock, the excessive delays on the outward journey had caused us to act with caution. Sod’s law had it, however, that the return flight was bang on schedule, and we were back in the business of waiting again.
Our immediate destination from the airport was the bus station. We would go there by taxi, stash our bags in the left luggage department, presuming that they had one, and then idle our time away.
Gdansk bus station is reminiscent of Corby dole office in the 1960s, even down to the stink of piss. It is a concrete catastrophe from that era, constructed on two levels, decorated with pigeon shite and a lift that does not work. The left luggage department is not a department as such, but a big tin thing on the station’s lower level split into different sized lockers with doors that need coins to operate them*. Consequently, we had a twofold problem: (1) Karting two incredibly heavy cases down umpteen flights of steps and (2) obtaining Polish coins in the correct denominations.
The extreme awfulness of Gdansk bus station and the thought of time to kill, encouraged Olga to investigate the possibility of exchanging the 6pm bus tickets for the 3pm service.
One thing that Gdansk bus station did have going for it was that it had a cafeteria*. I use the term cafeteria because it reminded me of somewhere I once had the misfortune to visit on a school trip. I think it was the canteen of an up-North pickle factory. Our school was short on education but inventive in saving funds. {Apologies to Headmaster Lowe. I am not referring to the Prince William School but Chalky White’s secondary modern!)
*Please note that when I was in Gdansk in September 2023, both the left-luggage canisters and the cafeteria had ceased to exist, thus making Gdansk bus station an even more horrible place than it was before. Thought I’d better warn you. They haven’t closed the toilets yet, but it costs 5 zlotys a pee!
Knock the school if you like, but let’s don’t knock the cafeteria. At least it was somewhere to sit, to have a hot drink and a snack. Cosy, it was not; friendly, it was not. There are still some things to be said for England! But first we needed zlotys (that’s Polish money, if you did not know it).
The extreme awfulness of Gdansk bus station and the thought of time to kill, encouraged Olga to investigate the possibility of exchanging the 6pm bus tickets for the 3pm service. We had no zlotys for tea, and we had no zlotys for the left-luggage lockers. Gdansk Bus Station Information office had no information. Exchanging tickets? An earlier bus? Don’t ask us, we’re only the information office.
We were both cold, tired, hungry and I was feeling ill.
I volunteered to go and seek out a ‘hole in the wall’, even though I instinctively knew, erroneously as it happened, that the location we were in was unlikely to be furnished with such a crucial convenience. Whilst I was gone, Olga said she would contact her daughter to see if it was possible for her to exchange the tickets online. It turned out that it wasn’t.
One 20-minute walk later, I espied the kind of hole I was looking for. It was not a hole in the wall exactly, but a hole protruding from a shop window. I did not like the look of this hole when I saw it from a distance and liked it even less at closer quarters. I certainly had no inclination to entrust my debit card to it in case the machine had been ‘got at’.
Flustered, and not relishing the thought of returning to Olga with mission unaccomplished, nevertheless this is what it amounted to. The real rub was that when I did return, Olga asked me why I had not used the cash dispenser at the front of the bus station? Doh! I had only walked straight past it! What a kick in the nuts! And the words of our old friend Barry, who had accompanied us on our trip to Kaliningrad way back in 2004, echoed across the decades, “You pair are a walking disaster!” ~ to be said in a northern accent.
Too tired to exonerate myself, I followed Olga’s directions but with the gravest misapprehension. The hole in the glass window which I had not used because it had looked dodgy was a paragon of virtue compared to the one at the bus station. The Perspex screen was scratched, it reflected dull orange in the LED light with which it was lit and the options that it displayed were almost indiscernible. It took four attempts to get it right, to extract money from that mean machine and throughout the entire dispensing experience I felt distinctly uncomfortable. It was a mean little machine in a mean hollowed-out husk of a building, and it also refused to provide a receipt.
Have zlotys will eat, we took refuge in the café. There we would buy tea from the miserable woman behind the counter, change some zloty notes into zloty coins to use in the left-luggage piggy bank, dispose of the bags, go for a walk.
It was a cold day but at the time of our walk it was blue skies and sunshine. We decided to return to Gdansk old town where we had not been since my first journey to Kaliningrad at the turn of the 21st century (makes me feel like Dr Who ~ the man version, not the PC one! {There was only one Dr Who and that was William Hartnell!})
Gdansk ‘old town ‘is, in fact, a perfect facsimile of the old town, since the old town underwent extensive modification thanks to Adolf Hitler and his Luftwaffe architects. However, if you ever go to Gdansk, the new-old town is well worth visiting.
We took in the sights and found food and warmth in one of the many restaurants, but now the sun had gone, leaving in its wake a sharp and chilling cold. With one and a half hours to kill, we made our way back to the bus station. We had no idea from which bay the bus we needed departed, so Olga did the logical thing, she returned to the bus information office.
As before, the information office which had no information about exchanging tickets had no information about our bus: Which Bay does your bus depart from? Don’t ask us we’re just the bus information service. We eventually worked it out for ourselves; not which bay we needed but that from the official information office to the average man on the street, once they tumbled that Olga was Russian, your Polack turned deaf and dumb. I suppose like every EU member, Poland is waiting for Biden to tell them when they can be polite again.
The second information office, which lay inside a concreted labyrinth of subterranean walkways, went one better. Not only did they not know from which bay our bus departed, they denied its very existence and the existence of the bus itself, although we had tickets to travel! It was beginning to get amusing.
Dragging the heavy cases from the lockers up two flights of steps and then loitering in the bitter wind was not so funny. We asked a couple of Polacks on the street the bus question for which we could get no answer, and one of them was so appalled or frightened when he heard the Russian lingo that he practically dashed away.
We decided we must divide and conquer. I went to reconnoitre the bus park to see if I could spot the bus, whilst Olga, having clocked a small group of people huddled against the wind behind the back of the bus station, went to ask the dreaded question.
My mission was unsuccessful (isn’t it always!), but on my return I found that the group that Olga had approached were waiting (note that word ‘waiting’ again) for the same bus as us. Like us, they had little or no information to go on, but thought that the bus would depart close to where we were standing. The girl who Olga was talking with then added, in a low whisper, “It’s probably better if they (‘they’ meaning the Polacks) don’t hear you talking in Russian.” Well, now, this was what I call information! And it seemed to improve my Russian no end, because, having been warned to the contrary, Russian words and phrases were flying out of my mouth like economic migrants spilling from small crammed boats across the length and breadth of Dover’s shores.
Therefore, it was probably fortuitous that, struggling to contain my new-found language skills, my eye alighted on a bus hidden away at the side of the road. There was no bus bay and no other way of knowing whether this was our bus or not, but working on the hunch that it wasn’t speaking Russian, we decided to investigate. And hey presto, Fanny’s your aunt and Bob’s your unfriendly Polack, was I right or was I right!? (for once!).**
** In September 2023, I discovered a piece of paper taped to the wall on the inside of Gdansk dole office, sorry I mean bus station, stating the bay number from which the bus leaves for Kaliningrad. Then it was bay 11. Bay 11 is not really a bay as such but a number painted on a piece of tin stuck on the corner of the bus station. Although the destination from bay 11 is a place or a town in Poland, as stated on the piece of tin, and Kaliningrad is not mentioned, three people have since corroborated that this was the bay they used to travel by bus to Kaliningrad. The best way of locating this ‘bay’ is not to ask at Information, as they’ll either grunt or will not tell you. Exiting from the front of the station, with the railway lines in front of you, hang a hard left and then left again, and walla! ~ bay 11!
Relieved that we had discovered our transport out of Poland, I was less excited by the fact that our chariot of deliverance was a minibus, even less so when the answer to the question ‘Where do we stow our heavy bags?’ was in the Skibox clipped to the back of the bus. Though the driver made the mistake of lifting our heavy cases into the Skibox for us, he never made the same mistake twice, neither at the border crossing or later when he put us down in Kaliningrad. And who can really blame him?
The cases did have to come out again when we arrived at the Russian border, and, naturally, we had to go through the same rigmarole of standing in front of poker-faced officers sitting in little square cubicles, but that inquisition apart the process though tiring was fairly straightforward. Nevertheless, we would have to endure another hour of waiting when some woman was detained either because she had the wrong travel documents, the wrong items in her luggage or who can say what else was wrong with her? But something was not quite right.
Finally, back on home territory, all we had to do now was lug the cases into a waiting taxi and from the boot of the taxi into the house.
The return journey, which had begun at 4am British time, ended in Kaliningrad at 12 midnight. Ahh, back to a nice warm house, which no doubt it would have been if the fuse box had not tripped out owing to some electrical fault or other.
In conclusion, the Kaliningrad to UK or UK to Kaliningrad route via Gdansk Airport and by bus is not as direct as one would like. However, it gets you there in the end and on the way tests personal virtues, such as patience, diplomacy, tact, resourcefulness, stamina and so forth. Yet, those of a nervous disposition are advised to approach it with caution. Prepare yourself for the journey. Perhaps an hour of meditation and a course on anger management before you leave the house?
The Baucenter: If you don’t find it there, you won’t find it anywhere!
4 January 2024 ~ Baucenter Kaliningrad DIY Store With So Much More
I wouldn’t like to give the wrong impression, the wrong impression being that beer plays a disproportionate part in helping me to decide the topics of my blog posts. (Perish the thought, old chap.) Take this post, for example, is it about a pub, is it about a bar, is it about a bottle? No, this post is about a shop, a very large shop, which in Kaliningrad ~ where tradesmen are few and far between, and where, it would seem, the majority consider themselves DIY experts, which, without putting too fine a point on it, they most certainly are not ~ is a veritable institution.
The shop in question is a humongous retail store known as the Baucenter. According to one of my brothers, “It’s bloody handsome. It sells everything!” Admittedly, and you’ve probably spotted this yourselves, some hyperbole is creeping in here. For example, it doesn’t, in case you are wondering, sell beer (shame!), but it does sell everything anyone could wish for if you are into Do It Yourself.
I’m not ~ not, that is, into Do It Yourself. I am rather more into SDIFM (Someone Doing It For Me), but as tradesmen are few and far between (Have you ever experienced déjà vu?), it is still incumbent on one to purchase whatever materials and tools are required for someone to do the job for you.
Baucenter Kaliningrad
The Baucenter (I believe there are three in Kaliningrad. I told you DIY is big business here.) is not close to us, but I kinda like the bus trip, as it enables me to contemplate the various bars on route, purely, you understand, as each of them contain the sorts of things that I like, such as chairs, lights, windows etc. The Baucenter has all of these and a whole lot more besides, and although the store is vast, it is well laid out ~ everything in numbered isles ~ and the stock so well displayed that once you’ve got your bearings and have passed your navigation exam, off you go with your basket, feeling rather smug if you know exactly where you are going and in the event that you don’t, as enthralled as any explorer can be.
The Baucenter advertises itself as ‘everything for construction, renovation and garden’.
“You don’t say!”
“I do!”
Jewson may think it’s ‘got the Jewson lot’, but the Baucenter’s got more, by a long chalk.
“Excuse me, I wonder if you can help me?”
“I shouldn’t think so for one minute. You look as if you are beyond help.”
“I’m looking for a long chalk.”
“Ah, I see, that will be Isle number 69.”
There, what did I tell you: They’ve got the Baucenter lot!
Tools, light bulbs, wallpaper, paint, screws, nuts, bolts, carpets, curtains, toilets, patio surfacing, garden ornaments, garden tools, garden fences, garden everything, stuff you need to build barbecues with, stuff you need when constructing saunas, doors to put in door holes and the frames to go round the holes and doors, lamps ~ tall, short, squat, long, silly and not-so-silly … as long as the name’s not beer, you name it, they’ve got it! Or let me put it another way, you would not want to be tasked with making an inventory of this store!
Excuse me, do you sell toilets?Don’t forget to wash your hands!
One thing that has emerged from my brief list, which causes me more problems than anything else whenever I go hardware shopping, is not that the Baucenter doesn’t sell beer, but that it does sell light bulbs, which is good if you want a light bulb. However, I am old enough to remember the time when all you needed to know about buying a light bulb was the wattage of the bulb. Nowadays, there are so many different kinds of bulbs, such a vast array of different shapes, styles and energy types ~ traditional filament, energy saving, LED ~ and new units of energy measurement that it is all too easy to be lulled into a sense of false security and then end up in the lighting isle looking perplexed and bamboozled. Watts! Lumens! BT! Bugger! Yet fear not thee who feel flummoxed! A helpful Baucenter assistant is never too far away when you need to be helped and assisted.
Now that you have replaced the lightbulb that you brought to the centre for comparison with several assorted bulbs, no one the same as the other, and your shopping basket is burgeoning, it’s time to take care of your tum. No trip to the Baucenter could ever be called complete without stopping off at its excellent café for a bite to eat and drink. Did I say drink? Yes, as in cups of tea and coffee, or maybe fruit juice or a glass of still water. What do you think I meant?
The Baucenter café is a proper café, as in an honest to goodness cafeteria. It ‘aint fancy, nor does it need to be. With their tools a-swinging in their Baucenter bags, Do It Yourself kind of people want no-nonsense up-front nourishment, and they want it for the knock-down price of a packet of ordinary paintbrushes!
After the repast is over, novices like me are inducted into DIY, the first lesson being to collect the used crocks from the table and walk them to the tray cart on the opposite side of the room.
That’s easily done, unless you are raving drunk, and of course you’d never be that whilst shopping in the Baucenter, because the Baucenter has security guards with jackets saying ‘Baucenter’ on them.
More difficult than used crocks and Baucenter security men is being vegetarian whilst being in Kaliningrad. However, wherever I go to eat, I invariably manage to find beer something minus meat, and the Baucenter café is no exception. The last time I went there, I had some tasty salads, mashed potatoes, two different kinds of cakes for desert and a large cup of coffee. It did not cost me much, under a tenner in fact, and the quality-to-price ratio left me rather chuffed.
As logical as day follows night, toilets have their respective place in the consumption and ingestion chain and suffice it to say that the Baucenter has them. They are handy for, but not limited to, hardware hauling handymen and anyone else taken short or acting in a pre-planned way before embarking on the long journey home. Hey, don’t forget your DIY sack!
Do we have to fit our own cubicle?
I am not a great fan of shopping, but like a lot of things I’m not crazy about, I do it. I am no fan of DIY and cannot imagine how anyone can be: ‘Horses for courses’, as they say. But when I’m not beerlay (that’s the phonetic spelling of Russian for poor, just in case you were wondering), an afternoon at the Beercenter, I mean Baucenter, is as good a place bar none to spend a pleasant afternoon and in the process walk away, having first paid, of course (remember those men in their Baucenter jackets!), with everything you could possibly need to complete that job in hand. Now, where did I put that bottle opener?
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Basically one of the best beer bars in Kaliningrad
28 December 2023 ~ Yeltsin Bar: The Best Craft Beers in Kaliningrad
There’s an awful lot written about Kaliningrad’s number one specialist craft ale bar, Yeltsin, named after Russia’s first post-Cold War president. Most of it is good; and much of it correct.
The essential ingredients of Yeltsin’s success are a wide range of tap and craft bottled beers from around the world, no frills food and a basic, industrialised look and atmosphere. With its juke box, table football and predominantly young clientele, it is the closest thing in Kaliningrad to a UK student bar that you would not expect to find in any Russian city ~ except, perhaps, Kaliningrad.
Yeltsin Bar
The Yeltsin sits at the end of a big solid block of a building on a fairly busy road junction about five minutes walk from Victory Square, Kaliningrad’s city centre.
You’ll wonder what it is when you first see it, as the name Yeltsin is all there is, cut solidly into a bronzed metal sheet attached to the outer wall. It is an effective sign prompting further investigation and one which pre-empts the Yeltsin design and ethos.
To get to the Yeltsin, one must leave the pavement and descend by a flight of concrete steps. A small beer garden, or more accurately beer courtyard, with a gravelled surface and some rudimentary seating precedes the entrance, and preceding communism, and to a limited extent surviving it, is a fine example of the Russian tradition of wall carpeting, albeit on Yeltsin’s outside wall as opposed to the usual practice, which is to hang the carpet on an interior wall for insulation and decoration.
This wall feature, as quirky as it is, pans into virtual insignificance in comparison to the voluminous blackboard, which, stretching from head height to the point where wall meets ceiling, contains an inventory of beers that ranks as truly awesome.
Beer rotation is ongoing, and with each outgoing and incoming beer, the board requires amendment. Up and down the step ladder demands good co-ordination and an admirable head for heights. One can only suppose that the bar staff either refrain from imbibing or have undergone rigorous training in the art of balanced consumption or balance whilst consuming.
Board-Chalker wanted; must have a good head for heights and proven expertise in the techniques, mechanics and dynamics of staying on a stepladder.
The Yeltsin Bar in Kaliningrad
As I wrote in a former post, the Yeltsin is an honest to goodness no frills bar. It is not ‘back to basic’, it is basic. No carpets (apart from the one outside) and no deluxe or chintzy wallpaper. It’s got hard seats, high stools, plain tables, industrial-style hanging ceiling lamps, a 1970’s style football game, a good old-fashioned juke box and an awful lot of atmosphere. It is not a soft-seat comfort place. It’s a place to hang out and drink beer. In fact, it is simply just a great place, with an easy-drinking atmosphere. What more could one possibly want?
Well, now, the proprietors of the Yeltsin obviously anticipated your answer to that question, and the answer they came up with was the more you want is street cred. And how they have achieved that is to turn the antechamber leading to the toilets and the toilets themselves into municipal halls of graffiti. The result to more conservative-leanings may be a trifle downtown urban for positive acclamation, but for me personally it seals the envelope on the Yeltsin statement of beer and basic.
The thing about the Yeltsin is that it’s a good thing, where less than more really works and where all the additional quirky bits feed into the central premise, which is that young and laid-back beer drinkers only need a glass for their beer, a table on which to place their glasses and stools on which to park their arses, anything else is superfluous.
In the Yeltsin’s case this superfluous anything just might be the huge wall-sized TV screen, which on my most recent visit to the bar was showing a fixed, that is stationery, video-camera image of a busy traffic underpass somewhere in Bangkok (How thrillingly arty fart is that!).
I cast a glance across it and then returned to the beer.
Bing Crosby’s White Christmas Symphony No. 9 in Morris Minor
20 December 2023 ~ 2023 UK Woke Hits an All Time High!
It was cold in April. It was cold in May. Come to think of it, it was cold in the UK, not to mention wet, from April to September. I was staying with a friend for some of this time, where I only had the gas heating on for two hours a day. Even so, the gas bill, together with electricity, ie one light bulb ~ my friend is a tight old sod ~ clocked up about 200 quid per month! I know, I know, it’s all ‘a certain president’s fault’.
We were in Aldi’s supermarket, the only place we dare shop nowadays without taking out a mortgage, when we heard a woman (I think ‘it’ was a woman. You never can tell these days.) behind us at the checkout complaining bitterly about the hike in food costs. Suddenly, my brother Joss, who never takes with him or buys a carrier bag at the supermarket (he’s saving his pocket, not the planet) but always transports his groceries in one of those open-ended, partially broken, sad and saggy inadequate boxes kicking around in supermarkets, on hearing the woman’s complaints, slaps the box upon his head and proceeds to vituperate: “I know! It’s all so terrible in this country. I’m going to hide in this cardboard box. Maybe they’ll go away.” He did actually say, ‘they’ll all go away’. I looked around the supermarket, and I think I know what he meant. However, we don’t know for certain what he meant, because with a cardboard box upon his head, he could have said virtually anything and could have been almost anybody. He could have rowed up the village brook in an inflatable rubber thingy with a Royal Navy escort, declared he came from the land of Cardboard Bongo and, consulting his list of rights and benefits, demanded of the police that they chauffeur him to the nearest hotel. None of your bed and breakfast, mind; anything less than 5-star treatment would degrade the red-carpet welcome.
Anyway, as the box in question had an open end, I twizzled it around on Joss’s head, an action which would have certainly turned his toupee back to front had it not been stuck down with UHU. Now the box was a TV set, so Joss decided to read the news. “Here is the news from the BBC. Whatever it is, it’s all P….’s fault!”
Before leaving the supermarket, I apologised to the people gathered at the checkout for having mentioned Mr Ps name numerous times in the space of two minutes, but, showing them the roubles in my wallet, went on to explain that we have an arrangement with him, viz every time we mention his name in Britain, he pays us a hundred roubles.
I’m not one for confessions or for making and signing statements, but I must confess and state simultaneously that I cannot remember the last time I had so much fun in a supermarket, certainly not recently and possibly not since a childhood friend and I were nabbed in one by a store detective. I can see him now, this stocky, cocky, store detective, striding up behind us, just as we were about to clear checkout, his face wreathed in triumph. He thought he had caught a couple of shoplifters, but we were nothing of the sort. So, he had to let us go, never knowing how close he had come to revealing the identity of the notorious local stock shifters.
Before adopting a moral stance, you must make allowance for the fact that in those days, before the advent of Play Station and when enslavement to the smartphone was just a twinkle in Bill Gates’ eyes, we had, as the expression goes, to make our own entertainment, and how we used to do this in the supermarket was to amble around from shelf to shelf surreptitiously shifting things from one place to another. It was, indeed, a rewarding sight to behold jars of Marmite amongst the saucepans and a tin of baked beans or two sitting next to the Brillo pads. Just think what fun could be had today, now supermarkets sell condoms. The possibilities are endless (I’m sure there’s a Freudian reference here?).
But don’t you talk about supermarkets! Shocked, I was, and I said so to Mavis. Didn’t I Mavis? Didn’t I say I was shocked! And it is shocking, not to mention inexcusable (But, of course, it’s all that ‘certain president’s’ fault!) — Britain’s escalation in food prices: Weetabix £4 a packet! A bottle of brown sauce £3.30! A packet of crisps £1.50 … Well, you know for certain you’re a hopeless old fart when you carry on like this. But what about the price of beer! If I carry on like this, I’ll wear out my exclamation key! There, did you see that! There it goes again!
2023 UK Woke Hits an All Time High!
My brother Joss won’t drink in certain pubs and in certain pubs he can’t because he’s barred. He won’t drink in pubs where he knows that the beer is priced at over a fiver a pint and in pubs where he doesn’t know and is taken unawares, he always complains. He also complains about the quality of the beer, ergo poor quality, and always rather loudly.
“It’s alright,” I said in a resigned voice, when the offended look on the barmaid’s face caught my eye and her eye mine (Were we wearing eye patches?), “I’m used to being ashamed of him”.
Summer in the UK
Since summer in the UK was such an abysmal washout, it enabled me to get down to some serious … beer drinking? That too, but I was going to say stuff shifting. In order to accomplish this gargantuan feat, I had to resort to eBay. I hadn’t used the eBay platform for quite some time, but I soon got back into the swing of things, once I had complained my way through their two-step verification system.
Two-step verification, indeed! I told that globalist, that pseudo-leftist Gaters. “Gaters,” I said, I call him that, you know, “Gaters, what’s it all about then, ay, this two-step verification? If you ask me, it’s more globalist quick step than two step: the swiftness of the feet deceives the arse you’re kicking and whilst we are feeling the pain, you’ve snatched our mobile phone numbers and locked your global trackers onto our locations. It’s all grist to the surveillance mill, the keeping tabs on us all, the inverted 1984, where it’s not the fascists we have to watch out for, at least not in the traditional sense, but the fascistic sanctimonious, pseudo-liberal lefties led by the usual suspects (those well-known US rich families (really my boy, my boy) and their friends in the Davos set).
Of course, I could have gone on saying this until the proverbial sheep came home (‘Merrr, I’ve had my jab!’), but as you, me and the gateposts know, the gateposts we have in parliament, it would not have made a ha’peth, or rather billions of quid’s worth, of difference, because already the globalist mob is no doubt plotting their next Plandemic and rubbing their hands in anticipation of the monstrous profits to come. However, I would have said something to that effect had I not been deplatformed first, labelled a far-right extremist, been banned from tweeting on Twatter and suffered the near misfortune of having my bank account nobbled, as they tried to do with Nigel Farage. Now that wasn’t two-step verification, it was a step in the wrong direction! The goons who pulled that stunt were soon up on their feet doing the shithouse shuffle, as good old Nigel proved again, he is just too strong and too astute for the pseudo-libs to take on.
WOKE WATCH UK!
You know, being a conspiracy theorist and a far-right extremist is not as easy as might be imagined. It would be a lot less difficult to go with the flow, go down to Dover harbour with a bog roll in my hand and beg the third world and its wife (don’t want to be labelled sexist), please can I wipe your arses before the taxpayer-funded police chauffeur you to your waiting hotels and shower you with benefits. What a terribly ‘wacist’ thing to say!
I thought it a bit racist, although not entirely unapplicable, when I heard a bloke down Wetherspoons say … I think he was bloke? (Once you could tell a bloke from a gal by the tattoos that he was sporting, but now that women have taken to tats and to shrapnel shoved in their lips and snouts, it’s difficult to determine who has and who hasn’t the meat and two veg. (By the way, how’s your memory? Do you remember Ena Shrapnel? Give me the hairnet any day (Corrr!) rather than tats and bolts.) Anyway, getting back to the point, which is? Well, I heard this manly man, who may or may not have been a man, say: “Turn that telly off! If I wanted to watch the coonmercials, I would have stayed at home!”
Ah! there goes the theme tune to Love Thy Neighbour.
Britain’s social engineering programme has advanced quite spectacularly over the past five years. The Tories have excelled themselves. They have stolen a march on the Liebour party, beating them at their own game, and flushed with their success are leading with the initiative in sexual engineering. The adverts are a case in point. The next time you go to the pub, presuming that you still go to the pub with beer the price it is, see how many men you can spot who look as though together they have recently won the lottery.
Where’s Frankie Howard and Larry Grayson when you need them most? Now it’s no longer a Catholic sin, let’s hope that they are having fun bumming around in heaven.
They’ve won the lottery!!
My particular favourite sexual engineering advert is the one where the les goes into the shop, says something to the girl behind the counter, the girl behind the counter replies, and the les, who misunderstands her, says, “I’m sorry, I already have a girlfriend!” And the nice black man behind her, who doesn’t look like a mugger at all and besides is a British citizen, titters away as though he knows that the advert he will star in next will see him relishing Sunday lunch around the family’s middle-class dining table.
And what is it about British TV, I hear you ask? If Billy Cotton was still around he would not be shouting ‘Wakey! Wakey’ so much as ‘Wokey! Wokey!’
I threw away my telly many years ago, long before British broadcasting sank beneath the surface of degradation. Did you Mike? You do surprise me. And it wasn’t because of the BBC licence fee, as so much joy can be had from receiving their threatening letters. But this summer, probably because it was so inhospitable that we spent more time inside, the telly at somebody else’s house could not always be avoided. I saw, for example, a segment or two (and that was quite enough) of the Ukraine Vision Song Contest, some of The King’s Coronation on the Royalty Abolitionist Channel and couldn’t really miss the seeming perpetuality of big butch pony-tailed ladies charging around the football pitch, who seem to have no qualms at all about muscling in on what little remains of Britain’s emasculated working-class males’ last bastion of blokeyness.
I also allowed myself the wonder of watching the news on the odd occasion, the wonder being whatever happened to the impartiality ethic? Time was when the news anchor (now re-spelt with a capital ‘W’) would simply read the news. Now they no longer report, they lead, invent and manipulate and for nebulous liberal ends. However, every unpaid licence fee has a silver lining, which is that as long as you know it’s not really the news, it can be entertaining.
For example, have you heard the one about the fire service chap who allegedly suffered a mental breakdown. He was interviewed in his home, looking all wan and lachrymose, by a young ~ I think he was male ~ reporter, who really did overdo it slightly on the ‘I’ve got to look so serious’ level. Perhaps he works for the BBC, where woke is a serious business.
Every now and again, between solemn interludes of conversation and OTT serious looks, the camera would pan, zoom in and focus on a broken mirror on the sitting-room wall, which looked, by my experience, as if someone had put their fist through it. Gritty symbolic stuff, ay! But try to remember that this is the ‘news’, or rather the news is what it professes to be, not a dramatised documentary.
Given the nature of the job, it is common knowledge that firemen suffer breakdowns (note the traditional use of the proper word ‘firemen’). Heaven knows how these men contend with their lot. In the course of duty, they are subject to unthinkable scenes of horror and human tragedy. Hardly surprising, therefore, that even the strongest men crack (Now, now, it’s not what you’re thinking!). But it was not danger or tragedy, tragedy in the accepted sense, or so we were asked to believe, that had caused this gentleman’s breakdown. According to the ‘news’, which was heavily biased in tone and format, his illness had been brought about by his having been ignored when repeatedly calling out the fire service for its alleged culture of systemic sexism.
2023 UK Woke Hits an All Time High!
WTF?! Call me old-fashioned (You Old Fart, you!), but my long-held belief has been that first, centre and foremost, the duty of the fire service is to put out fires and save lives. I certainly don’t recall anything in my primary school books, Janet and John (now Abdul and Lola), about sexist firemen running amuck with their choppers in their hands. I do remember the Village People sliding down a greasy pole not looking like chaps and in nothing but chaps, but that was the 1970s, when men were men and poofs were poofs, and never the twain would meet (so we were led to believe). But a fire service that lets off damp squibs for the sake of claiming compensation, why you’ll be asking me next to believe that public money is actually spent on funding wokist causes, for example something as unimaginably silly as black and pink police associations! It’s Monty Python’s UK Circus!
Ho!Ho!Ho! Hark! Which Santa is that who is coming down the chimney. I hope he’s wearing a condom. Sorry about that, and everything … around me … all over the UK … but as Frank Zappa once famously said, “I can outrage anybody, if they want to be outraged.”
Don’t try this at home, or if you live in Brighton!
More recently, I outraged myself ~ and bear in mind, please, that ‘outraged myself’ is not the same as ‘outed myself’. For years I have been at the forefront of the Smartphone Resistance League, so successfully I might add that my avoidance of the smartphone earnt me this saintly sobriquet: ‘The last man on Earth to own a mobile phone’.
Thus, it was with great sorrow and a distinctly uneasy sense that I was not only letting myself down but anti-technocrats everywhere, when I allowed myself to be dragged, proverbially kicking and screaming, along to the mobile phone shop, where, with a heaviness in my heart beyond the expression of indescribable, I signed myself away to that … to that, terrible, terrible mobile thing!
“Yet something else,” I grumbled, “to cart around in your pocket.” It will be difficult fitting it in [“It’s so big you’ve got to grin to get it in!” ~ do you remember the Wagon Wheels advert?], with all the street survival kit you need in Britain today ~ CS gas cannister, stun gun, beam-me-out-of-the-21st-century flip-top radio, mugger’s alley cloak of invisibility etc etc. Thank heavens my stab- and bullet-proof vest has pockets!
“This ‘aint very Christmasy is it?! Let’s see what’s on the other channel.”
A party-political broadcast on behalf of you can put your cross where you like, but it won’t stop mongrelisation.
Wherever you go in life, even in somebody else’s, there’s always a heckler. But what the heck, it might only be a linguistic device! Anyway, whilst you and your family are sitting around a blazing Christmas fire, with coal you’ve stolen from the next-door neighbours, wearing party hats, wondering why, and cracking your nuts. I shall be pulling my own cracker and … That’s odd? What is? Everything. I thought I just heard someone sing, “I wish it could be Christmas every day.” Those hats! Those nuts! Pulling your own cracker! For eternity! No fear. Ha! Ha! I can see the Christmas TV adverts now: More black than white and oh so extremely gay.
Right, bugger all that, I’m off to make a cup of tea. Ginger, the cat, is squinting at me, but only with his right eye. I think he wants a monachal for Christmas. This is something that’s easily fixed. It’s what Bing Crosby is dreaming of that isn’t.
Updated 10 December 2023 | First published 2020 ~ Kavkaz Restaurant Kaliningrad
Housed as it is on the ground floor of a rather large building across the road from Victory Square and directly in front of the colossal shopping centre built in Königsberg style, it would be inaccurate to say that the Kavkaz Restaurant is ‘tucked away’ or that it is ‘off the beaten track’, but by not facing the main street and not advertised in any demonstrable fashion, you could say that it is reclusive, although no sooner had we entered the place than an editorial decision was taken, as I changed the word ‘reclusive’ to ‘exclusive’.
Immediately on stepping inside through the great glass double doors, words such as classy, quality, posh and ultimately very expensive chinged into my mind one after the other like metal tabs in an old-fashioned cash register, the last more forcibly than the rest, although in fairness I was about to discover that looks expensive does not mean is expensive.
For a few moments I was lost in the vastness. There
are big restaurants and bigger restaurants, but this was one of the biggest.
The metal tabs were singing again: huge, massive, cavernous, grand, and I must
not forget impressive!
It is being this impressed that makes it happen to you rather than you making it happen. A gaggle of pretty young waitresses, dressed in regulation black skirts and white blouses, hover near the entrance of the restaurant ready to escort you to your preselected, pre-booked table. Coats, hats and any other encumbrances are checked in with the cloakroom attendant, and before you know it you have been whisked away majestically to your seat.
No frills ceiling at the Kavkaz Restaurant Kaliningrad
Kavkaz Restaurant Kaliningrad
The Kavkaz Restaurant is a Georgian restaurant and its theme the Georgian Caucasus. As a Romanticist celebration of all that is vast, time-honoured and traditional about Georgia, the restaurant cannot be faulted. Its atmosphere, in great part, relies upon its shabby-chic credentials. The tall square brick pillars have a white-wash exterior, but one that is worn and ostensibly weathered; the ceiling is exposed, but the concrete is torn and ragged; the wallpaper, richly embossed with abstract designs, is scuffed; and the plasterwork screed on some of the walls has seen better days that never existed.
In the cozy secluded area where we were seated, the tribute to Georgia’s beauty continues in framed pictures of mountain men on horseback set against a sublime backdrop of snowcapped, sunlit and half-shadowed mountains. To the back of my seat, at the far end of the room, stand twin staircases equidistant apart. The sides are shabby-chic plasterwork; the tops crested with dark wooden rails. The stairs lead to a small upper storey that is confined to this area only. Brick pillars at frequent intervals, fitted with tall, pierced wooden shutters, the interior moulding of foliate design, create an illusion of sitting outside a building, of sitting below a veranda. In our sequestered corner, the illusion was so convincing that my wife and I were almost compelled to play Romeo and Juliette. But the romantic moment quickly passing, she stood upon the veranda, and I took a photo of her instead.
Olga Hart looking down at me from the balcony in Kavkaz Restaurant Kaliningrad
The Georgian Caucus theme is wonderfully pervasive and permeates everywhere effortlessly. The distressed brickwork, weathered stucco and plaster wall-motifs, the exposed ceiling and idealised pictures of tribesmen riding the mountain range conspire with perfect lighting to make you feel at once relaxed and, if you are not careful, rather more bohemian and definitely a lot more gallant than you could possibly ever pretend to be. It was as well, therefore, that any further straying into the realms of fantasy was brought rapidly to a decisive conclusion by the sceptical face of Pushkin himself staring down from a portrait on high, as if Romanticism was his sole province and yours to sit in Kaliningrad drinking vodka and beer.
Romanticist images at the Kavkaz Restaurant Kaliningrad
Looking somewhere else, I was pleased to observe the arrival of the first volley of vodkas. There were four in all, four tall glasses slotted into a wooden platter with snippets of cheese on one side. Ahh, and here was the beer as well.
Vodka served in style at Kavkaz Restaurant , Kaliningrad, Russia
Several dishes were served up, but as this was a celebration of a friend’s birthday, my apologies ~ I could not keep track of who was eating what and who was enjoying what they were eating. However, between drinking different flavoured vodka’s, we did manage to take some photos of the restaurant’s menu, which you will find in this review.
Kavkaz Restaurant , Kaliningrad, menu Kavkaz Restaurant , Kaliningrad, soups menu
From where we were situated going to the gents was something of a trek. Fortunately, my trip across the Caucasus was amply facilitated by vodkas and beers. From where Pushkin could no longer see me, I observed, whilst trying to walk straight (these mountains are prone to vertigo) that the other side of the restaurant was just as intriguing as the one we were dining in, and another visit would be needed to try it out for size.
One of many toasts at Kavkaz Restaurant Kaliningrad ; Mick & Olga Hart
On returning to my table, my vodkas, beers and wife, she listened intently (as intently as her twiddling habit on her mobile phone allowed) about my trip to the other side.
“Where have you been?” she asked. “I thought you went to the toilet.”
“I’ve been to the other side,” I replied.
She looked at me for a full three seconds, with an expression that seemed to say, isn’t that that where you’ve always been, and then went back to twiddling.
Pushkin was glaring again, so I ordered a second beer and looked him in the eye. He wasn’t a bad old stick, and neither was the Kavkaz Restaurant.
30 November 2023 ~ Smartphone how Smart is it to have one?
The last man to leave the sinking ship; the last man to go to the Isle of Man before they change the name to the Isle of Person; the last man to be the fourth man, as you know there was a third; the last man out at the wickets; the last man to be allowed to be called a man; the last man to play the white man; the last man behind the penultimate man; the last man ~ real man~ to win the lottery; the last man on Earth; the last man in Islington (even more rare than the last man on Earth) ~ you probably wanted to be, if not all of these, at least one of them, in the same way that I had led myself to believe that I was and would be the last man without a mobile phone. I didn’t plan things to be that way, neither did I design my phoneless status, as rumour has it, according to some highfalutin principal. It just happened. I never had a mobile phone, because I never had a mobile phone.
As with being a vegetarian (I became one of those in the 1970s.), I discovered, and I must confess with some delight, that not possessing a mobile phone became other people’s problem not mine, but when those around me who were most effected by my not possessing a mobile phone began to turn up the morality and invoke the strains of guilt, viz that my not having a mobile phone did not prevent me from using theirs, I had to agree, they did have a point.
There cannot be many of us who do not realise that the mobile phone (and I use this term generically to also include the smartphone) is, as with every other technological communication system, a tool for mass surveillance. Whenever you use a smartphone, they know where you are, what you are doing, what you are saying, and, once they have compiled that electronic dossier on you, you can bet your life they presume to know what is on your mind, even how it works, if indeed, it does work after you have enlisted yourself into the ranks of the twiddling masses. So, there it is, the smartphone, but for whom is the smartphone smart? ‘The Spy in Your Pocket’ my brother calls it.
Smartphone how Smart is it to have one?
Mass surveillance is the price we pay for our addiction to technology. Some of us rail against it; some of us accept it; most of us ignore it. I, personally, am not so much bothered about Big Brother as ending my life as the Lone Ranger to become one of the twiddling cattle-driven.
Not having a smartarsephone is a little like not being saddled with children. Without both, you can sit back at comfort’s distance and watch with a heartfelt sigh of relief as it passes you by. But as Nature and habitualisation dupes us into doing things that others think we ought to do, so William Gates and his band of silicons coerce and cajole us, hunt us out, hound us down and round us up until, with no place left to hide, the last stop is the twiddler zone. Remember, just because your paranoid does not mean that they’re not out to get you!
Whilst having children is not so much of a stigma as a life sentence, having a mobile phone is incalculably stigmatic. As soon as you pull out that phone and twiddle, an arrow seems to flash out of the ether, pointing the caption at you, “One of the brainwashed masses!” Tell me, in some American states is it still a felony not to guzzle alcohol inside of a brown paper bag? Taking this as my cue, I was thinking of disguising my phone as a sandwich or rubber duck, but that would never do, because twiddlers who twiddle their lives away do so as if by self-enslavement, they are wearing a badge of honour. All for one and look like all! WTF! (The World Twiddling Forum).
It astonishes me how inveterate twiddlers, who twiddle whilst they walk, do not meet with a horrible accident. An acquaintance of mine, an elderly gentleman, has seen fit to turn this banal practice into a source of entertainment.
Whenever a pedestrianised twiddler is heading in his direction deaf and blind to all around them, he takes up position on the pavement, having first worked out their approximate trajectory, and stands there whilst they collide with him. Judging by the average response, it would seem that even the demigod smartphone, with all its apps, bells and whistles, is powerless to resist when it comes to timely embarrassment.
My personal favourites of the twiddling fraternity are pub twiddling couples. I have seen couples come into pubs twiddling, buy drinks whilst twiddling and then spend the entire evening sitting next to each other, never saying a word, just twiddling. Are they beyond repair, or do they actually ‘talk to each other’, for example on the WhatsArse messaging system?
“What an interesting evening, darling. Time to twiddle back home.”
You’ve probably guessed by now where all this is leading. Correct, no matter how much I might rail against it, and in the process vainly hope that somehow, somewhere along the way, I will exonerate myself, the indisputable fact remains that crumpling under umpteen pressures, I eventually succumbed. Yes, I went out and bought a twiddler (‘Arrrggghhh!’)
So, whatever could have gone wrong to have brought about this extraordinary U-turn?
For all its social and psychological evils, whilst it irrefutably is an implement for mass surveillance, the smartphone also doubles as a cloak of invisibility.
Before the smartphone and its mass uptake, going to the pub on one’s tod was a peculiar exercise in self-consciousness. If you hadn’t got a newspaper to hide behind, and even if you had you might end up reading it cover to cover, upside down and back to front, all you could do was to stare into space. Thankfully, the days have gone, except in some up-North benefit-class clubs, previously ‘working man’s’, when a knuckle-dragging neanderthal clocking how you were sitting there with seemingly nothing better to do than letch would adopt a confrontational tone: “Are you looking at my girlfriend?” which obviously you were, or, if he hadn’t got a girlfriend, which usually he hadn’t because he was far too stupid to have such a thing: “Are you looking at me mate?” The temptation to reply, “Given any number of variables, I would rather look at a piece of s_ _t!” was often too hard to resist, even though as a means of closure, it often ended in fisticuffs and sometimes a trip to the local nick.
Today, pubs, in the main, are much more civilised. Possibly because they are more food, and therefore family, orientated, and also because some of the ‘men’ who frequent them would be positively miffed if they didn’t catch you looking at them. You can usually tell who these men are. You’ve seen them on the adverts. They’re always winning the lottery.
How many men have stopped doing the lottery since adverts like that appeared is a question for another day. It does not alter the fact that sat there in the boozer looking like Billy No Mates, constantly checking your watch, as if someone you had arranged to meet is late, or coddling the delusion that after you have finished that long, that slow, that lonely pint you are going on somewhere else, are no longer ruses you have to resort to in an age where everyone looks and acts as if they are everyone else.
Smartphone how Smart is it to have one?
As long as you are a paid-up member of the Zombified Smartphone Club, nobody is going to bother you, nobody is going to question you. With that little (not so little and also rather heavy) rectangular glass-front phone, a voyeur’s window on the world, not so different from Pandora’s Box, flings itself open to you. You can kerb-crawl the net at will, take as many selfies as you like ~ hundreds if it floats your boat ~ before seizing on that magic one that looks not remotely like you. As long as it hides those sags and wrinkles and makes you believe you look 20 years younger (Likes and Followers! Likes and Followers!), you’ll kiss the ass of your mobile phone until all the old cows come home. Ahh, shrine to delusion, vanity, narcissism, thy name is social media!
I instinctively knew that to take a selfie of myself was something I should avoid. And was I ever right. But for the sake of historical record, I took that selfie. Good heavens, I thought, when I looked at my selfie, what on earth do I think I’m doing wearing the nose of Charles de Gaulle?
This first sorte into the realm of selfie-taking taught me in no uncertain terms that there is obviously more than meets the eye (and nose) when it comes to taking fawning photos for mass consumption on Facebook, especially abracadabra ones that transform you from what you really are into the oil painting you never can be. Indeed, every photo on Facebook is intrinsically an art form, art meaning ‘artificial’, and not everyone can master it. The trick (and what a trick!) is to make your faithful believe that the life your photos say you are living is primarily better than theirs and certainly better than yours.
Look out! Selfie in Victory Square!
My next trick was to put the smartfun away, cease repeating “He nose you know!” and shoot off on my solo run into Kaliningrad’s city centre, where, it embarrasses me to confess, that in front of the monument in Victory Square the compulsion took me again. I had to try for another selfie! (You can see the way it goes, can’t you?)
This time I would bring into play the much loved sucked-in cheeks and ubiquitous silly pout. At the very last minute, however, drawn in cheeks were dropped (they tend to do that, don’t they?), as I had noted in my dotage that my impression of Peter Cushing was already quite advanced and that to remodel my cheeks into two squeezed lemons might prove a bridge too far. If only I’d have stuck in my youth to murdering animals and eating them, by now my cheeks would be lovely and round like two plump rolls of prime pink brisket!
Even though my lips had not been enhanced, pumped up so that they looked like slugs, and I had no Frankenstein’s bolt through my snout, which given its size on my debut selfie could easily have accommodated any number of scrapyard pieces, this was destined to be my first (and also my last, I might add) outdoor-taken selfie. All that I succeeded in doing by pouting my lips like a retard was to convey the regrettable impression that although I was out on the town tonight my false teeth had not come with me. They were probably still in the gherkin jar into which they had landed when I let out that sneeze.
“Well, bugger that!” I said to myself, and shoved my Toosmart phone deep within my inside pocket, and I did not take it out again until I was standing outside the bar to which my feet had been programmed to take me. (Blame it all on the technocrats!)
Here are some facts for you. There are two bar/restaurants in the centre of Kaliningrad which are joined at the hip: one is Bavarian themed, Zötler Bier, and the other Czech, U Gasheka. The only pubs in the UK I know which had a similar arrangement, occurred in London’s Greenwich. They were the Richard I and The Greenwich Union (since vandalised by Young’s Brewery, which, with typical corporate disregard for social history and heritage, knocked them into one).
How embarrassing it was that on one occasion when a group of us had gone to the Richard I, I somehow ended up halfway through the evening accidentally in The Greenwich Union. I had stepped outside the front of the Richard for a quick puff (that’s right, I said ‘puff’!) on my King Edward cigar and when I went to return inside unknowingly entered The Union. Thinking I was in the Richard and that my friends were playing a silly joke, ie they had gone into hiding somewhere, I took the pint I had freshly ordered and went and sat in the beer garden to ponder on what I should do. It was only when I heard my friends chatting away behind the fence in the Richard garden next door that I realised my folly: it wasn’t my friends who had played a joke; it was beer and navigation!
“Well, that’s nothing to be proud of. Is it!” Hmm, I’ll have to think about that one.
Out of the two Kaliningrad bars mentioned, my first bar tonight would be the Bavarian one, an establishment where, if you are lucky, you get to sit down the centre of the room inside a make-believe beer barrel. Unfortunately, my luck was out this evening ~ it had probably gone to Maxims ~ and I was shown to a line of seats and tables that ran along the perimeter of the room. Good! A young couple sitting together at right angles to my table would provide the perfect opportunity for testing the cloaking function of that recently purchased gadget that was jumping out of my pocket.
A businessman, to the left of me, who had obviously not just bought his phone, was so absolutely invisible to everyone in his orbit, with the exception of himself, that had his skills at twiddling not been so well endowed (which seemed to beg the question, was he born with his smartarse in his hand?), I would never have thought to notice him.
He was a pro, I was a novice, and I have to say it showed. My first message on WhatsArse was an all fingers and thumbs job. It took me 20 minutes to compose a reasonably legible paragraph which, had I been working on a laptop, would have taken perhaps a minute or less. Nevertheless, I stuck to my guns, and over the next 40 minutes, managed to shoot three messages into and across cyberspace complete with photos attached. During those 40 minutes, the young couple facing my profile (and thinking “It’s Peter Cushing!”), and whatever it was the man was doing down the other end of the room with his Bavarian sausage, were so plainly indistinct as to issue the suspicion that I had come as close to vanished as Davos had to resetting the world. Had I been any more gone, I would have been shaking hands with H.G. Wells!
Next door, in the Czech bar, I was again unlucky. The best seats had been taken, and I ended up perched upon a sponge-filled leather-look bench, which was, I suppose, alrightish, except that being so high off the ground it left one’s little legs dangling with nothing to rest one’s feet on, rather like sitting in the barber’s chair when you were six-years old. How fortuitous and kind of fate that she had arranged a stool in front of me so that I could use its stretcher as a foot rest.
In this bar, I tried out my phone with an email or two. Fine, although when it came to attaching images, the process became a tad mysterious. Exit quickly and onto Google. I had never opened websites using a smartarsephone before, and now that I have, I cannot say that I found the experience particularly positive: yards and yards of constant scrolling. It’s like an electronic version of bog roll. But twiddling and swiping go hand in glove, and for me, the man with the reputation for being the Last Man on Earth to Own a Smartphone, the gauntlet had been thrown.
In the bar up in the clouds (the Pivovar Restaurant Brewery) overlooking the spot where I shouldn’t have taken my second selfie, and now on my third beer, not only had I become more confident in my twiddling and more comfortable with my twiddler, but my Russian language had improved no end. Crabtree from ‘Allo ‘Allo (“Good Moaning”) may well have had good reason to feel proud of me, but could his approval be half as rewarding as thinking you’re getting it right, whilst most likely you are not, or rather not quite, but not knowing nor either caring because sitting snuggly in your pocket, if you haven’t already lost it, is your little spy and pie in the sky, your customised, very own smartphone ~ ahhhh.
By the end of the evening I was able to say two things. No, I had not drunk so much that I could only say two things, I mean two things pertinent to my smartphone experience. The first was something I had always suspected: Never take a selfie and, if you have to think again, never take a selfie. The second was that my expectations of the smartphone as an instrument of lonely-guy concealment when sitting alone in a bar or pub was vindicated. And yet, the keeping-tracks-on-you downside that inevitably comes with owning a smartphone, unless you keep it switched off, continues not to sit easily with me.
In more recent years, I have heard people say that the Silicon Valley Mob have turned up the heat in their racket to enslave people and to extort as much personal information about everyone on Earth as completely as they can. Like the Capone organisation, which, after Al’s demise, moved with the help of Sam Giancana into the labour rackets, the Silicon Outfit found a new racket in 2-step verification.
Conspiracy theory or not, with the roll-out of 2-step verification for online banking, as a sign-in function for websites and blogs and as the only option for identifying yourself on ecommerce sites, such as eBay for example, the message is loud and clear, either get a smartphone or else be bolloxed.
The one-step further exploitation than 2-step verification is fingerprint and/or eye recognition. Now it’s getting personal. Where will it all end? The clue may lie in the word ‘end’. In other words and words more plain, is Anus Authentication already passing from science fiction into the realms of science fact? It is too much of a coincidence that AI (Anal Intelligence) is the state of the art abbreviation on the tongue of every news editor. AI is everywhere, so there must be something in it, as I’m sure there must be someone out there, in a small secluded brick-looking building in Silicon Valley’s back yard, who is poised with the paperwork in his hand for the biggest breakthrough yet. Zappa may have the answer …
Image attributions
Man with phone on couch: Image by <a href=”https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/character-playing-videogame_7734013.htm#query=clipart%20sitting%20using%20a%20smartphone&position=17&from_view=search&track=ais&uuid=00c57546-c79e-4db8-a98c-c064c40ce15e”>Freepik</a>
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