Tag Archives: Snow in Russia

Snow in Kaliningrad: Great Shovels and Icicles!

Getting yourself into a scrape by I Cicle

21 Feb 2026 – Snow in Kaliningrad: Great Shovels and Icicles!

Brrr! That’s something that we all understand in England. At 14 degrees above outside, it’s brrr in most English houses, not simply because we are not used to the cold, but from the shiver that passes down our spines and out through the toots of our toes when we have, in the last resort, to switch on the central heating: Better the shiver we know and must live with than the aaargh that comes with the gas bill.

Fortunately for the UK, however, whilst we really should open the coal mines and pile that lovely black stuff into our stoves and onto our fires without a thought of tomorrow, global warming has come to our rescue. Temperatures in England – not the ones that are rising under every true-born Englishman’s collar, owing to the government’s sponsored migrant invasion – are typically, if not perversely, generally low in summer (you’d think that would drive the blighters away, would you not?) but not so low in winter.

Passing over pointless places of which the UK is composed, and, focusing solely on the one and only UK country that counts, that being obviously England, we will state in connection with our winters that it’s just as well that things are as they are; for given the slightest touch of ice and the most meagre sprinkle of snow, the government and the media go immediately into national crisis overdrive – ‘Help, there is snow on the road!’ – when all we should be concerned about at any time of the year are migrants, muggers and terrorists and with signing up to reasonable campaigns such as banning the hoody from our streets along with the types that wear them. Not yet put your name to this? Then do so straightaway!

Snow in Kaliningrad: Great Shovels and Icicles!

It pleases me to confirm that in Kaliningrad this year, we have experienced, and are experiencing, what I would call a real winter. For several weeks at least, temperatures have been hovering between -9 and -14, dropping sometimes dramatically to -24.

A snowy street in Kaliningrad, January 2026

There are certain sounds associated with real Kaliningrad winters, which are alien to their unreal England counterparts, and of this we can honestly say vice versa. For example, mild winters in England are apt to bring forth incredulous cries of, “What the f…?! I can’t believe this gas bill can be right! ”, whereas in Kaliningrad, and I imagine most everywhere else in Russia, when the temperature rises slightly, one is wont to hear, especially in one’s attic, a terrifying and mighty roar, like the tortured grate of metal on metal, which could easily be mistaken for the frightening din of Casey Jones’ train hurtling out of control down the MF of railway gradients (A conversation in Islington: “Mummy, who the [beep] is Casey Jones?” “Hush, now, dear, put out the light and try to go to sleep. Don’t read that terrible stuff; it is the workings of the fetid mind of one of those naughty men The Guardinistan calls a populist; besides, even with the help of daddy’s child support benefit and contributions from your many uncles, and with I working every hour that the tax god sends, we cannot pay the electric bill, so please don’t give me cause to wonder why I am blessed with being a mother, particularly at this stressful time, and put that light out, now!”), or, for those, like the child in Islington, who have never heard of Casey or his Cannonball Express or owned a pair of stoker’s gauntlets, a substantially different comparison, but one I am sure you will all agree lacks no less of the colourful, is that of the sandpaper sound emitted by a big fat woman hauled along on a sledge, albeit not very gracefully, over freshly gritted ice or across a piece of pavement where the snow has mischievously melted.

Thankfully, this ginormous roar emanates not from either one of these two most obvious sources or even, as might be supposed, from the jaws of a passing lion. They are broadcast by the peremptory movement of prodigious drifts of snow and underlying sheets of ice taking their leave from sloping rooftops. This is why, as you saunter around Kaliningrad, you will observe on many an apex roof protrusive wire frames put there for the strategic purpose of cunningly arresting the wanton and wayward slip of snow, the ultimate objective being to prevent its rapid downward motion so as to mitigate the risk of it plummeting onto your head and doing to you, as a result, without recourse to expletives, what your maiden aunt might coyly describe as ‘a right old mischief, make no mistake!’.

We desperately need something like this – wire frames, not aunties – positioned just a little below the surface of the water and preferably fitted with very sharp spikes, invisibly laid length and breadth across the English Channel. Apart from the entertainment value accruing from the implementation of such a delightful and curious contraption, it would, methinks, provide some budding entrepreneur with the opportunity of making a killing (language of the stock market) on the crowded shores of France, before the inevitable killings are made (language on the streets) in England, by selling to the former country’s lucrative and ever-expanding inflatable dinghy industry thousands of puncture repair outfits, which much of Britain would surely sponsor, as the last thing that its people want is to stop the boats rolling in and prove Elon Musk’s predictions wrong that in them, along with the migrants, a civil war is coming.

The other tell-tale sound of winter heard with fascinating regularity in the attic of your former Königsberg house is the one that goes scrape, scrape, scrape, wafting upwards in the chill of the night from the snow-challenged ground below. This is the winter serenade of many plastic-bladed snow shovels, wielded by men in thick woolly hats, shovelling snow off paths, both in private gardens and on public streets, as though should their husbands fail to do it when they are expected to, then their wives might form the opinion that there is something seasonally wrong with them.

Snow in Kaliningrad is a shoveller’s paradise

Shovelling snow in Kaliningrad is rather more than just a must-do occupation during the winter months; it is, most vitally, when push comes to shove, an intensely competitive sport intended to determine who can do it more frequently and with the most success.

Hailing from a country that is largely less white than it should be, by which, of course, I mean snowless England, where all you have to do is sneeze from any part of the body and the little snow that there is gets blown away, I confess that I am not, by culture and also by lack of experience, particularly good at shovelling, and being rather competitive, or so I have been told and more often than not accused, I tend to subscribe to the mantra of letting sleeping snow lie, preferring rather to trudge across it, even should it cover my knees, than spend a proverbial month of Sundays digging away at snowdrifts as if they never have any intention of disappearing on their own accord.

However, like so many things in life, once bitten, forever smitten. Public Health Warning: Shovelling snow can prove addictive!

A word to the wise, therefore! Before you take to your shovel, it is as well to glance at the nearest rooftop to ascertain the amount of snow and estimate its adherence, prefacing this wise precaution with yet another you may not have thought of, which is that before you start to wield your shovel, stick a tin helmet on your head, or alternatively a Russian castroola (that’s saucepan in your lingo). Once you get beyond the question, “What am I doing this shovelling for?”, which is quickly followed by “Is it necessary?”, and which runs to the conclusion that “I suppose I must. I’ve bought a snow shovel”, you really can get into it, both the saucepan and the shovelling; and, after a while, its all systems go and, dare I say it, really quite fun.

Snow in Kaliningrad paves the way for new experiences

I find that the pleasure of shovelling snow is intensified considerably if, by using the imagination that God saw fit to give you, you trundle forcefully through the snow, making a brr, brr, brr sound as you go. Since it is so cold, so very cold, at -24, you will probably find these sounds occur in the absence of conscious effort, but rattling teeth and knocking knees, though they add tremendously to the experience, are never nearly quite so satisfying as going ‘brr, brr, brr’, when the object of the exercise is to pretend you are a snow plough cutting along the highways and byways in blizzard-blown Siberia.

Adopting this clever fantasy (clever because it stops you asking, ‘What am I doing this for?’) inspired the efforts of a certain man, who uncannily looked a little like me, to such a devoted extent that he found it hard to stop, which in hindsight was rather unfortunate, because having shovelled a surfeit of snow from the pavement outside on the street, quite by accident or malevolent fate, overnight the temperature rose, causing some of the snow to melt and that which was travelling down to earth from an inconsiderate universe to turn whilst on its long descent partially into icy water before coming to rest on terra firma, thus threatening to transform his (this man who looked a little like me) nice, neat, snow-clean path into a local skating rink.

This unforeseen development had the effect of persuading me, I thought not injudiciously, to desist from looking out of the window through which the altruist’s handy work was so demonstrably evident. There were other windows that one could look out of without incurring a sense of guilt, advocating remorse or entertaining rum predictions of unspeakable turns of events, but possibly not with so much success of not inviting jealousy, as from the window I had chosen I could only admire and gasp out loud at how big the neighbour’s had become. Sagely, I said to myself, against the lamentable backdrop of someone vigorously shovelling, ‘Should Kaliningrad hold a competition to see whose is the biggest, it would have to be our neighbour’s.’ I mean, just look at the size of that one! What a beauty! What a monster! What a magnificent icicle to behold!

Whopping big icicle in Kaliningrad, February 2026

It saddened me to think that when soon the shovelling shall be heard no more, this prize-winning shard of ice will melt and shrivel away no different to us and to nothing, and all that will be left of winter, as with every seasonal change in life, will be an echo of the past, marked by the eerie silence of redundant snowmen’s shovels, since disbanded in garden sheds, their handles and blades covered in cobwebs, and in their forced retirement singing, humming and sighing gently of shovelling feats and duty done.

But take heart, those that do, compared to those that don’t or rather petulantly won’t! Spring is not as distant as the snow would have you believe. No sooner will your magic shovels be sadly stashed away than the long green grass will rise on your lawns, over which you will feel the duty-bound need to wave and waggle your strimmers.

And to think that there are philosophers out there who waste their entire existence deliberating and discoursing on the purpose and meaning of life. Give them a shovel, I say, and put them to something needfully useful!

All White in Kaliningrad More Snow on its Way!

Snowy scenes in Kaliningrad 2021/2022

Published: 31 January 2022 ~ All White in Kaliningrad More Snow on its Way!

For the past three or four days the rain has been teeming down here in Kaliningrad. It has washed away the snow and left the city and my shirt, which is hanging on the balcony railings, looking gloomy and bedraggled ~ as I wrote in a previous post, Kaliningrad is far from its best during a rainy winter season!

I also wrote in an earlier blog that ‘It always snows in Russia ~ and sometimes it doesn’t’. Such flippancy becomes me, but affirmation that all is still well can come from the strangest of sources. A few moments ago, I consulted the BBC weather forecast and contrary to my expectations of alighting upon something inexcusably liberal-left, such as for the next seven days it will be sunny over the English Channel, perfect weather conditions for the Royal Navy to taxi across more migrants, I was heartened to discover that more snow was making its way to Kaliningrad. Good, white snow!

The fall may not be sufficient to make hundreds of snow-Its but, as winter still holds illimitable dominion over the calendar, until such time as spring breaks a little more snow is unlikely to offend a conservative outlook on how the seasons should conduct themselves.

All White in Kaliningrad More Snow on its Way!

To tide us over, I have selected and posted here a number of what I consider to be atmospheric ‘Kaliningrad in the snow’ scenes taken just before Christmas 2021 and after Christmas in 2022.

Those of you who are still children at heart will feel the magic in what you see; those of you who have grown up too quickly, grown too old without realising it or just grown out of it, will be excused for thinking snowballs but pitied for a species of short-sightedness that any number of trips to Specsavers is unlikely to resolve.

Every snow cloud has a sublime lining!

All White in Kaliningrad More Snow on its Way!

It Always Snows in Russia!

… and sometimes it doesn’t

Published: 22 January 2021 ~ It always snows in Russia

Before moving here, whenever I mentioned to a fellow Brit that I was visiting Kaliningrad, I would be asked, “Where’s that?” As soon as I had educated them geographically, among the predictable responses based on prejudice and cliché, an old stalwart was, “Russa! Brrr, it’s cold out there …”

Try as I might to explain to them that since Kaliningrad was the westernmost point of Russia the climate was not that much different to the UK’s, the stock images of frozen rivers, ushanka hats, voluminous fur coats and, of course, snow ~ lots and lots of snow ~ proved impossible to shovel away.

It always snows in Russia!

When I first came to Kaliningrad in winter 2000, there was snow, and lots of it (see Kaliningrad First Impression), and I do recall seeing a tower-mounted digital thermometer somewhere in the city giving a temperature reading of minus 27 degrees. Harbouring the same stereotypical notions of Russia’s salient attributes, this first encounter pleased me no end, providing me with photographic evidence to confirm what Brits had always known, that Russia was cold and that it snowed a lot.

There was more snow to Russify my experience when I travelled to Kaliningrad in 2002. We entered the exclave via Lithuania, where it was also snowing heavily, and the journey by train across the snow-bound wastelands was all that the heart could desire.

This stereotype was to melt away, however, in the winter of 2004. This was the year that a new-found friend of ours looking for adventure and a woman, decided to accompany us on our Christmas trip to Kaliningrad. He knew that it was cold (it’s cold out there in Russia), and his knowledge had been bolstered by the tales that I had told and the photographs that I had shown him. He was excited, and set about preparing himself for Siberia, buying up large stocks of woolies, U.S. military surplus coats and the all-important long johns. His suitcases were fat and heavy.

Who said that it always snows in Russia?

Not disappointed, in the first three days of our arriving in Kaliningrad, the temperature had dropped well below those in the England we had left and, more importantly, there was snow, lots of swirling snow. And then, quiet suddenly, the mercury shot up the thermometer tube, the snow melted, the rain came, and it stayed that way for a month. As I believe I have said before, there is a world of difference between Kaliningrad in the winter rain and Kaliningrad in the snow. Those who live here will know what I mean.

Last year, winter 2019-2020, was like everything else that year, miserable. It was, literally, wishy washy: a winter of muck and puddles.

So, how refreshing this winter to see some snow. It has not been that heavy, but it has been persistent and cold enough for successive falls to settle and to transform the city and regional landscape into a childhood memory of how winters used to be.

Oh, but it’s alright for me, or so my critics tell me. I don’t have to go anywhere. I don’t have to scrape the ice and snow off the car in the morning and then brave the roads on my way to work. On the contrary, I can sit at home, look out of the window and admire the Christmas-card view. And they are right. But I am unrepentant and remain that way. There have to be some advantages in getting starry, and this is one of the few.

Come rain, snow, hail or shine my wife goes out whatever, and this is as it should be. Someone has to do the shopping. And she also has to obtain those much-needed photos for Arsebook, which I can then requisition and use here for my blog.

Russia! It always snow there!

To bring things up to date, for the past several days or more it has been snowing lightly, and today, at the time of writing, it was at it again. Temperatures are low enough to ensure that what comes down stays put; just enough for picturesque, but not enough for concern.

This morning, the scene at the back of the house through the patio door was wonderful. It had snowed quite a lot during the night and the rooftops of the old German houses all had snow on them, some in total, some in places, and the fruit trees had become crystalline, petrified, the smaller branches and twigs very nearly pure white and the trunks and boughs though not completely covered with snow were artistically contrasted by what had collected upon them.

Our pear tree was the most wonderous thing. One side of the trunk was peppered with a white drift of snow and the rest, the smaller branches and twigs, coated into nobly clumps, so that taken as a whole it resembled a giant cauliflower. The rest of the garden had all but disappeared, replaced by a smooth white plateau, except for the Buddha, and he was wearing a snow-white hat in the unmistakeable shape of a British policeman’s helmet. Wherever did he get it from?

Kaliningrad Buddha wearing a snow hat. It always snows in Russia! — No he is not a silly Buddha!

Later, as I was stood in the kitchen making a cup of tea, my eyes caught movement and lots of it through the gap between two houses, which for most of the year is obscured by leaves and foliage. All I could see was different coloured objects darting hither and thither, and then it dawned on me that without the obstructing verdure the small park across the road was visible and what I was witnessing was the congregation of numerous families, mothers with their children, and that the different coloured objects, some zipping across the plateau and others sailing down the banks from every conceivable angle, were children on their sledges.

Children sledging. It always snows in Russia! — **Children on sledges, Kaliningrad, Russia, January 2021**

Olga, who walked through the city centre yesterday, said how delightful it was to see children with their parents playing snowballs and whooshing about on sledges. It was a good old-fashioned traditional family sight, and it reminded her of her youth. It reminded me of mine as well. Whenever there was snow, which became less and less frequent in England as the years rolled by, we children would hammer each other with snowballs. We also had a sledge, a one-of-its-kind made from the light alloy parts of a scrapped Flying Fortress, a B17 bomber, salvaged from Polebrook’s United States’ wartime aerodrome. What happened to this culturally interesting and nowadays valuable item? One of my brothers, with considerably less acumen than myself for the singularity of historical artefacts, deciding that he would clean out one of the family barns after a forty-year hiatus, skipped the sledge and kept the junk. Oh, don’t worry, we take every opportunity to remind him of his folly, in no uncertain terms.

From the kitchen to the living room, looking out of the window at the Konigsberg house opposite that has never had anything done to it at least since perestroika, I noted that the two toilets lying in the back garden ~ where else? ~ had become snow toilets, a rare sight indeed, but not as exclusive or controversial as the giant phallus, complete with two enormous snowballs, that some imaginative and enterprising young men would erect a day or two later somewhere in Kaliningrad.

This made the news, and, of course, Facebook. Personally, we had a bit of fun with this, by which I mean we conducted an experiment. Olga posted the media story to Facebook, and then we sat back ready to compare the different reactions from Russian commentators and those in Britland. As we anticipated, the Russian response was one of condemnation and disgust, whilst the Brits reacted in a flamboyant spirit that ranged from artistic criticism to unbridled glee.

Me? I just felt sorry for the virtue of virgin snow, but I consoled myself with the thought that outside of our circle something like this would never be condoned in the UK for fear that it would offend the delicate sensibilities of feminists, race-grievance wardens and the entire woke community: a giant phallus made of snow! Sexist! Racist!

Snowballs!