Zelenogradsk maze - Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Skeletons in closets and more …

Published: 15 January 2021 ~ Amazed at the Museum of Skulls & Skeletons

To see it, especially from a distance, you would think that it was just another modern apartment block. Besides, your eyes would be led away by the nearby proximity of a far more interesting building ~ the Zelinogradsk (formerly, Krantz) water tower. Only when you draw closer do you get to see the hotel sign, as large as it is. This is the intriguingly named Boutique-Hotel Paradox; the first paradox being that entombed within this building lies the Museum of Skulls & Skeletons; the second, that it is not really a museum at all but more like an art centre, or exhibition centre, of skulls and skeletons. But you won’t know this until you get inside.

Once on the forecourt shared by the Boutique-Hotel and water tower, you will be unable to miss the directional sign for the museum. It is a large ~ larger than life ~ skeleton made of metal, steampunk style.

My wife, Olga, and I visited the museum on the 21 December 2020.

Here is an extract from my diary:

As we climbed the steps to the entrance of this building, the thought materialised that it was an odd building in which to have a museum. For a start, it was plainly modern, and for a second and last it was more or less nondescript, looking like a large block of flats with one of the lower walls in glass, through which it appeared was a bar or restaurant.

The entrance led us into a foyer, which, in keeping with the building’s general appearance, was office-like. Olga paid the girl sitting at the desk in one corner the skelet museum’s entrance money, and off we went, through some large glass doors and up a staircase, which was, well, office-like. And when we emerged into an identical landing on the second floor, where there was a long counter/reception desk, it felt as if we had come for a job interview.

To our right, there were two large, double, glass doors, and it was in here where the skeletons were lurking.

I am not exactly sure what it was that I had been expecting. Olga had spoken of the museum a year or so ago when she visited it whilst I was in England, and we had posed for a photograph next to the metalwork sculpture of a skeleton outside the front door on the concourse one night last year [2019]. This particular skelet had a bronzed, distressed finish, classifying it in my mind as steampunk, so I imagined that this was how the rest of the museum would be. I did not expect it to be a museum in the traditional sense, full of dusty, old, real bones, which was good, as it was not like this at all. No, Zelenogradsk’s skelet museum is, in fact, a brightly illuminated showroom containing a vast number and range of skelet art pieces of all shapes and sizes made from lots of different materials.

Amazed at the Museum of Skulls & Skeletons, Zelenogradsk

The desk to the left of the entrance, the shelves behind and other surfaces and the display units to the front and side were bristling with every conceivable skelet artefact in miniature or medium. On, within the glass-frontage and around the desk, the smaller items were souvenirs, waiting to be bought as mementoes of your visit. In front of you, and in the centre of the room, there was a large motorbike, possibly a Harley ~ they like Harleys in this part of the world ~ complete with flag, possibly one with a skeleton imprint ~ on which one could sit and have one’s photo taken. In fact, Olga suggested that I do just that, but I declined on the basis that I was not a motorbike sort of person.

I was, however, the sort of person who would be quite ready and willing to stand next to a ‘vintage’ wardrobe containing various skeleton pieces and which spoke to you in English when you opened the door. Olga snapped off three or four pictures of me in front of this, including a most arty-farty one, in which my face appears in the inside door mirror looking quizzically at a white bust of Putin.

President Putin in the wardrobe — Hello, fancy meeting you here

Amazed at the Museum of Skulls & Skeletons Zelenogradsk

The next experience was an unlikely one for us and one, moreover, which Olga placed great symbolic store on later. At the side of us, next to the wall, there was a doorway with multicoloured plastic streamers hanging vertically from the ceiling. A couple of yards away to the right there was an identical door furbished in the same manner. Above each door, on brightly coloured card, I was able to read, in Russian, the words ‘entrance’ and ‘exit’. I asked what this was, and Olga said it was a maze.

The maze at the Museum of Skeletons in Zelenogradsk — Amazed at the Museum of Skulls & Skeletons Zelenogradsk

“A maze!” I snorted.

I just had to step inside and in so doing was immediately and utterly overwhelmed, smothered by the sheer volume of the multi-coloured hanging plastic strips. I pushed my way through them until I reached the back of the cabinet. It must have been almost two yards deep. The density of plastic trailers made it impossible to see what exactly lay at the back of this cabinet, but I could feel a textile wall ~ and that was it. I felt my way back to the entrance, saying, as I almost emerged, “But there’s no way through; it is solid.”

“No,” Olga contradicted, “It’s a maze. It says so on the sign.”

I was just about to question the veracity of this statement when I realised that the vertical strut I was holding was not in fact adjoined to the outside wall.

“There,” said Olga at the same time as I discovered it, “is an entrance.”

Indeed, there was. It was narrow, about one slim person wide, tall, obscured by the crowding nature of the hanging tapes and the dark interior beyond but most of all by the assumption that no doorway would lie at right angles to the entrance.

By now I was curious and made to move inside. Olga was nervous and attempted to hold me back.

“Come on!” I laughed. And off we went.

No sooner had we stepped inside than we were overcome both by the darkness, which was now black as pitch, and by the obstructive density of the dangling ribbons. We had not gone three feet, I imagine, before our voices lowered and our pulses began to race. I edged forward, feeling the wall as I went, until my hand dropped into space. Another right-angled turn. I urged Olga to follow me.

As I entered into a wider void, I heard Olga’s voice in the darkness call out, “Hold my hand! Hold my hand!” I did, pulling her gently behind me. I was feeling for where I suspected the next opening in the maze would be, but it was not. The ribbons seemed to be growing in profusion, but I found another gap and proceeded through it, a frightened Olga clinging to my hand and calling in an alarmed voice, “I don’t like it”.

Into the next compartment we went, with Olga calling, “Let’s go back.”

It seemed to me that this part of the labyrinth was larger than the previous, and when my hands hit solid wall, and with Olga crying to get out behind me, I must confess to experiencing a paroxysm of panic, quite foolish and illogical I know, but panic all the same. I was on the cusp of saying, ‘you’re right; let’s retrace our steps’, when a science officer Spock-like rationale kicked in. “Don’t be so silly,” said a still, calm voice, “you’re only inside a cupboard.”

[I have omitted the next paragraph as it contains the secret to identifying where the ‘doorways’ are, and I would rather you go to the museum and get lost in the maze yourselves!]

Applying this simple science, we did a quick sharp turn and there, lo and behold! through the ribbons that hung like fog, the lights of the larger room penetrated.

As we emerged, I had to laugh, both at our fears and our appearance. My hat was all skew-wiff, making me look like Captain Mainwaring in one of those scenes when the entire Dad’s Army troop cram into the verger’s office, and Olga was as red and dishevelled as a beetroot fired from a cannon.

The difference was that whereas I had enjoyed the experience, she had not; and whereas I recovered instantly, she did not. She was still talking about how much it had disturbed her on the way home and, in fact, throughout the following day.

Made of sterner stuff, however, including a built-in denial system that allowed me to bury quickly any further thought of the spasm of fear experienced and certainly not to discuss it, I moved on to the exhibits, which were many and varied and laid out in large shelving units glazed front and back. My favourite was the excavation scene: a skeleton lying on its side in a shallow hole, its legs bent at the knee and one of its bony hands clutching an empty bottle of vodka. The red earth around the skeleton was caked, cracked and littered with the detritus of our modern age, suitably weathered and tarnished as though it had been there for some considerable time. There was a battered coke tin, a scrunched-up plastic bottle, a squashed memory stick, part of an old music cassette, a CD, a shattered ballpoint pen, a condom (still in its packet, I am glad to say!), coins, a battered mobile phone and other bits and pieces testifying literally to life in the throwaway age.

Remains of a skeleton amongst remians of modern life

This exhibit was not, of course, a shelf one. It was contained in and presented through a large flatbed cabinet, tilted at an angle and raised on supports. It stood in front of a window, the closed strip blinds of which had one edge stencilled with the image of part of a skeleton, connected visually to the rest of its skeletal body, which was solid state, pinned above the blind fitting. Two similar designs were repeated in the second half of the room: one, with the skull and two hands of a skeleton mounted above the blind rail and the complete body of the skeleton stencilled beneath it; the other, one side of a skeleton in solid state with the skull, rib cage and one arm stencilled onto the fabric.

In the centre of the room where I had been studying the excavation scene, there was a table-mounted stretcher, on whose surface lay a skeletal leg and, standing next to it, a skeleton doctor, dressed in a white coat with a stethoscope around its neck. Hmm, not only was he not wearing his muzzle (mask), but he had also forgotten to put on his trousers.

The glass-fronted shelving units contained a profusion of artistic sculptures all designed around the theme of skulls and skeletons. My favourites consisted of: (1) a ‘giant’ Zippo lighter, with two skelets standing nearby, one holding the body of the lighter and the other supporting its top; (2) three skeletons together on a beach with a large jug of beer next to them, one of the skeletons is lying drunk on his back and next to him is the proverbial tall story ~ a giant fish; (3) three different tray and skull designs, each profusely decorated ~ one in blue & white motifs; the other deep red with abstract, almost psychedelic ornamentation; and the third in traditional Russian lacquer-work. I also liked the open-sided computer tower with a gold skull inside, and the skulls with green moss clinging in patches to the side of them. One of these had a small graveyard scene modelled on the skull’s cranium, complete with tumble-down picket fence and skewed tombstones.

Of the numerous artefacts on display, if I was asked to choose my favourite, it would be without hesitation a figural piece, which was both touchingly symbolic and at the same time macabre. The composition is that of a long-haired female skeleton sitting on the knee of her skeleton male lover, the two are embracing and kissing, and the piece most aptly named, ‘True Love Never Dies’.

I would have purchased this without a second thought, but, alas, none of what we could see before us was purchasable. There were skeleton-themed items that you could buy, but they were cheaply made and overpriced. There were other pieces that I did not care for, mainly those skulls that looked as though they belonged to computer-game software and Halloween-type products: skulls and skeletons with glaring, gobstopper eyeballs. There was even a wall-hanging skeleton with the parched remains of brown flesh clinging to its bones. If this was available for purchase, would I have bought it and hung it on my wall …?

In the end, we settled for a skeleton pen, with two articulated arms. There are a couple of buttons at the back of these little devils and when you press them the arms move, as if they are boxing, oh, and the eyes light up.

I would have bought the skull lamp, but I thought it a tad expensive at thirty quid, and besides I was not sure whether our skelet, the one we have at home who is a member of the family, would be pleased. Skelets, like the human beings that they partly are, can be exceptionally jealous.