While renting an apartment on St Petersburg’s Mokhovaya Street, it wasn’t difficult to cross the road and discover Lulu’s Bar.
It’s Lulu’s Bar so she can do what she likes and does. She can’t really sing and the jokes - all double-entendre - are fairly unsubtle. But a bit of kabaret with your konyak is always [...]

There’s nothing to see and only if you read Russian can you pass the time scanning the many bird-flu leaflets.

…The new post-war name of Sovietsk cheese was not a marketing success (laugh) and contributed to the decline in population.

The excellent ‘In Your Pocket’ guide wrote of Svetlogorsk: ‘The whole experience is still decidedly Russian. Savour it before it becomes another generic seaside resort.’

This was written before the Schengen curtain went up around Kaliningrad. These days, Svetlogorsk is in scant danger of euro-isation. The main visitors are Moscow property developers and day trippers from Kaliningrad. So you’ll still get dill with everything and a strong whiff of barbecues in the Baltic breeze.

A sunny Sunday is normally the cue for Kaliningraders to head for the coast.

I’ve spent the last couple of months between St. Petersburg and Svetlogorsk.
Of course, I’ve kept an eye on the street scene.
It’s definitely long, long hair and chestnut rinse jobs. Though the shade of ‘chestnut’ is rather loosely defined, despite what it says on the packet.

And where there aren’t pines, silver birch fill any leaf space left. Svetlogorsk - Kaliningrad’s Baltic beach - is a heavily wooded resort where only shafts of light make it through. Chances of a deep tan are slim and the only really bronzed resident I’ve come across is Pavlov. In sculpted form, of course.

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There are a couple of downsides to blogging the Baltic. Wi-Fi isn’t quite as pervasive as it might be. And laptops are quite heavy if you hump them any distance on the offchance of some free to air.
A little netbook would be nice - if Apple made one. Yet it is possible, I discover, to [...]

Inbetween Novgorod and Kaliningrad I took time off from the net, so here are some pictures I never got around to posting.
Maybe Novgorod is more for history fans than funsters, but surely worth at least one of the regular excursions from St. Petersburg.

Sunday is the perfect day to visit the Kremlin. This babushka has [...]

Andrei Rozen’s portfolio set me mind-traveling from Kaliningrad back to Novgorod, where I spent last Autumn. This portrait of Andre Leon Talley, for Russian Vogue, is shot in Novgorod’s Vitoslavitsa museum, an outdoor exhibition of Russia’s wooden building heritage.
A repro theme park it isn’t. The buildings were brought plank and nail from villages throughout Russia [...]

The road from Novgorod to Pskov

I came across this picture in a Yasha Levine article about ‘Russia’s dangerous roads‘. Hmmm. Hadn’t I seen that stretch of road before somewhere?
It is indeed the road from from Novgorod to Pskov. This eternity, where the asphalt is largely missing, is actually worse to drive over than pot-holed [...]

If you take Poland’s imaginary motorway to Berlin, you’ll discover that - contrary to the encouraging and optimistic road signs, you get thrown off at Nowy Tomysl, where the motorway comes to an abrupt end.
However, you can always capitalise on this opportunity to visit Swiebodzin, a town of incomporable time-warp charm. It’s best enjoyed with [...]