It’s Saturday and I’m in a Saturday night’s all right for fighting mood. I’m cross with myself for backhanding the militsi 400 Euro. I should have gone to Russian prison and had something meaningful to write about. I feel I’ve let down the whole blogging community.

Anyway. After a couple of red wines, there she is standing over by the record machine - though hardly the Chuck Berry vision. She’s in the Hotel Deima’s pathetic attempt at a disco - the evening version of its so-called restaurant, with almost no patrons, one flea-market rotating mirror light and one Stas Pexa number they play all night long.

I buy her a beer. I buy myself another red wine. We dance and she shoves my hand up her top. I’m past caring. I get the tab and suggest we finish drinking upstairs. Which is where the trouble starts.

It’s often been my experience that seedy Russian hotels have a strict code. You can’t take any woman upstairs. Only an official Hotel Ho. Maybe this girl was official once - after all, she was drinking in the disco - but I guess she hadn’t paid someone off. We are blockaded at the souvenir shop by the night watch.

A shouting match ensues - she’s past the label - and he suddenly gives her a grey-out quality smack round the head. Well, it gets my attention. I ready the camera for a photo op, but this only occasions the hotel to panic and call the militsi. We’re bundled smartly out the door. ‘You make beeg mistake, English’, says the receptionist, just like a line straight out of Len Deighton. ‘Zis woman ‘ave no papers’. Oh really. They were quite happy to sell her drinks all evening.

One of the militsi suspects I’m a junkie and pulls all the zips on my bag, emptying the contents into the long grass in the dark. Wonderful. In nanoseconds I’ve lost my glasses, keys, immigration card, god knows what. Another goon checks Hotel Ho’s papers. (Aha, she does have papers.) Strangely these appear to check out, so they leave me fumbling in the dark and Lada off. But Deima’s night man is still sore about my taking his mug shot and I’m not going to be let back in my room. So it’s a taxi to her place.

She gets out some beers - bottles, no glasses - and cuts some sausage. While she’s in the shower, a dog jumps on the table and slobbers over the sausage. Cool. Up until now there’s been little to report on Kaliningrad Night Life. Ho steps naked out of the shower. Unfortunately the light bulb in the apartment is also glaringly naked. She appears as a bright white corpse with shrivelled buns. I have this sudden urge to shut my eyes and go to sleep.

‘Er. prastite’, I mutter, ‘ustal’ and make the bye-byes sign language. Well, it isn’t what she wants to hear and I’m shouted out into the street for the second time. Pulling on a wrap that hardly covers anything, she starts flagging down cars to take me away. A couple stop and they get out, each of them with a bottle in one hand like it’s permanently attached. Hotel Ho is trying to push me into the car. I stand my ground. The other girl comes up and holds out her hand to me as one might to a frightened child who is being abducted. I remember saying something really stupid and English like, I’m only getting a proper taxi - as if there’s anything less than iffy in this town. But by chance a cab cab does pull up at the all-night liquor store.

In the morning, I get back in the Deima for my stuff. The hotel charges me for sleeping in my car plus 30 dollars for losing the room key the militsi tipped into the grass somewhere - never did find that - and for a breakfast the restaurant doesn’t serve.

I mean to write a full review of the Deima of course, but right now I’m busy designing their customer satisfaction form. It includes questions such as: How did you feel about being bundled out of our hotel? Was it (a) Too forceful? (b) Not forceful enough? (c) Just right!