Meanwhile Back In Kaliningrad
I last drove through Mamonovo on a midriff-baring summer day, passing the time in the border queue with a packed Olga lunch of chicken and Georgian wine.
Seasons change but the queue remains the same. I’m sure I recognise some of the Polish cars still here from last year. Obviously beef smugglers. The Polish line never appears to move.
It reminds one that Kaliningrad was a closed town for 50 years. Well, the whole oblast was closed. There’s a Wiki entry on Russian closed towns, but Greg McNafferson’s ‘Russian Geography’ is far more illuminating:
In the times of the Iron Curtain there were many towns in Russia, where parts of nuclear bombs were manufactured. Such towns were called ‘post office boxes’, because they were represented only by a postal address like ANPR-566—833. Nobody knew where such a town was, whether it was big or small or what its inhabitants did.
The secrecy was so high that even inhabitants themselves didn’t know where their town was located — in the South or in the Far East, in Russia or another Soviet Republic of the great USSR. These towns were not marked on maps, of course.
Reading the recent publications on military history of Russia, I have found out that not only were there hidden towns and villages in Russia, but also whole hidden Republics!
And the main incredible discovery is that Russia itself was hidden!
Forget everything you think you know about Russia. Forget what you think you know about the country’s location. The power of the KGB has no borders. Do you really think the US government wanted to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan on August 10, 1945? You are deeply mistaken. Rockets were aimed at Moscow, Russia. Or, to be correct, at the place where American secret service thought Moscow should be.
Foreseeing the possibility of the Russian capital location being uncovered, KGB moved the capital from one city to another every year and renamed many towns so that they would have similar names. Even today you can hear people saying something like ‘I am leaving for the north capital’ meaning St. Petersburg. In fact, there are still 134 cities named Moscow, 108 St. Petersburgs and many others. Such cities are called brother cities.
Only after perestroika did Gorbachev agree to lift the curtain of mystery over the country’s location, since international airlines had to know where to land.
As it happens, Baltijsk, the old Soviet naval base in Kaliningrad, is still partly restricted and if you plan to sail around this part of the Baltic you need special and highly complicated invitations from local yacht clubs. Otherwise a Soviet destroyer will dang your dinghy.
Kaliningrad takes on another character in winter. Despite all its recent Eurostyle rejuvenation the old, bleak Soviet landscape dominates. Here’s a nice picture of an old Soviet sculpture, originally designed to show the time in different parts of the world. The base is a map but nobody can remember the clocks ever working. Perhaps this was to prevent the residents of Kaliningrad from knowing their true co-ordinates.
Kaliningrad pictures by Ed Austin
as they say “very interesting but stooooopid”. Don’t even know how to interprete this bullshit - are you joking? Kaliningrad region is curious enough where “story telling” fantasies seem to be superfluous. Naval maps of the region are up to date and more detailed than many European shores and always have been otherwise approach to Baltijsk would be cluttered with wrecks. We had a cup of tea on a British registered yacht in Baltijsk in 1992 or 1993, while last year I sailed a Red Ensign yacht from Harwich to Baltijsk with a British crew.
Perhaps copydude copied his attitude from another “observant” traveller - A A Gill http://www.travelintelligence.net/wsd/articles/art_1001177.html
cheers
The main body of this post is supposed to be humour. It is not supposed to be read literally. Perhaps I should have put ‘humour alert’ at the top.
The article you reference was written in 2001. Most Western visitors at the time did indeed find Kaliningrad quite forbidding - if not shocking. It still isn’t pretty but the makeover since ‘05 has mitigated many of the horrors.
Concerning visas, I understand from the authorities that the business is complex if a crew wishes to leave Baltijsk (on land) or continue sailing into the vistula lagoon.
I guessed that it’s a spoof, trouble is there’s not a slightest difference between a spoof and “the real thing”. It’s the attitude of the “observer” that is the same - patronising arrogance. Time is irrelevant, whether 2007, 2001 or 200 hundred years ago - take “La Russie en 1839″ by Marquis de Custine, which, it seems, is practically copied word for word by every European travelling to Russia.
“Business is complex” as a result of NATO’s blind and uncompromising drive right up to the Russian borders and Poles eternal desire to become Europe’s best plumbers. 16 years ago I met an Englishman from Essex University in my hometown of Svetly. He arrived there directly from Gdansk by ship on a temporary Russian visa - it was OK for a couple of days. Svetly had customs and border control office by the town peer - such was the initial drive towards openness and cooperation with the neighbours and EU in general. Such steps imply a two way street, but the moment was lost and we have what we have - barbed wire around Russian trains in Vilnjus and no sailing in Kaliningradski zaliv. Plus road signs in Polish in England. F***ing great!
Baltijsk with its peers, harbours and quays is formally a military naval base. Which, I agree, is a real pain. But try moor within the limits of a British naval base, say in Gibraltar. Best way around the problem is to form a joint venture with the Baltijsk Navy, just like the UK company Baltic Petroleum did.
That’s not really recent news
but thanks anyway. Nice blog by the way.
You’re making a lot of correct details in your post and would probably believe many of them.
I’ll gear this review to 2 types of people: current Zune owners who are considering an upgrade, and people trying to decide between a Zune and an iPod. (There are other players worth considering out there, like the Sony Walkman X, but I hope this gives you enough info to make an informed decision of the Zune vs players other than the iPod line as well.)