Taxi!

Kaliningrad-Gdansk is one of the world’s slowest train journeys. They say it’s about four hours. Which is a long time to cover just 125K. And there’s still more time to factor in.

First, it’s important to know that all trains in Russia run on Moscow time. So the 18.35 from Kaliningrad to Gdansk actually leaves at 17.35. Add an hour already.

En route, the train passes through a border post in a forest between Russia and Poland, for which you can probably allow an hour on either side. The forest is of cold-war-style barbed wire which just leaves a gap wide enough for the train. It’s time-warp travel in every sense.

I checked my baggage for an anaesthetizing hit. I had some paracetamol, ear drops, a lucky icon calendar and some Russian railway sugar. Not really enough to knock me out for six hours. I can however recommend finding a talkative Australian and a carriage of cigarette smugglers. This passes the time rather well.

Cigarette smuggling is the premier economic activity of the Kaliningrad Oblast. When you take your seat on the train, don’t be surprised to find a little old Polish lady underneath it with a power screwdriver. At Kaliningrad Voksal, cigarette cartons are hidden in the seats, ventilation ducts, strip lighting, headlining, loos, everywhere. The old ladies then innocently take seats at a distance from their stash.

At the border, Russian and Polish guards board the train with power screwdrivers, climb all over you, take the train apart and put it back together again. None of the guards have guns in their holsters, only Black’n'Deckers.

Besides old ladies, does anyone really need to visit Gdansk? Well, there are many Lech Walesa posters around the place - including a huge mural at Gdansk’s Lech Walesa airport - which tell you that the town is the ‘crucible of modern democracy’ and ‘history started here’.

It’s all a bit of a horse laugh, considering Poland is now a bananas state where the President appoints his twin brother as Prime Minister. In the 1970s, workers fought communism because they wanted honorable working conditions. Then the shipyards provided employment for over 20,000 craftsmen. Today there are just 3,000 jobs and the skilled workforce is currently washing dishes or packing chickens in England. Or smuggling cigarettes. Solidarity is just a fondly remembered logo.

The Soviets were roundly - and rightly - criticised for a lack of infrastructure care in Poland. But at least they left things as they were. As the train pulls in to Gdansk Glowny, you are in for another picture of ‘progress’.

This is the station as it was. Today the middle section is a McDonalds and the east wing a Kentucky Fried Chicken. There’s a huge illuminated KFC on the gable. The windows are largely covered with giant colour blowups of Happy Meals.

Across the street is a Holiday Inn and a Mercure, so really you might just as well have been to Gateshead or Glasgow for the day.

All in all, it was a delight to return to Kaliningrad. Not only is Kaliningrad Voksal beautifully restored, with polished marble halls and new blue and gold uniforms for the ticket clerks, but the old Babushka in the cafe is always pissed and pretty quick to splosh around the wine and konyak. Really, this is the essential difference between Russia and Poland - liquidarity rather than solidarity.