Beside the Seaside

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In Which A Grim & Distant Frontier Is Breached

November 16, 2006 by Mike

Gdansk, Poland

Route: Kaliningrad - Mamonowo - Gronowo - Elblag - some obscure back roads - Gdansk

This is a long one: sorry.

What I haven't found space to say about Kaliningrad could fill a book [Charlie - it's all yours] but might include:

1. It's home to what's been called The Ugliest Building In The Soviet Union/ The World. Sir Norman Foster would be proud of the House Of The Soviets. The innards are on the outside: service shafts and walkways and the like; separate towers joined together over a ground floor base of concrete. It's failings are al too clear to see, too: there are no lights on in the House Of The Soviets because it is empty: it has never been used. Kruschev ordered it to be built on the site of Köningsburg castle, damaged by the WWII bombings. The funniest-saddest thing being, because the castle foundations were unstable and its cellars widespread, the much-heavier House Of The Soviets is structurally unsound. [Oh, the irony...] An impotent, useless, towering monument to the Soviet era plonked right in the middle of the city.

But the truth is? 'Ugly' is subjective. I'd say there are thirty grim and grimy apartment blocks visible from the cracked, desolate plaza infront of the House Of The Soviets that are far uglier. And people have to live in them, not just glance at them as they scurry along the street: far worse.

2. I spent a long time in the market -- it's covered; it was raining -- keeping up my quota of markets visited on this trip. Row-upon-row of stalls selling winter coats and warm boots. This must be November. The central section is the produce market. It was stuffed to the gills with fruits and vegetables the like of which I've never seen before: the colours and shapes and textures and smells were a wonder to me. (Regretfully, the same would be true of my local Tesco: I just don't know much about fruit & veg - it doesn't mean the stuff here is particularly exotic.) Capacious side-halls, painted white to emphasise the dirt and grease on walls and floor, are devoted to cheeses, hanging meats, prepared meats and sausages, fish. The cheese sellers are the most insistant, offering a taste of their wares. The sausage-sellers (and there may be sociological or nutritional reasons for this that I can't pinpoint) are by far the best looking.

3. Dairy farming was the mainstay of the local economy until the end of the Soviet Union, when they lost their captive market - and the means to get their milk easily to the rest of Roosia. I read somewhere that 70% of the herd was destroyed. Well, Mr/ Ms Statistician, I haven't seen a single cow in Kaliningrad (city or countryside) since I got here...

4. The main road in town is (still) named for Lenin. There is Karl Marx Street too. And lesser lights of the Soviet era - Kirov and Frunze and the like. Even the name of the city: Kalinin was the first President of the USSR. Now wait a minute... Leningrad changed its name; so too did Stalingrad. The Soviet road names, too, have gone. Why not in Kaliningrad? Because they can't revert to their pre-Soviet names. They're all German. And nobody needs reminding that.. whisper it.. this city isn't Roosian at all. It's all smoke and mirrors..

5. Something else I read: the average income in the Kaliningrad oblast (region) is less than $100 per month.

But we must move on. My visa is a short one and time's wingèd chariot, as ever in the form of the threat of snow, is at my back.

The layout of the city is straightforward. I know that in order to get to the Polish border I have to be on the other side of the river... bridge duly crossed.. then head over to the right-ish on a main-ish road. That will have me pointing in the right direction. Lo-and-behold, I even spot a roadsign indicating where to turn (a rarity in these parts) and so I know that I am (probably) on the road to Mamonowo and the border. (There's another spit heading south, but it's a military zone and still closed to the public and, especially, foreigners.)

Such certainties are a reassurance when you find yrself riding a motorbike up a cobbled, pot-holed, rain-soaked rat-run of a road with heavy lorries wheezing and weaving dangerously close on all sides. The smell all around is of burnt oil. White Van Man, too, is alive and well and living dangerously in Kaliningrad. The road passes through the Brandenburg Gate, another rebuilt redbrick monument to the region's Germanic past. I throw a glance upwards as I ride through, not too happy at taking my eyes off the road surface. The bricks are peeling away above me. I accelerate and am grateful to be wearing a helmet.

There are blocks of flats in the very centre of all the post-Soviet cities I have visited. There's a certain democratisation of the urban space involved here: why should ugly, cramped living be confined to the suburbs? Why shouldn't people living in wracked poverty be able to look out of cracked windows to see cathedral spires and the insistent neon lights of the 'Roosia' cinema? Why should visitors to the old historic centre be denied the sight of what modern living means to the locals?

This means in turn that, for the independent traveller, the appearance of individual family homes means you've reached the suburbs. In almost all cases, that doesn't mean social or economic advancement. The houses are in pitiful disrepair. Broken windows let in the cold air - they'll let in the snow when it arrives too, so presumably they open on rooms that are blocked off from the rest of the house. The curl of smoke from one or more chimneys indicates somebody is home: don't look for lights to be switched on. In the daytime? A waste of electricity - and money. I wonder about the houses with no smoke coming out of the chimney: don't assume they're empty, just that the people inside them are cold.

Then, just as suddenly, you're through the suburbs and into the countryside. While the road still demands attention, it isn't as bad as some. After all, this is the E28 and the E77. Someone's lobbed a few bob in to keep it in a decent state of repair. Some of the money has even been spent on doing the work.

I'm riding through East Prussia (as was) and by golly, it's exactly as you'd picture East Prussia to look. Blasted heathland, low forested hills, copses scattered across grassland stretching far to the horizon. The sky is lightly picked out with cloud but blue sky and a weak November sun are coming out on top. It's crisp. The road is lined with mature trees almost the whole way -- planted long before the Soviets arrived: a Prussian legacy -- so you can plot your route far into the distance, and see long before you arrive where another road is to join your own. Everywhere, the shades of Autumn. Reds and orange and gold and deep yellows.

The road goes straight into my Top Ten.

It is a landscape that in my mind harks back to a specific time in this land's topsy-turvy history. At any moment I expect to see an aristocratic 19th century hunting party bound out of the trees and over the road in pursuit of a horned stag. Better be ready to brake sharply if they do: they certainly won't be expecting me.

But there are no aristocratic hunting parties. There are no aristocratic manor houses or hunting lodges. There are no aristocrats (the Soviets weren't all bad).

Life In A Small Town
In the seaside town of Uskakowo, I park up and walk the main street, looking about and taking pictures. There are anglers everywhere: fishing for food, I suspect, rather than for sport. Every building on the roadside is dirty. Everything is in need to repair. The houses behind the road and down to the water's edge are old wooden boxes: unpainted, untreated, uncared-for. There is a former church - war-damaged and left to fester. In front of it a large memorial records the names of 100 and more Soviet soldiers who must have died fighting in this spot. There are flowers. I want to say "freshly lain flowers" because they look new but these flowers are plastic. Can plastic flowers be freshly lain?

A middle-aged man with one eye and a crap moustache stands motionless by the road, dressed in filthy overcoat and string. He stares at me without malice or menace. Beyond him, a youngster is hard at work raking leaves. I gesture that I want to step inside his yard to take pictures of the ruined castle behind the village. If it is a castle - it's so broken down that it may be an old factory. It's hard to tell.

We introduce ourselves: "Mike..."... "Roman..." He is enthusiastic but lack of a common language is frustrating. What the hell is the Russian for 'castle'? He doesn't recognise the German ('schloss') but why should he? He and his parents and his parents' parents are Roosian imports from elsewhere. They would never have come into contact with German speakers - the people who built and lived in this town. But then he comes back with "Brandenburg" and finally there's a word we both understand. That brings huge smiles on both sides. I try 'Remont', a word you see on in every Russian town or village: it means 'repair'. Most local cars and lorries look like they could do with some 'remont' at the best of times and the laws of supply and demand mean there are lots of places ready to do it.

"Remont?" I gesture towards the ruined castle.

It's as though the idea of repairing this huge, devastated building that overwhelms the place where he lives, possibly where he has lived all his life, had not occurred to him before. It's just... there. It's a ruin, not a former castle. A jagged, remote, empty presence. I have no need or desire either to glamourise or overemphasise the poverty of life in this rural backwater but I can't help hoping that for Roman and his pals, this ruin was a great place to play when they were kids.

Roman shows me the building where he and other youngsters are hard at work. This is being repaired. It has the feel of an old village school. There is a corridor and small offices and two larger rooms - classrooms, perhaps. Everything has been stripped and they are furiously scrubbing it clean. An older woman is introduced as the 'direktor'. Flush with optimism, I picture a new youth club or training facility where the young people of Uskakowo will be able to meet, talk, study, drink.. laugh.

The Kaliningrad-Poland border
It's a living nightmare. I got through in under two hours. In order to do this I rode, slowly and uncomfortably, down a thin road collapsing under the weight of parked cars. I wish I'd counted them but there can't have been less than 400. There could easily have been twice that number. I wish I'd had the guts to take pictures but -- my bleedin' heart Western liberal mentality -- I don't take pictures of the plight of others just for the sake of it. 'Plight' is not too strong a word. These people - Russians and Poles - must take two or three *days* to cross the border. They were sleeping. Eating packed food. Dozing. Standing in small groups talking. Staring off into space. I rode past one man having a loud, sweary argument - with himself. Alcohol may have been involved. I rolled along the road beside them. Some smiled, some waved, some ignored me. I hardly knew where to look.

I struggle to understand why they weren't all shouting and screaming and rushing the barricades.

More than that, how could they so cheerfully and generously wave me through - urging me to steal up to the head of the queue just because I'm foreign? Don't they realise how resentful and bitter they're supposed to be?

At the head of the longest queue is a small guard-post. I was through it in about four minutes - the time it took a soldier to look up, stretch, stand up, amble around the bike noting the GB plate and wander over to raise the barrier. Just like that. The cars in the queue didn't even have their engines running. Why bother? Why waste petrol? What's another hour?

Half a mile down the road I arrived at the border itself. Two lines of cars queueing - about ten cars in total. (I chose the slowest line. Sod's law.) Ahead of us a handful of cars at a time were being processed by the border guards, though I don't want to indicate that anything was actually *happening*. As I reach the front of the queue at the passport window the woman behind the glass gets up, puts on her coat and leaves. Just like that. Not a word or glance at me and the people queueing. Such complete disregard for her fellow human beings - but we're not human beings, we're just 'the job.' And besides, she has a uniform and that means she's right, regardless. For the briefest moment, I despise this person more than anyone on earth (then quickly realise how little she deserves any thought at all.) Happily, a colleague spots my crimson face and waves me over. He stamps me through in double-quick time.

So far it's taken the best part of an hour for me to edge forward, get to the border guards, have my documents checked, double- and triple-checked, stamped and counter-stamped, signed, photocopied, transcribed and countersigned, stapled, folded and filed.

Remember, there are 400 cars behind me in the queue.

Forward to the Polish border post. Another queue - perhaps 30 cars this time. I stop at the back: this time I want to wait my turn and experience some of what they experience (I didn't do that with the queue of 400 cars: I'm not that keen on 'authenticity') but I am urged to the front again. It's more awkward - cars need to move forwards, backwards and sideways in order to squeeze me through. Everyone cooperates. There are shouts and smiles and laughter. I offer a pillion to a woman of about 50 (stone, and years) to much amusement. She declines, she indicates, because her skirt is too short to get on the bike. (She's not wrong.) The young Pole who has taken it upon himself to manoeuvre me to the head of the queue is impossibly drunk. It's funny. It's midday. I hope he isn't driving.

To the front of the queue again and then into the border post proper. Some confusion when it emerges that I've chosen the Red 'something to declare' line [sorry - I don't read Polish or Russian] which meant sitting on the bike for a loooooong time contemplating my navel. I negotiate my release from this latest unending queue with the border guards. There is much shaking of heads until someone points out that I am 'Inglisky' (whatever the word is, I catch the drift: I am not Polish or Roosian. That's what counts) and within seconds I am off again.

Remember, there are 400 cars behind me in the queue.

From the border at Gronowo to Gdansk I see slightly more of Poland than I was expecting. The roads are being repaired. *All* the roads are being repaired. The main roads are off-limits so the small country lanes are awash with traffic. I am taken south - inland.

The first Polish word I learn is 'Objazd': diversion.

Many people behind me wish fervently to be in front of me, and are keen to practise their suicidal overtaking techniques in my presence.

The countryside is less forested, more relaxed. It reminds me of what I think I remember the French countryside to look like (but it's many years since I was there.) The villages are small and grey and huddled together for warmth. Every village has its share of brokendown, unrepaired houses. Small blocks of flats, painted strange geometric shapes in pale pastel shades. A small factory here. Farmhouses there. Some cows. They look cold.

Gdansk
It is rush-hour when I get there. It is past rush-hour (but still clogged with traffic) when I give up on the horrendous jams, stop trying to find the railway station, from which I have hand-written directions to a B&B, and turn off instead following the signs to the Novitel. The traffic was inCREDible. (Everyone agrees: apparently it's because of road works. How can one country have so many roadworks at one time? Where do all the engineers and workers come from? Or perhaps there aren't enough, and that's why everything is so slow?

Animal-lovers: look away now. I knew I'd had enough of the jams when I passed a dead dog prostrate in the carriageway of a bypass for the second time. First time, bad enough. Second time, 30 minutes later, with the dog untouched (and me not realising I'd come full circle, so I was utterly lost) was too much.

So I'm staying in the Novitel. Far grander than I'm used to. (And more expensive.) There are some Geordie shipworkers staying here, posted for several months to do repair work on a Norwegian oilrig, who bring news of assorted football gossip. I vow to mention Auf Wiedersehen, Pet if they bring up The Long Way Round but we all get away with it and enjoy the local beer instead. I wander the Old Town before bed. WOW! This. Is. A. Beautiful. City.

Beside the Seaside

In Which A Grim & Distant Frontier Is Breached

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