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In Which We See Kaliningrad Through Five (Or Is It Four?) Sets Of Eyes

November 15, 2006 by Mike

Kalingrad

Gayane was born in Kazachstan to Armenian parents. (On the whole, I decided it was prudent not to ask her what she thinks of Borat.) I stopped to ask directions (in English) from a shop with the Marks & Spencer and Tesco logos painted on the front door. They took me to meet Gayane, who works works as a translator in a tiny office, more a broom cupboard on the half-landing of a stairwell, across the street.

"My maternal grandparents were forced from Armenia in Stalin's mass deportations of the 1940s. But father went from Armenia to Kazachstan on holiday (after all, there were lots of Armenians there.) We lived in Almaty but the family moved to Kaliningrad in 1997, when life at home became difficult because of 'de-Russification'.

"Why Kaliningrad? There are lots of people who moved here from the former Soviet Republics. It's Russia here, so we feel safer. And the economy is better here than in many places. People have better cars here. We couldn't go to Armenia. It's too dangerous there because of the war with Azerbaijan. Bombs and guns. But also, I know a family who left Kaliningrad to return to Armenia. They're back here now. Armenians have very harsh feelings for other Armenians who've lived abroad then go home.

"But the Russians who were here before us [i.e. those who arrived in the wake of the Second World War] can be resentful. Yes, the Russian nationalist parties do well here. I don't have any trouble from them, but they don't want me and my family here. And even the Russians who have arrived from Kazachstan, or Uzbekistan or Tadjikistan or even Armenia, they feel different. They wouldn't be voted in if they stood for election. People pay attention -- 'Where was he born? -- when it comes to voting here.

"Chechnya? You ask about that? Yes, there are Chechens in the city. I have a friend - her husband was Chechen. He ran a club where Chechens could meet. In fact, I think she might be Chechen as well. I haven't asked her. You don't."

[Gayane was very uncomfortable talking about Chechnya in public. She changed the subject very quickly.]

"When you are here you must visit Svetlogorsk and Zelenogradsk. These are old cities. They look German. Yes! This is something all tourists must do. And in Kaliningrad city, it would be a shame to miss the Museum Of Amber. And our Organ Hall is inspiring. And of course the Cathedral with the Tomb of Immanuel Kant."

Eugen patrols the Park of Sculptures outside the Cathedral. (There are no sculptures in the Park of Sculptures.) It's a quiet, open space in the heart of the city. Until the night of 29-30 August 1944 it was the commercial and social heart of Köningsburg. The mediaeval buildings were destroyed by RAF bombs. The Cathedral has been rebuilt (a work in progress) but the rest have disappeared for ever. Eugen is Russian but spoke to me in German, accented but fluent. I got a CSE Grade I in German. 24 years ago. I battled to keep up him. Eugen is in his late 70s, maybe early 80s. He wears a tie, shirt and jacket. Fittingly, his teeth, or what's left of them, are all the shades of amber - orange, brown and chalky. He finds me studying a map of the city.

"You are a tourist? I was born here, in Köningsburg. Right here. There are few people of my age who can say that. This place here was so busy. All the businesses and shops, all gone. A tragedy TRAAH-GEH-DEE My life has been a traah-geh-dee. So many traah-geh-dees. Ach. My childhood, a traah-geh-dee. The war: traah-geh-dee. I was forced to work for the Nazis. Slave labour. Then the Soviets. More traah-geh-dee.

"It is all the fault of capitalism. National Socialism is the child of capitalism. Communism is the child of capitalism. They could not exist without capitalism. Don't blame the Germans. Don't blame the Russians. It is politics. Ach. A traah-geh-dee. Politics.

"You see this building?" [points to the cathedral]. "What is it? A cathedral? No! It is a fortress. Look! Look at the high walls. Battlements. Not religion. It was built to dominate the city. By politicians, yes. By capital.

"Now tell me, do you know Kant? Yes? What of him? Have you read his books? You haven't? But I have read the great British writers. Shakespeare. Agatha Christie. You haven't read Kant? Ach. A traah-geh-dee. He was not a philosopher. NOT A PHILOSOPHER. That's what the politicians want to call him. Not a philosopher, no..." [Eugen expanded at length on this subject. He lost me. But I learned that it was a traah-geh-dee that people think Kant was a philosopher.]

"See this? See this quotation? [Not from Kant, an aetheist (but not a philosopher). It's along the lines of.. 'The most lost of souls are those who recognise Jesus but fail to act accordingly'.] Yes, a traah-geh-dee. To have no god."

The rain is falling. I'm a little worried that Eugen refuses to move indoors, or even under my umbrella. In parting, I muster what German I can. I feel the need to part on an uplifting note. I gesture around us, to sum up the dreadful history of the place; of what we've discussed; ; his dreadful history:

"Eugen. Ich bin optimist." (Remember: I got Grade I.) (24 years ago.)

He stares at me with a bewildering intensity. Just for a moment. Then, slowly, he starts to nod in agreement. His eyes moisten, and he pushes me away, off into the rain. We made a connection.

I come across The Texan in the Hotel Moskva. He is carrying bottled water back to his room.

"Hey man, is that your bike? Oh crazy, man! What's with the bumper sticker? The Kinky Friedman bumper sticker? Incredible! Can I take some shots for the folks back home? They'll never believe.. that I.. in Russia.. never in a million... oh ho ho..

"What are we doing here? Adopting. Three more weeks and we can take our little girl home. We came here last year and found her. Now, we're back, and we've got her. Incredible! Sure there's lots of paperwork. Lots of bureaucracy.. but it's not.. you know..

"The water in the hotel may be bad but boy, it was worse where we found her. Brown, yessir. Incredible. Kinky Friedman..."

Also staying in the hotel is Julian. If he didn't exist, you'd reallyreallyreally want to invent him. He's so completely English that it's no surprise to learn that he's actually two-parts Irish, one-part French, one-part Russian.

"You're reading 'The Gulag Archipelago'? My great-grandfather is in it. Or rather, there's a lengthy description of his execution. Bit grizzly.

"Have you read 'War & Peace'? Ancestor in that one, too - Count von B_______. Comes across as a bit of a buffoon, unfortunately.

"It's interesting, isn't it, all this family stuff? No more than that, really. But Russians sometimes shake my hand because the Count had a hand in the assassination of one of the Tsars. They quite like that.

"Kaliningrad is fascinating. As corrupt as any other part of Russia of course. But they want out. Putin only got 30% of the vote here. My friends here all say 'but we've never met any of the 30%.' Of course they haven't! They don't exist! Everyone wants out of Russia now and to be a part of Europe. That's where the future is. That's where the money is. They've seen it. They can taste it. They want it.

"They've only just let me come back into Russia, as a matter of fact. I spent some time working for an NGO advising the Chechens."

[We're sitting in a dark bar surrounded by moody, young Russian men curious about us. But Julian has no qualms whatsoever talking about Chechnya out loud. Nobody says a thing.]

"Tricky one, that. Grozny has been destroyed. Devastated. Like nothing on earth since.. well. since here in 1945 actually. What would you do if you were Chechen? You'd fight back. It's going to get worse. It may get better first, but it's going to get far, far worse. For a long time. The Russians know it. They know I know it - but it's all about who you know. And I have the business card of a Russian general in my wallet, and he scribbled his mobile number on the back. Whenever I'm stopped or arrested here I just whip out the card. 'Shall we call him?' Works every time. They run!"

My final character witness speaks no English, German or Russian. He is The Brown Bear in Kaliningrad Zoo. This is a most sorrowful place. Pitiful. Harrowing. Bleak. Ugly. In ways you don't need to read about. Please, just take my word for it.

Amongst the cracked enclosures, rusted wire fences, concrete hillsides, empty pens, surrounded on all sides by traffic noise and traffic fumes, I wander in a daze.

There's a waste-paper bin with 'Halmstad' emblazoned on it. I was in Halmstad in September. It's much. much more than a world away. (It turns out Halmstad donated a park space to the zoo last year. Dear Halmstad: your gift comprises that waste-paper bin, a small sign and an open ditch. I hope you didn't provide this kind gift in cash, without some kind of guarantee?)

Kaliningrad had snow storms a couple of weeks ago - the same snow that caught me in Estonia. It's melted now, leaving huge puddles and mud-baths across the city. They seem bigger and muddier in the zoo. Stepping between them to rake up autumn's leaves with bundles of twigs are a small army of babushkas: old, round, bent women with headscarves, two or more thin grey coats one on top of the other, rubber boots. I take surreptitious photographs. These I can show on the site, I think. They're here of their own free will but their poverty and squalor will give a taste of the zoo's other inhabitants. But on reflection, no. They have as little choice as the animals. It's desperate.

Curled up in a pile of leaves in the lee of a wooden outhouse where zoo workers are brewing tea and hiding from the cold, a ginger-and-white cat passes the time of day. Here's a critter who lives here with more freedom than most of the zoo's inhabitants. She ain't going nowhere. She's well fed. Yet cats are wise; they know more than they're letting on. What does she say to the lions and tigers and snow leopards when the humans aren't around?

But I wanted to introduce you to The Brown Bear. The maliciously poisoned pen of A.A. Gill crafted one of its customary 'Sunday Times' hatchet jobs when he visited Kaliningrad in 2001. It's a vituperative, snide, unworthy article but hey, that's what he gets paid for. In search of an ending for his piece, Gill visits the Zoo. He is richly rewarded. He judges the city by its zoo, and makes the zoo sound like hell on earth.

Who'd do a thing like that?

But he still hasn't got a killer pay-off line. And then...

"All on his own in a concrete ditch, a scabrous, balding, old dirtbag Russian brown bear has obviously grown transcendentally mad with despair... For a moment he stares straight at me, and I can see in his rheumy, tea-coloured eyes, all the sorrow, all the struggle, the suffering and pity. Through everything, in a dark place all his own, the bear has survived. Then it does the damnedest thing, I promise. It slowly lifts one cack-caked, scimitar-taloned paw and salutes."

Today, there's a sign outside the rebuilt bear's enclosure which is, sure enough, larger than that of all other creatures here. The Brown Bear sits in a corner, close to the iron railings, moulting. (It looks like he's falling apart. Perhaps he isn't moulting. Perhaps he is falling apart.) It looks to me like he might be blind. Perhaps that's just how he is supposed to look?
   Bear house and enclosure
   are built with the means
   donated by citizens of London
   on the initiative of the
   newspaper "Sunday Times"

Nice. No mention of the outrage A.A.'s piece presumably stirred.

But I'm still standing on my side of the iron railings, looking for a way to conclude my own look at Kaliningrad.

Then the Brown Bear That A.A.Gill Saved From A Grim & Uncertain Future, the one housed in a lovely new bear house and enclosure, starts to paw the mud and leaves beneath him. Nothing threatening. He is very slow and methodical. We are six feet apart.

The pawing stops, and I realise that A.A.Gill's Brown Bear has a message for Mr Gill. He is evacuating his bowels magnificently - and manages to fart at the same time.

Beside the Seaside

In Which We See Kaliningrad Through Five (Or Is It Four?) Sets Of Eyes

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