Back in Russia, because we luv it. Kaliningrad was a German town and formerly known as Köningsberg. After the second world war it was almost completely destroyed. The remaining German buildings were destructed by the soviets and replaced with nice communist architectonical concrete buildings. The castle did survive the war and the first wave of soviet reconstruction but was dynamited out of existence in 1968. It were replaced with a lovely “House of the Soviets”. Money ran out before it was finished and till this very day the building is not in use.
Typical Westerners we are, we never thought much of the esthetical values and economical insights of our communist friends. Since Kaliningrad one could question the ethical values as well; the city is named after Stalin’s close friend Kalinin who ordered the Katyn massacre and was responsible for the famine in Ukraine in 1932 (Holodomor). Not the kind of person you would like your city to be named after.
Kaliningrad had more death and disaster on offer. We came across a monument for Alexander Marinesko. He was a Russian submarine commander and responsible for torpedoing the Wilhelm Gustloff a German passenger ship which carried mostly German refugees at that time. Some 9000 people died during the attack, making it the worst marine disaster ever. Alexander Marinesko never actually lived in Kaliningrad so why his monument is in this former German town one can only guess.
But summing up all the horrible facts about Kaliningrad would not do any justice to the place – it is, after all, the city of Kant. Where he was born, where he lived and where he died. And why we were impressed after all (if only to cross off another name from our dead philosophers tour we started a while ago). Some Enlightenment to the place after all then.
Also the submarine museum brought some light to our existence, although the thing was turned partly into a memorial for the Kursk submarine disaster.
We tried hard to get the bloody thing started. This without success. Russian mechanics…
Hee mensen wat zijn jullie lekker aan t globetrotten! Effe op en neer naar Italy. Mooie verhalen hoor, keep ‘em coming! En Daaf ik kreeg een teleurgestelde E.H. aan de lijn dat je niet bij Concl aan de slag gaat – wat dan wel? Ben benieuwd!
Veel plezier nog,
Steven