Gdansk
The bus Gdansk – Kaliningrad was half-full. Its passengers were Russians and Poles except for one Spanish-speaking family of four. Near Elblag, the only stop en route to Russia, we ran into thick fog that changed to rain. The bus was at the Polish border at 8:20 a.m., about 2 hours after it left Gdansk.
The Spanish-speaking family produced Chilean passports and some official looking papers. Polish border guards, all young girls, collected everyone’s documents. It took them a long time to study the paperwork of the Chilean family. I wondered what business brought this family to Russia and why they were crossing the border by bus from Poland. Our passports got stamped; the bus moved forward a few meters and entered Russia.
The rain stopped and the sun was out. We were taken into a small building where a cheerful captain of the border guards processed us one by one. He was friendly and methodical while doing his job. My Russian passport was issued by the consulate in San Francisco. Seeing it, the captain grinned and asked me if I could still speak Russian. I answered affirmatively. He gave me a broad smile and waved to go through. The bus left the border at 10.20 a.m. and arrived in Kaliningrad by 11 a.m.
From my inquiries made from Gdansk, I knew that my chances to take a ferry boat to St. Petersburg were slim. I found the agency anyway and asked about the next ferry. They did not have a set departure date of the ferry. In any case, the tickets were not available. Truckers who traveled with their vehicles bought tickets well in advance. Unsurprised by that, I turned back to the railway station and passed under the old city gates built in 1755.
These gates are the few relics of the city’s past when it was called Königsberg. Similar to Gdansk, it was mostly populated by Germans and belonged to the Teutonic Order, Prussia, and Germany. Under Empress Elizabeth I, the city was briefly incorporated into the Russian Empire. Five years later, in 1763 the Russian Army abandoned Königsberg and it became Prussian again. Königsberg was occupied by the Soviet Union in April 1945 and its German population fled or was expelled. At the Potsdam Conference, the Allies agreed that this area including Königsberg would be part of the Soviet Union. The city was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946. The current German government says that it has no territorial claim over Kaliningrad.
As Plan A to take the ferry failed, I switched to Plan B to travel by train. I bought a ticket for the following day and sat down to think what to do next. The great philosopher Immanuel Kant was born in Königsberg, spent all his life in it and died there. I noticed a sign that pointed to his memorial on the way to the ferry agency. If I went to see Kant’s grave what else could I do in the afternoon and where would I stay? Kaliningrad was going to host some games of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and it hurriedly was getting ready for a swarm of visitors. I did not like the noise and dust from the construction and roadworks. Besides, as I grow older, big cities appeal to me less and less. I checked the map, lifted my backpack, and walked over to the bus station. A bus to Baltiysk was about to depart. I knew that Baltiysk is home to a large naval base of the Russian Baltic Fleet; the city was closed to visitors and I was not sure if these restrictions were now lifted. Nobody asked me any questions when I boarded the bus; so I went to Baltiysk.
The long ride through Kaliningrad was an opportunity to see the city from the bus. The area by the river looked nice but overall I did not regret my decision not to stay there. When we were in Baltiysk I tried to spot a hotel while still being on the bus and I did not see any. The bus reached its final stop, the central square and I had to get off.
The square was named after Lenin and had a statue of him, traditional for many cities during the Soviet era. Those statues mostly got removed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Here, in Baltiysk a plaque on the statue warned against damaging this “monument of historical value. Any such attempts will be prosecuted in accordance with the law of the Russian Federation.”
I asked a young woman at the bus station if there were hotels in Baltiysk.
‘Of course, there are,’ she sounded offended. ‘It is a small town but we have hotels here like Baltika, for example’.
I did not find Baltika but stumbled upon another hotel The Golden Anchor. A pretty and courteous receptionist quickly got me a room that was only $30. She recommended eating at the hotel’s restaurant. The room was old-fashioned, modest and clean. At the restaurant, I had a bowl of borsch, fried fish with potatoes, and tea with an apple strudel. That was my first decent meal because I had to leave Gdansk without breakfast to catch the bus and so far survived on snacks. The food was great and cost me about $5.
Everything around me looked so Soviet that I felt like I returned to the USSR of my youth.
It was 3 p.m. and therefore enough hours till darkness when I set off to see Baltiysk.