Svetlogorsk Beach Side
by Espoomax
Just walk through this widespread city, see the different building styles, discover some left overs of the old Prussia era and act as normal tourist!
If you wana do some Russian Roulette, take a taxi...cheap but damn we had a careless driver who speeded up to 90km/h while commenting on the city.
Ask your hotel receptionist to book tickets to the Oceanography Museum, City Theatre and Zoo! Going down the magificent stairs to the Baltic Sea, enjoy the pure coast line of the Kaliningradskaya Oblast.
The promenade is about 2 kms long and many different steps bring you to the sandy beach.
At sunny days many stalls do sell all kinds of Amber/Yantar and around the old elevator there are some cafetarias with nice Czech beers for low prices. Walk urther and meet the 5 stars Hotel where Putin invited Chirac and Schroeder for a tete-a-tete. Prices per night at least EURO 100,00. Hotel has a nice but push private sun terrace.
At the end of this long beach road there are a few other bars with one decorated with old photos of Rauschen and Koenigsberg. Enjoy the scenery of happy Russians at the western borders sun bathing, playing beach volley or swim in the calm sea!.
'Kenig'
by OlafS
Locals call their city 'Kenigsberg' or just 'Kenig', as the Cyrilic alphabet has no equivalent for the German ?. The university proudly calls itself Albertina, like its German predecessor. These are just two of many symptoms of the big change the city is going through. Living in an area that's officially Russian but seperated by the rest of Russia by Lithuania, the people of Kaliningrad are increasingly losing their ties to the motherland. They are Russian in majority, but they feel Europeans more than anything else. Unfortunately there are also extremist forces who oppose the city's development. Russian warveterans (most of whom still are fanatical communists) who obviously regret that the war is over have demanded that the city's 750th birthday in 2005 will not be celebrated. Not surprisingly president Putin, a former KGB-henchman and a fanatical admirer of Stalin himself, sympathizes with this despicable bunch. Hopefully that will not discourage the people and they will continue to work on a more civilised city. With their persistence this could be a city of peace.
Tomb of Immanuel Kant
by lotharlerch
This tomb - built to the cathedral, in its actual form from the 1920ies, was the reason why the cathedral was not blasted away like the Koenigsberger Schloss. The "communists" misunderstood in some way Immanuel Kant as one of the "intellectual fathers" of communism. I was there on a Saturday and wedding couples visited the place to take pics and to let flowers there. (That is a Soviet tradition, it never happened in the German time)
But it is also due to the Russians that Kant's body is no longer there. The tomb was opened, the body thrown into the Pregel river and never found again.
Highway
by MikeAtSea
The main roads through Kaliningrad were quiet alright. After passing the town of Kaliningrad a highway went towards the border.
Yet I battled with road signage since all was in cyrillic lettering and at times no signage was found at all, leaving me guessing into which direction I had to travel. Needless to say that I got lost twice - and a friendly policeman sent me into the wrong direction,.
Drama theatre
by bugulma
Drama theatre is a building on Prospekt Mira, between Victory Square and the Zoo. The drama theatre was founded in the city in 1947. In 1960 the destroyed theatre building (that works till 1941) was reconstructed and the theatre has placed in the building.
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Cross of Litovsky Val Str and Mosckovsky Pr
Central railway station
Soviet architecture
in the museum of amber
