The excellent ‘In Your Pocket’ guide wrote of Svetlogorsk: ‘The whole experience is still decidedly Russian. Savour it before it becomes another generic seaside resort.’

This was written before the Schengen curtain went up around Kaliningrad. These days, Svetlogorsk is in scant danger of euro-isation. The main visitors are Moscow property developers and day trippers from [...]

And where there aren’t pines, silver birch fill any leaf space left. Svetlogorsk – Kaliningrad’s Baltic beach – is a heavily wooded resort where only shafts of light make it through. Chances of a deep tan are slim and the only really bronzed resident I’ve come across is Pavlov. In sculpted form, of course.