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 [...]]]>

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 Kaliningrad. So you’ll still get dill with everything and a strong whiff of barbecues in the Baltic breeze.

A sunny Sunday is normally the cue for Kaliningraders to head for the coast.

Svetlogorsk is actually two places, imaginatively called Svetlogorsk 1 and 2, which roughly equate to ‘ville’ and ‘plage’. Svetlogorsk 1 is the old spa centre, with lakeside sanatoria. The old wooden station (1900) here is the real deal, but in Svetlogorsk 2 you’ll set down from the elektrische at the new, repro-Prussian terminal.

First stop on the promenade is the sundial. It’s said to be the largest in Europe and a Soviet miracle from the 1970s. Originally it was Friedrich-Wilhelm IV who ordered the resort to be prettified, though it’s unlikely he had this in mind. It’s also a least a quarter of an hour out.

There are many stalls in Svetlogorsk but only really two kinds of souvenirs. The majority are trinkets from the local amber mines. Other stalls sell pottery with both German and Russian motifs: Konigsberg and Kaliningrad, or Rauschen and Svetlogorsk. They appear as if self-twinning towns.

In its heyday, Rauschen had 3,000 closed beach cabins for changing. In Svetlogorsk you just take your underpants and some vodka.

After the beach, it’s a wander around the cafes to Russian romances.

Svetlogorsk has its luxe hotels of course but to enjoy it Russian style you can’t do better than rent a cabin in the old Pioneer camp. (Old Pioneers welcome.) For more about Svetlogorsk, click the ‘Svetlogorsk’ tag.

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.

Odd meeting [...]]]>

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.

Odd meeting Pavlov here since he died in 1936, a decade before Kaliningrad was annexed by Russia. Perhaps he may have had some dialogue with the famous Kant university in Konigsberg days. Who knows. But probably not important. Kalinin himself never once visited Kaliningrad, the town that bears his name. The Pavlov sculpture was part of the Sovietisation of Svetlogorsk, something that never really worked. The tall pines and steeply gabled Prussian villas somehow rise above it. Changing the names of these quiet cobbled pathways to Lenin Street and October Way hasn’t changed the character of Svetlogorsk, which escaped the wartime destruction of Konigsberg, 30 kilometers away.

In the grand old days, Svetlogorsk – formerly Rauschen – was more about sanatoria than swimsuits. Which is just as well, because the beach is a fast-diminishing strip of sand and the promenade, like everywhere else, passes much of the day in shadow. The sun disappears early behind the steep cliff above.

Only on the diminutive beach is it possible grab some full-bat, Baltic ultra violet. Maybe this is why Svetlogorsk was never as popular as Sochi with old Soviet leaders. Yeltsin preferred the Karelian lakes. Only now are Muscovites discovering the time-warp charm of this old Prussian resort.