The Brandenburger Tor was there, standing as one of the city gates of Königsberg. I was walking down this dark street somewhere in Russia when I looked to my right side while crossing a street and there was something I recognized. But the most exciting sight was just a block away. The city and the state, or Oblast in Russian, received his name after his death in 1946. A few meters later, there is a statue of Mikhail Kalinin, one of the original Bolsheviks and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The first sigh I saw on my walk was the impressive looking train station that is decorated with Soviet symbols. So, I decided to walk the few kilometers between the bus station and my hotel.

There wasn’t a taxi close by, and my lack of Russian combined with the late arrival just made me lazy to ask around for directions. The bus station is located in the south part of the city, next to the train station and, when I arrived there, I followed a map I had with me and decided to walk to my hotel. I arrived in Kaliningrad on a bus from Gdansk in the middle of the night.

Foto brandenburger tor berlin