A Few Words About Love
Some love beer, some love dreams, and some love to reason about what Kaliningrad is and what we should do with it.
Not long ago, taking advantage of this circumstance and, so to speak, by right of someone who was born here and has no plans to move anywhere for now, I wrote about how I see and feel this city.
Among other things, I allowed myself to express my conviction that for many people the main reason for moving here from "greater Russia" is our proximity to Europe and the sea.
Considering this an axiom, I did not trouble myself to look for proof. And probably wrongly so, since it very soon turned out that this state of affairs is far from obvious to everyone
For example, the local philosopher and anthropologist Dmitry Polyansky, having done some very serious work, convincingly proved that the new Kaliningraders chose this city on the basis of a combination of factors, among which proximity to Europe and the sea are "far from the main ones, let alone the only ones".
Then What Is the Main Thing?
The main thing, in the respected scholar's opinion, is: "the general standard of living, salaries, property prices, unemployment, access to high-tech medicine, the presence of serious universities, the crime situation, the ecological environment, the level of infrastructure, the quality of the roads".
However, the research data cited by the author himself show that on practically all these parameters Kaliningrad does not particularly stand out among cities of comparable population and status. An ordinary solid mid-table side among ordinary solid mid-table sides. Like some "Newcastle" in the English Premier League.
And if so, the question may arise: why should a person choose Kaliningrad as their permanent place of residence rather than, say, Astrakhan?
What is our city's main advantage if we leave aside Warsaw and Berlin being "within walking distance"?
In the opinion of the respected Dmitry Polyansky, a reason for moving here may be the presence of a cardiology centre (though he notes that Krasnodar, Smolensk and Penza, and Astrakhan too, have exactly the same ones), a federal university, the Baltic and Curonian Spits, two lagoons, Lake Vištytis and the Rominten Heath.
What Can One Say?
If a scholar believes that for newcomers all of the above is more important than the opportunity to travel abroad frequently, then so it is. Arguing with science is a thankless and utterly hopeless business.
…What troubles me about this approach is something else. I can quite well imagine someone who, before moving to a city new to them, carefully studies Rosstat documents, compares the standard of living in different parts of the country, pores over the reports of regional Interior Ministry departments and local employment services, and weighs up the development prospects of industry and agriculture. What's more, I know people who did just that before coming here. Yet this systematic approach helped far from all of them.
And it is not only that official statistics are often rather deceptive – it is simply that not everything can be calculated and foreseen.
For example, a woman I know spent a long time preparing to move here from Vladivostok. She read mountains of literature, she was a regular on specialised forums, she even came to Kaliningrad a couple of times to have a look around.
Yet soon after the final move, this ultra-rational and ultra-prudent person discovered to her horror that she could not live here. There is a cardiology centre here, and the Rominten Heath is close at hand. But no – she doesn't like it. The people here, as she puts it, are somehow "listless", there's nothing going on in the city, the sky is grey all the time, and the food is tasteless. Now she is thinking of going back to Vladivostok. And she most likely will.
On the other hand, I have an acquaintance who never made any plans to move to Kaliningrad from his native Omsk. He simply came here on business one day and fell in love with the city. He has been living here for more than three years now and walks around as if drunk all the time. He likes everything here, everything delights him – from the girls to the manhole covers. One even fears for the man a little.
Does this mean that you have to dive in headfirst? Of course not. But in the classic argument between Zhenya Lukashin and Ippolit (in the film "The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!") I side with the former, who believed that there is no such thing as programmed, expected, planned happiness. It always comes unexpectedly, always – suddenly.
And besides, cities, like people, are often loved not for something but in spite of something. Sometimes even in spite of everything. And if you find it repugnant here, if you have failed to feel Kaliningrad, if you could not become imbued with its spirit, then even five cardiology centres and six federal universities will not save the situation. Nor will the city's proximity to Europe help. Although… But I promised not to raise that question any more. So I won't…
Translated from Russian with the help of AI (Claude, Anthropic), October 2026.
