旅人る - Tabibito

 

Pionerskiy

 

I didn't use commercial airlines since early 2020 due to coronavirus hysteria, mask mandates, closed borders etc. The only way to reach Kaliningrad oblast, Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, is by air. The flight from Moscow used to take just an hour and half but now it takes more than two hours to to fly around the closed airspace of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

 

For the foreseeable future, this is the only way to look at the EU cities. For example, Tallinn in Estonia.

 

Or Klaipeda in Latvia.

 

So, the Baltic Sea. Pionerskiy is a small resort town, known before 1946 as Neukuhren. It was renamed along with the rest of the settlements of East Prussia after it was conquered by Soviet Union in WWII and purged from German population.

 

No swimmers in sight because the sea is tolerably cold only in July and August. In others months it is freezing cold.

 

Seaweed.

 

Birds.

 

An LNG storage, transportation and regasification vessel Marshal Vasilevsky near the sea terminal built in 2019. It supplies gas to Kaliningrad oblast bypassing Lithuania.

 

Some preserved German houses.

 

A bus from Pionersk to Kaliningrad.

 

Z and V military symbols on a dilapidated bus stop.

Getting in (as of August 2022): Primorskoe ring highway from Kaliningrad and Khrabrovo airport. Frequent suburban trains from Kaliningrad South railway station in the direction to Svetlogorsk.

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