Happy Halloween?

It’s been 5 years since I visited Russia's Kaliningrad region and finally I’m getting around to framing a few of those memories. Both Tainted Amber and Crow Stone are 

Top left: Baltic Coast at former Rauschen,
now Svetlogorsk 
Bottom left: linden-lined road in rural Kaliningrad
Right: house in former Kreuzburg, now Slavskoye

set in the Kaliningrad Oblast.  Grateful that I got to visit the area before the pandemic and the Ukraine invasion. 

I follow a few Instagrammers who live in the Kaliningrad Oblast and they often post beautiful images of the former East Prussia. The Oblast is like a time warp … German ruins, battle memorials ... amidst Russian tourism.  

It’s stunning to realize that the average Russian seems oblivious to the current war, seems oblivious to the political crisis that their leader has created. How do Kaliningraders … wedged between EU countries and Ukraine ... even manage?  Perhaps they’re not as oblivious as they seem … perhaps they’re terrified to speak their fears.

The stylish, picture-perfect world of modern Russia shown on social media juxtaposed against the ruins of the last world war is bizarre. Terrible battles are happening so close by. The cries from Ukraine and from their own political prisoners must haunt those beautiful  ruins.  

While the remaining Third Reich structures crumble into rustic art, the horror of war, of revenge and misuse of power haunts our grim present.  Happy Halloween?