Приключения голландца в России

I went several days to the beaches of Kurshskaya Kosa national park in the North to Zelenogradsk. Every late afternoon there are wild foxes standing along the road of the only road in this this long and thin stretched peninsula. The foxes are asking for the food from people going home, that have leftovers. I stopped several times too to make photos and video. I compared the photos and every time it is another fox. So many foxes learned to do this. I tried to handfeed a fox like I saw somebody do before...

Kaliningrad and in particular Zelenogradsk (Cranz) is about amber. A lot of amber is found near the beaches and sold in the many tourist shops. On the beaches you always see people bent over searching for amber. I tried to find some myself and it is not so easy as it looks! I found only small pieces, but the hunt is the fun of it. Sometimes not the destination is the nice part but the journey! The bigger pieces are found by professional in the sea. Amber is the result of dripping raison from the Pine trees...

Today I visited Kaliningrad. I have been many times to this city, which is near Zelenogradsk, where I live when I am in Russia. Kaliningrad was a German city before WW2. The name was Konigsberg, like Zelenogradsk was called Cranz. The region was called “Ost Pruisen”. That’s why a lot of German history, art, names and architecture are present in Kaliningrad. There are a lot of German wood skeleton houses which has this typical look. After the Germans were defeated in WW2, the city was renamed to Kaliningrad...

As a foreigner in Russia, I noticed that personal in shops are not smiling at clients. It surprised me, as in the west, personal are very politely smiling at costumers. Maybe this is fake smiling, in the west a lot is fake anyway, but getting a smile, makes you smile back and that makes you feel good and polite. Smiling is part of the service level that shops provide in the west. I tried to use humour and jokes to lighten things up, but whatever I did, it was not working. Personal react like they are tired and if they got a bad mood every time is encounter them...