An ex-clave - an ex-region

This is an EX-region... Everything is ex: towns in the Kaliningrad region, buildings, names of the streets, even habitants. A very different from the rest of Russia place, a small exclave between Poland and Lithuania.

Toy town Zelenogradsk (ex. Kranz):

On the road from Zelenogradsk to Svetlogorsk:

On the road to Sovetsk - old ruined church or town hall (???)

Old Queen Louise Brigde in Sovetsk (ex. Tilsit):

and Customs post on it :)

Sovetsk (aka Tilsit) impressed me, so much European and beautiful and so much misery and destruction...

A very queit and peacefull Svetlogorsk (ex. Rauschen):

Actually the best place for a slow walk. I can easily imagine myself in 40-50 years walkind down thru cobblestone streets of ex. Rauschen...

I fell in love with that region, you would probably do the same... There is something in it's air, probably...

Vyborg

I wasn't here for a while, sorry for this :). Too much work, a bit travelling.
This time I was to Vyborg - small russian town close to Finland, only 9 hours by car from Moscow, only 750 or 800 km. It's really small, you can see it in one day, the most prominent landmarks are the Swedish built castle, Round Tower and the Rathaus Tower. But you can read all this in Wikipedia :).

Why I will remember this town?
Because of a very beautiful sunset in Vyborg port













Because of the hotel name. I asked the waiter in the hotel restaurant, why the hotel is called "The Bat" - the answer was: hotel owner is a big fan of these creatures... Lucky me there were no bats, no rats and no mices in the hotel :))).

I will remember it due it's desert streets and very unusual for a Slavic eye architecture:


















due to it's ruins (old Clock Tower in the back):


















due to an old Finn, singing russian songs of the Second World War (in Finnish!!!) in a restaurant in the evening, - it was too dark, I couldn't take a picture and anyway it wouldn't say you a lot ), it was to be heard...













last photo - just for fun, they have cats there - nothing interesting :)