Street Surfing

So we had some flood posts lately from various Russian cities due to lots of rains during this summer. And now, finally, somebody has found how to make use of the flooded streets. Meet the Russian street surfers…

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A Wall Inside a Tree

This old tree has a wall inside.

The tree is really old, around 200 years old. It started to grow in German city Koenigsberg, inside a brick fence. German owners of the house let it go and it was growing like that leaving the fence inside of its roots and .. .

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Kaliningrad Before and After

Do you know a German philosopher Immanuel Kant? He left in easternmost part of Germany in the city called Konigsberg. Today this city is not called Konigsberg any more, it is Kaliningrad now, the most westernmost city of Russia and the things so are already for 60 years. After the WW2 this region came under the Soviet rule, together with so-much-discussed Estonia and other Baltic Countries. These countries are now independent, cutting the only on-ground roads and railroads leading to Kaliningrad, so now the city and the area around it is fully cut off from the Russian mainland but still stays the part of Russian Federation even it is separated so much from it. You can see Kaliningrad as a leftmost red dot on this map of Western Russia.

Here we have 23 pairs of photos of Kaliningrad from kng750.kanet.ru showing the city before the Russian rule and World War 2 in distant 1939 and nowadays, year 2005. You can make your own conclusions on how the WW2 affected the city, and how Russian rule affected it too.

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Strange Soviet Buildings

All these buildings might remind some objects from Sci-Fi movies of the past.

In the former USSR you can meet such buildings. They are not very often but there are some like in this photo series.

Some of the buildings have weird history. For example the building number 3, the “Friendship” hotel attracted a great part of attention from USA intelligence agency. They thought it was some sort of missile launching site.

This one can remind some castle from “Star Wars” but in fact it’s a place in which Soviet marriage events were held in Tbilisi, Gergia. In Russia and in USSR marriage doesn’t occur in the church, it happens in a special house called “Palace of The Marage”. It is so still nowadays, though after getting married in such place couple can visit a church.

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