What was once an outpost of the Soviet Union, barred for travel by foreigners, has suddenly transformed itself into Russia’s most appealing gateway city for air travellers.
For years, Kaliningrad was a pain to reach. Things looked up with the introduction of an overnight train service from Berlin in December 2003, but the train is in great demand and securing one of the sleeper berths is not always easy. Berlin has a large emigre Russian population and the night train to Kaliningrad has become a favoured route home.
Avia Hub
The airline behind Kaliningrad’s new role as a hub for European air traffic is KD Avia. The extension of the Schengen area last December to include Lithuania and Poland left the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad isolated and surrounded by EU territory (and the Baltic). To leave their exclave by road or rail, Kaliningrad’s Russian residents must now apply for a Schengen visa, or a special travel permit to use one of the daily Russian transit trains that link Kaliningrad with Moscow. This burden gave a massive boost to air traffic at Kaliningrad Airport, as Russians now favour flying for journeys between the exclave and Russia proper.
KD Avia now has a dozen routes from Kaliningrad to the rest of Russia, complemented by a similar number of routes into Kaliningrad from western and central Europe. Most of these links to the west, like the new daily flights from London Gatwick, have started just this spring. The Russian cities on offer predictably include St Petersburg and Moscow, but KD Avia also serves the Volga region, the Urals and Siberia – not to mention a regular flight from Kaliningrad to Astana in Kazakhstan.
The new Iceland?
The development in Kaliningrad, based in a single terminal, echoes Icelandair’s similar hub-and-spoke operation at Keflavik. It uses a strategic geographical position to offer multiple west to east route options at an efficient hub. A wave of KD Avia planes from the west lands at Kaliningrad mid-evening, and within an hour or two passengers can be through immigration and on a connecting flight to any one of a dozen Russian cities.
The Keflavik stopover did much to put Iceland on the tourist map back in the 60s and 70s, and now the canny Kaliningrad authorities are wondering if the KD Avia initiative could be used to boost tourism in the Russian exclave. Marina Drutman, head of the tourism department in the Kaliningrad regional government, is optimistic. “We have so much to offer: a historic city, excellent beaches and a real taste of nature on the Curonian spit. Tourism is one of the industries that will support our future economic development.”
Russia-lite?
Whether Drutman’s vision ever comes to pass may not be entirely in her hands. So much depends on Moscow. Local politicians have floated the idea that Russia’s outpost on the Baltic might form a test bed for Russian entrepreneurs anxious to develop good links with businesses based in the European Union. A sort of Russia-lite, with a business environment more amenable to western investment.
But these grand plans may never come to fruition, as the Moscow authorities are reluctant to see one oblast benefitting from privileges denied to other regions of the Russian Federation. Not to mention endless tit-for-tat recriminations between Russia and the European Union over issues of customs, visas and pollution control in the Kaliningrad oblast. The city and its surrounding region is a flashpoint in the often tetchy relationship between Brussels and Moscow.
Russia or Prussia?
Meanwhile, Kaliningrad is making plans. The city, previously known as Königsberg, was once the capital of the German province of East Prussia. The former German cathedral on Kneiphof island has been restored and a new generation of museums, unlike their predecessors in Soviet times, do nothing to hide the city’s German past. Königsberg’s most famous son, Immanuel Kant, is back in favour. On the red brick gateways into the city centre, Teutonic knights and Prussian kings jostle for position with the philosophers and scientists who helped give so much character to old Königsberg. The city even boasts a Brandenburg Gate to rival that in Berlin.
Kaliningrad, it seems, may yet turn out to be more than just a convenient place to change planes.