Kaliningrad gets closer to Europe

Presseurop ^ | 12/14/2011

[bruinbirdman]

The inhabitants of Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave squeezed between Poland and Lithuania, will soon be able to travel without visas to Gdańsk and other cities on the Polish side of the border.

Poles from the Pomeranian and Warmian-Masurian provinces, in turn, will no longer need a Russian visa to go to the Kaliningrad Region to buy petrol, for example, much cheaper there than in Poland, rejoices Gazeta Wyborcza.

All this thanks to an agreement on small cross border movement which is to be signed in Moscow on December 14 by the foreign ministers of Russia and Poland. "Russian diplomacy can claim that this Moscow's first tangible success in relations with the EU. It's been years since Russia signed any deal with the EU [...] dialogue between us has so far been mainly ritual", a Polish diplomat told the Warsaw daily.

Meanwhile Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov expressed hope that the agreement would “herald completely visa-free movement between Russia and the EU".

[AlexW]

Kaliningrad was always something of an oddball of the old Soviet Union.
I remember working it in my old ham radio days.

[elcid1970]

Kaliningrad used to be known as Koenigsberg.

Gdansk is the former Danzig.

Is this what was once known as the Polish Corridor?

[Oratam]

The Seven Bridges of Königsberg.

[Fiji Hill]

Is this what was once known as the Polish Corridor?

The Polish Corridor ran through West Prussia, well to the west, and included the port city of Gdynia, or Gotenhafen. Königsberg, in Esst Prussia, lay in a German enclave that included East Prussia and part of West Prussia. Danzig was a free city that bordered on the Polish Corridor and German West Prussia.

[Verginius Rufus]

Koenigsberg was Immanuel Kant's home town. Although the name of the city is German, the king honored was a Slav, Ottokar (or Otakar) II of Bohemia (1253-1278), a candidate for the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, who lost out to Rudolf von Habsburg (the first Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor) in 1273.

Actually, Ottokar was only part-Slav. He was part-German (related to the Hohenstaufens--Philip of Swabia was his maternal grandfather). He was also a great-grandson of the Byzantine Emperor Isaac II.