Orienteering trip to the Baltic coast: coast of Kaliningrad Oblast
July 26-27: coast of Kaliningrad Oblast
I first went to the local theme park “Youth Recreation Park”. There are a variety of facilities, including a Ferris wheel, a roller coaster, etc. There is also a learning centre. There is a chess club inside promited. I entered the house and took a few photos:
Then take the route 120 suburban bus from the train station to Yantarny. The bus runs every hour and there will be additional buses on sunny days in summer.
It was indeed a sunny day in the summer, and encountered a historical heat wave in Europe. There was no additional bus before the 12:27 departure that I took, and the result was bus full.
Yantarny (Янтарный), formerly known as Palmnicken before the fall, was named after the fall because of the local amber. Yantarny is now a famous beach resort in Kaliningrad, and the beach is blue-flag certified, representing a range of international quality standards. The beaches there are endless.
Also because the place was encountering a historical heat wave, I felt that the sea was not cool enough when I went swimming. The air temperature was above 28 °C and the water temperature was 21 °C, which was 3 °C higher than normal. The water of the Baltic Sea is not salty, and the salt content is only one-fifth of the ocean. Therefore, the buoyancy is greatly reduced, and it is easy to sink the bottom. However, the slope of the entire beach is very low. It is still very shallow far from the shore, and I can easily stand on the bottom of the water.
After a night in Yantarny, I took a bus to continue the journey to Svetlogorsk, then transfer to an electric train to Zelenogradsk.
Svetlogorsk (Светлогорск), formerly known as Rauschen before the fall, is a seaside spa town. As I was just passing by, I only visited the sundial and the beach. The beach there is also very long, but it is narrow and full of people, and the wind and waves are bigger than Yantarny.
Then I took an electric train (электричка) to Zelenogradsk.
In Russia, electric trains refer to suburban trains, as opposed to long-haul trains that traditionally use diesel trains. I took this route which operates on a single-track railway. Other than Svetlogorsk-1 and Pionersky, the rest of the stations are unmanned in rural areas. The train speed is also quite slow, the maximum speed is only about 80 km/h, and the frequency is quite sparse, only a departure per few hours. In addition, the train used in this route is also an old train left over from the Soviet era, which is in sharp contrast to the new air-conditioned train running for Kaliningrad.
Zelenogradsk (Зеленоградск), known as Cranz before the fall, was a larger seaside resort town in Kaliningrad Oblast. I visited the local water tower, but the tower is only a few floors high and not worth going up.
The bus schedule is also photographed for use on the next day to the Curonian Spit. There are 5 bus routes, which are as follows:
210 Zelenogradsk ↔ Morskoye (5 departures a day, operated by CranzAutoTour)
239 Kaliningrad ↔ Smiltynė (1 departure a day, in the morning from Kaliningrad to Smiltynė, in the afternoon by Smiltynė to Kaliningrad, operated by KönigAuto)
384 Kaliningrad ↔ Klaipėda (1 departure a day, in the morning from Klaipėda to Kaliningrad, in the afternoon Kaliningrad to Klaipėda in the afternoon, operated by Klaipėda Bus Park)
593 Kaliningrad ↔ Morskoye (4 departures a day, operated by ZelenogradskTrans)
596 Svetlogorsk ↔ Morskoye (5 departures a day, operated by SvetlogorskAuto)
(But the 384 line operated by Klaipėda is not listed, the departure is at 17:33).
Only lines 239 and 384 lines with 1 departure a day respectively runs through the entire Curonian Spit, and the rest of the routes end at Morskoye, about 44 km from the entrance of the spit.
The old boundary pillar was also displayed in the town.
The beach is a must-see place for me. The beach of Zelenogradsk is more windy, the sea is covered with white caps, and the shore is full of seaweed. There are also many people on the beach.
A row of wooden walls on the beach is used to prevent the coast from being eroded by the waves. I also swam for a while on the beach with such big waves. After going out of the water, I went to the pier, and saw people jumping pier! Jumping one by one!
So I also made the first jump in life! The water is in fact not too deep, but just enough. After entering the water, in the Baltic freshwater, a little exhale already get me down to the bottom.