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For City Explorers
Kaliningrad

  Anna Volovik has been living in Kaliningrad for 14 years. Long enough to be considered native and short enough to keep discovering new places. For example, the slipways on the River Pregolya. The artist sees Kaliningrad as ‘unassuming, endearing and always amazing as soon as you turn off a familiar street.’

 


Extracts from "Kaliningrad":


About the artist Anna Volovik:

Anna Wolowik © Anna Wolowik

Anna Volovik is an illustrator and graphic artist from Kaliningrad. In 2016, her graphic novel What Colour is the Snow? won an award in the Best Graphic Novel category at the BigFest comic book festival. She also won the 2017 prize for Best Graphic Novel (Jakow) awarded by the publisher Boomfest.


Travelpedia: Kaliningrad

  • Travelpedia: Kaliningrad - Haus des Sowjets © Anna Wolowik
    Kaliningrad Oblast covers an area of 15,000 sq. km and is situated between the EU countries of Poland and Lithuania. Until 1945, Kaliningrad was called Königsberg and was the capital of East Prussia. It became a Soviet city after the war. In 1996, the Russian Federation granted its exclave on the Baltic Sea the status of a Special Economic Zone. The oblast is home to around one million people.
  • Travelpedia: Kaliningrad © Anna Wolowik
    Many parts of the former Königsberg were devastated during the war and some buildings were destroyed in peacetime. The ruins of Königsberg Castle were blown in 1967, on orders from Brezhnev and the House of Soviets was built where the castle once stood. The high-rise with the two towers in the city centre is an unfinished building that is still empty today.
  • Travelpedia: Kaliningrad - Rauschen © Anna Wolowik
    Svetlogorsk is a seaside resort situated about 35 km north-west of Kaliningrad. Known by the Germans as Rauschen, the coastal resort town is a popular tourist destination. Above all, visitors love the decorative wooden villas dating back to around 1900. The main attractions are the cliffs and the wide sandy beach. The beach can be reached by cable car.
  • Travelpedia: Kaliningrad - Bernstein © Anna Wolowik
    Kaliningrad is amber country with 90% of the world’s reserves. And it has been this way for 40 million years. Once described by Ovid as the ‘tears of the gods’, the stone is therefore coveted. Many collectors are gripped by amber fever, particularly after storms. Mining and collecting for commercial purposes are however illegal, which is why amber smuggling flourished in the 1990s.

More Comics for city Explorers

Minsk © Reinhard Kleist

"Travel Sketches from Minsk"

Reinhard Kleist travels to workshops around the world for the Goethe-Institut. This led to numerous travel sketches in which he processes his own impressions and experiences. In 2015, among other destinations, Belarus was on his program.

Delhi_header_yelin © Barbara Yelin (Detail)

"Delhi Sketch-Book "

"I think it was the sheer size of this large Indian city, and then the otherness of the visible structure and society compared to here that initially blew my mind,’ says Barbara Yelin, recalling her stay in New Delhi, a city she travelled to for a week in late 2012 at the invitation of the Goethe-Institut.

Tim Dinter: Museumsquartett | Kunstmuseum Basel © Tim Dinter (Detail)

"Operation Läckerli"

Travelling to Basel as a member of Monogatari in the 1990s, Tim Dinter is used to fast-paced Berlin. In Basel, he visits museums.


More about Graphic Travelogues

Graphic Travelogues Graphik: Dominik Wendland © Goethe-Institut New Delhi

About the artists

Learn more about our well-known artists, including Barbara Yelin, Reinhard Kleist and Sarnath Banerjee. All with proven comic expertise and sometimes with more, sometimes with less travel experience in the respective country.
 

Graphic Travelogues Graphik: Dominik Wendland © Goethe-Institut New Delhi

About Graphic Travelogues

Graphic Travelogues presents travel experiences by comic artists from different countries, illuminates and identifies recurring topics. From sketches to graphic novels, graphic diaries and travel drawings, we collect treasures here and question concepts and motivations, techniques and experiences.

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