"Kaliningrad - Stalins Enclave" Top 5 Page for this destination Kaliningrad by MikeAtSea

I have traveled across many borders in the world. Nothing surpasses the experience of traveling in and out of the enclave of Kaliningrad. To enter Kaliningrad I arrived at the Polish Russian border at 6 am after having left Gdansk at 4 am. I was the only car at the border and the officials took 2 ½ hours to clear me and the car into the country.
On the drive through Kaliningrad I was being moved in a time capsule back to 1945. Bombed out churches, farms and factories made the impression World War II had just ended. During the drive through the enclave the only attractions that one could see are monstrous Soviet monuments for Lenin, the war and other soviet style memorabilia.
Leaving Russia was an even bigger adventure. Arriving at the border post I saw that cars were parked in one lane the last car being parked at the corner. Hence I parked my car behind. At the time there were around 35 cars in front of me. Two people knocked on my window and started speaking to me in Lithuanian and I indicated that I did not understand, but I realized several hours later that I had jumped the queue and that there were about 150 – 200 cars behind me.
The process was simple, each time the boom gate opened four cars were let in. Then it took about an hour for the Russian officials to check those four cars and stamp the passports. Within that hour no one moved. Russian cars bribed the border guards to be let into the front of the queue.

Arriving at the town of Kaliningrad

It took about 6 hours for me to reach the front of the line. During the hour wait while being “checked” the 150 or so officials that I could count processed one truck and the four cars.
It was like Stalin was breathing down my neck.
And this experience was available for a EUR 400 visa fee plus EUR 50 insurance and EUR 25 border fee. This for the most humiliating experience I can gather in my long list of travel experiences.
I certainly could not recommend this as a transit route – however it is a good place to go if one wants to film a war movie, since the scenery has been set up already.

• Pros:None that I could find
• Cons:Long humiliating wait at the border
• In a nutshell:Don't go there!