Préface

If geographically separated from mainland Russia, the region of Kaliningrad is often seen as testing ground for European and Russian geo-political games, indeed at the foreground of tensions or interactions dialectics between the two entities. Nevertheless, the situation of fragment, or isolated territory the region has chosen for identity-marker became criteria for the region definition since the 1920s. At that time Kaliningrad was not existing as such, but as East-Prussia capital Königsberg. If cut off already from its mainland after the Treaty of Versailles, the region maintained connections to Western Europe through its administrative adherence to the Weimarer Republic. When renamed Kaliningrad 1946, repopulated by Soviet citizens from Europe and Asia, Kaliningrad became, under its quality of war loot, military zone closed to foreign visitors. By the end of the Cold War, the region managed to maintain its connection to the neighboring countries Poland and Lithuania, but since the EU-Enlargement of 2004, Kaliningrad became at the real intersection of Russian and European policies.

Not only the border, in its banal typology, but also the bureaucratic procedures became physical brake for the inhabitants. The projection of the abroad that is often for the Kaliningrad the 30min away Gdansk or 1hour away Kaunas now rhymes with non-ending bureaucratic processes, any European Citizen would already be impatient about. Not really Russian, but not really European, the Kaliningraders desperate from an identity that has been fiddled 1946 as Soviet-type city. If influenced by its neighboring countries, because of being a border region, Kaliningrad should be considered as a platform for European and Asian privileges instead of an island cut off from its mainland, due to the cultural and linguistics origins of its inhabitants.

The project Travel Route Boutique decided to deal with on one hand the bureaucratic unfortunate step of applying for Schengen visas, on the other with the concept of place-construction the region of Kaliningrad is facing by not finding its scale on the national, regional and local identity levels. It resulted in an encounter that took form in a fictive Agency that followed the frame of the visas in the context of the German Consulate.

Dominique Hurth, Berlin, 2008