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1.7 Russian Federation
As a result of independence for Lithuania and Belarus in the early 1990s, the territory became a Russian exclave, separated from the rest of Russia. When Poland and Lithuania became members of the European Union in 2004, the region became completely surrounded by the EU. Special travel arrangements for the territory's inhabitants have been made.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union it has been discussed whether to give the city its old name back, as has happened in several Russian cities like St. Petersburg and the city of Tver, which was also known as Kalinin during the Stalinist period. But after some discussions the further use of "Kaliningrad" at least for the next years seems to be sure. "Kenig" (short Russian form of "Königsberg") is often used in advertisements for tourism companies in this region.
2 Geography
Kaliningrad is located at the mouth of the River Pregolya, which empties into the Vistula Lagoon. Sea vessels can access Gdansk Bay and the Baltic Sea by way of the Vistula Lagoon and the Strait of Baltiysk.
3 Economy
4 Sightseeing
5 Famous people from Königsberg/Kaliningrad
- Christoph Hartknoch (1644-1687), historian
- Christian Goldbach (1690-1764), mathematician
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), philosopher
- Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822), author
- Gotthilf Heinrich Ludwig Hagen (1797-1884), physicist
- Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (1824-1887), physicist
- Karl Rudolf König (1832-1901), physicist
- Otto Wallach (1847-1931), chemist
- David Hilbert (1862-1943), mathematician
- Erich von Drygalski (1865-1949), explorer
- Arnold Sommerfeld (1868-1951), physicist
- Agnes Miegel (1879-1964), author
- Lea Rabin (1928-2000), author and wife of Yitzhak Rabin
- Viktor Patsayev (1933-1971), cosmonaut
- Aleksei Leonov, cosmonaut (1934-), first person to walk in space
- Heinrich August Winkler (1938-), historian
6 External links
