The first object in this report is an old and decayed residential building in Gdánsk. Locals have a more dramatic name for it: “the Haunted Mansion”. I visited this abandoned house during a recent hitchhiking trip to Kaliningrad. And, like almost every other city in Poland, Gdánsk was an excellent stop for a good night out. Since flying in Europe has become ridiculously cheap, and since one can find the best parties in the East, I often go to Poland for the weekend. As Gdánsk is located just about a hundred kilometres from Poland's border with Russia, many people regularly make the trip to smuggle cheap Russian cigarettes into the European Union. On my way back, an angry Russian border guard (“How do you dare going on foot through the border, this is military zone!”) would put me into a car stuffed with packs of cigarettes almost everywhere one can imagine: inside the chairs, behind the license plates, inside the roof, onto the engine, and so on.

The other object in this report is a tall abandoned apartment building in the city of Kaliningrad. The building was actually being watched, but a simple bribe of just 200 rubles for the guard did the job. In fact, he even gave me his phone number, in case I ever wanted to return.