4mo ago

Could an American please prove me wrong?

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The real secret european country. We just didn’t unlock it (Yet). Be a man and don’t look it up.
- It's a Russian enclave, but I don't know what it's called without looking it up. I'll be the first to say "Oooooh right" when someone does post the name.
  
  Akshually it's a Russian exclave. That means it's disconnected from the main part of Russia. An enclave is like Vatican city which is totally surrounded by Italy. 🤓🤓
  
  Isn't the Vatican a "country" with exactly one citizen?
  
  There's a bunch of staff there too. Wikipedia cites an estimate of 764 people.
  
  Having been there, that's a lot less than I would have imagined it to be. But that means nothing.
  
  I mean, there may also be plenty of non-citizens there at any given time.
  
  Mr. Vatican VII
  
  Kaliningrad
  
  Oooooh right
  
  Ooooh right
  
  I said "Oooooh right" before you. What now, buddy?
  
  The guy’s clearly a fraud
  
  Oh it is on!!!!!
- New Prussia
- occupied Koenigsberg?
- I cheated and looked up a map of Europe, and that country is named "Russia". Haha!
- Königsberg
  
  Samland
- So, pre WWII that was more-or-less East Prussia. Does anybody know how Russian it is these days, in terms of language and culture? Is there any remaining hint of Prussianness vs Russianness? I would think that having no land route connecting it to the rest of Moscow might result in it having its own identity. But, I don't know enough about its history to know if any of the people there feel a connection to the pre-WWII identity.
  OTOH, sometimes you get the opposite effect, like people in the Falkland Islands feeling even stronger connections to Britain than a lot of the people actually living in the British Isles.
  Also, since it's the home of the Black Sea fleet, I imagine that means a lot of Russians in the navy moving there, which would tend to exert a strong Russian cultural influence on the area.
  
  Well all inhabitants were pretty much thrown out or fled to Germany in fear of persecution. Then Stalin filled it up with ethnic Russians.
  They do have their own identity afaik, but it stems more from the connections they made with the neighbours: Lithuania and Poland.
  I don't know how deep it goes, but Kaliningraders were more against the war as it inconvenienced them in doing their shopping in Lithuania.
  Btw it's only half of East Prussia, the southern half was given to Poland.

214 comments