I was born in Kaluga and lived my first 18 years there. I still haven't lived anywhere longer, Prague is barely catching up.
My memories of the city are exclusively good, but the more I look at photos, the better I understand that Kaluga was good because me and my friends lived there.
2006
Until 2007 the only way to take photos - phones with antediluvian cameras. As a kid it occurred to me to photograph exclusively something like Kirov with a dick:
2007
Shit cameras still haven't disappeared. Photo taken from the "right bank". There used to be nothing there. Now there are solid human anthills
One of the main squares of the city - Victory Square. In childhood I lived nearby, so the place is significant for me - I went there almost every day.
Behind on the building is an inscription I learned to read when I was 3 years old. I remember now word for word, letter for letter, to the details: "Glory to the Soviet people - the victorious people!"
This is where I went to do sports (photographing the city just like that - not comme il faut, when the phone only has memory for 10 photos)
Three meters from my school. In the background - the legendary Cat and Dog store. Among the people "kotopes". Behind kotopes the coolest kids in school always hung out.
Drama theater. Kaluga Roman
From age 14 I lived a bit in the ass-end of the world. In April right around my birthday it snowed
Kaluga calls itself the cradle of cosmonautics
All because Tsiolkovsky was born here
Now we've already fucked all this up, but what times those were
Gagarin, by the way, also thought emo sucks
In those times Babruysk was a wildly funny meme, and in Kaluga there was a highway management office there. TO BABRUYSK, ANIMAL
Tents - symbol of the era
And three-liter beer tits
Once somewhere outside the city I left my first and last graffiti
And suddenly, they bought me a camera. I found myself
"Karpukha". Here non-conformists hung out
Now it's clear the city was terribly green
Stone bridge over a ravine in the very center
We're unrecognizable. Back then in 2007 Putin was rather a positive dude - after Yeltsin it was hard to be worse
The very center. I'm going to 11th grade, soon Kaluga and I will part
With its courtyards
With its hangouts with blackjack, whores and "Svyaznoy" magazine (that's me - the guy who didn't skip a single one). I had a hairstyle I called "hooligan", but turns out its name is "bilanovka"
With its grilled chickens
With its renovation
And with its Victory Square
2008
In my last year in Kaluga I went wild as I could: due to winning olympiads I automatically got into the local university, so I didn't need to study anymore
My first LAN CHAMPIONSHIP in Call of Duty 2. At that time I got internet, which took me out of life for the next 10 years
Gay test. If you see a dick here, I have bad news for you
Fashion 2008. Such girls were more the rule than the exception
And Kaluga still green
Old, beautiful
And a bit strange
August 2013
Then I studied in Moscow, having been to Kaluga only a couple times on vacation. I returned here only right before leaving for Czechia, when I bought a new camera. In those days I was actively trying to understand how to make websites
Now I understand how well the city could hide panels and new construction. Not so now
I lived on Saltykov-Shchedrin Street
More precisely with a hyphen, Saltykov-Shchedrin
More precisely S-Shchedrin in general. And all on one pink house
In general now I understand that living there was not bad
Not good, not terrible
Kaluga design, I grew up in it
My contemporaries erased or drank away the beauty
Named after.
Embryos of hipsters
Is it exactly clear what kind of store this is?
Thank God this appeared when I was already leaving, not when I was 15
Fashion
I was learning to take photos
This is already the creation of modern people, not the fucking Soviet Union
The fucking Soviet Union did it like this
This inscription has been preserved as long as I can remember. Maybe it's still there, on the pharmacy near Victory Square
Victory Square, of course
This thing is called "eternal flame", haven't seen such in Europe
The city has always been a city of contrasts
Which you get used to as "normal"
Three meters from erased history
There can be an ordinary panel building
On the roof of which even more history is hidden from view
Across the road from which even more history
And more
And more
And more
Until, finally, you bump into the blue spire of modernity
Where they don't want history
Too bad
I'd gladly drink historical milk
Would work at a historical factory (for historical money)
But I left for another country, and don't want to go back - let history be history
