Eternal flame
Buzuluk

In Russia the only reliable means of obtaining information regarding train times and ticketing is to visit the local railway station.

Health warning: "Visiting the local railway station ticket office can seriously affect your health!".

This is not a task one normally embarks on unless one is fully fit, both mentally and physically. Words cannot describe the mental and physical anguish one can suffer while enquiring about trains to Samara, Kazan, Volgograd, or for that matter, anywhere else in the Russia Federation.

Be prepared to queue, change queues, abandon queues, form new queues, invent queues, design queues and then be prepared to queue some more. Be aware that all the time you are queuing, a demon behind armoured glass is conceiving more absurd reasons in order you should be forced to queue again.

If this experience doesn't take away your will to live, then woe betide the naive person who armed with train times and availabilty, then attempts to purchase a ticket!

The photographs in this album were taken immediately after a visit to Buzuluk railway station. I needed to walk to calm down. I needed a religious building to avoid harming someone. Fortunately there is a marvellous church immediately opposite the railway station carpark. Ironic really.

My thanks goes out to Natasha, a young girl helping to clean the church. She has little money, few prospects and did not wish to be photographed. She practised her basic command of the English language by advising which of her favourite icons I should photograph. I felt very humbled.