Airports. One feature of the modern world that is genuinely hard to love; from the gross inefficiency of your Heathrows and CDGs, to those sterile, sprawling monstrosities in Schiphol and Frankfurt, to the nauseating glitz of Dubai’s shopping mall city, no-one has yet managed to successfully design a place where thousands of travellers can cool their heels in relative comfort and peace. It’s a tall order, admittedly, but you’d be hard pressed to find an airport than makes a bigger mess of it than Sheremetyevo, the ex-Communist monster that “serves” Greater Europe’s second largest city. I spent roughly four hours in Moscow enduring fever-inducing cold, belittlement, mild extortion in the form of excess baggage payments (a 3kg excess in Heathrow miraculously blossomed into 7kg once on Russian scales), cigarette smoke, and the worst music I have ever heard in my life. If Russia is as awash with money as they say, then it can surely afford something better than this.

Tyumen airport was an exercise in contrast. Which isn’t to say that it was good, because it wasn’t; more that it was… austere. It was really more of a train station than an airport. Upon touching down at 6am, we trudged across the snowy tarmac to be disgorged into a car park via a gate held closed by a rusty padlock. That was it; no arrivals building to speak of at all. A little while later, an ante-chamber was unlocked, in which I found my baggage. No further officialdom seemed to be forthcoming, so I went on my way – slightly bemused by the experience, nonetheless.

Happily, I was met from the airport by Amanda, a pleasant American lady who is also the director of studies of CET in Tyumen. Her assistance on that first morning was fairly vital, as my own capacity at the time was somewhat sub-par. I later found out that this was a case of the blind leading the blind: Amanda had herself arrived in Tyumen after a 15-hour trek from the States only a day or so previously, and spent much of the following day in deep, deep sleep. But that notwithstanding, she still managed to take me to my apartment, thrust a handful of cash and groceries into my hand, and force me to make my bed before collapsing into it. For this I am grateful.

I forced myself out of bed at around noon, having slept for about 4 hours – enough to take the edge off, but not enough to ensure that I would be body-clock-distortingly alert at 2am the following morning. This was the first point at which I properly stopped to check out my surroundings. My flat – fine, clean, tastefully decorated and spacious, with as much kitchen as I could possibly wish for. Located on the tenth floor of a Soviet concrete block, it provides some scenic views of a pair of radio masts, which are actually quite pretty when lit up for night.

Meeting Amanda and another new colleague, Rob, for a pizza lunch provided an opportunity to see Tyumen itself in daylight. On first impressions, it’s like a Saudi city but snowier – lots of wide, straight roads in a grid system, lots of concrete blocks, and lots of cars. A slightly fairer eye will realise that this is fatuous; for one thing, Tyumen has bars, and restaurants, and pavements, and people bustling about the place – not many, but enough to prevent a sense of desertedness. The concrete blocks are interspersed with some charmingly ramshackle old wooden buildings, most of which have electricity but none of which have plumbing. And if you’re persistent, you can find some items of real interest – a small central park with a fair, for example, complete with ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds, and a collection of very beautiful ice sculptures, or some of the oldest churches and cathedrals in Russia.

Pizza was a slightly lazy affair, if only because Amanda and I were persevering under the effects of travel tiredness. Once fed, however, I was taken to the school to meet the other staff and get a sense of the premises. The school in Tyumen isn’t big – 6 permanent teachers, plus myself and Jon, both pending for Nizhnevartovsk – but it is friendly, and the welcome I received there was very warm. At the end of the day, Jon – who is literally the friendliest, most cheerful man I have ever met – took me out to dinner at a diner in town. Along with Dan, another recent arrival, we cheerfully ordered Deluxe Moccasin with no idea what that entailed (in the event, a fish fillet fried in batter with a potato fritter) and a nice big slice of cake to follow. I got home in time for an early night, but sat up bolt upright at about 1.15am, realising that I had left my satchel at the restaurant. After ten minutes of internal wrestling, I sighed, booted up and headed back out into the cold. After half an hour of trudging, was extremely fortunate to discover that: a) stories of the probability of getting stabbed in Russian cities at 2am are overblown, at least in Tyumen; b) the restaurant is not in the UK, and thus stays open until a sensible hour – in this case, 2am; and c) apparently no-one else had been in the restaurant since I left, as mu bag was undisturbed where I left it. All of this is extremely fortunate, as losing that bag – and its contents – would have been catastrophic.

Yesterday was mostly spent at the school, although I did brave my first visit to a Russian supermarket (which was, uh, remarkably similar to supermarkets anywhere else in the world. Who would’ve thunk). Plans are being drawn up for a weekend trip to the hot springs, and hopefully I’ll have my ticket sorted out for my train ride to Nizhnevartovsk by early next week. I shall no doubt keep you all informed in the next thrilling installment.