01.07.12 Sunday
Rum stuff this Russian cuisine. It is, this morning, evident that the half-dozen or so pickled onions I ate last night were in fact garlic. A queue of cars before our minibus catches our attention as they weave a pattern, dance, through the string of potholes that is the road ahead. We vibrate behind them. Everywhere memorials of the 1941- 1944 "Great Patriotic War" along our route attest to the ferocity of the fighting on the front line against the Axis forces. The line held and Murmansk port remained open. But for the hill-tops capped with radar domes and pierced with communication masts there's little evidence of permenant habitation anywhere until, over an hour later, the guard at our first checkpoint wordlessly extends his hand seeking sight of our visas. This region is rich in valuable mineral ores. We have entered a zone of significant strategic importance. Here a major miltary facility, there a vast mining complex and then again the same. Penal colonies spring to mind as we take in our first impressions of the industry undertaken here. The pollution, the smog produced, blocks our view as we pass through it. It can be seen at 30 miles distance. Patches of old snow are coated brown with grime and working mines look derelict This is indeed a hell of sorts on earth... but all of us are the beneficiaries of the nickel produced. All serves to emphasise the contrast not 20 miles down the road as we pass at official pace into Norway. Kirkenes is a haven.