Ok, Tyumen and it's inhabitants..... Part 2 of your cultural exchange lesson.

Tyumen is home to some 750,000 inhabitants none of whom are famous. Unless you count the girl who currently stars in Russia's reality programme Dom Dva (House 2). Despite the absence of celebrity spotting as a fun walking-around-town game, these folks are pretty happy chaps. Tyumen region is the oil centre of Russia, but all the oil is found up in the north where it's not as good a climate or vegetation, hence this city was born, down in the south, for all the wealthy oil workers to buy apartments and spend their wages, well, it was already here but it's popularity soared, as you can imagine. Not everyone here works in oil though; as with any big booming industry, it created hundreds of other jobs in different industries. Where there's money, there's business opportunities. So hundreds of 'businessmen' and 'businesswomen' appeared; where once there was a lonely corner shop selling stale bread and locally caught fish products there is now a shopping centre stocked with all the imported brands employing 50 staff, and where there was once a run-down flea-ridden bed and breakfast run by a toothless babooshka and her son-in-law, there now stands the arabesque Quality Hotel aka Tyumen Hotel. It's a city that's looking up and up, there's no going down, as they say. So although I convey my observations to you, yes you three that still read this nonsense, in a misanthropic manner, my cynicism is just pretence. In fact, the place where I live is thriving, and it's very interesting to witness a city being born, in the process of developing. The effects of all this good work, and more importantly, the fact that you can see the development happening in front of your very own eyes, is that everyone here loves their town. It's very interesting for me, coming from Manchester. Ok people love Manchester, but they'd never admit it outright, they'd disguise it behind a nonchalant phrase like 'yeah well there's been good music scenes and some good architecture sprouts up sometimes and what was that thing ... the industrial thing, yeah that was historical'. But that would always come after a complaint (no doubt completely justified) about the weather or the people all being moronic fight-heads and tarts on a Saturday night. Let's just say that folks here in Tyumen have a pride in their town that transcends any notion of pride in a Mancunian (believe me, it can be embarrassing). It's true, people don't get out much, which may also have something to do with it, you know, the nearest big town of any interest is a 4 hour drive away and that's just another big town like this one. But still, it never fails to touch my heart strings to hear the community speak well of their surroundings.

It hasn't made me think any better of it though; they are living and building on an uninhabitable swamp, the machinery, brain power and greed of mankind has defied nature, as it does so often in city life; but long after the oil has been extracted dry and the defunct neon casino lights have sunk into the concealed depths of the swampland, there'll still be the dust, the mud, the -40 conditions and the electric storms that are nature's way of telling us that we shouldn't be here. Not to mention the insects, which I'm beginning to take personally now, as an indication that I'm just not welcome.