After one hour on the bus from Perm, located on the European side of the Urals, there is only snow and dark green pine trees outside my window as far as the eye can see. With at least one more hour to go before arriving at the museum “Perm-36”, those small villages that one passes by every once in a while along Russian highways become scarce, allowing for a lonely landscape heavy with snow under a dreary grey sky to take over. It’s late morning on a cloudy Tuesday in February, and there are hardly ten people on the bus. Suddenly the driver pulls over and stops where a smaller road starts off from the main road, shouting back at me: “This is it!” The day is not cold, it is only minus one degree Celsius, yet the wind coming from the south is strong and icy; it feels like needles hitting against my face when I stand and watch the bus taking off, leaving me alone in the middle of nowhere. The first thing I notice is the silence. Except for the occasional car passing by on the road, there is nothing out here – only snow-covered fields and tall, murky pine trees.
