Barentzberg - the Russian Colony

Today we went to Barentzberg - the Russian mining town about one and a half hours by boat from Longyearbyen.

It is a working mine town and everyone who works there is employed by the mine company -even the girls working in the hotel bar. The people working here get all the meals and other needsprovided by the company, so it is a small society without any cash because there is nothing to buy.

It has a proper old soviet feel - like going back to the 1980's in the middle of Russia. The people that we met were really nice to us although most of them seemed to be down the mine. We did not get time to see the most northerly pig farm in the world but we did see lots of other stuff.

This is the school - which is painted to look like Noah's ark

This is a painting of a forest to remind the workers what a forest looks like.

This is a sculpture about the future, in front of one of the mine administration buildings.

Kjell and Alex