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Siberia which sits in Russia. Russia is the really big doll, being over eight hundred times the size of Wales.
    Krasnoyarsk city is the third largest city in Siberia, after Novosibirsk and Omsk. While Cardiff is about 140 km² with a population of around 350,000 people, Krasnoyarsk city is a little over twice the size but with three times the population. It’s such a big place that you would think that I would have heard of it before. That’s one of the things I find most annoying about my education and about the UK. I know at least a dozen people who can name all the states of America and know most of the cities. Britain has become so Americanised that it is taken as read that when someone says a place name in America you automatically know where they’re talking about. Nobody ever asked if I knew the great little café on the corner of Ulitsa Surikova and Prospekt Mira.
    Krasnoyarsk is actually famous in some parts of the world for several different reasons:

It is built around a junction of the Trans-Siberian Railway;
It is one of Russia’s largest producers of aluminium;
It was a major centre of the Gulag system;
It houses the fifth largest hydroelectric station in the world;
In 1749, a 700 kg meteorite was found 145 miles south of the city and it was the first of its kind. Made from an unknown and as yet unclassified type of iron, it was registered as a pallasite, as the scientist examining it was named Peter Pallas, even though the actual discovery was made by a man named Medvedev.
In the late 1970s, Abalakovo, a city near Krasnoyarsk, housed a phased array radar station, which frightened Americans because it violated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The treaty stated that the radars had to be on the periphery of national territory and had to face outwards; the radar near Krasnoyarsk was in the middle of the country and faced Siberia. After heavy negotiations in September 1989, the facility was eventually dismantled. It was all a waste of time, however, as in 2001 George W. Bush gave Russia notice of the United States’ intention of withdrawal from the treaty and withdrew six months later. It was the first time in recent history that America had withdrawn from a major international arms treaty and was a huge blow to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is now almost completely ignored.
    There are several other features of Krasnoyarsk that make the city unique from any other in Russia. One of those is the Stolby nature reserve, a 17,000-hectare area of outstanding natural beauty south of the Yenisei River. It is filled with giant pillars of volcanic rock that were forged millions of years ago when the Sayan mountains, the range between north-western Mongolia and southern Siberia, were pushed up out of the ground by pulses of magma from the Earth’s core. Stolby which is otherwise known as ‘the land of forest giants’ takes its name from the Russian word ‘stolb’, which translates as ‘pillar’. It is hugely popular with rock climbers who flock from all over the world to test themselves against the pillars. It is also a hotspot for scientists who come to study the wildlife. Stolby is a reserve for thousands of rare species of plants as well as birds, wild cats and insects. It is a little too wild for my liking as when there is a lack of berries and nuts in the taiga hungry bears have been known to stroll into Stolby looking for people’s leftovers or unattended children.
    There are an estimated 200,000 brown bears in the world, and it just so happens that half of them live in Russia. Worse than this, Siberian bears are said to be larger than your average grizzly and unfortunately human flesh is on their menu. During my first month in Krasnoyarsk there were seven reported bear attacks. These happened around populated areas on the outskirts of the city where people live in their dachas during the summer period. Bears, it seems, will spy someone lying with