The hospital was ten storeys high, apparently with eight hundred beds. It was only ten years old but already looked derelict. We approached it through a wasteland of broken buildings and those gigantic, incomprehensible pipes that always seem to surround Soviet buildings, on which pure white snow was starting to fall from a leaden sky. At one side there was a large and ramshackle open-air market, with battered zinc-covered huts displaying rather sad little collections of cheap cosmetics and vodka. Decrepit Lada and Moskvitch and Volga cars were parked in utter disorder. Everything was grey,
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