Where is it? Murmansk Oblast is located on the Kola peninsula, which juts into the Barents Sea in northwestern Russia and includes Russia's borders with Norway and Finland. It is, however, in the Moscow time zone, and you can find the local time here.

What's the biggest city? Murmansk, whose population includes 336,137 of the region's 892,534 million people, according to the 2002 census.

Who lives here? Primarily ethnic Russians.

What do they do here? Murmansk is an important port for the Russian Navy because it is the only ice-free port in the Russian Arctic. Fishing and shipping are big here, and it is the home base for Russia's nuclear-powered ice breakers. Russia's current expedition to claim more of the Arctic shelf for oil and gas exploration departed from the port of Murmansk on July 24. The large Shtokman gas field is nearby.

Does it have any English-language news sources? The Barents Observer covers the entire region from Norway. Murmansk's local newspaper, Vecherniy Murmansk, is also online in Russian.

How do I see what it looks like? Flickr has almost 2,000 shots, showing the seascape and wintry weather.

How do I get here? You can get to Murmansk by train from St. Petersburg, but most adoptive parents come in by plane from Moscow. Aeroflot flies from Sheremetyevo, while a carrier called Karat flies from Moscow Domodedovo. Rossiya airlines flies from St. Petersburg.

Which adoption agencies work here? Maine Adoption Placement Service and Adoption Options. MAPS operates a drug abuse prevention program in Murmansk, as well as a "big sister" project that gets local grandmothers involved in the orphanages. The latter is operated in conjunction with Tufts-New England Medical Center's Floating Hospital for Children. The Floating Hospital has also done research on fetal alcohol syndrome in the region.

Which Russian adoption bloggers have been here? Jenni, who blogs at "Four Feet More", adopted two children from here in December 2005. There's also the Harkins family, who adopted their younger son from Murmansk in 2006. There is one Yahoo! group, Murmansk_Adoption.

Truly trivia: If you come to Murmansk in winter, bring your own sunshine: the region goes through several weeks of total darkness. But if your adoption journey brings you here in summer, you'll need a sleeping mask. The "White Nights" phenomenon means weeks of 24-hour sunshine.

Need more information? Murmansk seems too far north for "Way To Russia" so far. Kommersant has much more detail. Here's the current weather in Murmansk.

Image Credit: Alf Gillman