Where is it? Tyumen Oblast is located in central Russia. The Novosibirsk region is its immediate neighbor to the east. It is two hours ahead of Moscow in the Yekaterinburg time zone. Sverdlovsk Oblast is on its southwestern border.

What's the biggest city? Tyumen, whose population includes 511,000 of the region's 3.3 million people, according to the 2002 census. The next two largest cities are Surgut (population 272 300) and Nizhnevartovsk, with 238 700 residents.

Who lives here? Wikipedia says Tyumen is one of the most multicultural regions of Russia, with 36 ethnic groups of more than 2,000 members. Ethnic Russians dominate, but Tatars and Ukrainians account for almost 14% of the population.

What do they do here? Oil and gas and oil and gas. They were discovered here in 1964 and life hasn't been the same since. Tyumen is Russia's biggest energy-producing region now and thousands of workers have come from all over the country to develop, produce and refine it.

Does it have any English-language news sources? None that I have found.

How do I see what it looks like? Tyumen hasn't really captured the imagination of the photographers who frequent Flickr. There are only about 300 pictures online, and it doesn't seem terribly photogenic.

How do I get here? By air to Roschino International Airport. Aeroflot and UTAir fly from Moscow's Sheremetyevo, while Yamal Airlines flies from Domodedovo.

Which adoption agencies work here? Adoption Associates, Adoption Source, Christian World Adoption and Wide Horizons For Children.

Which Russian adoption bloggers have been here? Rhyne and Jake came to America in December 2005, and their parents write about them here. Ron and Barb put some information about their 2004 trip to adopt two boys on their business's Web site. There is a good-sized Yahoo! group, Tyumen_Adoption.

Truly trivia: When Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, was ousted by the revolutionaries, he and his family were held in the Tyumen regional city of Tobolsk for a year before being moved to Yekaterinburg and executed. In an odd twist of fate, Grigori Rasputin, the mystic who gained considerable influence over the last Romanovs, was also from this region.

Need more information? Kommersant has lots of history and information on Tyumen's energy resources. There's a virtual U.S. consulate online here and the region's own Web site is available in Russian. Here's the current weather. Yes, it's often chilly: This is Siberia.

Image Credit: gthornton101