If you’ve ever rented an apartment in St Petersburg from the net, you’ll know how it goes.

You give the address to the taxi driver who drops you outside this gorgeous, stucco and sculpture fronted building. And you think . . . Wow. Am I really staying here?

But then you discover that all the wonderful facades of St Petersburg don’t include things like entrances or front doors. To find your apartment, you have to go round the back through a dim and grim archway, into some labyrinthine courtyard, stepping carefully over drunks, trash cans, prostitutes, rusting Ladas and broken bottles until you find the right, graffiti-splattered steel door with the unfathomable Russian, push-guess-buzz entry machine.

I took these pictures in the light, obviously. It’s less fun arriving in the dark.

Well, that’s not entirely true. It is huge fun for oddballs and culture shock freaks. If, however, you need a good apartment plus some hand holding on the way, may I recommend the lovely Irina Borisova. It may not entirely cure culture shock - or what psychologists prefer to call ‘acculturative stress‘, a syndrome first diagnosed in 1958. Moscow State Linguistic University is currently researching this among expats in Russia. Symptoms can include tics, twitches, obsessive washing and food poisoning. So, you know you’ve been in Russia too long when . . .