Visaginas is the youngest city in Lithuania, remotely situated between the country’s borders with Latvia and Belarus. Formerly known as Sniečkus after the first secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party, it was built from nothing in 1975 to house the workers of the now decommissioned Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, which supplied electricity to the northwestern parts of the Soviet Union and was set to become the most powerful of its kind.

Visaginas is the youngest city in Lithuania, remotely situated between the country’s borders with Latvia and Belarus. Formerly known as Sniečkus after the first secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party, it was built from nothing in 1975 to house the workers of the now decommissioned Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, which supplied electricity to the northwestern parts of the Soviet Union and was set to become the most powerful of its kind.

As a complete stranger, I came across Visaginas in a guidebook which boldly stated: "If you want to visit Russia without leaving Europe, then go to Visaginas."
I first visited in August 2017 and I have returned every year since. It was the first time I had immersed myself in a community for an extended period of time. I wondered what would happen when the unfamiliar started to become familiar. When does an outsider stop feeling like one?
Like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, every encounter led to another. The more I began to know, the more meaningful it became.