Finally I spend a few days in Samara where I have to give a talk and had almost no time to take photos. One has to say that it is a dusty town that clearly has “grown too fast”. I didn’t see many pleasant places, and the most pleasant one was the park on the banks of the Volga. During WW II it was chosen alternative capital in case that Moscow would fall. After the war, it played a leading role in the development of Soviet domestic aviation and the implementation of the Soviet space program. It was called Kuybyshev until the end of Soviet Union.