Yurga, Russia

Capital City

Brace yourself for a bleak Siberian outpost. Yurga, a town of 77,000 people, was founded in 1886 and granted town status in 1949. The local bureaucracy is a persistent headache, with the town serving as an administrative center while not actually being part of the surrounding district. And the climate? Well, let's just say the winters are long and unforgiving.

This is hardly the glamorous ex-pat life many dream of. Yurga is a hardscrabble industrial town, home to a Russian military brigade, where Soviet-era struggles linger on. Unless you have a strong stomach for Siberian austerity, this is not the place for you.