His first week was hell. He didn't understand anything that anyone was saying, was completely thrown by the Cyrillic alphabet, kept getting in everyone's way, doing everything wrong. It was awful.

So now it's the second week. He had decided to quit his studies, having been briefly enrolled among several courses, it ceased to mean anything to him. Now he was just a westerner, no longer a student, and he was desperate to find a purpose here.

He was hungry, so he joined the queue at the baker's. The line snaked across the entire square. More often than not, by the time you got to the front of the queue there was nothing to be had, but all the same it had to be done.

A woman was walking up and down the line. She had one hand out and was imploring for help. He couldn't understand what she was saying, but he could get the gist. Eventually she was stood in front of him.

He was wary of falling into the kind of tricks which get played on travellers and tourists so he decided to ignore her. He had one phrase he could use.

"Sazhalets, nimnawgi Ruski (Sorry, no Russian)."

But the woman didn't move on. She repeated herself. Her hand beckoned further. He couldn't think of anything else to do other than turn away and ignore her.

The woman moved on, as did the line.

Eventually his mind had forgotten the encounter with the woman and was approaching the front of the queue. He could smell the bread now and the scent tied his stomach into knots. Then, he saw the woman again. This time she had a child with her, she was leading a child across the square when she suddenly stopped and fell to the ground. He looked around to see if anyone else had noticed this event, but apparently no one had. He looked at the other faces in the crowd, when the man in front turned to him and said something that sounded brusque.

He didn't understand.

The child was tugging at the woman now and crying. She was imploring people to stop and help but no one did.

He couldn't put up with it any longer and left his place in the queue. They immediately filed together behind him. But he didn't care now.

He ran over to the woman, helped her to her feet. He could see that she needed to eat, and although he didn't have much money he gave her one of the two rubles he had left. The woman was very grateful for his charity and she and the child gave him broad smiles.

Afterwards, he made sure she was okay and watched her walk away until he couldn't see her any more. Then, he joined the back of the queue, knowing that soon all the bread would be gone.