Gryazovets

Gryazovets (Finn. sometimes Kurala) is a small but important Uralican city located in southeast Western Uralica, being one of only two major centres along Highway UH-20, the second-most used point of ingress into Uralica west of the Urals after Highway UH-7E between Viipuri and St. Petersburg.

As such, Gryazovets has large sectors in retail, international finance, and anything to do with transportation, whether that mean auto construction, the production of road-building materials and machines, automotive repair, auto part casting, or the production of radar guns for Uralican police to enforce speed limits with. However, Gryazovets also has a sizable food production sector and small sectors in ferrous metallurgy, petrochemical manipulation, pharmaceutical production, and hi-tech.

It sits roughly fifty kilometres south of Vologda and roughly sixty north of the Klimkovo border crossing.

Culture
Gryazovets, not surprisingly, is something of a cultural mixed bag. The majority of the inhabitants are at least partly Russian, but there is a large Finnish population, and no less than half of the population claims some Uralic ancestry as well, with the most common of these ethnicities being Veps, Karelian, and Mari.

Linguistically, Finnish and Russian are both universals according to the latest census data, with English also being very prominent and large numbers also speaking Veps. In fact, Gryazovets has the largest percentage of Veps speakers in any Uralican city.

Founded in 1538, the city's rich history is chronicled in the local historical museum, which is one of a few major tourist spots in the city. There is also a beautiful cedar grove in the city, and Gryazovets Central Shopping Mall (the largest of three shopping malls in the city) is a favourite with foreign shoppers.

Another major tourist trap is the Novy Kornilievo-Komelsky Monastery, built over the course of 2009, which replaced the ruined one which lay derelict from the time of its abandonment in the 1950s until its final destruction in 2008 during the War of the Coalition. It is not inhabited by monks per se, but the abbey is used for Orthodox church services on Sundays and UEB services on Saturdays, and other buildings are used for various things like museums and memorials to various Christian figures who were persecuted during the Communist regime.

Neighbourhoods and Suburbs

 * Krestovka
 * Svistunovo
 * Dvorets
 * Cheryomushki
 * Chistaya
 * Krasnoselje
 * Prudovitsa
 * Maksimovka
 * Ivovets
 * Sorskyy
 * Monza
 * Vostrogskyy
 * Vesennyy
 * Pirogovo