Some 1200 windsurfers take the start of the 21th edition of the Defi Wind in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Gruissan in southern France, on May 19, 2023. (Photo by Charly Triballeau/AFP Photo)

A newly hatched chick cuddles up to its mother at Santee Lakes near San Diego, California in May 2023. (Photo by Tammy Kokjohn/Solent News)

Women take photos on Lake Salt, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List, during the sunset in Ankara, Turkiye on July 3, 2023. Lake Salt, which is one of the important wetlands of Turkiye and is of great importance for the protection of biological diversity in our country, also attracts the attention of visitors. (Photo by Aytac Unal/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A young cholita from “Warmi Empollerada” project is portrayed emulating to fly with an umbrella during the sunset at the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flats), southwestern Bolivia, on June 25, 2023. The Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat and a top tourist destination in Bolivia and South America. (Photo by Marcelo Perez Del Carpio/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

The Villarrica volcano shows signs of activity, as seen from Pucon, some 800 kilometers south of Santiago, on November 21, 2022. Villarrica volcano is among the most active in South America. (Photo by Mario Quilodran/AFP Photo)

In this November 18, 2014 photo, Murshida, 12, sits on the lap of her mother Marjina as the train leaves for their village in West Bengal, at a railway station in New Delhi, India. Six months ago, Marjina stepped off a train in New Delhi with her two children, hoping to find a better life after her husband abandoned them without so much as a goodbye. The family spent their days at a landfill picking through other people’s garbage to find salvageable bits to resell or recycle. After six months of poverty, illness and shame, they returned to that train station in New Delhi, headed back to an uncertain future to their hometown in West Bengal. (Photo by Altaf Qadri/AP Photo)

A model presents a creation at the Lingerie Show-Forum 2016 international lingerie, swimwear, homewear and hosiery trade show in Moscow, Russia, February 24, 2016. (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters)

Only the most intrepid urban explorers cross the tattered ruins of the old Iron Curtain to endure the excessive bureaucracy, military paranoia and freezing winds of the East to hunt for the ghosts of an empire. Rebecca Litchfield is one who couldn’t resist the haunting allure of the ruins of the Soviet Union.