However, if you had faith, left your shoes and boots inside the airlock doors and climbed the gleaming staircase to the first floor, you found yourself in a kind of miracle - a warm, comfortable bar offering a choice of blond, amber or dark beer brewed on the premises, or several kinds of vodka.
I chose the dark beer and my wife, Chris, opted for the blond. While the young man behind the bar poured our drinks I asked him where the pub had come from. "We used to only be allowed to make beer with no alcohol," he said. "But yesterday we got our licence to brew proper beer, so now we are open." And he beamed delightedly. Both beers were superb, full-bodied, flavoursome and refreshing, so we beamed delightedly too.
As we sipped we mused about how this amazing pub might have come about. You see, the islands which make up Svalbard are Norwegian territory. But Barentsburg is a Russian town - there's a Russian consulate here which is the northernmost diplomatic mission in the world - its status protected under the 1920 international treaty that gave these Arctic islands to Norway (the detail is rather too complicated to discuss after a few pints).
Virtually all the inhabitants are from Russia or Ukraine (they say they get on really well despite the troubles back home). The settlement includes a small but distinctive Russian Orthodox Church, a gift shop which sells combination cigarette lighter-flick knives, Soviet-era medals and sealskin hats, and there's a bust of Lenin in the main square.
There are lots of ghastly Stalinist apartment blocks - mostly empty, apparently, as the population has dwindled over the years - tumbledown wooden buildings, a school covered in beautiful Arctic murals, one or two elegant old houses and several bizarre Soviet-style posters ... oh, and a hospital where, we were told, no births are allowed - pregnant women are sent home to Russia.
Barentsburg is surrounded by spectacular mountains and sits in a landscape of snow and ice but the effect is rather spoiled by the fact that just about everything is covered by coal dust. Our expedition leader had told us the night before that it was a place we would either detest or find absolutely fascinating and I know exactly what he meant.
Intriguingly, while we were there a big effort was being made to tidy things up with teams of women sweeping the roads with brushes, gangs of men removing the worst of the scattered rubble and junk in wheelbarrows, some of the most dilapidated buildings being knocked down and a few new ones - including the pub - erected in their place.
Inspired by our beers, and by Russia's recent annexation of the Ukranian territory of Crimea, we couldn't help wondering what was going on.
We'd been told that the coal mining operation in Barentsburg almost certainly lost money. So why would the Russians spend money doing the town up and even creating a brewery? Was it being kept alive to give the Putin Government another foothold in the Arctic at a time when it is becoming increasingly economically and strategically significant? During the previous night's briefing an American tourist had asked jovially: "When do you think Vladimir Putin will annex Barentsburg?" And I noticed that the Norwegians on board didn't laugh.
Of course, all that geopolitical stuff was beyond our mildly befuddled minds. All we knew was that whatever was going on had allowed us to be enjoying tall glasses of fine ale.
So we raised our glasses and toasted those great Russians Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin for their services to thirsty beer drinkers. Budem zdorovy, chaps.
CHECKLIST
Getting there: Emirates has daily flights from Auckland to Oslo via Dubai. From there, there are daily flights to Longyearbyen, Svalbard, via Tromso. There is no road access to Barentsburg: a boat from Longyearbyen takes two - three hours, or in winter you can travel by snowmobile.
