At the mercy of a Belarusian hipster

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Oh, Belarus. Are you as difficult and strange as you seem, or am I sabotaging myself with my own paranoia?

The first noteworthy thing I learn about Belarus is that more people speak English here than in Kaliningrad. As in, I met two.

The uniformed дзяўчына (girl; she was quite young) at passport control cheerfully helps me fill out my migration card, and I'm admitted into Belarus with pretty much no fuss at all. Nice.

I had arranged to stay with a private apartment-rental service in the city, rather than a hotel, and they'd efficiently processed my visa invitation as well. So far so good. Until... a few days ago I got an email that the current occupant of the "luxury" apartment I'd reserved back in May wanted to stay an extra night, so they were moving me to a different apartment for one night, after which they'd assist me with moving to the one I'd reserved. Not amusing at all. I argued via email, but it clearly wasn't going anywhere and I decided it wasn't worth trying to find another place to stay at the last minute. Since my flight was arriving really late into Minsk anyway, and they'd offered to move me early the next morning, I didn't figure I'd be missing anything.

But now I'm at the airport and my ride, which I had also arranged with them, doesn't appear to be anywhere. I can't just get a cab, given that I don't know where it's supposed to take me. I pace around. I try to find wi-fi, in case there are more surprise emails in my inbox. Finally, a text message! He's arrived. I text him back where to find me, and soon he drives up in a very nice red Renault Megane with techno music blaring. Dmitry, the person I've been emailing since May, hops out.

"Hipster" is really the only word for it. Tall, skinny, in skinny jeans, little glasses, shaggy hair, cigarette, perfect English including idioms. He puts my bag in the car, I climb in, and then I wait while he has a smoke outside. It's nearly an hour drive to Minsk from the airport. After we're speeding along the bright, brand-new Belarusian freeway, he says, awkwardly, "OK, I have some more bad news about the apartment for tonight." OMG WTF. They'd offered me a particular one in the city center, and now Dmitry's manager has "accidentally" booked it for someone else, so instead of that one, they're going to put me in a different apartment overnight, one on the outskirts of the city that isn't walking distance to anything. "You're not going out tonight, right?" he asks hopefully.

At this point, it's obvious that I'm getting jacked around because for whatever reason I'm not important enough to them. Don't know why. Even if I wanted to try to offer a bribe at this point to get them to inconvenience someone else instead of me, I don't know how. I'm getting angrier and angrier, but it seems my options are to throw a fit and demand to be dropped off at the lobby of the Hotel Minsk, or to play along for the evening and see what happens tomorrow. Other than the location of the overnight apartment, which I have no real reason to care about, nothing else has changed. OK. Deep breaths. I keep thinking, since they haven't gotten any money from me yet, they've still got a reason to want to make this work.

(Unless they're planning to rob me and leave me beside the Belarusian freeway, but if that were the plan I figure there'd be no reason to play around with all these apartments.)

Dmitry takes me to the apartment, making great and interesting conversation on the way, and the place is quite nice actually: a huge one-bedroom with a huge bath, full kitchen, and - jackpot - a washing machine! I had asked about a washing machine earlier, but the apartment I chose doesn't have one, and the other overnight apartment didn't either. Dmitry remembers me asking and is pleased that this one at least has that. "What about wi-fi?" Which I told them MANY MANY TIMES was VERY IMPORTANT. "Um, yeah, it hasn't been set up yet in this apartment." More deep breaths. We arrange to meet at 9:00 the next morning - "um, probably more like 9:20" - and he gets the fuck out, which at that point is best for everyone. I send a text message home to let folks know I have arrived sans internet.

Then, I try to settle in and focus on making the best of the situation: washing machine! OK, hmm. I'm only a little bit familiar with European washing machines; every time I've "used" one has been at a friend's home where they've done it for me. And the switches and buttons on this machine all seem to be labelled... in Polish. I dig out the Lonely Planet Polish phrasebook. It contains language to apologize when you've inadvertently violated local customs, to talk your way out of a traffic ticket, to discuss your venereal disease with a local doctor, but not to decipher the controls on a washing machine. Not even close. I plug in the machine, make a few wild guesses, and push some buttons. There's water. Looks promising. I throw socks and underwear in, and a tiny packet of "Hand Wash Tide" that I brought with me that is clearly marked "do not use in machine" but it's all I've got, and everything sudses up and seems very washing-machine-like.

And then, the power goes out.

Nope, not kidding.

So now all of my socks and underwear are wet and soapy, sitting in a dead machine in a pitch-dark room, and I'm supposed to be getting up early tomorrow to move to another apartment.

Wait, pitch-dark room. Not pitch-dark apartment. The lights and TV are still on in the bedroom. My mental debug engine kicks in and I realize that this means I've only overloaded the circuit, which happens at my house in Seattle all the time. OK. I don't know how that sort of thing works in a high-rise apartment, or if I'll be able to find the panel, but I can give it a try. I hunt around the apartment, no luck, and then I step out into the building's hallway. There's a promising-looking metal cupboard. It isn't locked. I open it. A panel! Not exactly like mine at home, but recognizably a panel. I wonder how the neighbors will feel if I start pulling switches at random. But that isn't necessary - a quick look reveals that they're all pointed in the same direction except for one. There you have it. I switch it back, and the lights come back on in the bath in my apartment. Victory!

I turn off all the extra lights and anything else that could possibly be drawing power from that circuit, and start the washing machine again. The circuit trips again and shuts it off. I reset the circuit. We won't talk about how many retries before I give up. My awesomeness at having successfully debugged a Belarusian circuit breaker is tempered by the knowledge that I'm still going to have soapy socks and underwear in the morning. As a last resort, I send a text message to Dmitry - washing machine trips the circuit, I'm going to need help resolving wet-clothes problem in the morning, damn you hipster. I don't actually type that last part. About 10 minutes later I receive a text reply: "I found out the solution. Use extension cord to plug into socket in hallway."

Well! Maybe Dmitry isn't so bad after all!

I've seen the extension cord in a storage closet. I pull it out and take a guess which "hallway" he means, and I fire up the washer again.

It works! Washer's running, and no broken circuit! I go to bed, lulled by the sweet sound of the spin cycle.

This turns out to not be one of those washers that also has a drying cycle, as far as I can tell - many European machines don't - so when it ends I get up and put things through spin a few more times, then hang things to air-dry. Still, transporting lightly damp socks is a lot better than transporting a wad of dripping, soapy ones.

In spite of this glorious success, a barking dog and my own EXTREMELY HIGH STRESS LEVELS AT THIS POINT keep me awake all night. Welcome to Minsk!

The next morning, bleary-eyed, I get up and re-pack and sit to wait for Dmitry to arrive at 9:20. And wait. And wait. When my phone tells me it's 10:00, I send him an(other) angry text. He replies: "We said 9:20; it's 9:00 now." What? DAMMIT, the local cell provider is sending MOSCOW TIME to my phone instead of the local time! They did the same in Kaliningrad and I had learned to adjust to it, because that's just kinda normal in Russia, but hey, Belarus, did you miss the memo about having been independent from the USSR/Russia since 1991? (They kinda did miss it, but that's another blog post.) So the local cell provider is telling me Moscow time, which I verify by checking the time on my iPod. They're an hour different and the iPod is correct. Now I've lost an hour of sleep and am embarrassed, too.

Dmitry arrives exactly on time, and takes me to exactly the correct apartment. I had thought about refusing to pay for at least one of the nights, as a protest gesture, but I am out-maneuvered when he asks me to pay cash in advance for the entire stay. Which is normal with small B&Bs as well as some hotels. I'm defeated. I pay up.

The good news? The apartment I actually reserved turns out to be even more awesome than I had hoped, and I have a fantastic stay there. Dmitry urges me to text him if there are any problems at all, which I don't because there aren't. He also asks me to text him the night before I'm to leave (early in the morning) so he won't forget to pick me up for the ride to the airport - but this proves unnecessary, as the afternoon before he texts me first to confirm that he remembers. And he's right on time. Belarusian time.

Yup... if I ever go back to Minsk, which I might, I may very well stay with them again.

See all my pictures from Minsk on Flickr: Мінск 2010 Set

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Photos

Apartment #1
Couldn't bear to unwrap the shrink wrap.

How do you say "nemesis" in Polish?
... because THAT isn't in the phrasebook, either.