The peaceful lull of the vuvuzela

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In the last post about Minsk, I talked a lot about Sovietisms, and ended with a frankly pathetic "life goes on". It's hard for me to know how to feel about Minsk. Even in the USA's darkest days under George W. Bush, and in spite of some liberals' worst fears, W never did some of the creepy things Lukashenko has done in Belarus - like a rigged referendum to abolish term limits which, since the presidential elections are rigged as well, allows him to serve as president for life if he wishes. (Even Putin didn't do it quite that way.) What does that mean for Belarusians? I have no idea. It depends what the president does with his power, right? Lukashenko is criticized in the west for being cozy with Russia; I don't know what that means in a practical, everyday sense either.

Well, OK, I do know one tangible thing. Both in Kaliningrad and in Belarus, the people I met (a biased sample of 100%!C(MISSING)ouchSurfing members - some who travel, others who only host/meetup) were desperately interested in travel, which is permitted but can be quite difficult and expensive, because neither Russia nor Belarus has significantly modernized its visa system, and neither country looks likely to do so under their current leadership.

Hard to call that an "everyday" sense, though.

Though I was only a visitor briefly to Minsk, I feel fortunate that my experience wasn't so much as a tourist. Minsk has perfectly lovely tourist hotels, but I didn't stay in one - I rented a private flat through my hipster buddy Dmitry. And when I say "private flat", I mean their company has purchased single individual flats in buildings throughout Minsk - buildings in which all the other flats are occupied by regular Belarusians living regular lives. Now, these rental units have been renovated like crazy, so I don't pretend they're representative of the insides of the neighboring flats which haven't had the benefit of tourist cash to modernize them, but it's really interesting to come and go from such a place, pretty much like anyone else, almost incognito.

I headed across the street to the прадукты (convenience store) and stocked up on rolls, cheese, a tomato, kefir, milk, herbal tea, fizzy water, wafer cookies and a roll of toilet paper. I annoyed the clerks by shopping incorrectly (I think I figured out afterwards that you're supposed to put your bag in a locker by the door first, then select items and pay, then move with your basket back to the locker area to bag up; intead, I was just in people's way all over the tiny tiny store), but I got my items and got out of there. My flat had a full kitchen with dishes and silverware and a hot water kettle, so I could make my own breakfast and evening snacks for the rest of my stay. Like a real person!

In the evenings, I had a sofa/lounge to rest on, and crazy satellite TV to watch - I got my first opportunity to see English-language news on Al Jazeera International, which was exceptionally good and much less depressing than BBC World. I panicked a bit on the first night when my wi-fi was working great, but I couldn't get to the CouchSurfing website. Every other site I cared about, fine, but not that one. My friends back home reported it to be up and working fine from USA. OMG - could Lukashenko/the Belarusian KGB be blocking it?! And how ridiculous am I for wondering that? And why CouchSurfing but not Facebook? And this is stupid, because obviously the Belarusian CouchSurfers are getting to CouchSurfing. OMG - is it just me?! It took me an entire day to figure out that I could use Remote Desktop to log into my computer at work and use it to navigate to CouchSurfing, by which time, the site had come back up in Belarus anyway. Whatever the hiccup was, it fixed itself. And I do feel pretty ridiculous.

My local CouchSurfers showed me how to buy tokens and navigate the bus, tram and Metro (subway). Almost all transit signage is in Belarusian only, and as previously noted, the Russian and Belarusian names can be quite different. For some reason, the English-language tourist maps display street and station names entirely in either the translation ("October Square"), or in Romanized script of the Russian name ("Oktyabryskaya Square"). And how, exactly, the hell does this help when the only sign for the actual square says «Кастрычніцкая»? (Nikolay explained, rather proudly, that Belarusian still uses the original words for the calendar months.) I read a little Cyrillic and even to me these Romanized maps were useless. Once I'd been given a quick orientation by Nikolay, though, I was able to put a file on my iPod of all three versions of every station and street name that I cared about - Belarusian, Russian and English translation - which I used as a reference after that. (iPhone OS's international keyboard settings are awesome, by the way, and put Google Android to shame. Shame!)

So I lived, I walked around, I occasionally purchased things, I watched television, I Facebooked. I didn't try, obviously, to enroll in a school or get a job. And because I had satellite TV, ironically, I had international channels but not local ones, so I wasn't seeing what locals might be seeing. It was a pretty mundane life, not totally "real", but definitely not like a tourist either. In fact, certain key touristic activities that I wanted to do - buy refrigerator magnets, buy and send postcards - I couldn't find. If Minsk has any such tourist infrastructure, I didn't find it.

On my last night, there must have been some sporting event, because my room overlooking the railway station and several bus and tram lines was ringing with the sound of singing young men and vuvuzelas. Yup, vuvuzelas. From the seventh floor, it just sounded like the soundtrack of a lively, happy city. You can tell I was at peace in that place, because the noise totally uncharacteristically didn't annoy me at all!

The more time I spent in Minsk, and the more I learned from locals, the more comfortable I got, and the more I liked it. Really liked it. I was sad to leave. I was bummed that I didn't get a second chance to hang out with Nikolay, or more time with Natalia or Anna. And I was cranky about Riga - cranky that the hotel wasn't as luxurious as my flat, cranky that the CouchSurfers weren't friendly, cranky that the place was teeming with tourists, and seriously annoyed by all the damn noise from the street under my hotel window.

I still don't know exactly how to feel about Minsk. If I say it's a wonderful place that I'd enjoy visiting again, does that minimize some of the real, serious political and human-rights problems going on there? How do I accurately describe the Belarusians I met - who are, in fact, smart, well-educated and well-informed, patriotic, happy, doing both ordinary and extraordinary things? They don't seem crushed under the weight of a repressive regime. They also don't seem like heroic martyrs. If I blog in detail about some of their patriotic sentiments, will I get them in trouble? Is it just a silly American thing to make such a big deal about this?

After three days in Minsk, I learned a lot, but I still feel like I don't really understand anything! I knew it would be big and challenging, which it was, and that it would be more different than any place I've ever visited (before or since), which it was, so after such a short stay I guess I shouldn't feel too surprised that I don't know how to summarize it neatly, nor how to end this blog post about it.

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

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Photos

Flat sweet flat
This was one of the only sketchy places I found in all Minsk - the entryway to my building.

Мне шкада дурня!
Yes, it's Mr. T dubbed on a satellite shopping channel. But not in Russian or Belarusian - this looks to be Arabic or Persian.

Metro station
Again, explain to me how an English-language map with "October Square" on it would help you find THIS place?

Comments

[Елена(Helen)]

tolerance
the most important quality Belarus population - tolerance. This explains why your not understanding the political situation. Most live on the principle: "if only there was no war." (Metaphor). Therefore, no feel discomfort on the political situation.