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Published: September 11th 2008
Welcome to Minsk
The grand Soviet architecture hits you as you leave the station.Arriving in Minsk on a warm Monday afternoon, I half-expected the place to be set in black and white like an old war film. I expected serious, moustachioed men in beige trenchcoats and sunglasses to exchange briefcases in dark alleyways, stopping only to utter something like "Red Fox, November in Sevastopol is always clement" before scurrying off.
For Belarus is technically a dictatorship, run by controversial president Aleksander Lukashenko, who encourages homophobia, xenaphobia, and has gotten away with tweaking the constitution to ensure he has stayed in power for 14 years.
The KGB is still in operation out of a massive, grand yellow monstrosity in Independence Prospect (the main street) and it is one of only two remaining countries in Europe where UK citizens require a visa to enter or travel through (the other being Russia).
With these restrictions and few famous sights, it is unsurprising that tourism in Belarus doesn't really happen. 4,000 UK citizens visit every year on average. That makes "White Russia" a less popular destination than Botswana (5,000 visitors), Uganda (15,000) and Colombia (18,000).
English is barely spoken as we discovered when leaving the modern train station and trying to get a taxi
Room with a view
The room from our 5th floor hotel window to our base, the Hotel Yubileiny. Fortunately, a bit of pidgin Russin and pointing at a map seemed to work, and we allowed our chubby, bald driver to navigate us impatiently through the rush hour for about nine quid. Well above the normal rate, but affordable, especially as we were knackered after our journey from Vilnius and weighed down with luggage.
Getting into the country had proven relatively straightforward. Si and I both filled out migration cards and had our passports and visas thoroughly checked by border guards on the train, but it was plain-sailing. Having read a few horror stories and being a journalist, I had fully expected a large, hairy man called Vladimir to conduct a painstaking full-body search and perhaps insert an ungloved finger into an area which is strictly a one-way street.
That experience fortunately denied us, we checked into our hotel, a huge Soviet high rise with the most miserable and reluctant staff on the planet, and set out to get something to eat.
On our stroll up towards the city centre we were surprised with the amount of young people out and about on a Monday evening. Many were clustered around
Island of Tears
Just visible in front of the concrete housing blocs on the far side of the river is the Island of Tears, a memorial to those killed in Afghanistan benches drinking alcohol. Apparently, this is illegal but the numerous police officers around turned a blind eye. This happens a lot in Britain of course, but in Minsk I never got the feeling that someone was about to throw a Bacardi Breezer bottle at my head and call me a c**t.
Apparently, street crime here is virtually non-existant, and the roads and parks are spotlessly clean. Indeed, I'm proud to say that in Minsk, for the first time in my life, I walked through an underpass that neither boasted crude scrawlings nor a smell of urine.
We eschewed McDonalds and opted for a small open-air bar/restaurant where we managed to get an unfilling mixture of sausage rolls and meat wraps by doing a lot of pointing. If nothing else, this trip is making me an expert in non-verbal communication.
Here in Belarus, the language barrier is two-fold. For not only do the natives speak a different language, they also use the Cyrillic alphabet, which made street signage much harder to understand. It doesn't help when the locals speak Russian and the signs are in Belarussian (and often have two different names). Many roads are still named after
Riverside view
A view across the river at the concrete blocs of housing, one of the many communist legacies in Belarus. communist icons like Karl Marx and Lenin, cementing the impression that the country has been a little left behind by the rest of Europe.
Our exploration of the city the following day was a lesson in Stalinist architecture and planning. Roads were absurdly wide and sometimes large enough for six lanes of traffic. Buildings were grand and imposing, with the largest and more important ones facing open squares. The city had to be almost completely rebuilt after 80 per cent of it was destroyed in World War II, so the buildings are new, but the city lacks the modern skyscrapers of capitalism found in cities like Warsaw and Kiev.
We hung around McDonalds on the main drag at around 1pm, when Lukashenko and his convoy often drive past on their way to lunch, but the big man was not spotted so we went in search of our own tucker, lucking out and discovering a nice place with a menu in English off Independence Prospect.
With little in the way of tourist sights we had a look at the national stadium, home on non-matchdays to a market where a woman who spoke English attempted to sell Si a
Not a clue...
Belarus uses the Cyrillic alphabet. I have not got a clue what this means. Russian furry hat. "All genuine dead animals" she assured him, but having just eaten lunch we made a sharp exit, walking past the KGB headquarters for what must have been the sixth time that day. If they weren't spying on us before, they were after that.
Walking over the calm river Svislach, we had a look at the flat where Lee Harvey Oswald once lived, and then saw the mighty Victory Obelisk, with an eternal flame burning below.
The people of Minsk were for the most part dressed like westerners but there were a marked percentage whose fashion sense appeared to be stuck in the 1980s. Indeed, I would say that in Belarus the mullet is king. Almost every young man (and some of the ladies) has allowed thin, curly wisps of hair to encroach unnecessarily onto the back of his neck as if in homage to Pat Sharp. Naturally, we spent a lot of time trying to take photos of them, which passed a bit of time in a city where the tourist is not really catered for.
The currency here is the Belarussian rouble, and there are 3,800 to the pound. There are no coins,
Independence Prospect
A view along the wide main street of Minsk, Independence Prospect. and denominations go as low as 10 roubles. So every purchase is made by sifting through a thick wad of mostly worthless notes as if auditioning for a part in a gangster film. It was like paying with Monopoly money. Worse, cashiers were reluctant to give out change, which meant additional sifting and holding up an impatient queue of people no doubt cursing the "bloody foreigners". On the second night, Si actually became a millionaire by drawing the equivalent of 350 pounds from an ATM.
If the day had been an interesting throwback, the night was to top it comfortably. And all within the confines of our hotel. It began at dinner where we were literally the only souls who had chosen to dine in the restaurant on the second floor. The waiter seemed both startled and pissed off by our arrival, as if he was expecting a nice easy shift with his feet up. Whilst eating, heads kept popping out from the kitchen door watching us with a kind of fascinated curiosity.
Done with dinner and lazily opting against experiencing city centre nightlife, we opted for the comfort of our hotel bar. Settling down with a couple
Independence Square
The vast, open Independence Square. of pints and getting updates from back home on the Southend scoreline, it wasn't young before a girl in her early 20s came over to us, introduced herself and sat down. This doesn't happen very often, especially as she was at least a 7 out of 10 on the newly-devised Forsyth Scale, so I prepared to engage her in conversation. However, she clearly wasn't intending to hang around for long and cut straight to the chase, namely the services she was willing to offer us in exchange for some roubles. We politely declined, and she was off like a shot, no doubt hunting for more willing clientele. I had heard about prostitutes phoning hotel rooms in Belarus, she obviously preferred the personal touch.
A few beers followed, and with Southend losing to Leyton Orient, always a solemn situation despite the match being in a minor cup competition, we decided to head next door to a strip bar. It cost around 15 quid to get in, which we thought was fair enough, and we were seated very close to the, ahem, action and got a drink in.
Within probably two minutes, we realised we had made a massive mistake.
Some kind of giant
Look at him towering over those buildings. We were two of only four people in there, one chap was cheerfully talking to a lady who I assume had already been on, and the other was a bearded gent in his 40s. The drill was thus, a lady would take to the stage and perform a striptease, before finishing off and heading around the room to try and solicit some roubles for gyrating against a lucky customer. In theory. Being clearly the only two westerners in there and therefore supposedly loaded, guess who they all headed to. All of them. It was incessant. Normally, a conveyor belt of attractive girls wearing only very minimal underwear heading straight for you would be a good thing. But of course, they wanted a "present" of around seven pounds a time, which took the gloss off more than a little.
And they didn't like being turned down. Affronted even. At one point, a queue formed while I informed one of the ladies that I admired her work and that I thought she was very attractive, but I didn't want her to dance for me because if I stayed there another hour I would need to return to England to sell my
Site of the revolution
Protestors rose up against President Lukashenko in this square. It became known as the Denim revolution. car. It was a great life experience. I've always had a bit of trouble being firm with beautiful women (insert your own joke here, my family reads this), but if you have to be if you want to eat for the next couple of days then it wasn't so much of an issue. Character building, some might say.
By the end, as we were frantically trying to pay our drinks bill and escape without further financial flogging, Si had completely run out of money and in a desperate last throw of the dice to avoid a dance, was trying to engage one of the girls in a conversation about Belarussian politics.
Eventually we managed to get out of there, about 60 pounds per man lighter, but I like to think a little wiser for it. Back to the hotel bar next door we went, where we were promptly propositioned by another two prostitutes, both well into middle age and one of whom was being pimped by her brother. Both were so ropey they would have had to have paid me, so we decided we'd had enough excitement for one night and retired, not before seeing a fight nearly
Dinamo Stadium
The home of Dinamo Minsk and the Belarus national team. break out between two clients, one of whom slapped the other round the face with his cloth cap.
As you can imagine, it was difficult to out-do Tuesday night in terms of incident, so we spent Wednesday roaming around Minsk again, leisurely drinking in a few outdoor bars and having a nose round the Museum of the Great Patriotic War (WWII). Set in another imposing Soviet building on Oktyabrskaya ploschad, an emphatic sign runs along the full length of the facade proclaiming that "the feats of mankind will live on for centuries". Unfortunately, the information inside was all in Russian but you nevertheless got a taste of how the city suffered so badly during the conflict. The most harrowing images were those of dead bodies hanging from gallows in public locations as a warning from the Nazis.
In many ways, Minsk was my favourite city so far. It was the first time that we had truly felt as though we were back in time, like we were at last in Eastern Europe. But nevertheless, the people (hotel staff excluded) were friendly and a few English-speaking locals had overheard our tones and had approached us for a chat. You
Dinamo Stadium
The large floodlights and bowl-shaped seating are typical of Eastern European stadia. felt though that the progress of the younger generation is being stunted here under a regime that is falling increasingly far behind the rest of the continent. Minsk is full of promising, talented young people, but you sense they are frustrated and longing to be somewhere else.
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Ed Beavan
non-member comment
Cracking stuff Jai
Keep up the good work, loving it...