Advertisement
Published: August 1st 2014
Belarus is arguably Europes last great unknown, I don't personally know anyone who has been here and considering the difficulties and the expense I can understand why. After the dramas of arrival yesterday was easy I went out on a tour to a couple of local sights, Mir and Nyasvizh castles both were well worth while, both have been extensively renovated and the Belarussians are very well organised so I had no problems. On my return to Minsk I met Misha and Olla for dinner before they showed me around the older part of town, I checked out the KGB building (the KGB still exists here), followed by the palace of the proletariat, the palace of soldiers and the palace of sport. We then wandered down to the river and checked out the memorial to Afghanistan which they call the island of tears.
Next day I tried to organise accomodation in Brest but Belarus is not set up for tourists and I failed to find accomodation so perhaps hastily I decided to go to Vilnius in Lithuania instead. So I walked about 4km to book my train ticket, the train leaves at 18.50 tonight. I had last dinner then headed
to a very modern train station, finding the correct platform was easy and we were soon on our way. The Belarus country side is mostly rural with the occassional village and town along the rail line.
The train was modern and comfortable, the Belarus immigration and customs boarded the train and checked passports and asked about baggage, no problem with my passport so all good, about 40 minutes later we arrived in Vilinius, passed through customs, changed money and grabbed a taxi to my hotel.
It is difficult to critique a country I was only in for a few days but Belarus is clean and pleasant, i wouldnt be surprised if I was the only Australian there. Lots of planning and prebooking of everything is required and that is not the way I like to travel.
I have a good feeling about Lithuania though.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.111s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 33; dbt: 0.0756s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Looks uncomfortable
