Blogs from Belarus, Europe - page 8

Communist Symbols All over Belarus there are Lenin statues, murals of proud workers, nationalist symbols and hammer and sickle symbols. I have a soft spot for these various communist symbols. I am not a communist, but I do like the symbols from an artistic point of view. In the years prior to the fall of the Soviet Union people in the communist world had to be constantly reminded of how great a system communism is. Therefore every town had a Lenin statue, there were always streets in each town named after Lenin and Karl Marx, statues of war heroes dotted the cities and on city walls you could find plaques commemorating communist leaders or perhaps a visit by Lenin a long time ago. There was frequent use of the hammer and sickle symbol and sometimes even ... read more

Imposing buildings, majestic subway stations and various memorials A few years ago I, Ake, and my friend Juha talked about Belarus and realised that we both wanted to go there. It took some time before we finally got there but in July this year we did. It has also taken some time for me to get down to finally updating the blog with photos and stories from this trip. But now, somewhat late, you can read the first of the blog entries from Belarus. For us to get the visa to visit Belarus was not as easy as you might think. We had to in advance book hotel for every night we wanted to stay in the country and we had to include a copy of the booking confirmation in our application. This paperwork made us ... read more

When i was told that i had to go to Belarus for a week in the end of April 2012, i was shocked. Becuase i do not like cold weather and all i heard about Belarus was the cold weather there. I was feeling lucky to have 19 C degrees in Istanbul so for me to go to Minsk was a total headache. But my feelings changed as we landed on Minsk Airport. What i saw from plane while landing amazed me. When we finally got out of passport control all i was thinking to see around.But i knew that i hasd to wait. For a few days i could not see much as there was a lot to at the office. But 3 days after we arrived Minsk, finally i had to chance to see ... read more

After narrowly escaping a few run-ins with the Belarusian Military and the KGB, I was looking forward to getting out of Minsk. We had an unearthly early start to the morning and found ourselves back on one of those odd sleeper train carriages (which stunk like I don’t know what) but at least this time we had more normal seats for another olympic session of cards for the next 4-5 hours on the way to Brest. It was a gloriously hot day (despite the forecast to snow the same time next week), but with our limited time here we only came to see one thing: The Brest Fortress – a WWII Soviet memorial, and originally the largest 19th century fortress of the Russian Empire. The long walk to the fortress in the heat just about killed ... read more

After leaving Clay to explore Latvia, James and I found ourselves off the tourist trail towards Belarus! The train carriage is nothing like I’ve ever seen before – our allocated seats were upper bunk beds, notably higher than normal, but with no ladder to get up! And when you did manage to get up that high, there wasn’t even enough head-room to sit up! For 5 hours! To make matter worse, the train was quite full and EVERYONE only spoken Russian. The ladies that we were sharing the area with made some kind of hand gestures to suggest we could sit on the lower bunks with them, so that was good! Crossing the border was interesting. Firstly we had to leave Lithuania, simple stamp of our passports. Easy enough. Getting into Belarus, however, was a different ... read more