Belarus

July 2005

Once inside the compound, we were able to jump ahead of a long line of Belarus cars to join the Foreigners Line. There were only seven cars in front and it still took 90 minutes to be processed. It was 34’C and blasting hot with six other lines of cars either side of us. I filled in customs forms declaring our currency and stating that we were not carrying firearms etc, but that we were carrying ‘printed materials’ (ie guidebooks). There was obviously a complicated communist procedure of paperwork to be processed and we had watched a German woman tearing her hair out as she ran around trying to gets stamps for this and that. An official ‘facilitator’ came up and told me to follow him. The brief Lonely Planet chapter on Belarus had said ‘don’t use the facilitators’ at the border, and I was expecting a costly scam, but it all went very smoothly. The first thing to note is that every sign is in the Cyrillic alphabet and so is unreadable to non Russians.

He first led me to a portacabin away from the little kiosks where our car registration and passports were photocopied by a lady for $1. Then to another portacabin where we got the ‘medical insurance’ scam. Obviously with worldwide insurance, we were already covered, but there was an official leaflet that said ‘Obligatory medical insurance of foreigners and persons without citizenship staying in the Republic of Belarus’. The insurance cost $4. That is it cost $2 and he stuck $2 in his pocket. But to be honest, $5 in total, speeded up the immigration procedure. I was then taken to customs where a man in uniform banged in our vehicle details and my father’s details into a PC with old outdated software. The details were printed out on official paper on an old Epson dot matrix printer. He signed the customs form and then said ‘Control Check’. I thought this meant to head to the final barrier to have passports checked but when we got there, we were pointed back to where we had just left.

I discovered that ‘control check’ was one of the kiosks. I waited while someone with 8 passports was processed (there goes a day), only to then be told that I needed a stamp from ‘Transport’ so it was back to another portacabin where the car form was stamped and I was given an exit form. Then back to the original ‘Control Check’ kiosk who waved me to another kiosk. Another official spent an age tapping details into his computer, and thumbed through a thick book of numbers looking for some detail. Eventually he gave up and stamped our passports. Back to the last barrier, where the official took the ‘car form’ and ‘exit form’ from us and we were finally into Belarus. It had only taken 3 hours from the time we arrived at the Polish border!

For what it’s worth, the Lonely Planet says on the internet “Belarus is a flat piece of land straddling the shortest route between Moscow and the Polish border. Wide stretches of unbroken birch groves, vast forested marshlands and wooden villages amid rolling green and black fields give it a haunting beauty. There’s more to see in Belarus than you might suspect”. Actually there isn’t.

Basic details: Belarus is slightly smaller than the UK (or Kansas) and landlocked, borders Russia in the north and east. Latvia and Lithuania in the north west, Poland in the west and Ukraine in the south. It has 10.4 million people. Minsk is the capital. Eastern Orthodox religion predominates (70%) Roman Catholism. Average annual income $8,700. Inflation 182%. Major industries: food, chemicals, textiles, agricultural machinery, timber. Very flat; the highest mountain is only 345m.

The CIA World Factbook says “After seven decades as a constituent republic of the USSR, Belarus attained independence in 1991. It has retained closer political and economic ties to Russia than any of the former Soviet republics.” The procedure just to enter the country with a vehicle is indicative of the Communistic tendency to paper chase. It also indicated that male life expectancy is only 63 years (even less if you cross the borders on a regular basis) in the Republic of Belarus. Rather than a republic, Belarus is actually run by a dictatorship. President Lukashenko has been messing up the country since 1994 and noone seems to stop him and 27% of the population are below the poverty line.

About the only thing I knew about Belarus was that late at night on December 28th, 2000, in Minsk, a fight broke out between six drunk Belarusians and a man by called Mikhail. The six – 5 men and 1 woman – set about Mikhail with a crowbar until he was dead. They then cut the body into pieces. Being practical drunk Belarusians they then decided to eat Mikhail. Little is known of the motives for either the attack or the cannibalism. There is no law mentioning cannibalism in Belarus and the last I heard, the Minsk courts were still trying to decide what law to charge them under. Do these people know how to party or what?

I had also heard that single roll of toilet paper (tualetnaya) had a street value of 191 Belarus Roubles. A roll contained 150 sheets – worth 1.27 Roubles each. Therefore it was actually cheaper to wipe your backside with one Rouble notes instead of toilet paper. Not a lot of people know this. One final thing on manners. Never whistle indoors. You are indicating that the room is dirty.

We followed the road into Brest which is snug up on the Polish border and one of the busiest road and rail border points in Eastern Europe. Tell me about it. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (as the city was called until World War One) was negotiated here in March 1918, buying time for the new Soviet government in Russia by surrendering Poland, the Baltic territories and most of Ukraine and Belarus to German control. As a result Brest was well inside Poland between the wars and became the front line when the Germans attached the USSR in 1941.

It was a non descript place with tall chimneys belching out black smoke. One of our problems with Belarus (and the Ukraine) was that the few signs we saw were in Cyrillic. We had come to see “one of the wonders of the Soviet era – Brest Fortress, a larger than life war memorial” (Lonely Planet). I managed to follow my nose and we found it west of the city. We didn’t realise until later, but the clocks had moved forward an hour.

Between 1838 and 1842, the entire town of Brest was moved east to make way for this massive fort at the confluence of two rivers. Two regiments were housed here when the Germans attacked and they defended it for an entire month. The whole structure withstood incredible attacks including 600 bombs. The scale of the Fortress itself is massive yet almost empty. At the main entrance, a looped recording of soldiers’ songs, gunfire and a radio broadcast of the German attack echo from a large star shaped opening in a huge concrete mass on top of the old brick outer wall which looks very impressive. You walk up a long lane, past a handful of old tanks, across a beautiful river scene and in the centre an enormous central monument comes into view – a stone soldier’s head protruding from a massive rock, entitled valour. It is a unique sight. The rock is huge but artificial, and on the back are various carvings of war scenes and hundreds of swallows and swifts flying around and landing on the carvings. It was blistering hot today. We also passed the brick ruins of the White Palace where the famous treaty was signed.

The attractively restored Byzantine Nikalaivsky Church lay beyond and inside we found a wedding underway. The Russian orthodox priest went through the service with the bride and bridegroom (who looked very nervous – poor sod) while two ushers stood behind them holding crowns above their heads.Then they all had to do a circuit around the altar including the ushers still trying to keep the crowns in place. The guests stood at the back and joined in with a small choir which was hidden above us. A huge golden multi-tiered chandelier lit the beautiful orange brick interior where every portrait and painting had flowers draped around them. After the service, they all trooped out for photos. The bride and bridegroom were driven away, while the others had to walk miles back to their cars outside the fortress. We walked onto another outer wall and gate where you could still see all the bullet holes and destruction from the war. The Fortress was definitely the best thing we saw in Belarus – just very different from any other fortress I have visited. And it was free!

Leaving Brest, we found the Minsk highway (about the only place signposted in Belarus). The ‘motorway’ was a toll road. No English signs, but they accepted Euros. The toll collector asked for 2 Euros and there was no receipt (because we discovered later, he probably pocketed 1 Euro). On the decent road lasting 400km, we counted 11 police speed traps; fully uniformed policemen all holding radar guns. Other drivers flashed their lights to warn us. Noone stopped us (probably because they couldn’t speak English), but they looked a little bemused that a foreign car was passing by. There were endless pine forests breaking up the flat countryside of arable crops. Harvesting was underway with old combine harvesters being followed by tractors pulling carts to collect the barley, oats, wheat etc. Kids swam in small lakes by the side of the road in the sunshine. Storks were also nesting everywhere or flying around. There was another toll nearer Minsk where we paid 1 Euro and got a receipt.

As we approached Minsk, the roads filled with old communist buses with smoking exhausts taking the locals home. There were also private enterprise white minivans. At one traffic light, a driver pointed at our steering wheel and indicated “power steering…what a luxury”. It was a Friday night and boy racers zoomed around in Ladas and cut in and out of the traffic without signalling. I note that in my diary that I wrote it was a “f**king nightmare”, but having since experienced the Ukraine, it was just getting us warmed up.

I had a basic map of central Minsk and the name of the ‘cheapest’ hotel in town. But we couldn’t read the Cyrillic words on the street signs and drove around until we guessed we had reached a major road, which turned out to be Praspekt Franyska Skarymy, a broad 6 lane highway and the main street in Minsk;. I spotted an ATM and got some Belarus Roubles (3776 = £1). It was around 9pm and dusk was starting to descend. We started to hunt for the Sputnik Hotel. Driving the length of Praspekt Franyska Skarymy, we arrived at the small city airport gates, where a man spoke basic English and told us the Hotel Sputnik was about 4 blocks back on the left down a street. So we drove back and couldn’t see anything and asked someone else who couldn’t speak English and summoned someone else. They pointed to a street where there was a hotel and seemed to indicate that our hotel was behind it and then realised we couldn’t reach it from where we were because of roadworks. They spent so much time trying to tell us where to turn around that we no longer understood where they were pointing.

So for the next 45 minutes, we drove up and down the street in a mile vicinity, exploring every side street, stopping to ask people (Gastinitsa Sputnik? – Hotel Sputnik?, gde? where?) who would babble away (naleva – on the left, naprava – on the right, pryama – straight ahead) and point this way and that, and actually tried to help, or in one case at a bus stop, when I asked a youth, he just ran off in a panic. We tried to narrow it down, doubling back on ourselves, getting pissed off and starting to get concerned about finding the hotel in the dark.

Our major problem was that we thought it was on a side street off the main strip but could only see one large big hotel all lit up. It was on a road just off the strip and looked too expensive for what we were expecting, and we couldn’t see the title ‘Sputnik’ on the foyer. In fact the first group of people we asked had pointed at it, but we didn’t understand what they were saying. Doh!

It was 11pm and I read that the staff were officious and unfriendly and often refused westerners. The bald security guard welcomed us in and told us to sit while the receptionist did whatever she had to do (it looked like she was completing a word puzzle in a magazine). Eventually we were waved over. She spoke no English. I tried my best Belarussian (nomer? – room?). A youth from Russia strolled up to ask the receptionist something. He spoke excellent English and did some translation for us. She wrote down the price: 128,000 roubles which I calculated to be US$62. Ouch. Belarus is still essentially a Communist state so there is still the old Communist double pricing policy for foreigners. We had no choice and checked in. We had told the Russian kid that we wanted to drive across Russia one day. “Too dangerous” he concluded. “The Mafia will steal your car”.

Outside, while we unloaded the car, the security guard came up and started angling for payment to look after our car overnight. He indicated that Minsk was dangerous. “Yeah, right” we thought. It’s a Communist country. Plus we had a steering lock. “Problem?” I indicated “We go to Police” and that was the end of our friendly reception. He never talked to us again and sulked. We took our bags up to the third floor where a woman, the ‘floor guardian’ let us into our room and returned to her desk. For $62, we got a TV with 3 channels we couldn’t understand, a cold bath (but it was stifling hot anyway) and a paper strip over the toilet to say it had been sterilised in Russian. But we were in Minsk, Belarus. It was another new country.

A self service breakfast was part of the price. We came down to find a variety of strange offerings. Crappy cereal with strange tasting milk, frankfurters, fried eggs, cold cuts, cheeses, salad, boiled eggs with mayonnaise, bread and jam, sponge cake and bizarrely, ice cream chocolate bars. We tried to get our $62 worth. The waitress who cleared up the plates and refilled coffee/tea looked bored and along with the receptionist, we suspected that the importance of customer service still hadn’t reached Belarus yet. You won’t get a “Have A Nice Day” in Belarus.

Our car was still outside unharmed. The security guard was still inside the lobby sleeping until his replacement turned up. We crossed the road to catch a public bus to the other end of Praspeckt Francyska Skaryny which contained all the sights. To catch a bus, you buy a ticket from the newspaper kiosk next to the bus stop. It cost about 20p, and saved us walking miles in both directions.

Minsk (pop 1.7 million) has been destroyed many times during its long history. In World War Two it was virtually flattened by the Russians and 50% of the population were killed. Moscow architects were given a blank slate after the war and they decided to make a Soviet city out of Minsk’s ruins; wide boulevards, expansive squares and grandiose proportions to the buildings. It became the third biggest city in the Russian empire. As a tourist, I found it impressive and central Minsk was as attractive as a city centre gets (commercialism was only just creeping in). The streets were clean and clear of litter (even outside the McDonalds). The buildings were constructed of attractive brown stone and looked older than 1945 when the first of them would have been rebuilt.

Praspeckt Francyska Skaryny is 11 kilometres long, but the major sites lie within a central area of about 5 km. We climbed out of the bus at Victory Square (Ploshcha Peramohi) where a giant victory obelisk rose up in the centre and an eternal flame burned at its base.

Heading south, we went to see an apartment block (Kamunistychnaja 4) where Lee Harvey Oswald (who had something to do with the JFK assassination) lived for two years, married a local girl, was spied on by the KGB and eventually returned to the USA in 1962. It was an impressive building, in a beautiful location overlooking a park. Looking at it, I wondered how he could afford it as a factory worker. Someone must have been paying for it. The conspiracy theory thickens.

Its funny how walking alongside a virtually empty (on a Saturday morning) 6 lane highway seems to take ages, but the architecture was imposing and almost enough to take my attention from the local girls who dressed well, were very slim, attractive and smiled back and I can see why Lee Harvey got hitched. We passed Central Square (Tsentralny Skver) where the dictator Lukashenka apparently lives and walked on to Oktyabrskaya Ploshchad (these names don’t exactly roll off the tongue), the city’s most impressive square.

Here stood the impressive (if you’re into Soviet architecture) Palats Respubliki (Palace of the Republic) opened in 2001 after 15 years of construction. The city’s premier concert hall resembles a massive mausoleum on the outside, and is decorated in 1960s gaudy splendour inside. As I peered through the large windows, a security guard opened a door to see what I was up to, but did not invite me in. The building was a cross between the Lincoln Centre in New York (grey replacing the white) and Mau Ze Tong’s Mausoleum in Beijing (definitely grey). Also on this square was the classical style, multi-columned Trade Unions’ Cultural Palace and the imposing Museum of the Great Patriotic War.

Independence Square (Ploshcha Nezalezhnastsi) was being re-landscaped but is dominated by the Belarusian Government Building behind the Lenin Statue. The red bricked Church of St Simon & Elena (1910) stands juxtaposed to the grey buildings and the yellow neoclassical blandness of the KGB building.

That was all I needed to see in Minsk. We returned to the hotel, and jumped in the car, while the new security guard dozed. If you are British and going to the Sputnik Hotel in Minsk, your name is mud with security. Sorry. We headed south east along a fast straight road, where more police speed traps were set up and flashing cars warned us, to the village of Dudutski, 40km south of Minsk.

I was impressed with myself for finding the place without a map. It was a rural area, crops of oats, wheat and linseed, forests, locals with horses and carts, villages and single track lanes. We had come to see an “open air village”. Well, Belarus doesn’t have that much to offer and I was desperate. The Lonely Planet said it was “where 19th century Balrusian country life is recreated”. But it wasn’t. It was crap. It was a windmill on a hill, then a small complex of rebuilt barns where a potter showed tourists how to make a pot, a blacksmith made a horseshoe. Fantastic. Usual kids day out. There was an American exchange group of teenagers who looked bored shitless, and we looked more bored than them.

A group of attractive Belarus girls dressed in ye olde white frilly costumes and a few males with instruments assembled to give the tourists (mostly day tripper Belarussians from Minsk) a few party pieces. They sang a lively song and then some announcer stood and warbled on for, well till the end of the world, about whatever he was talking about, because we didn’t understand anything. He went on and on and we all looked at our watches. Eventually, the girls did some more singing and embarrassingly came in to the audience looking for partners. As the saddest looking tourists, my father and I were chosen. I had to dance with my daypack on my back for christ’s sake. My dad had to stumble around with his dodgy knees. It was a relief when it ended and the announcer did even more talking. We didn’t hang around. Supposedly you can pay for a decent meal of traditional Belarussian recipes. If the announcer is involved, you may starve. Serious advice: If you come to Belarus, give this place a miss. It is shit. Stay in Minsk and look at the pretty girls.

In my schedule, I had pencilled in a day in Minsk and a day at the village and we had done both by 3pm on the first day. So we made for the final sight, the city of Hrodna. We backtracked to Minsk and messed around with their traffic system until we eventually found the correct road out of the city. Our first attempt to fill up at garage failed miserably - something about tokens. Petrol prices were the same at every garage in Belarus, 60 something pence a litre.We didn’t hang around and found another garage that took a credit card (but would have taken Euros). Here is a serious tip. In Europe, the Euro rules. Every country accepts it, apart from the UK. The US Dollar has become a meaningless currency anywhere in Europe so bring Euros for all occasions.

The M6 eventually road took us away from Minsk heading west. More oats, linseed, wheat and pine forests. Sorry to sound boring but the whole country was filled with these crops. It was a fast straight flat road, and fewer police traps and drivers flashing lights. One wonders if they ever catch anyone. There was a new crop on sale at the side of the road: potatoes. Big profit there. We checked out a wooden village off the main road. They all had gardens growing vegetables, well tended and the locals looked suspiciously at a western car exploring the un-surfaced lane through the village.

Another site you see at the side of the road in both Belarus and the Ukraine is the do it yourself car ramp. The cars either break down so often or men do their own repairs that pairs of ramps have been built so you can drive you car up on them to mess around with the engine underneath, change the oil, patch up the exhaust etc. It’s a great idea which we could use in the UK.

Hrodna (pop 310,000), 282km from Minsk, looked easy to negotiate on the map, and admittedly, we found the first hotel (Hotel Turyst) with no problem. But we thought the price ($60 and no breakfast!) was rather high for a hotel in a provincial town, even if it was the only hotel we saw. So we went on a search for another hotel. Big mistake. We spent, oooh, 90 minutes trying to find another hotel, stopping to ask many people including policemen. Noone could speak English. We did find one, but it was both full and even more expensive. Ironically, we had driven around in circles for so long, we could no longer remember where the first hotel was. We followed signs we had first followed and still couldn’t find it. Eventually we did and checked in because we were so fed up with looking for another hotel. Up the road we spent our last Belarussian Roubles on local beer from a kiosk (as you do) and lived on picnic food in our room. What a way to spend Saturday night.

Hrodna is famous as the birthplace for Olga Korbut, who in 1972, as a petit 16 year old athlete caught the world’s attention in the Munich Olympic gymnastics. But in 1991, she emigrated to the USA and Hrodna has never even bothered to erect a statue or name a street after her. Not that we had come for that reason. It survived the war better than anywhere else in Belarus and has some intact historical buildings to prove it. It also has a substantial population of Polish Catholics. Lithuania was only 42km northwest and Poland 24km west.

There were two castles facing each other; the Novi Samak (New Castle) and the Stari Zamak (old castle), and apparently the “most impressive” (Farny) Cathedral in Belarus. Inside, while a Sunday morning service took place, I took a look at the row of splendidly ornate (18th Century) altars leading to a huge main altarpiece constructed of multiple columns interspersed with sculpted saints. There was another church nearby which was emptying its huge congregation. Noone smiled as they left and I noticed that people wore ordinary clothes rather than their Sunday best. Opposite this church was a bizarre, spiderlike Drama Theatre, with a mounted tank outside. It looked like a spacecraft about to take off.

Mid Sunday morning, as storm clouds appeared we made for the Polish border. The rain started to pour down. We joined a kilometre long queue to leave Belarus and when we reached the barrier 45 minutes later, we were told to go back and pay a departure tax. So we went to a kiosk. The counter lady spoke no English and was annoyed I could not communicate. I was thinking “Its not my fault you can’t tell me what you want.” Another driver indicated I had to pay 5 Euros. I got my slip, we ignored the line and drove straight up to the barrier. Inside the compound, an official looked after us. He took me to the first kiosk to hand in my arrival/departure slip, then to his office, where he slowly banged in the car details into his computer. We drove to passport control to get stamped out and passed a final check. On the Polish side, the clock went back an hour. We were asked if we were carrying alcohol or cigarettes and went straight through. It took 2 hours to cross both borders.

I think it will a few years before Belarus becomes a proper tourist destination. There is currently no tourist infrastructure and the old Communist trappings are holding the country back. The rural scenery, especially in the summer sun is lovely but only Minsk holds much attraction. That said, I still think the fortress in Brest is un-missable if you ever get to Belarus.

Travel - £ 16.10 (petrol filled up before leaving Poland)
Accommodation - £61.44
Food - £1.91 (mostly Polish food)
Other - £9.65
Total - £ 89.10