Minsk was never actually a city that I had planned to go to and the reason I went there is ultimately by mistake. Shrouded in mystery, this place was relatively difficult to get to compared to the other countries where I had been spending much of my time. Having been living in Lithuania right next door for several months working in a hostel at the time, I decided it was about time to take the bus four hours down the road from Lithuania and check out the capital of Belarus. One of my good friends in Vilnius had visited there and a friend of hers was living there.
If you ever want to see a really amazing contrast between the old Soviet bloc which has barely changed in many respects, and the New Europe, then there couldn’t be a more vivid contrast between the countries of Lithuania and Belarus. I would hardly recommend going to Belarus for a normal holiday but then if you want to get off the beaten track and go to a place where virtually no tourists go and experience something a bit like going back in time, then I would highly recommend a visit to Belarus.
I stayed there for about a week back in November of 2003 but regrettably I didn’t see any more of the country and I was only based in Minsk where I stayed with a friend whose contacts I had. It is also a difficult place to get around, few people speak English, bureaucracy is infamous plus almost all nationalities need visas to enter the country. Nonetheless, that is the whole beauty of travelling off the beaten track and any backpacker should know that the true joy and memories from travelling are not because it’s easy and all pre-planned.
Vilnius is a very likeable city and although it has changed a lot in the last five years, it still has a very definite charm. Back in 2003, it certainly was a bargain destination but it was just starting to come on the tourist map and within a couple of years the budget airlines started flying there and the country had one of the fastest growing economies in Europe. There were developments everywhere and the city was rapidly expanding. Every few months when I went back to Vilnius there was another skyscraper on the horizon. From then on, prices steadily started to rise and the tourists started to pour in, especially during the summer months.
By comparison, Minsk was and still is the kind of secret place in Europe where very few foreigners get to. It’s not so much that it’s a challenge to get too, but there is really not much in Minsk for the average tourist. Nonetheless, if you want to see Stalinist architecture and a strangely well ordered society which is particularly unique (and bureaucratic) then Minsk certainly has it all. I can’t vouch for other places in the country but I do believe that there are various other places of historic and touristic interest but the only problem is that the infrastructure just doesn’t exist to attract any kind of significant tourist market.
So while I was working every day in a hostel in Lithuania, I sent in my passport to get a visa application at a local travel agency. It came back only a day later but it wasn’t valid for a week and as soon as it was a valid I hopped on the bus and made my merry way to Minsk. I had no accommodation or anything lined up for when I got there. I pretty much never to do when I travel, quite often to my peril. However, I was given a contact by a woman who was staying in a hostel where I was working and when I met her, and I had told her that I was going to Minsk she asked me two questions. She asked me if I were looking for a date (with some unknown Belarusian girl) and / or accommodation. I answered positive to both questions although the date never worked out simply because I was too lazy to go to Mogilev where the girl in question lived. Anyway, she gave me a contact of a guy who lived in Minsk who could apparently find me some cheap accommodation as soon as I arrived.
The bus crossed the border of Belarus about an hour after departure and it was very surprisingly easy to get across and I can’t imagine it’s much different these days. It took no more than about half an hour, they checked my visa and let me go. Shortly after the border crossing, the bus stopped at an extremely rundown town called Ashmyany. I knew that suddenly Lithuania was culturally and economically far away from me when I saw a large statue of Lenin standing in front of a local government building just as the bus entered the centre of the town. By contrast, Lithuania had all such things torn down during the revolution of 1989.
After a brief stop, the bus continued for another couple of hours eventually reaching the city of Minsk itself. After driving through rolling hills with the occasional ramshackle wooden farmstead, the bus went up a hill and upon reaching the top of the hill, I was greeted with a panoramic view of Minsk. It suddenly appeared; an enormous sea of concrete monsters, with very little in the way of light residential areas on the outskirts. This was Minsk, the original Soviet vision of a Worker’s Utopia. Having been completely destroyed during the Second World War, this was how they rebuilt it.
Driving through the outskirts, almost everything look the same. The streets are enormously wide and every concrete block seems to be at least ten storeys high. Judging by some of the places I’ve been to in parts of Eastern Europe, half of them probably don’t even have functioning elevators in them either.
When the bus stopped at the station, I quickly found the guy I was to meet and he told me in broken English that we needed go to the post office so that he could make some phone calls regarding the flat that I was supposed to be staying in. Anyway, we walked to the post office which is a particularly impressive building and he made a few phone calls but didn’t get any reply so basically the whole thing turned out to be a bit of a waste of time.
Anyway, the Belarusian was fairly helpful and apologetic and offered to help me to find a hotel instead. The only problem was though, in spite of being mid November, and visiting two hotels which looked completely empty, nobody would give me a room. I can only imagine that they just didn’t want to and perhaps these hotels are used for money laundering and not much else. Either way, it was rather peculiar but I did have a backup plan. I also had a phone number of the friend of a friend, a guy from New Zealand he was based there for a couple of years.
Having spent about an hour touring the Minsk metro system, I thought it was time to give him a call so we met up somewhere in the inner suburbs where he stayed and that’s where I ended up staying for a week.
We went out a one night but I didn’t experience much of Minsk in the way of nightlife due to not having enough money to go to the clubs at the time. Although we did go to the entrance of one, I remember the prices being shockingly high. Mind you, after taking a few days to get used the currency, one had to end up getting accustomed to holding a whole pile of dozens of notes which was only worth a dollar or two.
We ended up doing a bit of a pub crawl instead, starting at a delightful brewery, one of the few older buildings in Minsk lost amongst the towers of concrete and after that we went to a billiards club which was chock full of the most attractive, classiest women I’ve seen anywhere.
While I was staying in Minsk, I also met a girl who I knew from Vilnius, a Belarusian girl who had stayed in the hostel briefly. She and her friend showed me around a bit and we went to a few coffee shops and eventually to a rather pleasant restaurant although I noticed that absolutely everything was empty in spite of it being a Thursday evening. Before going back to the flat where I was staying, we walked down the impressive six lane monster that is Frantsisk Skorina avenue with the famous Second World War victory monument and the eternal flame (pictured).
I spent the next few days touring around town and enjoying the sights while being very careful with my camera so not to attract the attention of any irritating bureaucrats who would try to stop me from taking photos of the government buildings. Everything in the centre of Minsk is thoroughly grand and extremely imposing too. However, in my opinion, it also has an oppressive aura about it and although it is a spotlessly clean and safe city, perhaps the cleanest I have ever seen, there is something decidedly miserable about it. It is very grey but there are many huge parks, such as Gorky Park, which are well kept. These places are very popular for families to walk in during the day, since gardens are virtually unheard of and in the evenings, the younger crowd go there with a few beers since few can afford bars and clubs.
In spite of the shortcomings, I did highly enjoy Minsk. It is certainly worth a visit if you are interested in seeing old Soviet style socialism, which is, apparently, still very much alive there. If you are a seasoned backpacker, then I’m sure that you will find nothing too tough about getting around Minsk but if you are just getting started, then you might want to hit Vilnius or a place like it first. Also, with a complete lack of hostels in Belarus and any kind of budget accommodation at all for that matter, you might find it better to go with a friend since I can imagine it being extremely lonely.
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