I had the opportunity to visit Belarus earlier this summer, and a lot of people have asked me why I did this...
I'd always been vaguely curious about the place, as it's one of the least visited countries in Europe. I had also noticed that there were direct flights to its capital, Minsk, from my local airport, and had always wondered how on earth there could be a commercial demand for this.
I'd never done anything about visiting Belarus, however, as up until a few years ago, an expensive visa was required for all foreign passport holders from outside the former Soviet Union. Then, in 2017, it was announced that certain passports would be able to enter for up to five days. Last month, this was increased to 30 days, as long as the person enters and leaves via Minsk International Airport, and has adequate medical insurance, or purchases it at the point of entry.
A friend of mine speaks good Russian, and had also been curious about going, so we decided to meet up there, in June. I booked the direct flight, which was once a week, so I had to come back via Kiev, so we tacked that on, too.
When I got to the airport, my flight departed from a part of the airport which was only used by Jet2 - and, once a week, by Belavia, the Belarussian national airline. As I checked in (no online check in was possible), I asked how full the flight was, and why it even ran. It was about a quarter full, and it ran because it had originally served a charity which brought children affected by Chernobyl, to the UK for the summer. It was still mainly used by that charity, so flights from Minsk were full in the early summer, but were empty going back, and the situation reversed later on in the year.
The aircraft itself was a blast from the past, and I think there may have even still been ashtrays in the armrests. The stewardess was very beautiful, albeit very stern, and the 'food' served up was diabolical. It felt very much like air travel used to feel like when I was a child.
On arrival, the immigration process was something of a surprise. There were about twenty desks and all of them were manned, so there was no wait at all, you simply picked a desk and handed over your passport. The woman didn't speak much English, and wanted to see my medical insurance, and then stamped my passport and let me in. I'd arranged a transfer to the city, which cost far less than the guidebook had suggested it would (20 Belarussian New Roubles, to be precise), and this took me to the door of my hotel.
One of the appealing features of Belarus is that nothing really costs very much, and this includes the hotels. We stayed at the best hotel in Minsk for a fraction of the price that a similar hotel might cost in the west. It had all the mod cons, a massive balcony, and was next door to a very modern upmarket shopping mall.
What was there to see and do?
Minsk got pretty comprehensively flattened during the Second World War, and the Soviets rebuilt the city along their lines - wide boulevards, huge empty spaces, and grandiose socialist realist monuments. Unusually, various Soviet statuary is still in situ, including very unpleasant people like Vladimir Lenin, in front of the national parliament, and Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police.
There are also a number of replicas of pre-war buildings, which despite their recent vintage, still look pretty impressive. One thing that was conspicuously absent were private shops in the city centre. Another thing you didn't get were beggars, or people trying to sell you tat that you neither want nor need. Nor was there any obvious prostitution. Of course, we might just not have been looking in the right places, but there was certainly none of it in the hotel lobby, nor anywhere else we went. There were also no other tourists that we were aware of, other than Russian tour groups.
My overall impression of the place was that, if you enjoy places that are off the beaten track, it's well worth going. I wouldn't send anybody there for their first visit to Europe, though. It's a fairly challenging destination in terms of communication, and 70 years of the Soviet system was apparently unable to deliver basic things, such as potable drinking water from the tap etc so there are aspects like that, which might not be to everybody's liking. Unless you're on an organised tour, knowing some Russian would make your life a lot easier, and being able to read the Cyrillic alphabet is pretty much essential.
Belarus is sometimes described as "Europe's last dictatorship". Dissent is not really tolerated, and the president, Alexander Lukashenko, has been in office since 1994. It didn't feel especially oppressive, though, the police were not much in evidence, and certainly didn't trouble us in any way. People would grumble about low wages, when they thought nobody was listening, but it didn't feel like a place where the regime was about to fall. Belarus had no tradition as an independent country, and has remained very close to Russia indeed since independence. Russians and Belarussians have full rights of residency and employment in each other's countries, and there is an open border between them. It is one of the last countries anywhere to use Socialist imagery in its flag and state symbols, and the government has discouraged any sense of separate nationality, with Russian remaining the language of everyday use for most people. Again, for people interested in this kind of thing, I'd recommend a visit.
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