Belarus - 2012

First, where is Belarus?  It’s a small country of about ten million people sandwiched between Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Ukraine, with no access to the sea.  It was an integral part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and got its independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union broke up.  Unlike the other breakaway Soviet countries, Belarus has remained communist and is ruled by a hard-ass dictator, Lukashenko, who is the bad boy of European nations and a buddy of Putin.  Unlike Russia and Ukraine, the KGB is still alive and well in Belarus.  

Belarus identifies strongly with Russia and their main language is Russian.  Belarusian is a separate language but used only by about a third of the population.  Belarus means “white Russia.”  Very little evidence of anything related to the US here: no American cars, machines or other products, and this is probably due to the Cold War.

So why would we want to come to Belarus, a country few Americans or Europeans visit?  We missed seeing it eight years ago, in 2004, when on a trip to Ukraine we drove a rental car through the three Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and wanted to continue through Belarus on the way to Kiev. The Avis car rental company in Tallinn, Estonia, said driving through Belarus was “too dangerous” and we had to return the car in Vilnius and fly on to Kiev, which is what we did. That of course piqued my curiosity.  We wanted to see what the last European communist nation was like and if, as we had read, it was in fact a walk back in time.

We spent six days driving through Belarus and I must say we enjoyed our visit more than expected.  Belarus appears as a first world country, with a good infrastructure and a well dressed and educated population, but the people are mostly very poor.  They have the highest standard of living and literacy rate of the ex-Iron Curtain countries, and it’s evident they are ready to join the rest of the western world and go forward. Unfortunately, however, their government holds them back.  These are intelligent and very handsome people, incredibly beautiful women but, like Iran and some other countries, they are trapped in a time warp by their government.

For years Belarus has been in what they refer to as a “crisis” with inflation of over 100 percent a year and their currency, the Belarusian ruble, being devalued by about a third.  Two years ago the ruble was about 3,000 to a US dollar; now it’s 8,300 to a dollar (this is as of 2012 when we took this trip). That’s a crippling blow to the population but a boon for visitors like us since everything is dirt cheap.  $120 in US dollars makes you a millionaire in Belarusian rubles.

Recently Belarus depleted its supply of hard currency and the other Western European nations have made it difficult for the Lukashenka government to borrow money, as punishment for its refusal to have honest elections and its abuse of human rights.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out over time and if Belarus will bend to world opinion in return for economic relief.

There is almost no tourism and no Americans whatsoever.  The very few that come have relatives living in Belarus.  Reasons for the lack of tourism include the fact that the government is disliked worldwide, everything is in Russian with no English signage whatsoever, no one speaks English and it was very difficult and expensive to get a visa to enter the country. If you’re traveling independently, as we were, you have to be very determined to go through the difficult visa process, but we’re glad we did. It was necessary to fill out forms and write letters in Russian, and we managed this with help from my cousin Johnny, who studied Russian in college.

I’ve never been in any country where there is such a total absence of English.  Usually in countries such as China or India there is enough tourist infrastructure so there are many signs in English; that’s not the case in Belarus. The absence of English signs made it difficult to find anything, but we familiarized ourselves with the Cyrillic alphabet just enough so we could struggle through some of the signage.

We were usually able to find at least one English speaker in hotels and restaurants, and they seemed to like practicing their English.   People were amazed when they learned we were from America, and we always received a warm welcome.  

The roads in Belarus were marked well enough and we identified towns by the last three letters in Cyrillic, since the full names were just too difficult to read.  We got into and out of cities by hiring taxis and following them, as we’ve done in other countries, usually costing no more than a few dollars. The BMW sedan we rented was a wonderful car but it didn’t have navigation. We had a Garmin GPS, with a Belarus chip, but it was worthless.

As was the case in our travels through Ukraine, this is the land of small money; their largest bill was 100,000 rubles which is about twelve dollars.  Most everything was inexpensive, roughly a third to a fourth of the cost at home.  It’s nice to drink one dollar glasses of good wine (usually from Georgia), have good meals for three or four dollars and leave a one dollar tip which brings a smile to the waiters face.  I’m not looking forward to returning to California’s ten dollar glasses of wine and twenty dollar tips.

Minimum wage here had recently been raised to a little over two dollars an hour, which is less than $400 a month.  I don’t know how the people live as well as they seemingly do on that kind of income.  One result is there are very few cars on the roads. Driving here is a pleasure with excellent multi- lane highways and virtually no traffic. Parking spaces are available everywhere, even in the capital city of Minsk with a population of two million. Trucks actually pulled over to the shoulder to let us pass, something I’ve never seen happen before.  I think these people have been well disciplined by many years of Soviet (and now post-Soviet) rule.

The major cities in Belarus were destroyed by the Nazis during the second world war, so many buildings were constructed post 1945, with many in the Stalinist style. Stalinist architecture dominated during the period 1922 to 1952 and ended in 1953 after Stalin’s death. While not the lovely architecture found in many European cities, Minsk architecture has a beauty and appeal of its own.  The boulevards are wide and there are many lovely parks.  

Perhaps the most interesting part of the country was the many small villages with Russian style wooden houses that date back to the 18th century, and these were mostly not destroyed during the war.  There are highway signs indicating where these villages are and we drove through many, taking photos of both the colorful houses and the people.  Also, the occasional stork’s nest, high on a pole, with mama and papa stork tending their young.

I believe this is the cleanest country we’ve ever visited, even more so than Germany or the Scandinavian countries. Absolutely not a speck of litter anywhere, no graffiti and, of course, no homeless.  Perhaps this is due to the totalitarian government, but it also seems to be the nature of the people to be clean, neat and orderly.  Perhaps the reason is the small army of street cleaners who are always at work sweeping and cleaning. One upside of communism is it keeps lots of people employed, but at almost unlivable wages.  

This is he “whitest” country we’ve ever visited. No minorities - no Blacks, Asians, Hispanics or other ethnicities.  It’s like that throughout the country and everyone speaks the same language, Russian.  There may be some advantages to this homogeneity, but also lots of disadvantages. One gets the impression that the country is isolated geographically and as a result, over the centuries, there hasn’t been much immigration or inter-marriage.   Not having access to the sea also likely slowed immigration.  The government very tightly controls who enters the country and they have strict rules regarding who can stay and work here.  Not many minorities want to (or can) migrate here because of the poor economy and the lowest level jobs are filled by locals.

The country seemed very safe and we never felt any fear or danger.  We were told there is little crime and, perhaps because of the harsh government, people seem to follow rules to the letter. They wait for long, red traffic lights to change at street corners and never jaywalk, they’re not wild drivers and overall the place seems very peaceful.  I doubt any terrorists would be interested in this small and perhaps somewhat insignificant country.

Something happened while we were in Brest, near the Polish border, that was a bit of a horror story. A woman and her husband staying at our hotel in Brest said they were on a train going from Moscow to Nice, France, and when the train arrived in Brest they were told they had to get off the train and get a transit visa before proceeding.  Pretty amazing, since they were only passing through Belarus and not even getting off the train.  They had to pay $150 US each for transit visas and then hired a car for $300 to take them to Warsaw. They never got back on the train since they wanted to leave Belarus as soon as possible.  It’s easy to understand why this country doesn’t get many foreign visitors.

One night, over drinks in the Hotel Minsk, Misti talked with a local guy by the name of Yuri and she told him that we never see older people on the streets.  At first we thought that many had been killed off during the second world war; one fourth of the adult men died in that war.  But we realized the war had ended seventy years ago and many babies were born when the war ended (the baby boomers). Where are they?  Yuri said many older people were so poor, barely getting by on about two hundred dollars a month pension, that they mostly stayed at home.

One of our best experiences was in the Beloveschskaya Puscha National Forest.  All signs were in Russian and there was a complicated ticket menu for visiting different attractions in the forest.  We were holding up a long line of people, waiting to buy tickets, while we were trying to understand the options, which was impossible. Then we heard the magic English words: “Do you need help?”  It was a Belarusian guy named Julian who helped us get the tickets, and we then spent the rest of the day, and into the evening, tagging along with him and his friends.  We ended the day in a restaurant drinking lots of beer and champagne, making lots of toasts, and my dancing with five older, very drunken, Belarusian women who were singing, and who had brought their own boom box to the restaurant.  A great Belarusian experience.

Belarus has an interesting way of dealing with health insurance for non residents. At the airport, as you go through immigration, you have to buy health insurance to cover every day you are in the country. Not expensive, about one dollar a day, I guess sort of their own version of Obamacare.  Can you imagine if we required every tourist that enters the US to buy health insurance; maybe a good way to finance our health care system. I have no idea how good or bad the health care is, and luckily we didn’t have the opportunity to find out.

While staying at a hotel in Grodna, we noticed there was a casino across the street.  Misti used to like to play roulette, and hadn’t for years, so we decided to check it out. It was like going into a James Bond movie. The casino was small and very plush, five tables in all with roulette, blackjack and craps, guys in tuxedos and women in evening gowns, and a few people playing.  We bought $50 worth of chips and Misti went at it, as I watched and drank vodka.  After about twenty minutes of play, she had won $200 above her starting money.  It was late, and we were tired, so she decided to cash cash out her winnings.  When we bought the chips we had to use American dollars.  But when we cashed in, they paid us with Belarusian rubles. I told them we had bought the chips using US dollars and we’d like to paid in dollars.  Their answer was “nyet.” Clearly the casino, like many other things in the country, is run by the government and they weren’t about to give up any hard currency.

Our Belarus trip took us from Minsk to Brest, then to the national forest, then to Grodna in the west and back to Minsk for our flight to Tbilisi, Georgia.  A total of six nights and about 500 miles of driving, sufficient time to get a feel, for Belarus.

A fun trip, lots of good experiences, good food and friendly people.  We looked forward to our ongoing journey to Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey.

Art Faibisch, 2012