June 15
So… Belarus…
We wanted to go through a few Baltic countries on our way to St. Petersburg where we’ll be watching some World Cup next week. Belarus is apparently not a Baltic country because it’s not on the Baltic Sea and not an Eastern Bloc country because it wasn’t in the Warsaw Pact. Thank you Google for all of the enlightenment. It was kind of on the way and people from the US don’t need a visa as long as they’re there less than 5 days… or so we thought.
When we tried to board the bus from Kraków to Minsk, the bus driver was none too pleased with us. He was certain we couldn’t cross the border. I was pretty certain we could. But then our random new friend showed up. He spoke English as well as Russian while our driver only spoke Russian. Apparently you can only fly into Belarus, you cannot take a bus, if you are from the US. A little googling found a random travel blog that confirmed this. Crapola. But then second new random friend came over and told us that if we are going to the World Cup (we are) and have our fanIDs (we do) that we can maybe get in at a roadway border crossing. The rules were a little bit vague and the English wasn’t the most clear on the website. So we were heading towards a border crossing with no clue if we were going to be allowed in or not. Cool.
We got to the border and Poland had no issue letting us go. But then we drove the mile down to the Belarus side and things were less easy. Apparently, friend #2 was right about us being able to cross with the fanID. Great! But then they asked to see our medical insurance. No problem. I knew that this was a requirement and I had all the paperwork pulled up on my phone. Unfortunately they wanted to see a paper copy… which we don’t have. And viewing on my screen was completely unacceptable. Several phone calls had to be made and finally a higher up was brought on scene. Keep in mind that we’re in the middle of a 15 hour overnight bus ride. So we’re doing all of this at about 1am. The higher up reviewed my phone insurance, deemed it acceptable and we moved on to the next step – baggage. Two border control agents were having people open their bags and were using a drug sniffing dog. By the time Michael and I got up there, the one guy asked where we were from, shook his head and just told us to leave. That was easier than I was expecting. Apparently they wanted nothing to do with us and our overstuffed backpacks.
The rest of the bus ride was uneventful. We arrived a little before 9am and took our bags to the hotel to store while we explored the city.
That’s right. Our hotel was next to Casino Royal.
We spent the morning and early afternoon checking out the sights. To be honest, there wasn’t a ton going on in town. We started at Independence Square which had a statue of Lenin and some government buildings.
Then we saw the Church of Sts. Simon and Helen. It was being renovated. This church, like every church in Minsk has a history of getting passed around a bit. Built in 1905, the Catholic Church was robbed by the Red Army in 1932 and closed down by Soviet authorities at which point it became a theater. Then during the German occupation, it became a church again, but after the war, it went back to being a cinema. In 1990, the building was returned to the Catholic Church at which point it was renovated and turned back into a church.
It started raining pretty hard, so we popped into this coffee shop. I took the picture the next morning which is why it doesn’t look too rainy.
Since it refused to stop raining and I left our umbrella in the karaoke/trivia bar in Kraków, we grabbed an Uber to the other side of town for lunch.
This was the recommended local dish. It was pork of some sorts on a skewer with potato pancakes and, of course, fireworks. I was surprised to say the least.
After lunch it had stopped raining, so we got to walk around and see some more sights.
City Hall:
Cathedral of Saint Virgin Mary which I thought was a strange name.
The door was open, so we popped our heads in. Whoops – that’s a wedding going on.
Cathedral of the Holy Spirit:
The below is the Palace of the Republic. It makes me think of a sad 1970’s government building, but apparently this is where lots of social and political events take place with presentations, exhibitions, and concerts open to the public.
Cathedral fo St. Apostles Peter and Paul:
So that was basically it for sights. A ton of churches and a ton of government buildings.
We didn’t spend much time in Minsk, which I’m mostly fine with. The city didn’t seem to have much going on and with no signage in English, it was a bit hard to move around. Thank God for Google maps and Google translate.
The next morning we headed off to the bus station.
There was a bit of panic when I saw the above.
Don’t worry – this is our bus heading to Vilnius, Lithuania. Obvious, isn’t it?