As I mentioned in my post about arriving in Minsk, I was kind of dreading Belarus. It’s not that I wasn’t looking forward to exploring and learning more about a country completely unfamiliar to me. On the contrary, I was excited and intrigued to visit a place that most Westerners don’t even have on their …
Minsk surprised me. Brest disappointed me. Grodno really won me over. It started with my hotel – the Hotel Slavia, just blocks from the main square and a short walk from the bus station. Unlike the monstrous Soviet-era hotels I called home in Minsk and Brest, the Hotel Slavia felt more like a …
I have never visited a place so inaccurately described in guidebooks as Brest. Everything I read indicated that Brest would be the most Western feeling of the cities I would visit in Belarus: It is is very much the case…that Western influences predominate here. (Bradt) There is a calm and relaxed side that …
When we arrived at Khatyn, just outside of Minsk, I pulled out my Kindle and started to read to Yuliya and Andrei from my Bradt guidebook: Khatyn was once a small but thriving community in a picturesque wooded area, but this hamlet no longer appears on even the most detailed map today, other than as …
I have a confession: I was kind of dreading Belarus. As much as I wanted to go and experience it for myself, I was afraid Belarus would be difficult. Throughout the month of December, I got used to the relative comforts and “Western-ness” of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland and I wasn’t entirely looking forward to …
I began my quest to get a Belarus visa back in early October. According to the website of the Belarussian Embassy in the United States, I would need a letter of invitation from a registered travel agency – similar to the invitation requirement for Russia. On the other hand, rumor had it elsewhere that nothing …
