5 Days Visa-Free in Belarus - Chapter 1 and Chapter 2: The City Built On Ruins

 
 
Chapter 1

"Are you aware that the Visa would cost you 180 Euros?"

"No"

"Do you have a medical insurance?"

"No"

"You need to go to the insurance counter and purchase a medical insurance first. Then you come back."

The person inside the visa office at Minsk National Airport appeared to be cold, annoyed, and unwilling to help. Being one of the first people to ever test out Belarus's new 5 Day Visa Free Regime, I kind of expected this to happen.

I walked straight to the counter, it took me less than 2 minutes to get all the paper works ready. I went back to the visa office and knocked the window, the person showed up again.

"What is your nationality?

"Canadian"

"Do you have an invitation letter to come to Belarus?"

"No"

"If you don't have an invitation letter, how can I issue you a visa? What are you going to do now?"

I told him that Belarus had this new decree signed by President Lukashenko himself allowing citizens of more than 50 countries, including Canada, to visit Belarus 5 days without a visa. 

"What law? How come I have never heard of such thing?"

I suggested him to talk to his superior or simply go on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to verify the information.

"You bring this thing up! Why don't you find where-ever you see that thing and then show it to me?"  

Without a valid Belorussian phone number, I couldn't even use the airport's WiFi. 

To get one, I must first clear the custom. But this bureaucrat behind that little window wasn't helpful at all.

It seems that I will be stuck here now.

The "little grey cells" began to work. If I wasn't even eligible to get into Belarus, why wasn't the insurance lady even hesitate selling me the insurance? 

Aren't all Bureaucrats supposed to be in panic when something unsure happened?

All of sudden the term "Visa-free" went through my mind.

If I could travel here "Visa-free" for 5 days, what the heck am I doing here at a visa office?

I headed straight to the passport control, and handed in all the paper works to the customs official. He went through everything, and handed me back my passport with an entry stamp and a migration card. The green light above the door came on, and I knew the meaning of all this.

I exited Minsk National Airport and took a deep breath. It wasn't only the fresh air of Belorussian forest that was there, there was also the feeling of freedom.

Minsk

Chapter 2 

Minsk National Airport was quite some distance from the city which the airport bore its name from. There were some minibus services that would take travelers straight to the bus station next to the train station in city center. Not far from the airport, the China - Belarus Industrial Park stood right beside the highway. Belarus was recently named as a key nation in Chinese president Xi Jinping's ambitious "One Belt, One Road" initiative. Belarus, being relatively isolated from other European countries politically, had been a reliable ally of Russia since its independence from the Soviet Union.Often criticized as "the last dictatorship of Europe", Belarus had chosen a path that was not joining the European Union or NATO like other former states behind the Iron Curtain. Because of the nation's special situation in the European political and economical environment, it became a natural choice for China, one of EU's main competitors to select Belarus as its main strategic partner in Europe. 

One of the wide boulevards of Minsk

The city of Minsk, capital of Belarus, faced total destruction during the Second World War. Upon entering the city limit, there stood a giant obelisk in the middle of the highway with the city's Russian name "Минск" written on it. Underneath the same, an enlarged reproduction of the Order of the Hero of Soviet Union silently told the story of how the people of this city made huge sacrifices to expel the Nazi invaders. There were no words written anywhere to explain to visitors like me about these sacrifices. Yet when people saw the giant obelisk, they knew immediately that Minsk was a city to be respected.

Stalinist architecture near Minsk Railway Station

Upon arriving at the bus station, I ended up on the platform of Lenin Square Metro Station. There was still a bust of Lenin greeting "the people" on the way into the station. In the middle of the platform, a bronze pole with the hammer and sickle symbol divided the platform into the outbound zone and the inbound zone. The interior was decorated with marble titles, which was used in many of the subway lines in former Soviet Union. The station made me feel like time was frozen, as if the Soviet Union was still there. 

Lenin Square Metro Station

Kupalauskaya Metro Station

The name "USSR" and the Hammer and Sickle Sign at Kupalauskaya Metro Station

Once arrived at the hotel, I realized that I didn't have any Belarusian rubles to pay for my stay. The hotel manager was very kind to allow me to pay them the next day as the banks were closed on weekends. Later I returned to the old center of Minsk, an area that reflected what Minsk was like before the breakout of World War II. On an island in the middle of  the Svislach River, there stood a memorial in memory of Soviet soldiers died in Afghanistan. Indeed, the signs and symbols of war could be found everywhere in the city, if you looked very closely. As for the people, I wondered what they would think every time they passed by these monuments and memorials. Did they remember the struggles the previous generation had suffered? Or did they simply take everything for granted?

A Roman Catholic church at the historic city center of Minsk

An old building rebuilt

Historic city center of Minsk

An crying angel

Memorial dedicated to lost Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan

To be honest, if you ask me that question, I probably didn't know how to answer myself. I probably needed to see more of Belarus and stay longer in order to find out what people really thought of war.

The Island of Tears

The memorial on the Island of Tears

The memorial and a modern apartment complex

The historic city center of Minsk

I walked back to the new city center, where Soviet style giant building blocks made up the majority of everything in my sight. As I walked passed by the GUM- the Main Department Store from the Soviet era, something not far from there caught my attention.

Historic city center of Minsk

A building in Minsk city center area

A building in the Minsk city center area

Minsk GUM

In front of a statue, there laid a wreath made of fresh flowers. Above the wreath, there was a name engraved on the base of the statue. I had seen that person the whom the statue was dedicated to in history books so many times. Even before the fall of the Soviet Union, many statues of that person were torn down as he was widely seen as a figure of political oppression - even within the Soviet Union itself. When that statue of him was torn down at what today known as Lubyanka Square, it somewhat hinted the eventual demise of the Red Empire. To be sure that was him, I read closely the name on the statue:

ФЭ Дзержи́нский

I followed the direction where the statue gazed at 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  It was rather a magnificent building. On the gigantic wooden door of the main entrance, there was a shield with a sword penetrated through it at the perfect perpendicular angle. On the shield, I saw three letters:

КДБ

Of course that was the name in Belarusian - a language that you probably wouldn't hear that often unless you were riding the subway or at any government run places that offered services to the public. To locals, who were perfect native Russian speakers, they just referred the building and the agency in there by another name in Russian:

КГБ

Shall we translate it in Latin?

KGB

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