Dasvidania Belarus

Well, although the rest of the beginning week of my trip is messed up, I do think that I at least got to see all that I could see in Minsk without having a car. With the city bring so sprawling, some of the strange new sites (like the crazy looking new library... which I saw on the drive in at night).

As it turns out, most of the sights and monuments that I saw on my long walk the first day were about all that there was to see. In one word, war, you can describe all of them. Since Stalin rebuilt this city after it was destroyed, he put a huge war monument at nearly every major intersection. I spent some time just riding the metro and checking out various parts of the city... most all other sections are typical looking Russian square concrete box buildings.

Minsk was a very suprising city; all of the rumors would have you believe that it is some wasteland and KGB would be following you around the whole time. It was quite the opposite experience. The streets are cleaned almost constantly both by people and machines, the
parks are huge and fairly well maintained, there are cafe's and shops everywhere, and if there was anyone tracking my every move they did a damn good job hiding themselves. I am sure they were also constantly amused and confused by the obviously lost nature of finding my way
around the city.

As far as the visa situation is concerned, it is frustrating because it is really entirelly out of my control. I jumped through all of the hoops the past two months and had all of the paperwork completed to perfection. Now, it is all messed up due to flight delays and under- trained airport workers.

But, in trying to find something positive in all of this, I have all the confidence in the world in finding my way around my future destinations, because I had to learn a lot these past few days trying to work this visa situation out. I had expected these first few days to be tougher than the rest simply due to getting used to how to do things that are completely foreign to me, and it has been much tougher than I could have ever imagined...due to all of this visa crap.

The thing I am most looking forward to now is being in a hostel with other backpackers, and perhaps being able to have an actual conversation with someone that does not involve the validity of by travel documents. I got the last bed on some of the nights in the hostel, so there should be many backpackers there and it should be pretty fun.

So I am on my way to Moscow by train (11 hours) now (actually it leaves in 4 hours, but I am leaving now and headed to the train station), and assuming my visa is alright, my next updates should come from a hostel in Moscow for the next 5 days.

- The Dues