CRF: Belarus

"CRF" is not a crime show you've never heard of, it stands for "Cutting Room Floor." Below are some of our favorite pics that never made the blog. We figured we'd reminisce a little while we're home for a visit. (Back in Europe August 16th).
This is one of our most favorite photographs. It was taken on one of many long drives on one of many snow white days. The iconic Belarusian tractor is right there in the central image of our former Soviet winter. We were the only car on the road and took this photo in complete quiet aside from our idling engine.
Something we've noticed, looking back at pictures, is just how often this shade of blue popped up. Since it's the same color as the tractors, we wonder if there's just a surplus of this paint. When everything is state owned, it's not like you're going to get independent paint companies coming out with ones called Robin's Egg and Sky. Bright colors abounded, on fence posts and sides of houses, but none as often as this Belarusian blue.
We stayed in some interesting hotels and apartments. You need a visa to enter Belarus, so they don't get many casual visitors. So, when we saw a place to stay, we basically started unpacking (after handing in our passports to get registered with the government, of course). The restaurant attached to this hotel was all booked up for a wedding the night we stayed - and this bridal shop happened to be located right in the building. We were hoping to spot the bridal party, charm them all and swindle an invite to the party. No luck. Also on the premises, a beauty salon and barber shop, neither of which were open.
This was taken in Polotsk, our very first stop in Belarus and a wonderful first impression that shook off most of our nerves and readied us for more good times and lovely people to come. It also happens to be the geographical center of the European continent.
Since it's difficult to enter Belarus, it's hard to say "oh, the next time we're there..." So, we regret even more not stopping at this railway museum. Just down the road from Brest fortress, we spotted the large collection of locomotives. Apparently, many are still functional and are used in movies. It looked incredibly impressive and would have, no doubt, been a very fun time.
We visited a few more churches than we probably would have had the weather been nicer. In Novogrudok, we stayed in housing attached to a convent. A nice younger lady had to convince the also nice but skeptical older lady to let us stay in one room even though our last names were different and my hand was ringless.
Next door to that very nun hotel was this restaurant, recommended by both ladies, young and old. We were shown to this back room and dined on whatever they had. Sharing the small room with us was a party of eight who came in to pick at their food and sip their drinks periodically. Then, back out they would go. It gave us an opportunity to take a photo of their table, set like so many we'd seen before. It was very common to see a bottle of vodka and either soda or tomato juice on a dinner table like you'd normally see wine and water. Hopefully, whatever kept this group from sitting down from enjoying their meal all at once didn't involve any heavy machinery, because they definitely went through two bottles of each.
Here's that blue again. Belarusian roads were fantastic, especially compared to some of the others we'd recently driven on. However, they were very rarely plowed. It was amazing to see vans like this slip their way down streets like a zamboni gone haywire. Our Subaru Outback, outfitted with snow tires from Riga, far outshone the competition. Subaru did not pay us for that comment.

Sleeping in Soviet Style

We stayed in some pretty interesting places in Belarus. This was a state hotel hallway in the gloomy town of Nesvizh. We stopped into a building that we thought was a tourist office, but turned out to be some kind of Ministry of Information (apparently a different thing). The woman there was loud and frustrated with us - eventually she called her teenaged daughter and yelled at her to take us to the hotel. We ended up staying for only one night because it was rather mildewy and sad. The colors in the hallway were great.
We stayed in a few rented apartments because they're cheap and they have kitchens. It's fun to see how they're set up. One thing all Russian and Belarusian homes seem to have in common: tiny pictures hung very high up on the wall. This was our kitchen in Brest.
We stayed at a ski resort (but didn't ski) in Logoisk, which was a strange experience. There weren't many people at the resort, and those that were had a decided air of privilege and wealth, which was unusual in Belarus. The resort is owned, of course, by the government. We were surprised by the hours it kept - there was night skiing until quite late, but the lifts didn't start running until about eleven o'clock in the morning.
This is a smoke detector, we think.
This is the apartment we stayed in in Minsk, right in the heart of the city. Most hotels here are state run, and the prices can be absurdly high, which was another reason we looked for apartments. It was nice to have our own little space in the big city, with a supermarket close by and a nice view of Lenina avenue. Also, it was nice not to have to deal with rude and scary hotel staff - they are government jobs, and checking in can be a little like going to the DMV.
This was our kitchen in Minsk. Yes, all the rooms were color coordinated. The bedroom was orange, the kitchen was blue, the bathroom was green (very green).
Something we saw more than once: more elevator buttons than floors. This hotel had four floors and eighteen buttons. Our apartment building in Minsk had five floors and eighteen buttons. We usually took the stairs.
This was the first place we stayed, in Polotsk. I loved this cupboard thing. We were suspicious, often, that we were being put in bugged rooms. In this hotel, the receptionist told us that she only had rooms with two beds. After looking at our passports, she put us in a room a little separate from the rest, at the end of the hall, with one bed. Think that's really far fetched? Well, they still refer to the police as the KGB.

Things Belarusian People Like

Patriotic Billboards. 80% of the economy is controlled by the state, so it's no surprise that the primo ad real estate went to the country itself. Along with ones that showcased cops carrying babies and soldiers cuddling puppies (not really, but sort of) there was this series of I Love Belarus signs (top and bottom, above).
Deconstructed Bloody Marys. Every time we sat in a cafeteria, bar, bakery or public bench, there were people drinking vodka and tomato juice - never mixed, always in two separate plastic cups. At 9 a.m., in Novogrudok, we watched as a pair of fur-clad, older women ordered two cream filled pastries, two shots of vodka and two cups of tomato juice. Somehow, when a bloody mary is deconstructed like that (and being enjoyed well before 11 on a Tuesday morning) it strikes you as something a little different than your average brunch.
Uniforms. If you worked behind a counter in Belarus, you wore some sort of uniform. Sometimes it was a visor, sometimes an apron with fluffy white sleeves attached. At one cafeteria, the server looked like she had a doily pinned to her head and the manager wore a paper crown. It seemed a little degrading to tell you the truth.
Saving Electricity. We could never tell if a business was open, because the lights were always off or dimmed so low that it was impossible to tell they were on at all. This picture was taken inside a restaurant and was the norm. The dedication is very impressive though, especially as you walk through a museum and there is someone standing in the corner of every room flipping the lights on when you enter and off again when you leave. Then, they each sit back down in their chair and continue to read - in the dark.
Exact Change. This is the change we were left with after leaving. 1,980 BYR, which equals about 60 US cents. There are no coins and eleven different banknotes (10 - 100,000), which can be pretty tricky to get straight. So, usually, the cashier would just reach over and start thumbing through our stack of money to take what she needed, trying to get as close to exact as possible.

Monumental Brest

Brest is very close to the Polish border, and some say it is the most western of Belarusian cities because of this proximity. I'm not sure that Minsk isn't more western, but it certainly does feel more insular, tucked away in the heart of the country. Maybe because it's so close to the outside world, Brest has a decidedly monumental flavor, as though it is trying to prove itself as truly communist and nationalist. This is the statue of "Valour," a soldier's head carved from rock, an overwhelmingly large statement about the bravery of soviet men in the face of western aggression.

Brest fortress was the largest fortification in 19th century, its walls having a circumference of 30 kilometers. It was a major site in both world wars, and two regiments of Russian soldiers are famed for defending the fort for a month against an all out German attack. It is largely ruined, and it serves as a large war memorial. This is the entrance, which is unabashedly soviet.
This was the one place that we saw tourists in Belarus, but they all seemed to be either Belarusian or Russian. They come to Brest, I think, for reassurance and to experience larger-than-life reminders of the pride taken in persistence. After all, Belarus refuses to change. A lot of that has to do with the leadership and the heavy police and military influence in the county, but it also has to do with a people who chose a different path than others did, and are trying hard to make it work.
In the cold, cement-block district where we were staying, this strange thing sat beside the road. It is very Belarusian to me, because it feels like a vision from another era that overlaps with the present.
Passing through the fortress gate, soldier's songs and recordings of bombs and machine guns echo in the air. It's a haunting thing, and it is designed, I think, to create a sense of loss - a sense that everything that was once powerful and great about the soviet union has crumbled around this little country, that they are alone in the world, hemmed in by enemies who have attacked them before and old friends who have abandoned them.

The Fence Post

Belarus may still call their police the KGB and have a state run economy. Its presidential "elections" are questionable and our passport numbers were recorded and linked to every internet card we purchased. But, something that struck me as decidedly un-Soviet was Belarus' desire to make things pretty: like their fences.
It wasn't uncommon to see multiple fence patterns, conjoined around one piece of property. Some had geometric shapes other were striped or polka dotted. Many outhouses got their very own fence with a different pattern and color. Especially against the blank canvas of snow, it was pure eye candy.
We saw yellow, blue and green painted houses all through the Baltic, but nowhere have we seen the colors extend to fences and gates.
Each town seemed to have a color scheme, as if at some point, a truck came through with cans of paint and told everyone to get outside and be creative. I actually wouldn't be at all surprised if that's exactly what happened.
People really looked like they had fun with it. When we left Belarus and entered Poland, I told Merlin that it seemed to get so much poorer all of a sudden. His response was something along the lines of: "Nothing's painted purple."
It really is amazing how much a coat of fresh paint can do.

The Capital

Minsk is a bigger city than we were expecting. We're not exactly sure why we thought the industrial, cultural, economic and administrative capital of Belarus would be anything other than big. Unfortunately, after being in Saint Petersburg for two weeks and then experiencing small town Belarus for nearly a week, we were less than excited about being thrust into a metropolis again so soon. Quaintness isn't really Minsk's thing, but there's an attractiveness to its bizarre severity.
For a city 80% destroyed during World War II, it has an overwhelming sense of history. Stalinist architecture towers over the streets, which are peppered with busts of Lenin and black marble memorials to fallen Belarusians. The country's history has seen a lot of death and the monuments erected don't try to sugar coat it. This one was in honor of countrymen who died in the Afghan War. The women in the statues are wailing with grief, eyes and mouths agape horrifically. There's also a Jewish Memorial in the city, that we never got a chance to see, which is comprised of statues, arms raised and faces emoting, lined up for the firing squad.
There are three easy ways to see the human side to any city, though, no matter how inaccessible or imposing it may seem. The first, is to do laundry. The laundromat Tatyana dropped us off at happened to be located within the big outdoor market. It seemed to be patronized by cleaning women doing large loads of bedding. We were probably the strangest walk-ins they've ever had.
The second is to go to the flea market, which our laundromat happened to be located right inside of. We grabbed two pork-fat filled mushroom barley soups and successfully convinced the man behind the counter that we didn't need any pizza. Then, I bought some toiletries from one of the little windows above. As overwhelming as they seem at first, it really is nice to just be able to point at what you want.
The third way to find the charm just about anywhere with a church is to take a stroll early Sunday morning. Minsk happens to have quite a few churches, mostly Russian Orthodox, and the day was just snowless enough to make walking around and people watching not only possible, but pleasant.

Castle Hunting: Mirsky Zamak

One of the best parts about this castle hunting project is that it gets us into some uncomfortable positions. Last night, we were stumbling around in the cold and dark, trying to take pictures of Mir Castle, which is one of the more spectacular buildings of the trip. It was freezing, and our noses were dripping by the time we burst through the door of our favorite little cafe in town. We must have looked pretty wild.
We were out in the dark because of the awful weather that we've had here. It has been gray and snowy every day for a while (for the whole winter, really) and we didn't have any luck for the two days that we were in and around Mir. We did walk around a little and get some good pictures, but the castle was too difficult. Rebecca convinced me to take my tripod out at night so that we could at least get some good contrast between the snow and sky, which was a great idea.

As you can see, it is a fairy-tale building in a tiny town of little, wooden houses (and little, wooden outhouses). It is perhaps the biggest tourist attraction in Belarus, though we saw no tourists. It is more of an attraction in theory - as in, "if tourists were attracted to Belarus, it would surely be thanks, in part, to Mir."
The castle itself was originally built at the end of the 15th century, but has been expanded twice - once during the Belarusian Renaissance and again in a more baroque style in the 18th century. It has also been damaged in many wars, most notably during the Napoleonic wars and during WWII, when it housed a garrison of soviet troops and was subsequently bombed. It has been painstakingly renovated, and it looks amazing. The building houses a restaurant and nearly-completed hotel, so it is not all that "authentic" inside, though the courtyard is nice enough.

We may be passing back through Mir on our way to Brest, so, if the weather is nice, I may get another shot at it. For now, though, these pictures will have to do. I like the way they came out, even if I probably won't use any of them.

Belarusian Tractors

In Belarus, tractors are everywhere - they plow the streets of Minsk, they are employed by the police for towing illegally parked cars, they grace many driveways and are omnipresent on the highway. The Belarusians are proud of their machines, too - MTZ is a famed producer of tractors, attachments and other heavy machinery, and it is perhaps the defining company for this nation. Minsk Tractor Works likes to boast that it produces over ten percent of the world's tractors - but in this part of the world, the blue beasts account for nearly all of the off-pavement horsepower.
This tractor was in a small town in Lithuania. All through Poland, the Baltic and Russia we saw them - during soviet times, the MTZ was the main supplier of machinery to bloc countries, and many of the old machines are still around today. Interestingly, I had always known Belarus tractors (as they're branded in the west) to be red. Here, they all seem to be blue. In fact, blue seems to be the color that all Belarusian work vehicles - both tractors and trucks - are painted.
The MTZ models that are produced nowadays are a little more modern than their older workhorses, but they are still relatively cheap and simply designed. The older tractors were made as easy to fix as possible, so that they could be repaired by unskilled people on remote work collectives. Another interesting thing about them - because batteries were difficult to come by, and because many farms where they ended up were so cold, older Belarus models were equipped with diesel or kerosene starter engines.
There were armies of these little "sidewalk tractors" on the streets of Minsk. They plowed, sanded, scooped up snow and pulled it away. There were larger ones with police lights and insignia, some fitted with PTO lifts for towing cars, some pulling trailers of blockades for the inauguration. I was too frightened to take pictures of these, however, because it is illegal to photograph police or military personnel, buildings or vehicles.

Minsk Groceries

Our rental apartment in Minsk was conveniently situated above one of the most impressive supermarkets we've seen yet. Like most places in Belarus, it seemed overstaffed and under-lit, but there are far worse things in life than too many attendants and a lack of fluorescent lighting. Around the entire perimeter of the fairly large space were manned counters. Imported candy and hard alcohol were first, followed by cheese, smoked meats, prepared salads, prepared meals, baked goods, bulk candy, dairy, raw meat, raw fish, smoked fish and, finally, eggs - where an attendant would count out and weight the amount of eggs you wanted and then hand them over in just a plastic bag. I actually was planning on getting eggs (we had a stove) but the idea of getting them home safely sans carton was too frightening.
I waited on line to have the broccoli I picked out weighed and bagged, while Merlin waited on line to procure some blue cheese and gin. Not only was it prime grocery shopping time, but it was a little difficult to figure out which counters necessitated payment right then and there (imported cheese and booze) and which didn't (produce). So, we decided to skip the queues and get the rest of our lunch from the central 'pre-packed' section of the store. We trudged home in the snow with the above feast.
Merlin picked out this container that we dubbed "fish paste." There were other ones that looked the same, but were pink or green, and we assumed that it was some sort of caviar pate. Merlin had already chosen a chunk of deep, deep red smoked meat and I grabbed a packet of imitation crab meat, so we had protein back up plans. All that was left were crackers.
It was hard to tell what sort of cracker was in what sort of box, so I went with the ones I thought were prettiest. The picture on the back showed thin, golden strips which reminded me of Lavasch. When we got home and hungrily opened the box (grocery shopping makes you hunger no matter what country you're in), a dainty, little napkin fell out. The adorable packaging continues! Then, we realized why we may need the napkin. The 'crackers' were actually long potato "wafers" - terminology we decided upon in order to subside our guilty/gross feelings about a meal of cheese spread on potato chips.
And this was the star of the show. The fish paste. At first, we worried that the separated liquid signaled some kind of spoilage, but Merlin was cavalier enough to dig in anyway. It was really, really delicious and went amazingly well with the potato wafers - though spreading it on without breakage was tricky. Every combination that involved the paste was amazing - paste with blue cheese, paste with smoked meat, paste garlicky carrot salad or mayonnaisey beet salad. That's really the best part of having a great market at your disposal. Sure, it's great to get the foreign things you've been craving (soba noodles, over-priced sesame chili oil), but it's really all about discovering that sort of gross thing that resembles cat food and tastes like heaven. It's really nice to be able to make your own drinks, too.

Water We To Do?

We seem to remember reading somewhere, at some point, that we shouldn't drink the tap water here. The hotel receptionist in Polotsk said that it was safe "but had a sour taste" and that we were better off drinking bottles. So, off we went to the store to stock up. The entire water section was filled with flavored ones and gaseous varieties.
Finally, off in a corner we found "негазированная" (still) water that didn't appear to be lemon, strawberry or otherwise fruit flavored. The label read "Medical and Table Water." Elated, we bought as many as our arms could carry. Thirsty, we opened one up as soon as we were on the sidewalk and took a swig. To say it was disgusting is an understatement. Ever notice that the water that comes out of that tiny faucet attached to the chair at a dentist's office tastes sort of awful? Well, take that and add salt and you've got this. We both tried to get as much down as we could, but managed less than a cup each.

We've tried a number of different Belarusian bottled water. Some have been okay, others have had a salty taste to them. One night, we accidentally purchased the Medical and Table water again. The Russian language side of the label was facing outward and we just didn't put two and two together. It was fairly tragic.
Needless to say, water has been something constantly on our minds. So, when we pulled into the little town of Logoisk and saw hoards of townfolk walking toward the church with empty water bottles and walking from it with full ones, we had to investigate. In back of the church was a well and a long queue of people waiting to fill up. We're not sure if this is an every day thing or not, but I couldn't blame them for waiting as long as it took to get some fresh, ice cold, unflavored, noncarbonated, non table or medical well water.