Got the hotel car to the airport at 00:30, took about 30 minutes. The airport was surprisingly busy and most of the shops were open, and there were quite a few people sleeping wherever they could.
Got through check in, waited in the lounge, got on the plane, landed in Minsk, slept a bit on the plane, very uneventful. Looking out of the plane window we saw that Belarus is very flat, not a hill in sight, and quite a few forests.
Bit of a hiccup at Belarus immigration – they said we needed travel insurance, we said we had it. They needed to see it, but we bought the tickets on credit card which comes with insurance so we didn’t have a policy document. There was a bit of “you need insurance”, “we have insurance”, “I need to see it”, “we don’t have a document”, but in the end we just bought a policy from a conveniently located booth selling it.
The immigration guy then proceeded to look at the passport, look at us, check every page of the passport, look at us, ask us how long we were staying, why were we here, scanned the passport, and finally stamped it. I don’t know if there has been a flood of Australian and English spies trying to get in lately, but it seemed a bit excessive.
Changed some money and asked at information how much a taxi to the city cost, she said 30 roubles for the official taxi which made me a bit wary to look out for dodgy ones.
Went outside and spoke to a guy with a walkie talkie and a sign around his neck that said “taxi” so I guessed he was official. I asked him how much, he said 60 roubles. Hmmm. I told him the information inside said 30. He said 2 people, 30 each, 60.
I told him we’d take the bus.
For the next 15 minutes we were approached by every taxi driver in Minsk offering ever decreasing fares, one guy even said free taxi, I’m not kidding.
We just politely told them we were going to get the bus, they didn’t seem to understand why anyone would take the bus. Maybe because we don’t trust you, I felt like saying.
We got the bus, cost 4 roubles each.
First impressions of Minsk – it’s big. Such a contrast from Tbilisi. The airport to the bus station took about 30 minutes along a freeway, the road a lot better than Georgia, and we hit the outskirts of Minsk quickly. There were lots of modern apartment blocks, then as we got closer to the centre we saw some grand buildings – a library, university and the state circus building among others.
Everything looked well maintained and clean. It was sunny and about 24C.
Got dropped off at the bus station and walked the 800m to the hotel, paid extra for an early check in (a bit of a con if you ask me) which included breakfast so dropped the bags in the room and went to eat.
The breakfast wasn’t great, but did the job.
Went back to the room – we’d been given one that was designed for a wheelchair – lots of room, handrails everywhere. I wouldn’t have minded keeping it but the shower head was too low so I whinged and got given another room and a king sized bed.
Both of us were suffering from the lack of sleep so had a nap for a few hours, then decided that we didn’t really want to go out so I went down to the restaurant and had pasta and Song had a sandwich in the room.
A bit of a nothing day, we are here for 3 nights so will spend the next couple of days exploring the city.
