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A couple of months ago I visited Belarus. The country is sometimes known as "Europe's last dictatorship" and still has very close ties to Russia, so I was really interested to find out what it would be like there.
In a move to increase tourism and open up the country a bit more to the West, Belarus introduced visa-free travel for Australians (and various other nationalities) a couple of years ago. Originally this was only for stays up to 5 days. This has since been increased to 30 days, although you have to register if you stay more than 5 days. (If you stay at a hotel, they can do this for you.) There are a few conditions for visa-free travel, e.g. you must fly in/out of MSQ (Minsk) and you cannot be in transit to/from Russia. It is also mandatory to have travel insurance.
In many respects Belarus still has many vestiges of its communist/USSR past. On one hand, the architecture in the capital city Minsk is unmistakably Soviet and there are tractors driving through the city streets. The KGB still exists and there's even a huge statue of Lenin in the main square. On the other hand, there are western fast food chains all over Minsk.
I flew from Amsterdam to Minsk and back with LOT Polish Airlines, via Warsaw. I'd flown with LOT just a month previously, so knew pretty much what to expect. When flying short-haul on this airline you don't get a lot of service (pardon the pun), but at least it's consistent.
On every LOT flight you'll get served a choice of tea, coffee or water and the same chocolate wafer bar. There are other items available for purchase (I've never seen anyone buy something) and then the crew will come through offering duty-free (again, I never saw anyone buy something). You'll then land at your destination behind schedule and the purser will apologise for the delay. I think the apology is part of their standard script.
In this instance I allowed about ~3 hours for the layover in Warsaw. So even though we arrived predictably late, I still had time to visit the LOT business lounge at WAW. This was almost empty during mid-morning and had quite a nice selection of food.
The document checks were more thorough than usual when I boarded the next leg to MSQ. The guy scanning my boarding pass looked at my passport and yelled out to his colleague "Australia! A-U-S!" His colleague typed away and after a minute or so I was given the all-clear to board.
When I checked in for the flight, it was showing as a Boeing 737-400. So I was a little surprised to walk onto a brand new Boeing 737 MAX 8. (This was back in February, before the groundings.) The flight was uneventful.
Taking off from Warsaw:
And landing in Minsk:
Arriving in Minsk was more straightforward than I expected. I did not have to fill out any forms, and the only questions they asked me were "visa or without visa?" and "travel insurance?". I showed them my Australian travel insurance policy and it was accepted. If you didn't have insurance, you had to buy a policy from a special counter just before the immigration desks. I believe the price of the insurance was less than $2 a day, so not unreasonable.
After a quick trip to the ATM for some Belarusian rubles, I ventured outside the airport and found the bus stop. There's an hourly bus into the city and the price is 4 rubles (~$2.50). The bus driver did not speak a word of English and would only accept exact change in cash.
I would estimate that 90-95% of the population don't speak English. I did meet a few people that could speak German, but otherwise it was mostly just Russian and Belarusian.
In a move to increase tourism and open up the country a bit more to the West, Belarus introduced visa-free travel for Australians (and various other nationalities) a couple of years ago. Originally this was only for stays up to 5 days. This has since been increased to 30 days, although you have to register if you stay more than 5 days. (If you stay at a hotel, they can do this for you.) There are a few conditions for visa-free travel, e.g. you must fly in/out of MSQ (Minsk) and you cannot be in transit to/from Russia. It is also mandatory to have travel insurance.
In many respects Belarus still has many vestiges of its communist/USSR past. On one hand, the architecture in the capital city Minsk is unmistakably Soviet and there are tractors driving through the city streets. The KGB still exists and there's even a huge statue of Lenin in the main square. On the other hand, there are western fast food chains all over Minsk.
I flew from Amsterdam to Minsk and back with LOT Polish Airlines, via Warsaw. I'd flown with LOT just a month previously, so knew pretty much what to expect. When flying short-haul on this airline you don't get a lot of service (pardon the pun), but at least it's consistent.
On every LOT flight you'll get served a choice of tea, coffee or water and the same chocolate wafer bar. There are other items available for purchase (I've never seen anyone buy something) and then the crew will come through offering duty-free (again, I never saw anyone buy something). You'll then land at your destination behind schedule and the purser will apologise for the delay. I think the apology is part of their standard script.
In this instance I allowed about ~3 hours for the layover in Warsaw. So even though we arrived predictably late, I still had time to visit the LOT business lounge at WAW. This was almost empty during mid-morning and had quite a nice selection of food.
The document checks were more thorough than usual when I boarded the next leg to MSQ. The guy scanning my boarding pass looked at my passport and yelled out to his colleague "Australia! A-U-S!" His colleague typed away and after a minute or so I was given the all-clear to board.
When I checked in for the flight, it was showing as a Boeing 737-400. So I was a little surprised to walk onto a brand new Boeing 737 MAX 8. (This was back in February, before the groundings.) The flight was uneventful.
Taking off from Warsaw:
And landing in Minsk:
Arriving in Minsk was more straightforward than I expected. I did not have to fill out any forms, and the only questions they asked me were "visa or without visa?" and "travel insurance?". I showed them my Australian travel insurance policy and it was accepted. If you didn't have insurance, you had to buy a policy from a special counter just before the immigration desks. I believe the price of the insurance was less than $2 a day, so not unreasonable.
After a quick trip to the ATM for some Belarusian rubles, I ventured outside the airport and found the bus stop. There's an hourly bus into the city and the price is 4 rubles (~$2.50). The bus driver did not speak a word of English and would only accept exact change in cash.
I would estimate that 90-95% of the population don't speak English. I did meet a few people that could speak German, but otherwise it was mostly just Russian and Belarusian.
