First thing you notice is the "anachronistic architecture" with high rising concrete block buildings and wide prospects in between. That sounds slightly appalling at first, but it actually takes only a short time to get used to it and to like it. Newer houses do depart quite nicely from the central theme of a grey cube and have colour, some different shape and fancy embellishments. However, noticeably the big advantage of building high is that you have a lot of space left in between (which was covered in snow by the time I was there). So you can have a lot of open space for lawns and trees and use parts of it for things like an eight-lane street. This has the additional advantage that traffic becomes a much lesser problem.
Speaking for the centre, the houses are not run-down as bad rumours try to make you believe. They are well-kept, nicely painted and illuminated at night and most of them are not simply brightly lit, but the light changes colours which makes for a nice effect. Together with the abundant Christmas illuminations (flashing and in all sorts of colours) reflecting on the snow-covered ground, it is quite beautiful in its own way at night. The city does, however, not have a skyline or a distinctive crammed centre, but is draped along various prospects with a river mingled in between which provides space for parks. The prospects are reasonably straight as a prospect should be, but they are not orthogonal to each other, so it is not a boring look at all and still challenges your sense of orientation.
The most interesting building is at the edge of the city centre on one of those prospects and it is the National Library of Belarus. Depending on your associations, it looks like a diamond, the death star or a giant role playing dice – in any way, it is quite remarkable. What makes it even more geeky is that the whole facade is covered with coloured lightbulbs which basically makes it the weirdest screen I've ever seen. Of course, they use this screen constantly and display anything from scrolling text (some welcome message, I suppose for lack of knowing better), the animated national flag or just a screen saver, i.e. some purple arcs flying all over the cube's surface.
Of course, is has an inside, but if you are not there on the day of the guided tour (which is in Russian), you have to become a member to enter – so I did. I am now proudly in possession of a library card complete with my photo and my name in Cyrillic letters. They scanned my passport for the picture which makes for some nice background and lacks my smile, because of the biometric picture. The library is as one would expect with art, reading rooms and books. They said they do have books in other languages although I did not check.
Another very nice the thing about Minsk and Belarus in general is its spotless cleanliness. There is not a leaf or a paper on the ground, neither on the street nor in the metro stations. There were ten to 20 centimetres (four to eight inches for the non-metric people) of snow and there was frequent snowfall, but they managed to keep each street clean to the kerb. No heaps of snow at the sides, no sleet on the street or on the pavements, which I find really amazing – considering how other countries that think they were better developed cope with much less snow. Maybe it is again due to the contrast with scruffy Manchester where you constantly walk through dirt, litter and liquids on the pavement, but I am still totally enthusiastic about how clean you can keep a city of an 1.8 million population.
Traffic in Minsk looks and feels a bit chaotic when you are in a car, but it works well. People on foot stop at red lights – which is quite sensible if you want to survive crossing eight lanes – and in the city centre they have nice pedestrian lights with a countdown in seconds until the green lights which then show a nice animated man walking and another countdown until the red light. The metro consisting of two lines works very well – did I mention that you could almost eat from the floor, even when people constantly walk in with dirty shoes from the snow?
You might well be aware of the political situation in Belarus and maybe what I am so enthusiastic about are just features of a police state. Admittedly, there is noticeable police presence on the streets and you are well advised not to argue with them about politics, but they are moderately helpful and not less unfriendly than ordinary people. I was prepared for the situation of being asked for passport, visa, registration and whatever else with a picture of me on it they might want to see, but a bit disappointingly, this never happened.
Another thing making it a bit adventurous to be there is the language and scripture barrier. You cannot expect ordinary people to speak more than Russian and Belarusian and you need a photographic memory to read or recognise signs if you are not familiar with Cyrillic writing, because there is nothing except for some lonely bilingual English-Russian signposts at each ends of one park.
Having said that, it is a very enjoyable city when you are with locals that speak your language and this is what I will write more about in further postings, so stay tuned again.
