Trip Report: Belarus
Visited in July 2023
My second last country in Europe has definitely been the most difficult on the continent so far. In July 2023, I spent three days in Belarus. The only European country I need a visa for. And also the European country that takes the longest to get to.
Belarus is sometimes referred to as the last dictatorship in Europe. The Eastern European country has been ruled by Alexander Lukashenko since 1994, making him the longest-ruling head of state in Europe. In 2020, elections in Belarus, which were internationally labeled as sham elections and in which various manipulations were proven, led to the largest protests against the government to date. Months passed before Lukashenko brought the protests back under control (sometimes with massive use of force).
In 2021, Ryanair flight 4978 was on its way from Athens to Vilnius. Due to an alleged bomb threat on board, Belarus forced the plane to make an emergency landing in Minsk when it entered its airspace. The reason was that an anti-government blogger was on board, who was taken off the plane together with his girlfriend and arrested once the plane landed in Minsk. Ryanair itself condemned these actions as an “act of aviation piracy.” The EU went a step further and closed European airspace to the Belarusian airline Belavia. At the same time, it banned all EU-based airlines from entering Belarusian airspace.
Since then, it has become much more difficult for travelers to visit Belarus. You can still go by plane. Flights to Minsk depart, for example, from Istanbul, Tbilisi, Yerevan or Abu Dhabi. If you arrive to Belarus via this route, you will get a visa on arrival at the airport in Minsk. Another option is by bus. The borders with Lithuania and Poland are still open. However, you will not get a visa on arrival at the land borders, so you will have to apply for a proper visa through the embassy.
Anyway, I often regretted that I did not visit Belarus earlier when it was still relatively easy. Before the Ryanair flight incident, I could have flown to Minsk with Lufthansa via Frankfurt or with Austrian via Vienna. But I always thought it wouldn’t be the worst idea if I left a few (easy) European countries.
Now, I still could have taken a flight to Minsk. But my only realistic flight option would have been via Istanbul. The other destinations that offer flights to Minsk would simply have been too big a detour from Switzerland. But even the Istanbul option was not really a good one, as the prices for this route are somewhere around €800. Based on that, I decided to fly to Vilnius and take the bus from there. Even if that meant I had to apply for the regular visa.
Fortunately, it was not very difficult to get it. I sent my documents to the embassy in Bern and ignored the fact that they asked to send a letter of invitation. According to a friend who was in Belarus in May, the hotel booking was enough for the application. I paid €60 and my passport with the visa came back in less than two weeks.
From Vilnius to Minsk
My flight from Zurich landed at 13:35 in Vilnius. Supposedly, there would be buses from Vilnius to Minsk every hour, which is why I did not have a bus ticket yet. I assumed that you can still buy them easily at the ticket counter. While most of the buses leave from Vilnius’ main bus station, there are also buses that leave directly from Vilnius Airport.
At the airport bus station I met Anna, another traveler who has the goal of visiting every country in the world and has been to about the same number of countries as I have. Anna has an American and Filipino passport and lives in Italy. Getting the visa took a lot more effort for her than it did for me.
She had to go to the embassy in Rome five times (!) and also had to organize a letter of invitation from a tour operator for €200. She said that it was the most difficult visa ever for her. And that means something, because she has been to many African countries and had to go to Mexico City twice to get the visa for Venezuela (as it is usual for Americans).
Probably this cumbersome procedure is not only due to her non-European passports, but also to the embassy in Italy. Other Americans have reported that they were able to obtain the visa relatively easily.
The bus that went from the airport to Minsk was already full. So if you want to go directly from the airport, try to organize the ticket somehow in advance. In our case, this unfortunately did not work via the website of Minsktrans, which was the name of the bus company. For this reason, we booked a Bolt and went to the bus station in the city.
Once we arrived at the bus station, we were first incorrectly told that there were not enough bus tickets left for Minsk. But in the end we could buy two tickets for €41 each at another counter. Nevertheless, even if you don’t take the bus directly from the airport, I recommend to buy the tickets in advance on omio.com, for example. This saves a lot of stress and was even cheaper on the return trip (€31) than on the outward trip at the counter.
After we showed our tickets and visa to a yelling, unfriendly bus driver, who did not speak a single word of English, we left Vilnius at 3pm. To the border it took only about 30 minutes. When we arrived, the driver told everyone that passengers who had anything to do with the 2020 protests or have a Ukrainian passport should go to passport control first, as it would take the longest for them.
Already at the Lituanian side we had to wait about two hours until the passport control was over. Before we arrived at the Belarusian side, we took a break in the no man’s land between the two borders. There was even a duty free and the bus driver said that everyone could take a maximum of three liters (!) of alcohol into Belarus. Afterwards we waited another one or two hours on the Belarusian side.
On the Belarusian side, however, the border crossing was quite straightforward. The customs officer wanted to see the visa and the hotel booking. He also asked how much cash I had with me. After that, the luggage had to go through the scanner. And that was it, no more questions. The total time at the border was four hours. And that was not even due to a particularly high volume of traffic. Everything just went extremely slowly.
By the way, before crossing the border, the news reached us that Lithuania and Poland were considering closing their border with Belarus. The reason for this is that since the coup attempt by Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenaries are in Belarus and are seen as a threat by the neighboring countries.
When I read that, I briefly thought about whether it was really a good idea to travel to Belarus. However, closing the border would not have meant that you could not leave the country at all. You could still fly to Istanbul or something. It would simply have been a very expensive way to leave the country. And no insurance would have covered these costs.
And so I entered my 155th country. Like I said, the second last in Europe. This also meant that Iceland will be my last country on the European continent. For Anna, Belarus was the 147th country and the last in Europe. However, we were only over the border and it took another two hours before we arrived in Minsk around 21:30. So the whole trip from Vilnius to Minsk took 6.5 hours, with only 2.5 hours of driving.
Minsk – not the city I expected
I must admit that I had some preconceptions about Minsk – or Belarus in general. Somehow I imagined the capital city of the country to be dreary, gray and depressive. I expected a lot of people saying njet, dissatisfied with their life in Lukashenkoland and with a portion of anger towards foreigners.
Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit here. But to be honest, I imagined Belarus to be very similar to Russia in terms of mentality. I also expected Belarus to still look very “Soviet”. This is probably due to the many blogs that characterize Minsk as “a trip back to the USSR”. Therefore, I expected a city in the style of Tiraspol in Transnistria. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Minsk is indeed a beautiful city and also much more modern than expected. In the city center you can find beautiful architecture and a river flows through the city, which has a nice promenade for a stroll. There are also a lot of beautiful cathedrals or pompous buildings like the opera house.
It is not that there is no Soviet brutalist architecture in Minsk. Of course there is. There are also murals all over the city that remind you of the Soviet Union. The highlight is the most bizarre KFC in the world, which is located directly under a Soviet sculpture. A communist KFC, so to speak, what an irony. By the way, the sculpture was designed in 1960, while the KFC moved into this building only in 2015.
Nevertheless, I didn’t find Minsk to be a journey back to the Soviet Union at all. Minsk is a reasonably modern and beautiful city. There are little to no similarities with a city like Tiraspol, for example.
Speaking of KFC, you can find just about any international brand you can imagine in Minsk. While most Western companies have stopped doing business in Russia in response to the Ukraine war, Belarus doesn’t really seem to be affected by that. Even international credit cards still work sometimes (my Swiss cards as well as those from Revolut didn’t work, but Anna’s American cards did). In any case, I would recommend taking enough cash with you.
So, what can you do in Minsk? I think the city offers enough to spend two to three days there. Minsk has some interesting sights like the Belarusian State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War, other museums, the Island of Tears or one or the other nice city park. Or you just walk around and check out the churches or the river promenade.
The good thing about Minsk is that despite its two million inhabitants, the city is relatively easy to explore on foot. Many sights are located in the center. And if you want to visit the National Library, for example, you can take the metro and check out some of the pretty stations at the same time. Also, cabs are extremely cheap. A Yandex cab for a ten-minute ride within the city costs about two euros.
Apart from the sights, Minsk has other things to offer: good restaurants, cool bars or hip cafes – food and drinks are also quite cheap in Belarus. The roof top bar of the Double Tree hotel offers a nice view, by the way, check it out.
How would I rank Minsk against other European capitals? In comparison with the rest of Europe, probably somewhere in the midfield. In comparison with Eastern Europe, rather above. For example, I found Minsk more exciting than the Baltic capitals and definitely more interesting than Chisinau, Sofia or Bucharest. On the other hand, I would rate Moscow slightly higher, and Kyiv much higher.
Although the weather was terrible on the first day, as it rained almost continuously, my time in Minsk was still great and the city was clearly above my expectations. Nevertheless, we wanted to see not only the capital of Belarus, but also more of the country. Oh, and no news regarding a border closure yet after the first day…
Day-trip to Brest
On the second day, we hired a driver to take us all the way to the west of the country for one day. To the city called Brest, which is right on the border with Poland. I was in contact with two companies and then booked a driver who charged €160 for one day. That included car, gas, driver and about 400km of driving from Minsk to Brest and the same distance back, with a stop at Mir Castle.
A day trip from Minsk to Brest means a relatively long day. By car, one way takes about four hours. Fortunately, Mir Castle is quite close to the road between the two cities, so a stop there is not a big detour. By the way, you can also visit Nesvizh Castle instead of Mir Castle, which is also nearby. Or both. For us, however, one castle was quite enough.
The drive from Minsk to Brest passes dozens of cornfields. Basically, you mainly see one grain field after another, over and over again. In the Ukraine war, Ukraine (and sometimes also Russia) is called the granary of Europe. Belarus will certainly have a part in this. This region is a very important for grain cultivation and distribution in the world.
Furthermore, on this drive, which crosses practically half the country, you will also notice how flat Belarus is. In fact, the highest point of the country, Dzyarzhynskaya Hill, is only 346 meters above sea level, and more than half the surface area of Belarus lies below 200 meters.
After four hours we arrived in Brest at about 11 o’clock. The city of Brest itself is not really worth seeing, but most people come here because of the Brest Fortress. This fortress is a key symbol of Soviet resistance in World War II and also one of the main tourist attractions of Belarus.
The main monument of Brest Fortress is called Courage and consists of a soldier’s head rising from a massive rock. The rock has a hammer and sickle on it and in front of it burns an eternal flame. CNN once called this monument one of the ugliest in the world and had to apologize afterwards under protests from Russia and Belarus.
Whether the monument is ugly or not, everyone must decide for themselves. In any case, I found it a brilliant attraction. It is another weird Soviet landmark, which I always find fascinating.
Basically, this monument is the reason why we sat in the car for eight hours that day. Because otherwise there wasn’t really anything exciting to see (you need at most one hour in the Brest Fortress). Worth it or not? In my opinion definitely. But if you don’t find the pictures of this Courage monument intriguing, you can save yourself the trip to Brest.
After that, it was another four hours back to Minsk. Some people asked me after this trip if they had witnessed anything related to the Ukraine War in Belarus. Especially since Prigozhin and his Wagner thugs have been in the country for a few weeks. However, I can answer this question with a clear no. With one exception.
On the way back from Brest to Minsk we once passed a military truck with about 15-20 soldiers in the back. When our car overtook the truck, I really wanted to see if the soldiers had the flag of Russia or Belarus on their uniforms. Or even the Wagner logo. Believe it or not, I saw neither, but probably the last thing you could imagine. I saw an unknown emblem in rainbow colors on the upper arm of one soldier.
After three hours we arrived at Mir Castle. A pretty castle, but also a castle of the kind I’ve seen dozens of times before. For me, this castle was rather a nice place to stretch the legs again after already seven hours in the car. But since castles are one of the main attractions of Belarus, I was glad to have seen one in the end.
Interesting was a situation at the ticket counter. A woman who didn’t know a word of English sold us the tickets and seemed incredibly happy to see two international tourists. Nowadays Belarus probably sees much less tourists than a few years ago. Whereby “Europe’s last dictatorship” didn’t really see many tourists even before the 2021 incident. Even at that time, people would have called you a lunatic if you actually dared to visit this country.
But this scene was typical for this Belarus trip. People were extremely friendly towards us. It’s not like had deep conversations with many locals, but in places like the hotel, restaurants, cabs or cafes, I always had the feeling of being welcomed. Even on the street, I occasionally registered people smiling when they heard us speaking English. So my prejudice that the stereotype of a person in Belarus is grim was not true at all.
Belarus as a destination – worth it or not?
As I mentioned, Belarus was my second to last country in Europe – and also the most difficult. I mean, a visa and a journey consisting of a two-hour flight and an almost seven-hour bus ride, as well as the danger of suddenly having the borders closed, speak for themselves.
People often asked me if Belarus was dangerous and I would basically answer this question in the negative. If you made it to Belarus, the country is neither more dangerous nor less dangerous than other European countries. The only difference is that Belarus is not a constitutional state and hostage diplomacy sometimes occurs in this country just like in Russia.
This means that citizens of “unfriendly” countries are sometimes innocently sentenced to long prison terms, sometimes for trivial offences, and then exchanged for some countrymen who are in prison abroad. It is extremely unlikely that this will happen to a traveler, but it does happen. You can read the story of a blogger who was arrested in Belarus and then deported to Azerbaijan here.
99.999% of all tourists will have no problem in Belarus. On the contrary, they will meet very friendly and hospitable people who are happy to see foreigners, especially in the current time. When we were at customs entering Belarus, a Belarusian lady who was on her way to visit her family at home approached us. The lady told us that people in Belarus are generally West-oriented and practically all of them are against Russia’s invasion in Ukraine.
At the end of the day, Belarus is probably just another country bullied by Russia and it is even questionable whether Belarus will exist as a state forever or whether it will be annexed by Russia in the next few years. You can only feel sorry for the people. They are now paying the price for their government, which they do not want, with all the embargoes, border closures, and so on.
The only thing that made the trip a little uncomfortable was the constant checking to see if anything would change at the border. I looked on Google several times a day to see if I could find any more news. All I wanted was that nothing would happen in the next few days. It didn’t. Even today, two weeks after my return, the borders have not been closed.
Will I ever return to Belarus? Probably yes. I liked Minsk very much, so I would like to spend more time there one day. Other than that, though, I have to say that Belarus doesn’t have a lot of world-class attractions for its size. You can see the main sights of the country in just a few days.
All in all, I found the country pretty cool, though. Besides Minsk, I also liked the Brest Fortress very much. Besides, the country was pretty cheap and if you like Russian food, you will be happy in Belarus. I can definitely recommend Belarus as a destination. Provided, of course, that you accept all the travel hassles for entering and leaving the country.
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I really enjoyed reading this! A few of my friends were in Belarus earlier this year and got stuck trying to leave Belarus at the Polish border and then had to backtrack back to Vilnius. And another couple friend just visited last week. I hope to make it here someday too!
Another great trip report! I just remembered the bees infiltrating the bus crossing the border 😂