Belarus Pt 2
We actually go to Belarus in this part
The train was ancient and behemothic. It was not, at first, at all clear how we would get in: the doors being a metre above the platform. Luckily a 7ft Belarusian man was on hand to haul us up one at a time. His mane was long and lank, the balls if his eyes were bright red.
We were seated directly opposite a pair of middle aged Belarusian women who mothered us through the trials of the journey. Headphones were apparently a luxury here. Obscure 80s disco tracks tinnily shuffled against tawdry flamenco and occasional raucous Belarusian folk music on one side of our compartment, whilst a film involving frequent machine gun blasts and monsters exploding played on the other side.
We underwent two waves of ticket checks and three waves of passport checks at two different intermediate stations, one of which took over an hour and a half. Neither of the stations were the kind you could get on or off of. The staff of the first wave were wearing camouflage, but not the kind that is of any use inside a train. The second wave were in furry hats. This group wielded many devices including devices for the scanning of passports, devices for the taking of fingerprints, devices for typing, devices for holding other devices.
There were two luggage searches, the first seemingly just to check that we actually had luggage, the second only marginally less cursory than the first involved looking inside the luggage, perhaps to ensure that the luggage contained possessions, rather than simply being fake luggage full of imitation possessions. Content that we were suitably encumbered, we were left to our own devices for the rest of the trip.
A comment on the plot. The main motive for visiting Belarus was to see their famous snow.
We had heard the Belarus was cold — really cold — and research on Google weather ahead of time had suggested that this was probably the closest country to us that would be covered in deep snow — a phenomenon neither myself nor Fergus had ever seen. As the train thrummed through countryside, we frequently pushed our faces against the freezing glass to glimpse the ground. We had to assume it was too dark to see the snow.
We arrived close to midnight and headed towards the hostel Viva, where we were staying. As we left the train station, we did not see any snow, but we did notice a man loitering suspiciously. He had a suspicious moustache. This was our first impression of Minsk. Our second impression involved the currency. Both Fergus and I are cautious travellers and so wear money pouches inside the front of our trousers (the safest place to keep absolutely anything). Significant inflationary pressure on the economy meant that these pouches inflated significantly too, with huge wads of cash. We believe this swelling inadvertently earned us the respect of both the men and women we subsequently encountered.
We had Skyped the hostel ahead of time and they were exceptionally helpful, advising about our letter of invitation and registration and the most popular types of haircut. It says a lot about the country that “the best hostel in Belarus 2014 & 2015” cost just 6 EUR per night (60,000 BLR). The hostel was actually built specifically for the 2014 World Ice Hockey Championships, alongside what appears to be a significant proportion of the modern infrastructure in Minsk. The hostel was 10 minutes’ walk from Minsk Central train station, but nevertheless 8 minutes of that walk was alongside a concrete flyover.
It was located in the ground floor of a block of flats. These blocks of flats had been built sporadically but identically across the entire southern half of the city, their pink colouring reminiscent of Pepto-Bismol.
The hostel was empty except for two comatose Russians who lay using their phones from the moment we arrived until the moment we left. The only time we heard either of them speak was when one answered his phone at 3am and had an extended conversation, annunciating and projecting his voice to ensure each syllable osmosed into our dreams.
On our first night, Fergus and I decided to sample Minsk’s nightlife. We were to discover that Minsk enjoys an uncommonly deep night, uncommonly devoid of life. We were directed 30 minutes into the centre of the city to a Rock and Roll bar, the only one that would still be open at that late hour (10.30pm). During the walk, we glimpsed the moustachioed man three more times. This would have been unremarkable but for the fact that for entire 30 minute journey we did not see anyone else — the streets seemed to be completely deserted. We could not work out how he was keeping pace with us, despite his heavy shoes and pot belly — and we did not once see him running or out of breath (we suspected segways, mini scooters or heelies). But the worst was yet to come.
We left the bar at around 12.30am. We walked one block towards the hostel. En route, we spotted a car park, containing alongside its standard grey sedans and estates, a very large red tractor. At our alcohol tolerance threshold of two beers each, this was the funniest thing we had ever seen. I had no choice. I had to take a photo of the tractor.
No sooner had I raised the camera to my face than the police had arrived: there were no sirens, no warning and neither of us could work out where they had come from or why they had been right there, next to a silent car park in a mostly residential area at midnight on a Sunday. Their opening gambit was a string of urgently uttered Belarusian syllables as their heels clicked towards us. Their hats were so big as to blot out the streetlights, casting long shadows over us. Having turned around with the camera still at my face, I now lowered the camera. There was a long pause whilst they waited for our response. Haltingly, in an unnecessary Russian accent, Fergus explained that we had been taking a photo of the tractor. We pointed at the tractor to illustrate our point. I mimed the taking of a photograph as if with a giant camera. Time seemed to slow, exaggerating the treacly way in which comprehension arrived on their faces — from their eyebrows downwards, visibly traversing several major obstacles before manipulating the moustaches and then lips. They nodded and vanished, as quickly as they had come.
It was difficult to pin down a precise lesson from the experience, but we would later learn when remarking casually about the fact that the British also manufactured tractors, that the Belarusians believe themselves world famous for their tractors. From that moment, we kept ourselves free from suspicion by building a formidable collection of tractor photographs — sufficient, we believed, to ward off any unwelcome attention from the authorities and no matter what the accusation.
From our second day we took our leave of Hostel Viva, and subsequently stayed with couchsurfing hosts. Despite out best efforts, none of our hosts were actually Belarusian. We are told this is normal and reflects a slight paranoia amongst Belarusians about interacting overtly with Westerners. Both hosts were Russian immigrants and happened to work at the same place: “Wargaming”, the software firm behind such games as “World of Tanks”, though they did not know each other. World of Tanks is said to have been inspired by real world events: as we were to later discover, there is no shortage of tanks in Minsk. Moreover, the advent of the game was described to us as the second major phase of Minsk’s economic history, following in importance only the invention of the tractor. Wargaming employs 2,000 people in Minsk, a number so large (comparatively) that for its Christmas Party the only venue capable of hosting them was the main football stadium. For this party, the company flew bands into Belarus from Russia to perform. Wherever we went, we heard whispered conversations about “The Party” in overtones that made us feel that this party was something to be vigilant against.
One host we did not manage to stay with was called “Art”. In an echo of my previous adventures, Art turned out to be a Rover enthusiast, a fact that moved me to the brink of tears. He was also an avid collector of owl figurines. When I asked him why, he replied “because there are lots of them already in my flat”. Another local we connected with was happily employed — and expected a long, prosperous career — currently studying a PhD into reinforced concrete. In total, 20 out of the 22 people I messaged ahead of time got back to me offering either their time or somewhere to stay. This is astonishing and a testament more to the friendliness and curiosity of the Belarusian people than to my cold messaging skills. I have never met an English person who has been to Belarus, and in Belarus did not meet a Belarusian who had ever met an English person. This cultural separation is completely unique in Europe.
Our first hosts were a Russian from Moscow (Serge) and a Ukrainian (Natasha) living together — as if in defiance of the current state of relations between their countries (though now forgotten, Russia’s invasion of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine was a fresh atrocity at the time). Natasha was an exceptional host, made us coffee and (perhaps more forcefully than necessary) fed us Ukrainian chocolates, as well as working tirelessly to help us “check in” with police, a requirement of our visas, but a topic on which not even the Belgian consular section for Belarus had guidance on. In the end, in desperation, we bribed the hostel to stamp our documentation a couple more times, something that did not seem to faze them, but which Fergus and I were exceptionally nervous about asking for.
Our second host was Ivan. We took it in turns to share his sofa bed with him whilst the other slept on the floor. He was a man taken to unusual economies, such as making all of his porridge for the week on a Monday morning. Small efficiencies like this allowed him to spend more time on the activities he loved, such as playing bass guitar and re-invigorating the Blues scene in Minsk. Indeed, our first night with Ivan, we met at a “Blues night”. In even the smallest towns in the UK this would be no innovation. My home town of Teignmouth in South Devon, with a population of 20,000, has its own entire Blues Festival, for instance. But the night we attended was the first of its kind in Minsk for almost a decade. The zeal of the musicians was legendary — at one point there were four harmonica players and three guitarists on stage simultaneously.
Whilst at first blush, the lack of a music ‘scene’ may appear to simply be a sign of backwardness, it is born of historical undercurrents that have contributed significantly to the country as a whole. I had asked Aleh, our host for Brest, ahead of time about whether we might attend a gig. He replied:
About music in Brest. Actually now is a huge crisis in our country and in belarussian music too. Not concerts and all band stop make music. :(
Not any secret gigs, not any not a secret gigs. Now started a time of “great depression of Belarus”. People sit in theirs houses and don’t think about entertainments. — sorry for my “positivity” :) but really shitty time now here.
Ivan explained his theory on the question of the music industry[1] so (though not in these exact terms) — to create a music industry, you first need an aristocratic or bourgeois class: a middle class is not sufficient and a country composed of subjugated working class is definitely not going to produce a live music scene. This is because training to be a musician takes many years, and most musicians are trained by people who were previously or are currently professional musicians. This training has to be subsidised by either the state (as is occurring in modern day China) or this wealthier class. Neither are effective in the Belarus.
Therefore, in Minsk, to find a Blues gig was akin to finding a car park which did not contain a tractor, to finding a street free of moustachioed, pot-bellied men, or to finding a supermarket with fewer than two full aisles of fruit juice. On this latter, it’s probably important to explain that the Belarusians love juice and that in any given supermarket, on average 20% of total capacity is taken up by juice. We are still searching for a reasonable explanation for this, but it may well be that dentistry is expensive and so liquid food dominates, or else that the market for drinking straws is heavily subsidised, or that the waste sewage system is not “robust” or that pasteurized smoothies are the most economical way of guaranteed nutrition.
Keep reading in Belarus Pt 3!
[1] Every place we stayed was playing music by “The Foals” — a band that is popular, but not this popular.
