Belarus

Visited: July 2024

Duration of visit: 8 days

Capital city: Minsk

Population: 9.2 million (2024)

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

• Crossing the border in anticipation of how long the inspection process will take.
• First touch with Belarus in the city of Brest.
• Riding a bike around Belovezhskaya Pushcha (Bialowieza Forest).
• Couchsurfing in Grodno enabled me to get a better understanding of local lifestyle.
• Cosmopolitan Minsk with a mix of Soviet architecture, extended parks, cultural events and vivid nightlife.
• Meeting a local couchsurfer in Minsk, who showed me the places where locals fill up with energy and relax.

Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, in 2024, Belarus, along with Russia, has been placed on a red list of countries designated as “no travel” destinations.

Even though Belarus has not directly attacked the territory of Ukraine and its army has not actively supported the Russian invasion, its president Aleksandr Lukashenko has openly offered Belarus territory at disposal to Russian army. This is just the top of the iceberg that has isolated Belarus from the Western World and pushed it towards Asian region to find alternatives in building international relationship.

I was afraid of visiting Belarus in 2024.

It all started with an unpleasant communication at the Belarus consulate in Vienne and continued by border interrogation in Brest, which was spiced up with personal check of my cell phone content. Nevertheless, after this methodic check-up I felt as free as in any other Western country during the rest of the trip.

Practically without foreign Western visitors, Belarus can be challenging to travel around without knowledge of Russian. The infrastructure is great, public transport efficient, food delicious and varied, people friendly and hospitable. Cost of travelling is low, sighting is attractive. People are very educated and particularly IT experts are some of the best in Europe.

Through Couchsurfing I had a chance to meet a lot of people, especially young population. They like to mingle, talk and party.

Belarusians are very knowledgeable about what is going on in the world and worried about the future of their country, since the international sanctions started to impact their lives and local oppression is stricter every day.

The country has excellent education system and founded alternative routes to import products that are not produced locally, but the biggest limitation is international travel to Europe. The access to Schengen visa and travelling to neighboring countries that are just a short distance away and historically strongly connected (Poland, Lithuania) has become extremely complicated.

Belarus offers a lot of rewarding opportunities to travel around, but the time will show, if the country opens to foreign visitors again, or it will continue off the limits for majority.