OKM:
re Belarus,plenty of great ladies,as is the case with almost everywhere from the FSU,but the authorities play a real hard nose game with tourists.
Lovely reception I had on entering Minsk airport,along with a very long queue of unsuspecting visitors.
FRiendly the authorities are NOT!
Shouldn't worry about the fallout from Chernobyl too much though......only a few of em glow in the dark.........:))))
From all the Vitebsk I have never seen a man who would glow in the dark!:-)
Only some southern areas were contaminated by Chernobyl disaster. Nobody lives there now.
Our authorities are really not friendly. I hate this. But on the other hand Belarus is the safest country in all FSU due to the strong government policy and law enforcement.
Calm down, noone will put you in jail!:-) Not friendly mean that our country is still not too open-minded towards all the rest of the world. Stupid formalities and laws exist, people even working in the main hotels can be not attentive to your needs and even can be not speaking English. This is only about the state-owned hotel.
Gladiator was telling about the Minsk 2International Airport. Everything is always very formal, dry. No searches or interrogations of course(actually Americans are not even oliged to go through a metal detector) but border guards with stone faces will check all your documents like if you are Osama Bin Laden. But there is 0% probability that you will need to give any bribes unlike in Ukraine or Moldova. Our anti-corruption laws are almost severe so it is very hard to find a bribe-taker here.
It can be hard for an English-speaker to get around, few places offer services in other language than Russian.
For the stupid laws... In big ste hotels it is prohibited to have guests in your room after 23:00. Even now this stupid soviet law sometimes work, administration can ask your lady to get out. Another law is that a person with constant residence in a taken city can't rent a room at a hotel in the same city. Don't ask me why this insanity exist, I don't understand this myself.
So a part of our tour services is to make a person not notice any of these archaic stupidities. To my pride, our clients mostly didn't even know that such things take place!:-)
In general Belarus is a nice, very tidy and safe country. Don't worry about anything. I can hardly remember any more or less serious troubles to our customers in two years of experience.
a friend of mine was in belorussia couple of weeks ago. he is also experienced travelling to russia, ukraina and moldova. he reported, that he nowhere had to pay more bribes than in lukashenko´s paradise. several times per day hassled by police asking indirectly for money.
okm,
if a young lady describes herself doing business, this can mean all and everything. doing business can for example also mean, that she has a place on a bazar selling cigarettes or potatoes.
"biznes" is a very popular word in EE.
Minsk is a pretty place but as Felec stated they have some unusually haesh retrograde laws. My advice is to use a travel service to avoid unwanted problems. The people are good hearted but reserved until you know them.
You need to mentaly adjust your thinking and even the stern guards are not to bad.