Brest is a grim city. A very Soviet-style city dominated by large industries. Nevertheless, the people can be good fun. In this pub pictured below a group of guys started chatting to us in passable English. They started with the preliminaries – where we were from, what we were doing there and such. They soon … Continue reading
A good way to get a feel for a country you are visiting is to take a train journey through it. Andy, Nigel and I took the train from Minsk to Brest and I snapped these photos to try and provide a better sense of what Belarus is like outside the main cities: Continue reading
The original Stalin Line was a line of fortifications along the western border of the Soviet Union. Work began on the system in the 1920s to protect the USSR against “western aggression.” The line was made up of fortified bunkers and gun emplacements, similar but less elaborate than the Maginot Line (and equally ineffective). Following … Continue reading
This was my first real view of Minsk – a big burst of Soviet-style architecture in the form of a new library. For the record, I love these sort of grandiose and ambitious projects. This was the view from my hotel room. We were told the building closest to us housed some sort of secret … Continue reading
The Velvet Rocket 