Minsk, Belarus Data Sheet:
05-08-2017, 05:29 PM
I just came home from a 4 day stay.
In regards to the medical insurance, you don't need to worry about it. I brought a copy of my Danish insurance, but they wouldn't accept it because it wasn't in English or Russian, however, upon arrival, 5 meters to the left of the control post I paid 4 Euros for a 5 day local insurance without any hassle.
General impressions:
I went with a close friend of mine for the christening of his daughter in Brest near the border to Poland. (his gf is Belarusian).
I'll share my two cents about Brest in this post.
It's dirt cheap. First time we visited a cafe in downtown Minsk while waiting for the train to take us to Brest, we paid 10$ for 4 pints of beer and 2 main courses. These cheap bills continued throughout our stay no matter the situation.
Example: Family dinner at the finest local restaurant; 11 people, 5 starters, 11 mains, 7-8 desserts, 4 bottles of wine, 2 bottles of prosecco and coffee = 230$ - and the food was excellent!
His gf had set me up in a hotel at the rowing canal slightly outside the city centre of Brest, paid 41$ per night, had a huge 2 room suite with high speed wifi, daily cleaning, swimming pool, fitness centre, restaurant, the usual neccesities. Got a local MTS SIM card for 5$ - enough for a months use they said. A taxi ride sets you back 2-3 $ to get to the city centre in 5-7 minutes. Supermarkets are huge and has a great selection of everything. The one next to my place closed after midnight, maybe around 1 or 2.
I went out 2 nights in downtown Brest. It has a real cosy town feel to it, combine that with hot chickas all over the place (the girls are mindblowingly hot in Belarus) who rarely see foreigners, and you have yourself a really interesting situation on hand.
Mind you, while the girls are really warm, welcoming, flirtatious, sweet and friendly, the language barrier is a huge matter as I know absolutely no Russian at all. Once you do find someone to converse with (and you actually can), their mind is simply not set up for a ONS, and my feeling is that logistics are NOT decisive in this matter! They're just too conservative
On the first night I went out alone. A group of 4 girls opened me when hearing me speak in English on the phone at a downtown cafe (by four, I mean the one that did speak English opened me on behalf of the others)
They took me to a place called korova. Awesome, cheap vodka martinis and a ratio to die for. I bounced around practicing Russian combined with google translate, actually had a blast. I got massive attention from the hottest girls, but as things progressed I slowly learned that something felt different. Usually when I get intense stares followed by simple sentences and massive kino, it's a pure sign that I'm about to seal the deal, but every single situation ended up in a number# and a plan to go out for a coffee one of the following days.
Well the 5 day pass and the fact that I spend quite a lot of daytime with the family helped stop that, but nonetheless, my feeling about this place is good. I know for a fact that they will open up for longer stays for foreigners if everything goes according to their plan, and then, spending two weeks here, even without much or any Russian could lead to great success. But accept that without Russian language skills, you will have to be proactive. Tinder is almost non-existent, maybe they use something else for online dating there..
Oh, and I reckon it was a big advantage to have local people help me out and save me lots and lots of time learning logistics and how to go about practical stuff. A 4-5 day stay will be a great introduction to Belarus even if you're fresh outta wherever, but without Russian or locals to help you out, consider spending a bit more time on the sideline until the perfect time presents itself.
Me, I absolutely adored it, escpecially since there's more to life than girls. And I absolutely loved the girls.