10 June 2009

I’m back in St. Petersburg! I wasn’t able to write for the last couple days because I had a night train from Kiev to Minsk, and then a night train from Minsk back here. When I walked in, Olga was in a panic and asked why I was so late. I didn’t know what she was talking about, and she told me that she thought I would arrive at ten am, and had been worried sick all day. She even had her son call the dormitory and leave a note for Valentin to try to get a hold of me… I still had my Ukrainian sim-card in my phone until this afternoon, but apparently she had been trying to call me all day as well and when I switched cards I started getting text messages and missed calls. When I turned on my computer, I had emails from her son telling me to call immediately.

My last day in Kiev was fun. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I walked around to a few more places I hadn’t seen yet. One of the places recommended in the guidebook was this old house covered in weird statues from a few hundred years ago, and when I got there I found that it was across the street from the President’s house (meaning he doesn’t actually live in the building where I saw all the people dancing). After that I went back to the friendship arch to see the statues in the light, and right there was a path to the water museum (which turned out to be closed). From there, I walked around the city some more, ate a lot of ice cream (which didn’t make me sick for some reason?), ate some more Ukrainian food, and after buying some fruits and vegetables for the ride, went back to the train station. It was really an incredible trip and I hope I make it back there.

In my compartment to Minsk along with me were three Belorussian women and a Ukrainian man (a Belorussian man spent a lot of time with us, but turned out to be in a different compartment). Everyone was very friendly, and the older woman across from me kept telling me about how wonderful Minsk is and how I’ll love the city. She said that the city is relatively small, and I should definitely be able to see everything in one day.

Going over the border didn’t go quite as smoothly as it did the first time. Before the passport verification, customs walked through, and though he didn’t ask me to open it the border patrol officer wanted me to take my backpack out of the storage unit so he could check it, and when he told me to put it back he used some kind of slang and I didn’t understand. One of the other people in the compartment said “he’s an American he doesn’t understand your slang” he eyed me, said he understood, and left. At the next station in the check, while they started checking passports at the other end of the wagon, two Belorussian police officers got on at the other end of the wagon, looked straight down the hallway, and came directly to me. The first one opened my passport, took a quick look, took out his walkie-talkie and told them to hold up the train. He then went through every single page of my passport, and had me take off my glasses and put them back on over and over again because he didn’t believe that I was the person in my picture. After a few minutes he gave it to the second, and he did the same. Then the officer with the computer checking passports came over, and while he checked my passport and visa in the computer a fourth officer came onboard. While one looked me up in his computer, the other three kept checking my picture and asking me questions- where I was going, why, where I was coming from, how long have I been in Russia… I was getting really annoyed, so I told them I had other documentation and I ended up giving them my passport, my driver’s license, my Russian visa (which had a picture of me on it), my Russian student ID, and my pass card to the university before they finally accepted that I matched the picture…almost twenty minutes after they finished with everyone else.

Later that night the Ukrainian man in my compartment was talking with the Belorussian man about how Belorussia is becoming more and more isolated because nobody wants to go there and all the intelligentsia is leaving or restricted by the government. The older woman from Minsk overheard, and started telling him that he’s wrong. She said ‘that’s not true! Students go all over the world!’ and he told her ‘not anymore. They stopped coming back. Your government doesn’t let anyone go west anymore.’ They went back and forth for a while, and I started feeling bad for her because she was trying so hard to defend her country but it was clear she was losing the argument and eventually she just stopped and sat quietly until she went to bed.

We arrived in Minsk a few minutes before six am. I went with the Ukrainian from my compartment into the train station, where he helped me find an ATM and the storage lockers for luggage. I didn’t know what I would be doing, so I figured I’d take out around $50 to be safe, that way I could do whatever I wanted and just exchange whatever I had left over to Russian rubles. I couldn’t believe the hyper-inflated currency in Belarus. Sixty American dollars came out to ONE HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND Belorussian Rubles. Absolutely ridiculous! I started laughing when the money came out of the ATM and all the people in line behind me gave me dirty looks, especially when I took out my camera and took a picture of the bills.

I walked out of the train station, and the skies opened up and it immediately started to downpour. The newsstands hadn’t opened yet so I couldn’t buy a map of the city, so I had to just wait in the stairwell to the metro until seven (I didn’t really want to just start exploring). When the stand finally opened, I told the woman I was a tourist in the city and I needed a good map of the city. She suggested one, so I bought it. When I went back into the metro, I was very confused. The map didn’t have a metro plan (great map to sell a tourist) but stops were shown on the map of the city. The plan of the metro was displayed on the platform, but the names of the stops didn’t match the names on the map. After about 10 minutes of going back and forth between my map and the metro plan, I finally just got on a train. There were only two lines in the city, so I figured from the connecting point I could figure out where to go. When I got out of the train, and walked out onto the street, I realized what the problem was. My map was printed in Russian. Though unlike in the Ukraine where people go back and forth between languages, everyone generally speaks in Russian in Belarus…but everything is written in Belorussian… meaning I had a map where everything was translated and written in Russian, but the street signs, names of museums and monuments, metro stops…everything was written in Belorussian. First of all, I don’t understand why anyone would make a map that where the text doesn’t match the actual names of the locations, and second of all why would someone recommend it to a tourist. My day only got better from there.

It was still pouring, and I was hungry and wanted to get out of the rain. Everything was still closed, but I didn’t want to sit in the metro for a few hours. There was a McDonald’s on the corner that had already opened, so I went in and had breakfast and sat for a while. I’m working hard to fulfill American stereotypes- I haven’t eaten in an American McDonald’s in years… but I’ve now eaten McDonald’s in four different countries (yes I tried it in Kiev too). I sat for about an hour, and then decided to head out to start seeing things that didn’t close, i.e. monuments and memorials. What a disappointment. The map had two sides- one that was a standard diagram of the city, and the other was a colorful drawing of the city with all the landmarks marked and described. Every one of the outdoor monuments and memorials was pictured as an enormous decorative impressive piece of art, when in actuality with the exception of two monuments in the entire city, there was nothing bigger than a Volkswagen beetle. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with a small monument, but there were pictures on the street and in the map that gave the appearance that these things would be entire buildings, and then I get there (for example, the monument to the soldiers killed in Afghanistan) and it’s a little boy standing on a fountain smaller than the kitchen table in Olga’s apartment.

I saw a few interesting WWII monuments and then decided it was late enough (around ten) to try a museum. I headed towards the museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War (WWII). On the way, I walked through a park where I took a couple pictures, and when I checked my map I realized I was right near the president’s (if you can call him that) house. The street was completely empty except for a policeman standing guard outside and a woman sweeping the sidewalk. The building was a giant cube with a flag on top and the Belorussian crest along front, but other than that it was completely unmarked. I saw the policeman ask the woman sweeping for documents, and while he was reading them I took out my camera and took a picture of the building. Now, I’m not sure why you would mark the president’s house in a tourist map if nobody is allowed to be there…but as soon as I put my camera back in my pocket and started walking I heard “young man!” and I looked up and the policeman told me to walk around the fence and come over to him. I thought about pretending I didn’t speak Russian and just walking away (I was about 30 meters away and there were two fences between us) but I really didn’t want any problems with the police. I walked around the gate and across the street where he walked casually over to meet me. After dealing with the police the night before I wasn’t really afraid of dealing with him, just not sure what to expect. He told me that it’s illegal to take pictures of the building. I asked him ‘why? What is it?’ and he told me it was the residency of the president. He then asked me for my documents, and checked my passport. As soon as I handed it to him he saw that it was American and grunted… but didn’t say anything. He gave it back and had me show him the picture of the building, delete it, and then confirm that it was the only picture I took. I told him I’m a tourist in the city and I didn’t know what the building was. He wished me good day and walked away. I was really surprised at how simple that was, but I’m fairly certain that if I didn’t speak Russian or if I had tried to argue/ran away I would have ended up in a lot of trouble. I told Olga about it and she said “in the old days we would have pulled out the film and ran!”

The museum was actually really interesting. I went to an internet café the morning before in Kiev to read up on Minsk, and they said that the majority of the museums are so boring you will “want to chew your own arm off just to get off the tour,” but this one was very well made. One thing that was consistent with all the museums here in Russia was that everything was about the Soviet victory…whereas in our museums it’s always an ‘Allied’ victory. There was only one exhibit in the entire four story museum that even mentioned other countries that fought with the Soviet Union, and it was a first-aid kit from the United States. It was a lot more graphic than most museums I’m used to, however. They had actual bones, gallows, and pictures of bodies. In one exhibit they even had ash from a concentration camp…

After that I went on to see more monuments. I walked up and down the city and saw every single out-door landmark or monument there was. When I made it to the WWII obelisk on the border of the city, I was sitting with my map trying to figure out where to go next when a 15 year old kid came by and asked me the time. I told him, and then asked him what there was to do in the city. We ended up talking for a few minutes. He named a few things I had already seen, and suggested going to the movies or go shopping because there is nothing else to do in the city. Then he started talking about how boring the city is because nobody has any freedom under their dictatorship (without any encouragement he went off on a rather interesting rant) and when I said that I had just been in Ukraine, he said he was there four years ago and would love to return. He then said “I’d love to go travelling, but I just haven’t had the opportunity. People are always saying ‘crisis, crisis, crisis’… but in all honesty, it doesn’t make any difference, because nobody would have the means to travel abroad anyway.”

I went walking around and found some park that took me off past a lake and an enormous construction site and got another view of the city. Finally I made my way back the road and started heading back. I decided to stop at the American embassy to register my passport, so that in the event of a more serious problem they had in their records that I had been there. On the way I stopped to look at my map and two kids came by and asked me if I was lost. They were very nice, and tried to help me come up with ideas for things to do. I told them what I had seen already, and the only thing they could think aside from shopping or the movies was the zoo. I asked if the zoo was interesting, and the girl said “well…there are certainly better ones out there.”

I put the map back in my pocket and just wandered around the city for a few hours. Eventually I made it to the embassy, and they didn’t understand why I was there. I explained to the guard, and he went inside with my passport. He said the business day had already ended, so he was trying to get a hold of one of the diplomats. He told me (and I had already read in the state department updates I get) that the Belorussian government expelled the majority of the American diplomats, and there were only five left in the country. I told him I didn’t really feel comfortable standing out on the street without my passport, but he said that without a diplomatic passport he couldn’t let me inside after-hours into that branch of the building. He did, however, stand outside with me while I’m guessing they did a background check on me. About five minutes went by, and a man came outside and asked me in a thick accent (in English) if I spoke English or Russian…which I feel is kind of a strange question to ask someone in Belarus with an American question, but either way I told him both and explained the situation. He went back inside, and I stayed and talked with the guard who turned out to be a pretty nice guy with a good sense of humor. Another ten minutes or so went by and a diplomat came out and spoke with me for a few minutes. I explained the situation, and she told me that in all honesty I didn’t really look much like my passport picture. I guess its true, but I mean…it was two years ago when I had a shaved head, a beard, and I was thirty pounds heavier. What can I really do about it? She was very nice, and gave me her card and cell number and told me to call her if I had any problems. I also told her about the visa process, and she was surprised at how much I paid and said of course it would be high but it was higher than it should have been and would look into it. I told her I had just taken the FSOT, and she gave me some good advice, and then wished me luck on the exam and getting out of the country.

I asked the guard about what else I could do, and came to the realization that I really had seen everything of interest in the city…so I walked around some more and then went to the main square to wait for my train. I had a lot of time left, but I didn’t want to just sit in the train station. I couldn’t believe how dead the city was. It was nine pm in the very center of the city, and there was nobody there. Small groups of teenagers gathered here and there, but for the most part the streets were empty. I asked one kid what usually happens at night in Minsk, and he said sometimes people gather to drink beer, but for the most part this was it.

At one point a homeless man came by and sat down not too far from us. He was the first homeless person I’d seen all day and I was really surprised. I was wondering where the homeless people were…I mean…the city is beyond clean. It’s completely sterile. There aren’t even cigarette butts on the ground, and there are people sweeping the streets all the time. I even saw people eating sesame seeds run over to a garbage can every time they ate a seed to throw out the shell. It’s like a hospital…but the country is also very poor. Well…I don’t think he had been sitting for more than thirty seconds before two police officers appeared out of nowhere and told him to move along.

I noticed a few adults in the square standing opposite me watching a big TV screen. I walked over to see what was on, and it was the news…if you could call it that. The anchor was going from story to story about how everything in Belarus is great because they’re just a great country, and it must be true, because one time someone in Russia said Belarus wasn’t terrible. It’s really ridiculous. They have some sort of complex where they are like Russia’s annoying little sibling. They are incessantly trying to compete for Russia’s affection. One story was about how a store in Moscow opened that sold imported Belorussian groceries, and they showed a clip of the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov talking about importing more produce, then for about ten minutes (no exaggeration) they showed one line interviews with random people all over Belarus talking about how they only buy domestic products because they Belorussian produce is the best quality for the lowest price and ‘if they’re even buying our produce in Moscow, then it must be true!’ At the end, they showed one old woman from Moscow who said she only buys Belorussian produce because she knows it’s the best out there. The next story was about how Belarus is building some new kind of helicopter to satisfy Russian needs. It’s absolutely ridiculous to me how obsessed they are with Russian approval. It’s not enough that all over the city they advertise Russian style and imports, have monuments dedicated to Russia, have essentially stopped speaking in their own language, and base all their industry on Russian demand…but they even use their media to continue to drill into everyone’s head that the Russians are superior and that they should be fighting to impress them. The impression I’ve gotten from the Russians is that the Belorussians are out of their minds, and while I certainly met some very nice people there, I think I agree.

Tomorrow I’m stopping by the Belorussian embassy because on the train ride back I went to sleep in Belarus and woke up in Russia…meaning I never presented my passport at the border. I don’t want there to be any risk of them thinking I overstayed my visa, because if I do end up ever coming back here that would make it very difficult for me to receive another visa.
This trip gave me a whole new outlook on these three countries. I have the belief that the following the collapse of the Soviet Union, all the former members dealt with their problems much differently. Ukraine has done everything they can to move on, become independent and self-sufficient, and be their own society. As a result, they have economic problems of course, but they seem like much more welcoming, friendly people. I think Russia doesn’t necessarily want to return to the days of the Soviet Union, but they are doing everything they can to return to the days of battling for hegemony. They were once one of the huge superpowers in the world, and since they day they fell off the pedestal they have been trying to climb back up, and that has made a lot of them bitter. As far as the Belorussian people…I think they are stuck in the past… the government and older generations, at least. In the Soviet Union they were able to function on equal grounds with the other nations in the Union, since the separation have been unable to recover, and their answer to the depression was to try to return to the Soviet style of life. This has made them isolated, angry, and bitterly jealous of foreigners. In each country, I was told by locals that they think that the other two are crazy. I don’t know who’s right, because they all have some crazy ideas about America, so all I can say is that I think the Ukrainians have done the best for themselves to deal with the social, economic and emotional backlash of the breakup of the USSR, the Russians have set a goal for themselves to return to first world status and won’t stop until they have the rest of the world nervous again, and the generation that built modern-day Belarus is very, very frightening.