SensFan

Great report. Now where is the next instalment? I understand that you can't post while at work but you should have no problems writing it all up for us there.

That one meal looks amazing.

FlyIgglesFly

8:00 am, Minsk style. This is not helping the jetlag, and I really should have picked up some coffee at the store the night before. The large gulp of NyQuil I downed before bed (to counteract the nap and four gallons of coffee products) hasn't quite worn off either.

I smash dozens of tiny mushroom flavored crispy bread stick things, which I did purchase purchase at the store, in my mouth and wash them down with some sort of grapefruit juice type product. Breakfast of those who have too much beer at dinner and shop for food on drunken impulse rather than well thought out necessity.

Andrei rings me a little before 9:00 to let me know he's in the parking lot and ready to start the day's activities. It's snowed probably six inches overnight and the small, uneven parking lot hasn't been touched by any snow removal equipment. This will become relevent.

Andrei's vehicle is a Skoda Superb and, though kept in immaculate condition by a doting owner, has a name which could at best be described as misleading.

Andrei's English, unlike the car, is superb. For someone with a bit of a Jersey accent, this is important. Whenever I try to lose the accent and speak clearly it's almost like I'm translating before speaking. If I had a southern accent at least the slow pace of my drawl would allow others time to understand me. As it is, I get animated and quickly string words together in ways that would impress the Germans.

We exchange morning pleasantries, climb into his car, Andrei puts it into gear and...nothing. Engine is on, car is in 1st, tachometer is showing RPMs, but the wheels don't turn. And we're sitting in the middle of a parking lot reserved for some sort of traffic or highway police. It would behoove Andrei to not be stuck blocking the entrance to this lot.

The trunk is opened, a shovel is produced, and physical labor is substituted for coffee to wake me up. We take turns shoveling, steering, and rocking the car back and forth to break through the snow. Thirty minutes later, we've guided the car into the runt of the parking spot litter, with about 2/3 of the car actually in the spot. Andrei's mechanic has assured him he'll be by within the hour to tow the car and, hopefully, have it fixed by the afternoon. Both the morning and afternoon tours I'd scheduled are not going to happen.

Now at the beginning I said that, no matter what fun I make of Andrei in this report, I would recommend him without hesitation or reservations. How he reacted to this setback is why.

FlyIgglesFly

I'll do at least one more post before bed, but figured I'd be a gracious host like SFO777 and acknowledge all your responses which have helped provide the validation of my own awesomeness that any trip reporter worth his weight in cheese wrapped in chicken wrapped in bacon so craves.

thepixinator: Glad I could give you a chuckle. Not one of my finer moments, but certainly one I've learned from and have never come close to repeating. Though many FA's have certainly tried. I'm looking at you, Cathay Pacific.

mad_atta: That's the fine line I try to walk on flights, having learning from that DFW-FRA, err, accident.

isaifan, phlogiston, and halfcape: I'm glad you like the writing style. I'm trying very hard to remove all the swear words that feature so often in my daily vernacular. Good to hear it's working.

jfidler: Crossing at the border seems like just a huge hassle from everything I've read. And it definitely sounds like we had the same guy. From what I gather he runs a nice little harem of apartments throughout the city for short term rental.

Mr. Strong: I read that this morning too. My immediate thought was how glad I was to have gone back before the inevitable currency devaluation that Lukashenko will be forced to make.

iczs: Thanks, I'll keep at it. Probably two or three more nights of posts to go on this trip.

Sarfa33: That line just came to me about poor Irina. Seems like a great way to encourage a suitorette. And I don't beleive the beer was Golden Pheasant. I just ordered the dark (cherny) one, and that's what it came in.

ZFW-ATC: I was terrified that the apartment would be a dump, but it was definitely nice and recently renovated. And you're not kidding about the menacing nature of the KGB building. Andrei told me "You'd never know what it was...unless it was raining and you decided to seek shelter under the overhang of the main entrance. Then you'd find out very fast." Some pictures of it will feature though, the camera on my phone came in handy.

SensFan: I'll put one or two new ones up each night. I told you people at the start I was a government worker. You knew what you were getting into in terms of production.

FlyIgglesFly

I'm fairly laid back when it comes to unforseen situations that are really outside of the control of the parties involved. It was clear to me that Andrei wasn't neglectful in the maintenance. S**t happened. You don't get mad at the gate agent because snow has shut down the airport. You get mad at her because she's snarky with you after her incompetence is exposed during the process of rebooking you.

Andrei knew he had about an hour before his mechanic arrived with the tow truck, so he offered a quick walking tour of the nearby area while he waited. We walked over the Lenin/Independence Square and entered an underground shopping mall (which ZFW-ATC alluded to) just as it opened for the day. We got coffee before my acceptance of misfortune gave way to rage induced by caffeine withdrawal.

We emerged into the cold and began walking up Nezavasimosti, past the Hotel Minsk and the Casino Royale, my haunts from last year. Andrei both dispensed information and asked questions whose puppose was, I assume, to gauge my level of knowledge on the area and region. He was suprised to learn that I was aware of the distinction they have in Belarus between World War II and The Great Patriotic War. The Non-Aggression pact held from 1939-1941 so that, for the first two years of what the rest of the world considers the war, the Russians, and Belarusians, were not yet really involved in anything other than occupying, pillaging, murdering, etc in what had been Eastern Poland. But when Hitler attacked on 6/22/41...game on. Great Patriotic War time.

About an hour later Andrei got the call that the mechanic was at his car. He quickly walked me to the Museum of The Great Patriotic War, apologized that he could not personally guide me through, and told me he'd keep me updated about the car and that maybe we'd get some of our initial plans completed during the afternoon.

The museum itself was fascinating, thorough, and entirely in Russian. As I've said, I have a cursory knowledge of the language and, through cognates and a good amount of deductive reasoning mixed with already acquired knowledge, think I gleaned a decent amount of new information. I was able to see a lot of artifacts and exhibits that would never feature in the saccharine teachings of WWII history we get in the US.

The area between Russia and Germany during the WWII is, frankly, the most terrifying landscape I can imagine. With every book I read on the subject, and I've read a few dozen, I gain an even greater appreciation that everyone who lived there during that time period was, for lack of a better word, f****d. Intelligent? You die. Jewish? You die. Soldier? You die. Woman? You definitely get raped, you probably die. Collaborate with the Russians after they roll in during 1939? You die when the Germans enter. Collaborate with the Germans? You die when the Russians roll back through.

You get the picture. And this museum, along with another site I visited (and will later post on), vividly portray the terror and carnage that took place.

But you're not here for depressing tales from the east. I think you'd rather hear about the clandestine photography ops Andrei and I engaged in around Minsk later that night.

FlyIgglesFly

In Andrei's words, he had "overestimated his chaps" and their ability to repair the car that afternoon. But he was confident it would be repaired that evening and inquired if, free of charge, I'd like to join him on some night time photography of the city he'd been wanted to do for his website. I accepted, and was told to meet him "by the red church" at 8:00 pm.



It's a church.



It is red. It has a name, Church of Saints Simon and Helen.



Those glass domes you see are the skylights for the underground mall.



This statute is apparently a symbol of the opposition. Photos of killed or imprisoned dissidents, with lit candles, were placed at its base. Andrei didn't want me to be seen taking a picture of that. Sensitive, prying eyes and all that.

Speaking of which, remember the Militsya from my last trip who were displeased at my taking of photos? They still wander the streets ensuring no one takes photos of government buildings. Since there was snow removal going on, Andrei and I feigned interest in the snow removal equipment to confuse them.



"You're snow removal is so interesting, we are glad that Batka (Lukashenko) has made sure that such important public areas are clear of snow!"




"***click***, mwahahaha, not really."

(done posting for the night, more tomorrow)

fivevsone

thanks again, i am loving the report.

I am currently reading The Storm of War, and the Nazis just rolled through Minsk on their way towards Moscow.

ZFW-ATC

I hope that you are foreshadowing that you went to Khatsyn. I REALLY would like to see that place in the winter. Definitely a stirring tribute to the Great Patriotic War.

Eric

jackthedog

Great report and writing. I'm really enjoying it.

havepointswilltravel

=FlyIgglesFly

Intelligent? You die. Jewish? You die. Soldier? You die. Woman? You definitely get raped, you probably die. Collaborate with the Russians after they roll in during 1939? You die when the Germans enter. Collaborate with the Germans? You die when the Russians roll back through.

Wow! Your summation of a tragic event in such beautiful prose is comical.
Poor guys had morbid choices.

mangoMan

'nuff said. ^^

FlyIgglesFly

Andrei and I spend the next hour or so running around the city getting photographs. And when I say running, I mean running. Andrei was either in a hurry to get the photos or had no interest in dealing with any bureaucratic hassles from overzealous Militsya.

Some more photos from Lenin/Independence Square:







The Hotel Minsk is on the left in this picture. My room from last year was on the fourth floor.



Looking down Lenin Street, which we wandered down to get to the old center of Minsk.



Here there were a bunch of Militsya "supervising" another bunch of people...



..who were gathering "holy water" from a pipe. At night. In temperatures around 0F. I like to think that if there is a god, he/she is nice enough to have his/her people bottle that stuff and deliver it to stores. This just seems mean, having the people struggle to get it into bottles themself before it freezes. But I digress.



I apologize at this point for my lack of descriptions on some of the pictures. I'd kept a faily detailed travel journal from about 2010 through early this year, but for the life of me I can't find it since moving to a new apartment in March. I'm relying as best as I can on a fragmented memory assisted by captions I'd attached to some of these pictures when I uploaded them to my computer. Any of you Minsk experts who can clarify what exactly a building or location is, especially if I'm way off, by all means pitch in. I promise to thank you via private message, but only after I edit my post and transfer 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points to a moderator to delete your correction in an effort to hide all evidence of my mistake.



Andrei also needed/wanted to take pictures of the Velodrome and hockey arena, which were a few miles away. We got in the now operational Superb, parked quasi legally, and walked around the outside of the sports complexes.





It was probably 9:30 when we finished. Andrei dropped me back off at the apratment and we scheduled a pick up at 8:30 the following morning. He promised the Skoda would have wheels connected to a transmission. We'd be heading out to Khaytn, a memorial to a specific town, but also for all Belarusian towns that were either liquidated, burned to the ground, or erased from existence.

But it was only 9:30, I still had that wad of cash, and I had an itch to gamble.

So I put on a nice pair of slacks, dress shirt and shoes, and returned to the Casino Royale.

FlyIgglesFly

I noted earlier that I have a "fondness for gambling that has at times in my life straddled the line of addiction and degeneracy." There was a deep, dark time in my early 20s where I found myself headed down that road to becoming the caricature of every broken gambler, short on money and long on odds, desperately taking shots to climb out of the hole into which he'd dug himself.

Like alcoholism, it's something that you can never fully shake. For me, I've found the only thing that really helped me out of that hole was professional success which made the financial risks of gambling outweigh any possible gains. So while I still retain all the knowledge and acumen of a seasoned gambler, rare are the times when I actually sit down to play, and I can't remember the last time I sat down thinking, "wow, I really can't afford to lose this money."

But there's still something about sitting at a blackjack or poker table that gets my blood going.

I armed myself with a few million rubles. There was a different beautiful blonde operating the check in desk and, after presenting my players card from last year (which of course I saved), I was through the metal detector and the pat down from the Belarusian heavy.

There weren't any empty blackjack tables. I got chips from the cage and picked a table with a man in his mid-40s wearing a track suit with the top half unbuttoned. When entering a blackjack table, it's polite gambling etiqeutte, especially when there is only one player, to ask permission of those present to join. I gestured towards a seat and said, "ok?"

"Da."

We play silently for awhile, with nothing more than impulsive responses to dealer blackjacks or six card 21s. The other player gathers from my expletives that I speak English, and asks where I'm from. "Ireland, but live in America." He speaks passable English, so the comraderie typical of a gaming table begins to develop.

(I apologize for any of the blackjack situations that any readers don't grasp. I know not everyone plays the game. But I promise if we ever meet up and sit at a table with me, I'll teach you the game. Quickly.)

Now Dmitri, and I call him Dmitri because it sounds Russian and I can't remember his real name, was in town on business of sorts. It took me a good half an hour to figure out exactly what that business was. He'd starting mentioning things about how, "Minsk is so different than Moscow, here there are rules, in Moscow I am boss." I figure he runs some sort of company, probably with an iron fist. He's more insistant than players at a typical table in his "advice" about what I should do with my hand. He wants me to do things like hit on 17. Or 18. He enjoys loudly saying "egalitaaaaaiiiiire" when we push with the dealer. He gets more agitated as the cards turn south and I refuse to hit on 18, especially when the next card is something like a two or a three. And when he gets blackjack and raises his arms in celebration, I can see that he has a large star tattoo on each of his shoulders.

Dmitri is a Russian mobster. And a f***** powerful one.

FlyIgglesFly

Most people would quickly find an excuse to get up, cash out, and run away before doing anything that might offend Dmitri, especially since he was starting to lose while demanding I do stupid things my my hands. I'm afraid that such an abrupt departure, in the midst of his losing streak, might be misinterpreted as disrespectful and itself offend Dmitri.

I'm down about $100 at this point with probably about $200 left in front of me. I'm pretty sure that I'm either going to have to play until he leaves, play until I'm broke, or play until the tone of the table dictates a departure on good terms.

It took me another hour to go broke. I absolutely hit on 18 a few times. I ordered a Johnny Walker Black (cherny). I was brought black tea (chai). It amused Dmitri that I was drinking tea, "like Englishman." I did not feel that the international law, mentioned in an earlier post, which allows any Irishman to slug anyone for calling them English should be followed in this case. The wording of that law is vague and open to interpretation anyway.

I drank the tea. "Like Englishman."

Dmitri asks if I have been to the club upstairs and, when I say I have not, says I should go because "the women are very nice, they do many of things, not too much money. I am going later..."

Discretian is indeed the better part of valor when it comes to accepting a tacit invitation to go clubbing and trolling for hookers with a man in the Russian mob.

I lose my last bet, explain to him that was my limit, wish him well in the club later, and go back to the apartment.

I lay awake in bed that night wondering what exactly those "many of things" are and if the $300 I'd lost would qualify as "not too much money."

Discretian sucks.

FlyIgglesFly

I'm done posting for the night, but I'll leave you with a teaser from Khatyn:

tsastor

See it on the bright side: for $300 you got a nice conversation with a Russian mobster boss.