旅人る - Tabibito

Belarus. Minsk

In April 2023 McDonald's had already left Belarus, but its former franchisee have not yet decided on a new name, so they worked under the banner "We're open".

Freedom square. Both the town hall and the baroque Church of the Holy Spirit were destroyed in WWII and restored in the recent decades.

Pedestrian zones and renovation on Komsomolskaya and Revolutsionnaya streets.

Brutalist portal on Nemiga.

Rent notices in Chinese.

Electric bus near the main station.

I used the third line of the Minsk metro twice and both times at the entrance they demanded to check my modest bag. The stations ("Vokzalnaya" on the photo) are pleasant, but I will probably not use the Minsk metro again.

New shopping center near the station stands almost without tenants.

There are a lot of pleasant Stalinist architecture in the Traktorozavodsky village built after the WWII for the tractor plant.

House with a tower at the corner of Koshevoy and Klumov streets, a former Design Bureau of the Tractor Plant.

Actually the plant itself.

Minsk tram.

Old Soviet sculptures in the yards.

Eyeless birds near the ophthalmological clinic.

Garbage cans in the form of frogs.

Getting in (as of April 2023): the ground border between Russia and Belarus is closed for anyone except Russian and Belarusian citizens. It takes a long time to explain why this happened, but if you are not a citizen of these two countries, you cannot drive straight from Moscow to Minsk by car or get there by train. The only option is by air.

Where to stay: Hampton by Hilton near the central railway station.

Where to eat: you may try Mak.by (former McDonald's) and spot the differences. There won't be many.

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