Today was our last day in Minsk. Barb and I had the day off from work, so we did some sight-seeing and souvenir shopping in Minsk with Alan, one of the intensivists. We all found some good gifts. Barb bought some lace, Alan bought a wooden egg, and I purchased some Russian dolls and Belarusian vodka! We got a quick bite to eat at a local cafe an...

Half an hour or so after I wrote that last entry, the fun really began. I ordered a Bockwurst (is this part of the fun? I'm not sure...) and boarded my train to Moscow. A few minutes after finding my 3-bunk cabin, the conductor came in to check my ticket. He was drunk. He didn't speak English, and I don't speak German or Russian (well not at 9pm...

The journey here started with two night buses and a changeover in Trafalgar Square in an atmosphere best described as "tetchy". Heathrow was an eerily quiet place, gearing up very slowly for a rush-hour I'd never see and there are no LOT desks, everyone is filtered through BMI, but nonetheless my luggage and my check-in for both flights was done...

We started today by souvenir hunting, which in the end even needed us to buy a new bag to carry it all home! Anyway, we then went on to the National Library and I paid 5000 roubles and had my passport scanned before being given a Cyrillic name and an ID and let into the recently completed, spectacularly beautiful and pointlessly vast viewing are...

Die Fahrt zum Flughafen Moskau dau**t läng** (1,5 Std.) als d** Flug nach Minsk (1 Std.) Die Moskau** Stadtv**waltung scheint nur ein V**kehrskonzept zu haben: Mehr Strassen. Und je mehr Strassen, desto mehr Autos. Besond**s am Freitag abends ist die Fahrt zum Flughafen so lange. In d** Business-Lounge gibt es keine Sitzplätze. Wir stellen uns a...

Long day on the bus getting into Belarus. Had a brief city tour of Minsk which is the capital of Belarus and the city had a very different feel to it then any of the cities we visited in Russia. Our dinner at the hotel was brutal and did not have a very positive effect on our bodies lol. The currency in this country is truly comical. We paid 10,...