A Visit in Minsk, Minsk, Belarus (B)

Minsk is one of those European cities that are usually unheard of, both by Western Europeans and tourists visiting Europe. Tourist guides dedicated to Europe rarely mention anything about Belarus. Some people are even surprised it exists at all.

It seemed to me that Minsk was one of the most unknown among all the capitals on the old continent (although later, it turned out that there's another - even less popular - Chisinau in Moldova which we also visited). Having been to so many unpopular destinations, the fact that no one else was interested in visiting Minsk was one of the main reasons we got intrigued about it and, contrary to the popular trend, we really wanted to see it - does it really feel like a police state of Europe's last dictatorship? Is it gloomy, filled with communist-era Stalinist architecture? Are the locals cold and unapproachable? 

Getting to Minsk is very easy and straightforward for most of the countries now. However, it hasn't always been this way. In 2016 on the way to Russia, we tried to visit Minsk via Vilnius using the "on arrival" visa procedure that could grant a 48-hour stay. Unfortunately, the staff at the airport in Vilnius didn't know about this possibility and we were refused to board the plane. Nothing helped: neither talking to the manager nor showing the terms and conditions from the official governement website. We had to stay in Vilnius and skip Belarus whatsoever. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).