Hi bloggers!

Two days ago, we woke up in Belarus after a long bus trip. It’s the last country we are going to visit before we arrive in Lithuania, our destination!

The official name of Belarus is the Republic of Belarus but we also call it in Dutch “Wit Rusland”. The official languages are Russian and Polish from which we didn’t understand a word. Thank goodness they also speak English!
The capital of Belarus is Minsk, the largest city of Belarus and situated in the centre of the country. Belarus is very dependent from the economical support of Russia. Russia provides profitable crude oil to Belarus and in exchange Russia can use for free the pipelines who are situated under Belarus.

The first day in Belarus, we visited the capital Minsk. We moved through the city by subway because it is very fast but we noticed that there was a lot of police and everyone had to walk through a metal detector. Of course the reason was the bomb attack of Monday 11 April in the metro station that was close to the president’s residence and the Palace of the Republic. There were 11 people killed and 126 people wounded. We read an article (see source article) about the bomb attack and we must say that we were a little bit scared.

Minsk is such a big city! Did you know that there are more than 20 cinemas and about 140 libraries? There are also a lot of churches and museums. The infrastructure was almost completely destroyed after the first and certainly after the second world war. The city is totally rebuilt with a lot of large streets and also the economy has improved. Nowadays Minsk produces e.g. trucks, bicycles, televisions..   

The journey was a real experience but I’m very excited to be back home with my family and friends and to tell them more about our journey!

Delphine Van Vooren

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk
http://www.belarus.by/en/travel/belarus-life
Article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/04/11/minsk-subway-explosion.html