Alright, so I visited Minsk not long ago and wanted to share some of the highlight with you guys. It was everything I expected it to be. I did not spend much time there and did not talk to any young people so I have a very superficial view of the whole situation, but Minsk was cold, communist and too clean, impersonal. I like things like graffiti that in my opinion add life to a city, but there, the main streets are squeaky clean and the citizens are proud of it. "Unlike the rest of Europe, we don't have any of that ugly writing on the walls".

So the first day I went to the "Kamarovski" market. Very similar to other markets I've been to. They have weighting point where you can check that the seller did not lie to you and indeed gave you 2kg of potatoes. Pretty neat idea!

The market itself is quite big with loads of fresh meats and cheeses. I honestly wanted to buy everything. The butter in these places is so much better than the butter I usually buy from the store in Canada.

The prices seem absurd. I payed 100 000 BYR to get from the train station to the apartment (aprox. 10$). The economy is really not doing well and many people I've talked to just seem in denial. "The president will fix it, Russia has our backs" but the younger people seem more realistic and tell me "Unless you know someone in the government or have people backing you up in Russia, you can't start your own business here. THe government will just take it away from you". I don't have much knowledge on how true those statements are, but it was the general feeling of the people i've talked to.

Then I took the metro to visit down town a bit. Right after I took this picture a policeman came over and pointed to a sign that taking pictures was forbidden in the metro. I then noticed similar signs in the market. It's just something I didn't even consider.

The central train station

The newly built national library. It changes colors and even displays advertising.I took a short video. There is lots of construction going on in Minsk right now because they are preparing for the Hockey championship. Hotels are being built everywhere.

Most of the city is illuminated like this at night. Like LOTS of buildings. It's very pretty but this was just a wednesday night and I can't imagine how much it must cost to illuminate the city every night.

I saw lots of military when walking around town, I guess this was some academy. I like their hats.

Victory square with a flame that never goes out in front.

People ice fishing on the river. It was pretty warm that day and the river was not really frozen 500 meters downstream... I guess these guys know what they're doing

Obligatory vandalism near the Yakub Kolas square.