Saturday, 15 August 2026

 

Start: Minsk (BY) 11:30

Arrival: Vitebsk (BY) 15:30

 

Total: 279 km

 

 

Our last day in Belarus! After breakfast, we hiked up the hill to Independence Square (that's the one with the huge Lenin statue). The plan was to proactively exchange some money into Russian rubles.

 

 

The money exchange, supposedly open 24 hours, was located inside the 5-star hotel Minsk. Would we get a good rate here? Usually hotels charge you quite a bit for the service, but the concierge at our hotel had recommended it. It turned out that both the hotel and the exchange booth were state-run, so we got an excellent rate. A good start into the day, and the sun was shining too!

 

 

Just before noon, we were on our way to Vitebsk. From here on, we would be on new ground. Sonia expertly guided me through Minsk, improvising when a big construction site tripped up Yandex maps. I got honked at twice before I figured out the finesses of the Belarus red light rules, but all in all, we navigated the vagaries of big-city traffic quite smoothly. Soon we were speeding along the large boulevards of Minskian suburbia, heading towards the M1 east.

 

 

An hour in, both me and the car felt a strong urge for a drink. I filled up the tank while Sonia hunted down an iced coffee for me. "This is all they had", she said, handing me a blue can. "It has got a coffee bean on it, but I'm actually not sure whether it is coffee." Whyever not? "Well, they had the same one 'with sea salt'", my sister explained. "Who puts salt in their coffee? It's a Korean brand", she added. I eyed the blue can suspiciously, before carefully taking a small sip. Tasted like normal coffee to me. A bit watery maybe, not as lush as I had hoped, but at least they'd held back on the salt. We later looked it up: Sea salt latte really seems to be a thing in Korea. To each their own, I guess.

 

 

 

 

70 km before the Russian border, we left the M1 and headed north. The road wound through fields and villages. Luckily, there was very little traffic, so overtaking the odd tractor was not too much of a problem. Then the skyline of Vitebsk, a city about as large as Düsseldorf, appeared on the horizon. When we drove into the centre, a large building caught my attention. "Quick, grab the camera", I told my sister, and the gods of communism smiled on us, because right then the lights turned red and she was able to snap a pic. Podvig sovietskovo naroda bessmerten proclaimed a large sign on the building: The feat of the Soviet people is immortal. A very inspiring motto. All around the city, we found other remnants of a bygone era, the hammer and sickle, streets named after Soviet leaders and monuments of people who had toiled for their country.

 

 

Vitebsk is a very interesting, clean and touristy city with numerous green squares, promenades and beautiful town houses.

 

 

After checking into our boutique hotel, we set out to explore the place on foot. The hotel is located right on the main tourist mile - vuliza Suvorava - a pedestrian street with souvenir stands and restaurants. An artist was painting romantic city views right there on the sidewalk, a guitarist loudly showcasted his deplorable lack of talent, the smell of grilled meat beckoned out of Italian and Georgian eateries.

 

 

"Morozhenoe!" Ever the eagle eye, my sister had spotted what makes life on the road worthwhile: soft ice! We treated ourselves to two vanilla cones when the bells of a church started ringing (though these two events are quite unrelated to one another, I'm sure). They kept on ringing in various melodies, one bell seemingly chasing the other, for a good five minutes. They were still ringing when we crossed a small bridge, all decorated in flowers, over the rivulet Vitba, a mural on the banks detailing the founding of the city by fierce Varingian queen Olga in 974.

 

 

The bells stopped ringing, at last, when we reached Lenin boulevard. There, in front of an Art Centre, we spotted a statue of an almost-compatriot of ours: Karl Marx. Well, he's from Trier, which is Grande Région, so close enough in my book. But why this inordinately long call to prayer? When we crossed a second, much longer bridge over the Dvina River, the reason for the tenacious tolling jumped at us in all its resplendent glory: there, on the hill, towered the Cathedral of the Assumption of our Lady. "Today is the 15 of August", Sonia said. "Maria Himmelfahrt." Indeed it was. Though this is an Orthodox church and not a Catholic one, and their church calendar is usually 2 weeks behind ours, it does make sense that they would celebrate Mary's assent to Heaven on the same day as us. Maybe. Or maybe they just like tolling bells.

 

 

 

On we walked, and along the way we found a cute green owl. And many other cool things, but we took a pic of the owl, so that's why the bird gets a mention. By now my feet were starting to really hurt. 2.5 km was a bit far, after the quarter marathon yesterday. Why 2.5 km, the discerning reader might ask. Well, we were in fact not merely aimlessly ambling through town, but were rather purposefully zooming in on a major highlight of Vitebsk: the childhood residence of one of its world famous sons. He's not my all-time favourite painter, but he is an interesting artist. I am talking of course of the creator of I and the Village, Moishe Shagal, better known as Marc Chagall.

 

 

We found the unassuming small red-brick house easily enough. There were quite a few visitors vying for space in the five small rooms, but the garden was peaceful and charming, so we sat down on a bench and waited for the groups to depart. The rooms showed photographs of the Chagall family, household goods and personal items that might have been present in a bourgeois Jewish family living in the Russian Empire during the late 19th, early 20th century. I especially liked the sketches on display, showing scenes of the aspiring young painter's everyday life around the house.

 

 

 

 

Back in Suvorava street, we treated ourselves to a yummy Belarusian dish of trout and draniki. Then back to our hotel. Tomorrow, we will set out at the break of day, and we hope to make it to our hotel in Moscow before the sun goes down. Fingers crossed that all goes well. And why shouldn't it, I braved the streets of Istanbul and Tbilisi, can the ring of Moscow really be that much worse? If this sounds suspiciously like whistling in the dark, that's because it is...