- Just about to leave Grodno for Minsk!
It's gonna be about a four-hour trip and
looking forward to getting there and
celebrating New Year's Eve with my buddy
Rémy so it was crazy night last night
but ready to go for another one and
let's see what happens on the bus!
So how did I find myself in an obscure
Western Belarusian town without a visa?
Well it all started a few weeks earlier
when i made the fateful decision to
allow a friend to decide our destination
for New Year's Eve. Rémy, where are we going for
New Year's Eve? - Me, I think we should eastwards.
Take your compass and we will look to the east. What would you think if we went to
the last dictatorship in Europe according to Western media, that means Minsk in Belarus?
- And you know that we need a visa to go there? And that's messy!
- That's true that it's a mess!
- It's more complicated for a European to get a visa to go to Belarus
than it is for a Belarusian to get a visa to come to Schengen!
No wonder Belarus is the country with the
least number of tourists per capita in all
of Europe. There are just so many
alternatives to go to be visa free.
Why go to Belarus?
- Here in Switzerland or in the French or British media, we say a lot of bad things about Belarus.
We speak about Belarus as a state that is 25 years behind in terms of infrastructure.
A state that is not capitalist but still communist.
I would like to go and see another version of the story
- Belarusian embassy ...
- I've decided that I'm not going to go through the visa process to go to Belarus, the formal
visa process because it's a pain
and there is a fact an alternative and
so I'm going to be showing you how you
can go to Belarus as a European without a visa.
By now it's Christmas time which I'm
spending in Galway, Ireland and I'll
have to take a circuitous route to
Belarus in order to avoid my visa.
So my attempt to avoid the Belarusian visa
means leaving Galway, Ireland for Dublin
Airport then flying to Warsaw in Poland
before taking a train to Białystok
on the Belarusian border. Then the
following day I'm going to enter Belarus
with an invitation to visit the border
town Grodno only which is valid for
five days visa-free. Now Minsk is then
another four-hour bus ride to the east
as I can only enter and exit with this
invitation by vehicle at four border
crossings with Poland and Lithuania, I
have to return the Grodno and then exit
heading for Vilnius in Lithuania from
where I can get a flight to my next
destination: Odessa, Ukraine.
So this is how my day begins let's go to Belarus!
[You can now start to feel at home in Białystok]
Am going all the way from Galway on the west coast of Ireland to Grodno!
So here we have an honesty box where you can
pay for the water. You just leave the
money. There's no actual cashier so
what you think would this work in every country or not?
So I've finally made it to eastern Poland, in Białystok and going to stay overnight
before hitting the bus tomorrow and finally
making it to western Belarus.
- ... in addition the Belarusian girls that we find absolutely fantastic, really pretty etc.
All of them we can say ... I am a huge fan of Stalinist architecture ....
I'm just about to leave Grodno for Minsk. It's gonna be
about a four-hour trip ... looking forward to
getting there and celebrating New Year's Eve ...
... every apartment in Minsk should have
a dancing pole! We'll see who'll be dancing on that later with
a view on to ...
So Happy New Year to everybody! Happy New Year! [French]
- Happy New Year to everyone! - Happy New Year! [Italian]
Happy New Year! [Russian]
- ... all the time. Such words our youth have to say ...
- Hello!
Yes, right ... my friend ... ok ...
Rémy, what's up? You're live! You should say 'hi' to everyone!
- A joyful new year to everyone! Happy New Year! I hope you it will be excellent and full of emotion.
Enjoy it!
- So now back in Grodno which is the town to
which I was originally invited in western
Belarus. Now I got the invitation to go
to the museum of this Polish language
author. So behind me there is my bus to
leave Belarus, to leave Grodno and it's
been a real long trip in terms of
traveling but let's see how things go on the last ... on the border
Was this all worth it? Is it that
different say to maybe Ukraine Russia?
It is a bit different. It was very clean.
Things were very well organized in terms
of infrastructure. Everything was orderly.
It was quite pleasant to be there ... not
very stressful and people actually a
bit more respectful towards each
other than I've seen and say other
countries in the region like Russia and
Ukraine. Another interesting thing about
Belarus was the language situation because
they actually have two official
languages, one being Russian of course
which is spokem everywhere by everybody and
then Belarusian which is spoken by a
minority in the country even though the
country's called Belarus and I saw it
written everywhere,
actually on all the buses, signposts and it's
very similar to Ukrainian especially the
alphabet they use. It reminded me of
Ireland because there we also have
two languages we have Irish and we have
English so Belarus was pretty similar.
I did hear Belarusian just once in
Grodno. So after all my moaning about
this incredible effort it takes to get a
Belarusian visa, ironies of ironies today
really really today President
Lukashenko has announced that you can go
for five days
visa-free directly to Minsk Airport.
And why couldn't he have done that two weeks
ago? It would have saved this entire trip but at
least that's good news for the future
that you can go in and out of Minsk
Airport and stay for 5 days visa-free so who
knows maybe even Lukashenko heard all my
moaning about how much hassle it was to go
and do this Belarusian visa and all the
efforts I had to take - one week of travel -
just to get there that he decided this
made a lot more sense which I thoroughly agree with!
You should sign up for my mailing
list if you're not on it. That's ... there's
also another link to that below in the
description. That's because T have an
inner circle there where we discuss
these issues in greater detail and need
to be on the mailing list to sign up for that.
I also have some
additional bonus videos there and of
course it's completely free
so what are you waiting for go to that
now! So it's going to be 'до свидания!'
which is 'goodbye' in Russian from Odessa,