[Russian] - Where are we? - We are in Brest!
[English] - To give you a little bit of backstory, I went to Belarus last year,
went to hang out with my friend, Rémy, for New Year's Eve and I went to Grodno
which has a special five-day visa-free regime. Afterwards things didn't quite go
as to plan because I was I was invited back to Belarus and I went to the
embassy, the Belarusian embassy in Kiev to get my visa to stay there and learn
Belarusian but unfortunately it turned out that I was put on a list of people who
were banned from entry to the country. The ban turn out to be for one year. Now I
can actually go back to least in principle go back to Belarus so I'm
gonna take advantage of a new regime that's come out which is go to Brest
which is another city right on the border of Poland. I've read a
little bit about it in history so I'm interested to see, it has a nice fortress
apparently so I'm intrigued. I'm also intrigued to see if I have problems at
the border. Hopefully everything goes smoothly and I'm allowed back in to
Belarus so come with me and let's go to Belarus!
Okay everybody! I've obviously made it to Belarus. This is a little bit of proof.
This is was in my apartment, an overview.
It says 'Беларусь - наша радзіма' ('Belarus - our homeland').
I'm not sure how to pronounce that in Belarusian so that's ... it's got some
fun facts seems to be like a children's book about this country so how did it go
yesterday? Yeah, it's definitely one of the tensest border crossings I've been
through in a long time. I got to the border. Yeah, I described my issues that
I'd had in the past with entering Belarus and what happens is that you get
off the bus and he also have to bring all your stuff, right?
That includes your suitcase because they're gonna examine it and obviously
all handbags and everything else that you gotta happen to be carrying and they
kind of lock a door behind. It's a ... yeah ... a bit different to going through the
border in any other country I've been in Europe. So when I went to the border
guard it actually been the first time that she had had to process someone
under this five day visa-free regime because it's quite new. It only started
like I guess on January first I think for this particular city, Brest. So that's
like two months ago and it was her first time doing it she had to make a few
calls, speak to some colleagues so I took a while I was actually the last person
basically to be going through so it took about 15 minutes for her to process
everything but she was really friendly and yeah which is cool because yeah
there were no issues she actually thought it was my first time in Belarus
which of course I agreed with it is my first time in Brest, Belarus at least so
when I was going through I didn't actually understand one of her questions and
there was a girl been on the bus with me and she quite kindly offered to help a
little bit in case i didn't understand something so she actually waited with me
which helped a lot not just with me getting through the border control, the
passport control itself, getting my passport stamped, making sure that my
visa free you know status is all fine. Also then I had to go on to customs and
have my goods or my belongings also vetted and she also stood around there
in case I had an issue. The border guard, the customs officer I kid you not
actually remind me a little bit Lukashenko without the moustache. I don't
know ... maybe it's just the fact that I was in Belarus and he asked me a few
questions like am I carrying drugs? What's in my suitcase? I said I have
clothes and a camera. Of course, my camera happens to be a drone which I wasn't
sure if they would be very cool with ... drones are not illegal from what I read
in Belarus. It is illegal to film official buildings or something like that. It's
not very clear to me and I saw another video on YouTube where someone went
around Minsk actually spoke to the police officers and they didn't even seem to
have a consensus themselves about you know what the rule exactly is and
whether they would enforce it or not but this particular customs officer just
asked me if I had drugs and all these things then looked at the suitcase and
he didn't examine any further. Luckily everything went well
hopped back on the bus, got to Brest. I had to walk around this morning, this
afternoon. I went out last night of course in Brest. It's not super crazy
nightlife judging by Friday night, just a few bars but I did have a good time and
met a good few local people already and actually met some, a Spanish guy
and an Argentinian guy who actually live here and work coaching the local football
team so that was also nice and people as you would expect in Belarus are really
friendly to foreigners. There is very little tourism here. I am enjoying my
stay. I am looking forward to seeing the fortress maybe when the weather gets a
little bit better because it has been cloudy and it is extremely cold
it's like lower than minus 10 Celsius but that's all coming up so let's go and
I will ... come with me and I'll show you a little bit of Brest, Belarus.
[Russian] - Sasha ... firstly, who are you? Where are we? What is there to see here in Brest?
- We have a really pretty town. You can go and see our amazing fortress.
You can go to see the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park which has a lot of interesting wildlife.
You can see in our nice town many cool places.
A wonderful alley lanterns on which we are now.
You can look at each enterprise has its own symbol, which you can see in the form of a flashlight.
And in principle, all people are very beautiful and friendly. Come here!
We love tourists. We would be really glad.
- And lots of pretty girls here as well, right? - Thanks.
- Like for example, our Sasha, from Brest. Cool. - That's really nice, thank you, for the sweet compliment.
[English] Hey, hey! Welcome to Brest in Belarus. I'm here
on the main pedestrian thoroughfare called Sovietiskaia and I'm
gonna give you a little look around the town. This is a town of about yeah
350,000 people on the border with Poland and it's just recently opened up for
tourists from Western Europe and from North America. It has now a 10-day visa-free regime
regime. You just have to go through a little bit of a process that was pretty quick
online although they limited it to five days for me when I tried to do it. It
just started in January and I'm here in early March in 2017 so it's quite a cute
town and I'm just gonna give you a little bit of a walk through the city
center. One thing that I always notice is that it is a good bit more tidier and
cleaner and more organized than say the other countries that surround it from the
former Soviet Union like Russia or Ukraine for example. Belarus has two
official languages: Russian and Belarusian but here in Brest all I've
heard is Russian. You see some signs like when you cross the street
you can see a lot of stuff that's actually written in Belarusian but I
haven't heard it at all.
So many of you may be wondering judging by some ... a lot of the comments on my videos
here in YouTube about what do I have ... what do I think about Belarusian girls? So
overall I've been here for like now about three or four days and I have to say
that they are definitely very sweet, very attractive and very friendly as I'm
probably one of the first Western Europeans to actually come here to Brest
and actually spend ... take advantage of this visa-free regime so I'm definitely a bit
of a novelty and girls are pretty similar to Russia and Ukraine in terms
of beauty and values and personalities to a certain extent but I did notice a
little bit of a difference because Belarusians of course find it harder to
travel than say Ukrainians and as a result they kind of don't have the same
worldly experience as maybe many Ukrainians and Russians have because of
the economic differences and with not as much money to travel and also not
yeah needing visas all the time. So that's something that's a little bit
different but I can definitely advise it in any case as a place to go to if you
want to meet, yeah, attractive women. This is definitely a good spot.
[Russian] - Yes, draniki with chanterelles, here you go!
These draniki are with chanterelles and a cream sauce with pork. - Ok.
- This is a traditional dish?
- It's a traditional Belarusian dish.
- The most important dish here in Belarus, right?
- Yeah, yeah. The most popularity dish of Belarus.
- Ok, super! Thanks. - You're welcome.
[English] - So we have what looks like the biggest bison of this group. For sure he's in
charge because he's seeing what the hell I'm up to. Hello!
So hey welcome to the Belovezhskaya Pushcha which is a forest here in
Belarus. It's actually on the border with Poland so half the forest is here in
Belarus and the other half is in Poland and it's actually Europe's last primeval forest.
Originally the European Plains were full of these forests but I was a long time
ago this is before we humans came and actually just cleared everything out
basically and there's actually been some controversy in the Polish side because
they've allowed logging there recently and that's caused a lot of uproar with some
environmentalists but I don't really know if that's good or bad.
I'm not an expert in logging but I am here to see the park's most famous
resident and that's the big guy behind me. That is the European bison and they
actually were wiped out here in the park at one stage in the early part of the
20th century and they were reintroduced in the late 20s and they've actually had
a very successful conservation effort, a reintroduction of the species endeavour
because there are lots of them here lots of European bison in this park and it's
really they're quite cool actually quite friendly guys ... big and friendly so this
is one of the reasons I wanted to come to the park. It's actually the main reason I wanted
to come is to come and see a bison in the flesh. Also because it's actually a
symbol of Belarus and I thought it'd be a pity to come to Belarus and not actually
see one since this is the national animal in effect so it's one of the
symbols of the country so I'm quite excited to meet one in person and
they've been friendly to me so far so I'm gonna take you around a little bit
in the park. There are other animals here but this is primarily the one I want to see.
There are things like deer. I see some horses and some smaller animals but this
is the one that I wanted to come and show you so come with me and let's go
and talk to the bison.
[Russian] - Hi! What's up?
Everything good?
- Hi! What's up?
[English] So here you can see some bison grazing ... just gonna keep it steady as
possible ... quite noble-looking animals, I have to say. There's a whole family of
them here. Looks like one, two, three, four, five, six of them the
The end of my trip here to Brest is about to come. I gotta get on a bus and go to
Warsaw in Poland. That's kind of the first big city over the border is actually the
capital so now I've gotta get there before midnight as you see it's just
getting dark so I have a couple hours to make it on my fifth day because they
count the day of arrival and the day of departure towards my time here towards my five
days visa-free so if you've enjoyed this video give it a big thumbs up! Whack that
notification bell beside the subscription button. If you're interested
in these videos especially here in Eastern Europe and if you've been to a
country like Belarus then write me your experience below in the comment section.
I'm trying to create a community here of people who are interested in traveling
to destinations maybe that are a little less traveled
especially a country like Belarus that is just opening up so if you have experience
help everybody out. Write your comments below and then you'll be able to help
like-minded people. That's kind of what I'm trying to do a lot with the channel
is reach out to you guys there who have similar interests who like to travel to
more unusual places who like to travel differently meet local people so go for
it down there let everybody know and I will see you guys in the next video. From
Brest, Belarus it's 'до свидания!' ('Goodbye' in Russian).