A Journey from Vilnius to Minsk: crossing into Belarus for history, culture, and unexpected encounters
The desk clerk at the Vilnius Hilton looped a paper tag through my suitcase handle and paused. “Aren’t you afraid you won’t come back?” she asked. “Of course not!” we replied – perhaps a little too quickly. “We’ll be back in two days!”
It was just past dawn, and outside the hotel a taxi was waiting to take my friend Monir and me to the bus station to catch a bus to Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
The desk clerk’s fears may have been overblown, but they weren’t unfounded.
Belarus is commonly and reductively referred to as Europe’s Last Dictatorship. For the last 30 years, Belarus has been ruled by one man: Alexander Lukashenko, who was freely elected in 1994 but has since overseen elections that are anything but free and fair. Today Lukashenko rules without popular support and suppresses all dissent.
While Belarusians who actively oppose their government are threatened with prison or worse, for the average traveler Belarus remains a safe and relatively easy country to explore.
Things have gotten more challenging however since the deterioration in relations between the EU and Minsk because of the war in Ukraine. Since the war, the border crossing between Lithuania and Belarus has become famous for lengthy delays. Wanting to maximize our time in Belarus we booked one of the earlier departures, leaving promptly at 6:40am. And lucky for us, our trip was far less onerous than feared. It took less than 90 minutes to arrive at the border and only about two hours total getting processed out of Lithuania and into Belarus. By noon we were in Central Minsk.
Our first stop was to attempt to use an ATM to take out cash. Since the war in Ukraine some western businesses have pulled out of both Russia and Belarus and we’d heard conflicting reports on whether our bank cards would work or not and were pleasantly surprised when they did!
Next we decided to attempt using public transportation to get to our hotel. Regretfully, I’ve yet to learn to read the Cyrillic alphabet, so finding our way on public transport was a real challenge. Thankfully, like elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, the subway stations in Minsk are works of art in and of themselves, making our subterranean wanderings rather enjoyable. With help from some English speaking teenagers we were able to get on the right subway and make it closer to our hotel.
The sun was shining and the temperature was great, families were out and about and enjoying lunch in outdoor terraces giving the city a real European vibe. Of course Minsk is a European city, but that can be easy to forget given the whole “Europe’s last Dictatorship” thing. We ended up stopping for lunch in a Georgian café. I figured while not “local” per se, anything formerly Soviet was close enough.
Our visit happened to coincide with the Russian Orthodox Easter. I’d imagined that this would be a much bigger deal than it was, but I suppose that eight decades of atheism as the official state religion reduced the cultural importance of religious observances. That being said on Saturday we saw plenty of families heading to church, led by women in colorful headscarves and carrying baskets. Outside the church families placed their baskets on tables in order to receive a blessing from the parish priest. He used a palm to spray holy water on the baskets filled with sweet bread and eggs dyed the color of plums.
The following day would be our only full day in the country and we decided to rent a car in order to easily visit two of Belarus’ premier tourist attractions, the Mir and Nesvizh Radziwill castles. Both are listed as World Heritage sites, and standing in front of either it is easy to see why. The lovingly restored castles are great examples of life under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. With tourism in Belarus so limited, we were among the few foreign tourists, most everyone else was Belarusian families enjoying the beautiful weather.
If visitors have to choose only one of the two castles, they often choose Mir which is closer to the main highway from Minsk, but I found Nesvizh the more interesting of the two thanks to the lavishly decorated rooms. After touring the Mir Castle we enjoyed a Belarusian lunch of barley soup and thick potato pancakes called draniki in town before making our way back to Minsk.
On our last day, the weather turned cloudy and colder so we spent time walking around near our hotel. In a bend of the Svislach River, the Island of Tears has a memorial to the Sons of the Fatherland, memorializing those who lost their lives in the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. This was one of the most striking war memorials I’ve ever seen. Perhaps fittingly for a conflict the USSR gave up on rather than won, the sculptures do not glorify battle. Instead they dwell on loss—women with hollowed features, some with children—faces that insist the cost of war be remembered. A translated inscription reads: “This memorial is built in memory of the sons lost in Afghanistan, on behalf of the Belarusian mothers who do not want evil to dominate on this or any other land.”
The nearby Belarusian State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War is unfortunately closed on Mondays, but a similar memorial there shows the pained expression of two lovers as the man prepares to head out to war. As nations sought to control the fertile land between two of the world’s great empires, Belarus was made to suffer the devastating effects of war more than most other European countries.
The people of Belarus continue to suffer today – unable to express themselves at the ballot box, they endure western sanctions meant to punish their leaders but which have had a greater impact on everyday people. Cut off from much of the world, the people of Belarus would be well within their rights to be angry or unwelcoming, but in fact I found the opposite to be true.
On the way back to Lithuania we stopped in Ashmyany. It’s a small city dominated by the spires of a Catholic Church and the gleaming onion domes of an Orthodox Church. We were let out to use the bathroom which was run as a small business by an older woman who handed out toilet paper in exchange for a few kopeks. On a small table near the door she’d placed a vase full of freshly cut lilac stems.
Back in Vilnius, the desk clerk was not on shift when we checked back in to our hotel. I found myself slightly disappointed. Had she been there I would have told her that of course we had come back — perhaps a little more thoughtful and a little more aware. But definitely with a deeper appreciation for the resilience of the Belarusian people.
If you go to Belarus
Should you be inspired to visit Belarus, please note that a trip does require some planning.
Traveling on American and British passports we received a visa from the DC and London embassies respectively. More recently Belarus has introduced an E-Visa which other travelers have used successfully.
Most travelers travel to Minsk via direct bus from Vilnius. These buses fill up quickly so you should purchase your tickets online in advance. Departures are available from both Central Vilnius and the airport.
The trip to Minsk can take between 5-6 hrs, the majority of the time being spent on processing bus passengers into Belarus. The immigration process often takes 2-3 hrs as one bus is processed at time. Logically wait times are less earlier in the day and tend to build up as the day goes on.
We stayed at the centrally located Doubletree – Minsk. I was able to book the hotel with an American credit card prior to our departure and the hotel quickly assisted with documents we needed our visa.
Both my credit card and debit card worked while in Belarus. I was able to take out cash at the first ATM we tried across from the bus station.
Finally, we rented a car for our trip to the castles which gave us a lot of freedom to visit at our own pace. That being said there are many guided day trips available.
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