The government of Belarus is trying my patience.
One November long ago, my friend Steve and I took the train from Moscow to Warsaw. For the moment, Moscow still reigned over the Soviet Union, which was dissolved the next month, on Christmas day, 1991. Thus our trip didn’t traverse an independent state called Belarus, which was born a month later.
CS&W is related to EarthPhotos.com, where we have photos from some 95 countries around the world. In 1991 (as ever) the Soviet authorities were intimidating about photography, and I was afraid to take any pictures when we stopped at Brest, on the Soviet/Polish border, to change the bogies on the rail cars for our onward travel. I imagine I took slide photos out the train windows while traveling across Belarus, but none survive today.
So I’ve been eager to visit Minsk in its own right, to enjoy that last little existing slice of Soviet-dom, and to add Belarus to the countries with photos on EarthPhotos.com. Next month, on 13 August, we’ll be in Vilnius, Lithuania. It’s a four hour train ride down to Minsk, so we booked a room for two nights at the Minsk Crowne Plaza hotel and a flight out with our old friend Austrian Airlines a couple of days later.
Our visa company, Passports and Visas, Etc. in Atlanta, sent off our passports and visa applications to the Belarussian embassy in Washington. The embassy web site says a letter of invitation is required, but not for US & EU visitors staying less than 30 days. Here is the pertinent passage and here is the web site. Plain as day.
Our friend Rita at Passports and Visas, Etc. (who has successfully gotten us around the world three times in not quite twenty years) called yesterday. Despite what's on the embassy web site, for a visa they would require a letter of invitation. They helpfully provided this faxed document listing approved travel agencies in Minsk.
Never mind that we’re already booked to spend at least 2288000.0 BYR ($760.13) in their country at the Crowne Plaza Minsk, and never mind the instructions on the web site. We’d need to spend something more with one of their approved travel agencies to get our tourist visas.
There are seven listed suggested travel agencies on that fax. I emailed all seven and the hotel for visa support. Four emails bounced back as undeliverable to the email addresses on the embassy fact sheet.
Welcome to Belarus. It appears to be far more of a privilege than I'd realized to visit in 2010.
Updates here as things change.
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