Stop Press!: Briton cycling around the world, visits Belarus, meets girl!

October 9, 2013

As so often tends to happen I woke up keen to crack on and explore the last remaining outpost of tyranny in Europe. The short ride on to the Belarus border was relatively uneventful but I was worried that I might have some difficulties crossing the border by bicycle. I had read some information online that it was only possible to cross in a motor vehicle, a problem which would leave me either having to a) abandon the principles of the whole trip or b) waste a 135 euro visa and miss out on visiting the last remaining outpost of tyranny in Europe. On the 25 kilometre ride to the border I decided to get around this problem by not really thinking about it.

Any concerns I had were greatly reduced as I cycled past the long line of cars and trucks queuing at the border when another man on a bicycle appeared who was also clearly heading for Belarus. I'm afraid I cannot remember this man's name but for the purposes of this story I am going to call him Reginald. I really must stress that Reginald's name really wasn't Reginald, but that is what he shall be called. I imagine he would prefer me not to use his real name anyway. He was a middle aged man dressed all in black and looked like a character from the Sopranos. He was, without any shadow of a doubt, up to some suspicious business smuggling things across the border. All of which is quite irrelevant because he was very friendly to me and, as he was also on a bicycle, I decided to follow him wherever he went.

First stop was the Polish exit window. This took me quite a long time, because the Polish border guard was clearly quite bemused by the fact that my passport states that I am from 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.' This is, if you don't know, the official name for my country. This border guard was one of those who clearly didn't know and was further confused by the fact that I was obviously English, in a 'How can you be from England, the United Kingdom, Great Britain and Northern Ireland?' kind of way. If he asked me this question, he did it in Polish and I responded with a confused look, which turned out to be a great strategy for making him let me through.

I caught up with Reginald at the Belarus side of the border. He got me the immigration form that I had to fill out, which I did, and then insisted that I push to the front of the queue at the window. This appeared to be much to the annoyance of the others in the queue and I was very apologetic and embarrassed. The border guard looked at my passport and Belarus visa and then said something in Russian to my minder Reginald. Reginald pulled me out of the queue and marched me over to another building. Inside the building there was another window with a woman behind the desk. Nobody spoke any English so I had no idea what was going on but then I looked above the window and saw the word 'Insurance.' Realising what was going on I told everyone that I had already purchased insurance from the travel agency in Vilnius. Obviously no one understood this so I pulled out the form they had given to me in Vilnius. The woman checked this, and then Reginald and I marched back outside where, with even greater embarrassment on my part, Reginald pushed me back in at the front of the queue. "I'm really sorry everyone," I said, "But look at him, what can I do? You can't argue with this man."

The border official checked my passport, visa and insurance form. Any difficulties I might have been given were probably avoided by my scary looking bodyguard and I was quickly stamped in. Next came a quick stop at customs where a word between Reginald and the official was more than sufficient to avoid any further interest in what I might be carrying. I was through! I had made it to Belarus!

Reginald and I cycled together a short way in Belarus, him insisting on cycling in the fast lane of the dual carriageway. I was in the slow lane and tried to wave him over to the slow lane but he wasn't having any of that. He was clearly the kind of guy who lived life in the fast lane. On his bicycle. Once safely into Belarus he joked with me about what was in my bags. "Marijuana?" he asked with a chuckle.

"Cocaine!" I declared, patting my rear pannier. He did laugh, but I think he might have believed I was serious.

Reginald's phone rang and he stopped to take the call in the middle of the fast lane, getting annoyed with any cars that got annoyed at having to slow down to go around him. Then he had to go - he was only here to pick up a car to drive back across the border. I'm only speculating, but the contents of this car may have contained one or two suspicious substances, but would certainly have no problems getting to Poland. I thanked Reginald for his help and waved goodbye.

Goodbye from Reginald and his bag full of fifty euro notes

Very happy to have made it to country number fifteen - Belarus!

I didn't really know what to expect from Belarus. It is such an isolated and secretive country that I think it was difficult for me to have any expectations. I only had twenty kilometres to cycle to Grodno anyway, but I was quite impressed by what I saw. The road, for example, was in very good condition. The bus stops, always an important indicator, were in good condition. I went past a lake where there were picnic benches and things. It was all quite nice. The houses outside of the city were relatively simple affairs, but this certainly wasn't the poorest place in the world. It looked like a Westernized Russia, or a Russianized West.

I arrived in Grodno on a warm and sunny afternoon and made my way through all the tower blocks, of which there were an awful lot of course. They looked in much better condition than those in Russia though. After a lot of time spent being lost among all these similar looking buildings, I finally found my way to the centre near to the river. This was a different view of things, it was actually really nice.

Tower blocks yes, but much better maintained than elsewhere in Eastern Europe

There would be time for sightseeing later though, the thing to do first was find my hotel. I was staying at the Hotel Semashko, a necessary requirement for acquiring my visa. It was a fancy hotel and I caused a minor stir with the doorman when I walked in with my ragged, somewhat vagrant-esque appearance. He was soon put in his place when I addressed the female receptionist with a "Good afternoon madam. I have a booking, the name is Pountney, thank you."

It turned out that I did not have a room booked at the hotel at all. Oh no, I had a whole flippin' suite booked at the hotel! It was huge, I was basically given a whole floor to myself. I had a big double bed, two showers, two televisions, three balconies. If I'm honest, for a man who usually sleeps in a tent, this was all a little too much. I felt like a movie star, a feeling which increased even more when the phone in the room rang and there was a journalist on the other end of the line wanting to do an interview with me.

This call was very annoying on account of the fact that, after my record breaking ride of the day before and two successive nights of little sleep, I was really hoping to take a shower and relax for a minute. Not that I should have been very surprised. I had put a message on the Grodno couchsurfing group asking if anyone would like to meet up with me. This had attracted the attention of Aliaksei, the aforementioned journalist who had written to me suggesting that we meet.

So I soon found myself sitting in a cafe with Aliaksei and his wife, also a journalist, who was actually conducting the interview. The newspapers in Belarus are state-owned and so my interviewers work was only published online on an internet news site. They were friendly and were keen to stress that there was more to Belarus than the crazy dictator president. When pushed on the issue they came up with the smuggling to Poland as an example of another point of interest. "Yeah" I said, "tell me something I don't know!" After a little small talk the interview started and I found the whole thing quite hard work as I was so tired. I would have very much preferred to have just talked casually with them, but it was very much a question and answer session. If you can speak Russian you may enjoy reading the article that they managed to produce by clicking here or here. If you have google chrome it will translate the articles for you. If not, you could copy and paste it all into google translate. If you can't be bothered to do that, I'll give you the gist of it: "Briton cycling around world, visits Belarus."

I think my favourite part of the article is when I told them about my time cycling with Cherno in Sweden. This came out in the piece as 'Part of the way to Sweden Briton drove with a guy from Germany named Black.' I'm sorry Cherno! Either something was lost in translation there, or Belarussian journalists are really racist. I was also delighted by some of the wonderful and kind comments generated by the article from the Belarus people, such as 'The Briton , who travels the world on a bicycle, visit Grodno. We all fell down. We visited his lordship Briton.' I'm not at all impressed by this comment, nobody finds sarcasm funny.

I was quite pleased when the interview was over, even more so because I had arranged to meet with someone else that had replied to my message on couchsurfing, a girl named Hanna. Hanna was a pretty blonde girl who had that wonderful feature of not-being-a-journalist. As a result we were able to converse in a normal and enjoyable fashion as she showed me around the city. We got on really rather well and the day turned into something like the movie Before Sunrise, in so much as Hanna took on the role of the exotic, interesting, continental girl, and I took on the role of the annoying Western idiot.

As my tour guide Hanna explained, this stone church was partly destroyed and then rebuilt with wood, thus making it look ridicuous. My tour guide Hanna, by the way, is the very weird looking small blonde thing you might be able to make out at the bottom right

After several enjoyable hours exploring Grodno and learning about Belarus at about eight Hanna had to go and teach an English class and I went back to my hotel. As I walked in the receptionist told me that I had a message from another journalist (a colleague of Aliaksei) asking if I could do an interview with her the next day. Now I was really starting to feel like a movie star! Obviously I had no great desire to do the interview, but I was frankly too polite to decline, so I said yes and then went upstairs and threw a TV out of my window.

After Hanna's class was over I met up with her again and a friend of hers and we went out to a Cuban bar. The bar was great, it was really very Cuban, and there was a guy playing traditional music (from Belarus, not Cuba.) A very drunk man was entertaining everyone by dancing to this music in ridiculous fashion. Inspired by what this intoxicated man was achieving, I decided that the only way to combat my extreme fatigue at this point was to drink lots of beer. This was not a problem because I had found my way into 120,000 roubles and I had to spend them all by the next day. Worth noting however that this rather large sounding amount of cash was based on a generous exchange rate of one euro = 12,000 Belarussian roubles.

After a couple of hours Hanna's friend went home and the Cuban bar closed, leaving the two of us to continue the night at another bar. I learned a lot of things about Belarus from talking with Hanna but I'm not going to bore you with all the details about that now. As I said, Belarus is a very secretive country, the last remaining outpost of tyranny in Europe lest we forget, and I would hardly be bold enough to give away the secrets on a public blog would I now? In any case, I'm sure you're all much more interested to hear about how the evening ended after the bar. But I would hardly be stupid enough to talk about that on a public blog would I?

Today's ride: 27 km (17 miles)
Total: 7,030 km (4,366 miles)

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