It was a great trip in these two weeks and I had the chance to learn so much of a country that is only 1000 km away from Vienna but in the mindset still in the Kaukasus. I feel that the country is starting to opening up - the new law about Visa free entry for 5 days for European citizens was introduced - the daily registration for foreign citizen has been made less strict - now every five day registration is fine - before it was on a daily basis - the number of tourist from Europe increase steadily now 40-50 % of the tourist to Minsk com from Europe the rest ist Russian. The cleanness of this country is amazing I have never seen anything beside Singapore in my live - everything is tidy, traffic rules are followed - nobody is crossing a red light - unbelievable - and the contact with the authorities I had were strict but correct and no bribing was asked anytime. On the downside you still have a hughe beurcracy that hinders development - learned about 6 month application time for a authority approval for an outside sitting area - or that Europcar is still not allowed to place a sign in the Minsk railway station that you can find their counter easier than after 15 minutes search ...also the reintroduction of the death panalty - leaves a strange feeling and a president that is now more than 23 years in power is propbaly not proofing the most democratic structures - people have disappeared that tried to act against the government ... and the news are not free - local people call it "the day of Lukaschenko and the weather" and also my Russian is poor the name of the president was mentioned nearly in every post before the weather ....
People struggle with the low wages and leave to Russi Patro work - I spoke to some people that have be deported from working on the black labour market in Denmark and Germany in struggle to survive. The prices inflation is still over 20 % per annum that lead to a cut of 3 digits in the Belarusian Rubel - so since this year 2000 Rubel are 2 and people are complaining about the high food prices - the economy is greatly depending on Russia and the cheap Russian oil - by the way the petrol prices are fixed - every petrol station n this country has the same price - and making the country easy to be blackmailed if they would turn too much to the west. People also told me that if this happens they do not know what Russia would do and that what happened in the Ukraine is a warming sign about the influence of Russia. The opening in the tourist area opens opportunities to grow in this part of the economy - agrotourism is under development and this can bring more people jobs and work in the future. However the language barrier still remains - English is not widely spoken and most of the Central Europeans lack knowledge in this language. It will be interesting what changes will come in the next years and in what direction the country will orientate - towards Russia or Europe - future will tell...
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