A Puerto Rican in Belarus - Part 1

On January 2, I traveled to Minsk via “marshrutka” (12 passenger van) as Néstor was arriving the next afternoon. I spent the night with my friend Elise and was very happy when she offered to drive me to the airport, which is located about 45 minutes from the city. We arrived at the gate just in time to see him walk through customs. What a great feeling to finally hug and kiss each other again; neither of us could stop smiling! Like me, all his flights had been on time and all his luggage made it through with no problems. Now it was time for his 2-week adventure to begin.

We spent the night at the Hotel Planeta and managed to squeeze in a few hours of sightseeing the next day. We didn’t have time to do much as we had to catch the 4:22pm train to Grodno, although I did finish my last minute holiday shopping at “Univermag” (the state owned department store). The highlight of the day was watching a fire truck empty its tank to create an ice skating rink around the New Year’s Tree in October Square. It was so cold that the water froze instantly and people began to play and slide on the ice, even without their skates. Now that was definitely something new for my Puerto Rican!

Néstor finally got some sleep during the 6-hour train ride to Grodno. And we had a blast playing with our camera. We had heard that you aren’t supposed to take photos of the trains (a throw back to Soviet times?), so we kept sneaking our camera out when the cabin attendant wasn’t looking or when he went to another car. The joke will be on us if we ever find out that it’s actually okay to take pictures, but we had some good laughs nevertheless. The train pulled into Grodno at 10:00pm and we dragged our luggage a few blocks to my flat. It felt great to finally be free of it. Next, I took Néstor to the 24-hour shop on Sovietskaya Street to buy some fresh milk and bread. Then it was back home to prepare his first meal, which like mine, consisted of пелъмени (meat filled dumplings) and a local beer. The only difference was that we had soy sauce, which is a very tasty way to spice up your “pil-main-ee.” So went Néstor’s first 36-hours in Belarus and our first night together in Grodno, my home away from home. (Check out " A Puerto Rican in Belarus: Part 1" under My Photos.)