One Year Ago

Last August, my company paid for me and to travel to Minsk Belarus so that I could do some training on our software system to employees of our new outsourcing firm.  It was a nine day trip.  I traveled with my coworker, David, and my company also paid for Kevin to come along with me (although I had to give up a business class seat for that!)  It was really a once in a lifetime experience and I'm so grateful we got to go.

It was a 28 hour trip from door-to-door.  We flew from Phoenix to Houston, then from Houston to Frankfurt Germany, and then on to Minsk, Belarus.  In order to get acclimated to the time change, we only slept a few hours on the way out, so by the time we got to Minsk we were completely exhausted.  The long flight from Houston to Germany was on an Airbus A380-800 with Lufthansa airlines.  I was amazed this thing could even get off the ground it was so huge.  It was a very nice airplane, it seemed new.  The flight from Germany to Belarus was another story. The plane had seen better days and the food was awful!

The Big Plane

We Made it to Germany!

My coworker, Dave

We were met at the airport by Tanya, an employee from the outsourcing firm, and she and our driver took us to our hotel.  We stayed at the Crowne Plaza in Minsk.  It was a very nice hotel.  We had a room with a bay window that opened onto a tree-lined side street.  Across the way was some kind of government building. I liked sitting in the bay window and writing in my journal or watching cars and people go in and out of the buildings.

Crowne Plaza

View from the Hotel Room

So Exhausted

Each morning we had a complimentary breakfast at the hotel.  The food was excellent.  I had crepes with fresh blueberries and pineapple most days.  They also had a chef that made delicious omelets.  We would try to get bottled water because it's hard to come by in Belarus!  They would ask us if we wanted it with or without gas (meaning carbonated or not).

After breakfast our driver would pick us up and take us into the office.  He didn't speak a word of English - so we could only say hello and goodbye to him in Russian.  He was there faithfully every day to shuttle us to and from the office.  Kevin's company allowed him to work remotely during the trip so he didn't have to take any paid time off.

The office where we worked was on the seventh floor.  At first we took the elevator - but the elevator was so tiny and old, it was scary, everyone would cram in and I got so claustrophobic.  Plus they would shut them off at 5:00PM every night.  I didn't want to risk getting stick in an elevator overnight!  So then we started taking the stairs - seven flights of stairs every morning and evening.  We had our own office that they stocked with drinks and snacks.  The office had a nice view as well,  though we spent most of our time in the conference room doing training.

Tiny Elevator - The elevator is basically the same height and width as the doors

Our Office 

View from our Office

They had fresh snacks on our desk each morning

The employees were very nice they would order in lunch or take us out to lunch each day.  One day we went to a mall where we ate at a buffet style restaurant.  I wanted to try several things so I loaded up my plate.  When we got to the cash register I found out that they charge by item - and they wouldn't take my corporate card - so Tanya had to pay for my meal. I felt terrible because I'd stocked up on food and she'd only picked one or two things.  The main staple is potatoes.  They also drink a lot of espresso and orange juice!  In the US they always give you a glass of ice water when you go and sit down in a restaurant, in Belarus they give you a glass of Organe juice.  There was no ice to be found - anywhere.  I don't think I saw one cube of ice the whole trip.  They had an espresso machine in the office and all day long they would drink from these little tiny espresso cups.  On the last day of training they presented us with some thank you gifts that were items hand made in Belarus.  We got a straw woven basket, a woven table runner with the traditional Belarussian colors and patterns and some candy.

Hands on Training

Tiny Espresso Cup

Dave and I with the group of employees we trained all week

Dave, Andre, Me (and Tanya not pictured) Out to Lunch

The hygiene (and fashion) is a little different in Belarus as well.  The guys smelled like body odor.  The conference room would reek by the end of the day.  They would wear the same clothes several days in a row - even the girls.  The bathrooms were not up to US standards either.  You couldn't flush toilet paper down the toilet - so you had to put it in a trash can next to the toilet.  Those bathrooms could get really gross.  Most of the girls wear heels, everywhere, and short dresses.  The girls school uniforms look like french maid outfits!

This company is one of the main employers in Minsk, so they owned many office buildings throughout the city.  We got to tour the consulting firm headquarters during one of our last afternoons in the office.  They have signs up around the hallways to 'Speak English'.  They do work for a lot of American companies.

Dave and I at the corporate headquarters building

Typical Conference Room - Each floor of the building was themed by color. This was the green floor.

Sings on the walls requested employees to speak English

After work each day we'd go explore the city.  It's a bustling urban city - lots of people walking around, lots of places to eat and shop.  Ordering food was quite tricky since we didn't speak Russian, and most people did not speak English. The employees of the outsourcing firm took us out a few nights, so they were able to order for us.  That wasn't always the case.  One night we went to the mall and had to find a buffet so we could point at the food we wanted to order.  We guessed at what the food was!  The mall was beautiful, it was underground with a large glass dome skylight in the middle that you can see from the street.  We found some souvenir shops and figured out how to buy things by the employee typing the price on a calculator and we'd nod yes or no.

The Underground Mall

In front of the subway tunnel with Andre

Out to Dinner in Minsk

Typical City Street in Minsk

Street Signs

Another night, Kevin and I were craving American food.  We had seen a McDonalds and a TGIFridays.  We first went to McDonalds but the line was out the building and around the corner, so we decided to go to TGIFridays.  Well, it turned out it wasn't American food!  Oh well.  They had to get a manager to wait on us because she was the only one who spoke a little bit of English.  We had to order our food based on pictures in the menu.

The one McDonalds in the city

TGIFridays

Kevin's Dinner

My Dinner (notice there is no ice in my glass!)

Dinner at TGIFridays

My company was nice enough to pay for us to have extra days in Minsk so that we could do some site seeing.  We told the consulting firm that we wanted to tour a castle - and they offered to arrange the whole thing and pay for us - which was amazing!  They hired an English speaking guide to take us out for the day to a castle in Mir and a palace in Nieswiz.  Our guide also took us to lunch and several other sites in the countryside.  The palace, now a historical site, once belonged to a rich influential Belarussian family.  It was very grand and opulent.  It was even surrounded by a mote and a drawbridge!  The castle was their summer home.  I can't describe how amazing they were, but I'll let pictures and videos try (See below for link to our pictures and videos).  I was fascinated by the stairwells at the castle, they were so curvy and steep (you'll see lots of pictures of them).  It was at the castle that I came upon my first squatty potty.  We had to pay to use it!

The scariest part of the trip for me was trying to navigate the airport in Minsk to get back home.  Our driver dropped us off at the door, and we were on our own.  We got inside and realized that there were no signs in English.  We couldn't figure out where to go or what to do.  We tried watching other people to see what they were doing, but everyone did something different.  I finally found an information booth and the person spoke English!  She told us where we needed to go.  I got stuck in security because of my insulin pump.  They stopped me because they didn't know what it was - and I couldn't tell them because I didn't speak Russian.  I kept saying 'Medicine', 'Medicine' but they didn't understand.  Finally someone in charge came over and waved me through.  Lesson learned - never go to a foreign country without learning how to say 'Medicine' or 'Insulin Pump' in their language - or at least have it written down!

I'm so amazed that we were able to go on this trip.  I have much more sympathy and understanding for foreign travelers now!  It also gave me a taste for travel and I can't wait for our next foreign travel adventure.

Click HERE for (many) more pictures.