I woke up early and made the Belarus border when light was just breaking, but I had to wait in the cold diesel fumes of a kilometer plus long line of semis and autos wanting to cross. Three checkpoints and several stamps on a piece of paper later I was in the now independent but former Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus. At the last checkpoint the officials were looking doubtfully at my bike and asking me questions that I couldn’t understand, until some helpful citizens started answering the questions for me in a reprimanding tone to the official and I was promptly waved on. I could understand their agitation – that border was a bureaucratic hassel to cross through – but the non-official people were nice. Not long after making my way through the border I was in wide open fields, running past small lakes and ponds. This partially-frozen lake was full of ice fishers, which seemed dangerous to me because, as you can see, the ice is really thin or totally melted in places, but I suppose they knew what they were doing. (12-18-04)

In Belarus signs of Soviet era communism are omnipresent, almost as if it has not disappeared, and riding through the countryside you can see the last surviving specimins of even the rarest of the communist world’s endangered socialist creatures, such as collective farming. This is an example of one of the many concrete monuments marking Stalin-era farming collectives, all very much still in active operation. Belarus is not really geared towards tourism, so the first night I found a room at a truck stop not too far outside Minsk, where the bed sheets smelled of beef fat and I was the only guest. I had a potato pancake dinner in the restaurant where at one point I noticed that everyone in the place except for me had a cigarette in their hand. (12-18-04) *

Drifting on the low plains of Belarus on the way to the capital, Minsk, I passed Belarus highway patrol the whole way, flagging down one unfortunate driver after another (who most of the time seemed only to be puttering along in Russian-made Ladas). Although I was on the national motorway, none of them bothered with me. Near Minsk I saw Soviet-era housing blocks rising from bare fields of nothing, mostly dull grey stacks of concrete but with a few flamingo and aqua tones, such as those here, to brighten the otherwise oppressive monotony. I ended up at a hotel with a high rise view of the capital city’s lights illuminating all that concrete monumentalism over which Aleksandr Lukashenko presides daily. Later that night the phone was ringing off the hook for annoying unsolicited offers of company – I tried to unplug the phone to get some sleep but the rubber cords leading in were not detachable so the ringing persisted. (12-19-04)

The Minsk hipsters seemed more with it than those in Scandanavia, at least I liked their sense of style more. But the choice of entertainment seemed less inspiring - mainly it was drinking beer on the giant city square with a giant TV screen playing state news for ambiance. This is the unpopulated eastern end of the square. (12-19-04)

While other statues of Lenin have been carted away, destroyed, or deposited in amusement parks such as Lithuania’s Soviet Sculpture Park where people can view the remainders of what once was, Lenin is alive and kicking in Belarus. This towering statue was located in Ploshcha Nezalezhnasti, one of the main squares in Minsk’s center. (12-19-04)

The victory obelisk in Minsk is surounded by the capital`s largest roundabout and is fronted by the biggest eternal flame that I have ever seen. The jet of flame flaring from the monument was large enough to warm me standing five feet away. The bottom of the obelisk was full of the standard socialist worker triumph decorations. (12-19-04)

“Happiness is not based on oneself, it does not consist of a small home, of taking and getting. Happiness is taking part in the struggle, where there is no borderline between one’s own personal world, and the world in general.” An excerpt from a letter from Lee Harvey Oswald to his brother, taken from Part One of the novel Libra, which I had randomly just finished reading. Coincidentally the novel discusses his early twenties when he was living in the USSR in Minsk, where I happened to be at the time I finished the book. His former apartment was in a relatively ritzy part of town with excellent balcony views of the Svislach River, and was only meters away from the Belarus victory obelisk and eternal flame. In fact, the bottom floor of the apartment building is now an Italian designer shop, La Dolce Vita. This is a picture of the street, Vulitsa Kamunistychnaja, where it is located. (12-19-04)

The road signs are all in cyrillic, so the 8 units of Russian that I took in college have finally paid off, although all I remember is how to read the alphabet and only the most basic phrases, so I have no idea what this sign says. Someone needing a creative artistic release must have decorated the Belarus highway signs, because the signs involved a lot more illustration than is the case elsewhere. The illustration of the police officer and his car here is a pretty reserved example, although the detailing is pretty excessive. Elsewhere no-passing signs were illustrated with two corvettes competing on the road with a wave of coffins floating off into the sky in front of them, to provide another example. (12-20-04) *

On the way to Babrujsk I passed a number of impromptu babuska stalls on the side of the highway selling buckets of apples and lines of fresh caught or smoked fish. When darkness came I passed local cyclists creaking along on their one speeds in the night completely obscured in the dark, and I figured if Belarusans were accustomed to dodging these cyclists, I should be just fine in my more reflective and illuminated kit. I had to ask around extensively in town to find the only hotel, which was not marked as such. When I approached reception I was met with a full-bodied administrator with a severe jet-black Kruschev-era beehive behind the desk who met my faltering Russian inquiry about rooms by producing three extensive forms for me to complete in cyrillic. The hotel was a really bizarre mish-mash of permanent apartments, a reeking nail studio run out of a hotel room, a buffet run out of a hotel room, and then the small handful of hotel rooms actually used as hotel rooms. The decor of the hallways and my room was something like a cross between Breshnev and The Shining, with deep-toned wall paper and dull bedding that seemed 50 years old. I had to hit four grocery stores in town to find breakfast food; the West definitely has yet to meet Babrujsk. In the morning I recovered the money that I was overcharged the night before by asking for a receipt and then demanding the difference between what I had handed over, and justice was served once again. (12-20-04)