After many hours on a train from Minsk, I arrived in Brest at 8 PM on a Thursday evening,…
Times visited: 1 (5 days in 2017)
Cities visited: Minsk and Brest
Villages visited: Braslav and Mir
UNESCO sites visited: Mir Castle Complex and Bialowieza Forest
Belarus is notorious for being a difficult country to travel to, which (of course) made me even more eager to go there. When I was researching where to go for my autumn break in 2017, I discovered a new 5-day visa free rule for EU citizens! Tickets were booked immediately and soon after, I was off to Minsk, a city I knew next to nothing about.
What I thought would be a solo journey with zero travellers to hang out with turned out to be the complete opposite. At my hostel, I met a bunch of Danish uni students on a field trip (seriously, what are the odds!?). So while I spent my evenings with them, I did venture into the lesser travelled parts of Belarus on my own.
Five days wasn’t much, but I did so much in that short time that I actually feel like I saw the entire country (of course that’s not true – it’s impossible to ever be “done” with such a huge country). I spent two days exploring Minsk, the nation’s capital, and took day trips out to Braslav Lakes National Park and Mir Castle. While Mir is often visited by tourists that come to Minsk, Braslav is a four-hour bus journey away and therefore rarely sees any tourists. Funny enough, this was my favourite part of Belarus!
I also found time for two days in Brest, a city near the border to Poland, where I went on a day trip to the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park and biked through the oldest forest in Europe.
I ended up spending over 24 hours in all in transport between places, but it was so worth it!
