After many hours on a train from Minsk, I arrived in Brest at 8 PM on a Thursday evening,…
Times visited: 1
Cities visited: Minsk and Brest
Villages visited: Braslav and Mir
UNESCO sites visited: 2/4
Belarus is famously known as a tricky place to visit – which only made me more determined to go. While planning my autumn break in 2017, I stumbled upon a new 5-day visa-free rule for EU citizens. Tickets were booked immediately, and before I knew it, I was on my way to Minsk – a city I knew almost nothing about.
What I expected to be a solo trip, with no fellow travellers to meet, turned out to be quite the opposite. At my hostel, I ran into a group of Danish university students on a field trip (seriously, what are the odds?). I spent my evenings hanging out with them but still made sure to explore the lesser-known parts of Belarus on my own.
Five days wasn’t a lot, but I packed so much in that it felt like I saw the whole country (though realistically, that’s impossible given how vast Belarus is). I spent two days discovering Minsk, the capital, and took day trips to Braslav Lakes National Park and Mir Castle. While Mir is a popular spot for tourists visiting Minsk, Braslav is a four-hour bus ride away and sees far fewer visitors – oddly enough, it became my favorite part of the trip!
I also squeezed in two days in Brest, a city near the Polish border, where I took a day trip to Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park and biked through the oldest forest in Europe.
I ended up spending over 24 hours travelling between places, but every minute on the road was absolutely worth it.