Mir, Mir, what’s on the wall?

Niasvizh Castle

For whatever reason, be they sitting in saunas, throwing back vodka or tractor-riding, there are currently fewer than 100 covid cases in Belarus. (Think I’m kidding? See the Washington Post article “No Lockdown Here: Belarus's strongman rejects coronavirus risks. He suggests saunas and vodka.” As a result, we’re not totally locked down like many seem to be. We are doing most of the buzzword stuff, like “social distancing” and using “an abundance of caution,” but we still free to roam a little, as long as we’re loaded up with hand sanitizer and wipes. (Incidentally, the Belarus hand sanitizer is a liquid, not a gel.)

Faced with another weekend of being “socially isolated,” a friend with a car suggested we dart off to a city an hour away to take a little break. At some point. The odds will no longer be in Belarus’ favor and everything is going to hit the fan but right now, we’re OK so long as we take precautions, so we got the boss’s blessing, loaded up the dog and took off for the area of Niasvizh and Mir, which are technically still in the Minsk region – and blissfully uncrowded.

Game room

After a quick stop at the McDonald’s drive through for breakfast, we hit the road and saw some countryside. Except for the train ride to Vilnius, it was my first time outside the immediate area, and Minsk’s sprawl surprised me. It’s still fairly small, but it’s a lot bigger than I first thought.

Niasvizh isn’t a big area – maybe 15k people – and, as far as I could tell, the castle and the church are the only things to see. Having arrived at 10 a.m., there really was no one there, and it was nice to see swans (and their baby ugly ducklings) swimming on the peaceful lake in front of the castle. I plunked down about $7 and spent an hour exploring the place.

The last castle-like place I’d explored had been Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, which pretty much sets the bar for ostentatiousness. It’s absolutely huge, and Niasvizh didn’t touch that, but it was still grand. It wasn’t on the Bosporus, but it had a moat and a fantastic spot to get a photo of the castle and its reflection.

My favorite rooms were the arsenal and some kind of room with dead animals. Trophies. Holy cow, the place reeked of testosterone. In the very first room, there’d been a scone with a candle in a funky cool shape. When I got to the animal trophy room, there were rows of black things in vaguely that shape. Initially, I thought that’s what I thought they were, but then I realized they were some kind of peasant. There were bearskin rugs, stuffed bears, moose heads and even some claw-like things that came off a unidentified animal. I’ve never seen so many dead things artfully displayed on a wall.

Canine Cannon

The arsenal was also pretty cool. I tried to think what hand-to-hand combat must have been like but I can’t wrap my brain around it. The U.S. and its frenemies have been “social distancing” mass killing for awhile now; the idea of going in to battle with a spear or similar is not something I can grasp. I can’t imagine a situation in which I could drive a knife into someone or beat someone with a mace.

To defend myself against claims that I’m most impressed with dead animals and weapons, I also loved the princess room and some other room that had white and gold walls and ceilings, plus  two mirrors opposite each other. It was bright and cheery.

Flying wolf skin rug

The castle dates back to the 1500s, well before central heating. As a result, there is a giant decorative furnace in every room, and those were total works of art as well. It’s really amazing how creative people could be in putting things together then. One  furnace, in a dining room, was completely tiled from floor to ceiling (and the ceilings were incredibly high) with several different kinds of tile, all totally different.

After grabbing some really good drainiki for lunch (table wiped down with disinfectant wipes first!), we headed a half an hour away to Mir to see the castle there, which also goes back to the 16^th century. We were able to explore the castle a little more than just walking through the rooms – there was a Jewish display in one of the towers. The stairs were pretty darn steep and scary, but it was worth it. (I can say that since I didn’t have to be med evac’d out.)

The two castles were similar, which makes sense because they were owned by the same family. And that meant there were more dead things there. I’d never seen a wolf skin rug before, and now I’ve seen three, including one displayed on a wall. It looked like a giant, morbid flying squirrel.

I guess that’s what people did for fun then. Now, we ogle their world.

Bel-Air-Ree-Us gets no respect

Had a long weekend and took the opportunity to visit Chernobyl, which is only an hour flight from here. Originally, I was going to go with a friend but she got sick. (No, not COVID-19.) The flights were non-refundable, as was the hotel room, so I decided to go ahead and go.

Gray blobs represent Ukrainian communities. See how
close they are to the yellow line? That's the Belarus
border. The damage crossed the line, but nothing I saw
on the tour or at the museum acknowledged it.

I’d been to Kiev before and looked forward to getting more chocolate. As you might recall, the head of the chocolate company was elected president in the last election. I am not much into politics, but holy cow, Rosen is wonderful chocolate. Beyond Chernobyl and the museum, that was my only other goal.

I didn’t take any time off for the trip, so I didn’t waste any time in Kyiv, either. Pretty much as soon as I go to my hotel, I left it again for the Chernobyl museum.

I remember the word “Chernobyl,” and know that it was a nuclear accident, but honestly, my knowledge of the subject is extremely limited. It wasn’t in my history books because, duh, it was going in my lifetime. But all we ever saw of the world, really, was from those short little newspaper articles we had to present in Coach Cone’s class. And hearing some uninterested student trying to regurgitate an AP news blurb to the class isn’t gripping.

Even since then, I haven’t attained much more knowledge of it, although I learned where Kyiv was and understand more about the Cold War. But what happened? I really don’t know.

No one else, does, either. Even after returning, I’ve talked with several Belarusians and they have mentioned that it’s still a mystery. Last night, I watched a documentary called “The Russian Woodpecker” and it spun a well-reasoned conspiracy theory, too, but in the end, no one really knows.

It was this. Over and over again. So awful

What we know is there was a nuclear accident on April 26, 1986, though the rest of the world didn’t find out until April 29, and that was thanks to Sweden, not the Soviet Union. Radioactive clouds from Chernobyl wafted that direction (and others) and the Swedes picked up on it and reported on it. The New York Times published a front-page teaser above the fold (complete with map) and had a huge story inside. Meanwhile, that same day, the Ukrainian local paper had, on the bottom left of page three, a red small box saying there’d been an accident at the nuclear plant, but no need to worry. And that was the first the accident appeared in the media. Radiation was all over at that point.

The museum in Kyiv is pretty haunting. There weren’t too many people when I went, and I got the headphones and paid extra to take photos. (Still, less than $6 overall.) I probably spent a couple hours in there.

But from the get-go, it was clear the story was from the Ukrainian side only. When you enter, there’s a staircase, and you see city signs lining both streets. The narrator said they represented the 70-something Ukrainian communities that had been wiped out.

Reactor 4 is now covered and sealed as best as possible.
For now.

Now, one of the books I read prior to going came from the Belarusian side: Essentially, 75 percent of the fallout affected Belarus. Being a smaller country made it even worse – there are lands there now that cant be used, and it’s a good portion of the country. But at no point in the museum, or in the actual Ukrainian side of the zone did anyone mention Belarus whatsoever.

Other than that, how was the play, right? But it is sad. The world mourns and sympathizes with Ukraine, but Belarus doesn’t get an acknowledgement.

The next day, a very appropriately gray one, I met my tour and we set off. It was an all-day thing and at lunch I surveyed the three minivans of people who went and realized that, other than diving, that was the first tour I’ve ever been on where the guys outnumbered the women. We had maybe 12-14 in our van (two empty seats) and I think there were only four women.

The scene is as creepy as you’d expect. The area is 30 kilometers around, and there are checkpoints as you go from safe to reasonably safe to I-warned-you not-as-safe. (No one under 18 is even allowed on the tour.)  Except for immediate looting afterwards, nothing’s been touched for 30 years, and nature has taken over. There’s broken glass everywhere, trees coming out of windows and rusted-out cars here and there.

We only went into a couple of the communities, with Pripyat being by far the biggest one, which had been about 50k residents in 1986. It’s where the Chernobyl workers and their families lived. The average age was 26.

The never-debut Ferris wheel at Pripyet.

The whole thing is utterly depressing, and it was more so because on the drive there, we watched documentaries on the event, which included footage of the city the day of and after the accident, and all looked normal. A lovely spring day and kids were frolicking and getting ready for the opening of the city’s new amusement park. They had no idea they were being poisoned.

“Haunted” is the best word I can come up with to describe the entire area, and some parts were more so than others. When the word finally came down for people to evacuate, they had two hours to gather up documents, a little money and clothes. Even after extensive looting, you could tell that people just left. There’s a kindergarten that still has schoolbooks and dolls lying around. If that’s not haunted, I don’t know what is.

When the people evacuated, they were told they’d be able to return in a couple of days, but that was over 30 years ago and no one has been allowed back. Everything’s gone.

But Belarus is forgotten. There’s a memorial – an angel made from some kind of piping – and again, all those city signs from all the Ukrainian communities that are no more, but not a word about Belarus’s plight. There’s even a map of the 30-kilometer exclusion zone with all the Ukrainian communities marked, all he way up to the yellow-printed border but nothing just over the border, even though those communities were wiped out as well.

The whole trip was sobering, but I told my would-have-been traveling companion that I would go again. The tour company, SoloEast, offers two-day tours as well. As I love ruins and stuff like that, there were a couple of points during the day that I thought I’d love to spend two days there, but there were also points where it was like, “Oh man, more dilapidated buildings. I don’t know how much more I can take.”

Tribute to children at the museum.

Maybe in another season, post COVID-19, I will go again. I deliberately didn’t cash in my Ukrainian money because I figure I’ll be back at some point.

And now I am looking forward to the next adventure, but I’m up in the air as to when it will be because of this whole virus thing.  I’m supposed to go this weekend and had planned to take off a couple days next week. I have time to burn and had planned on taking a long weekend every month or so.

At this point, I have no idea if I’ll be able to go, but in preparation, I had to get more money out, what since I didn’t change back my Ukrainian cash and all. I got a new debit card from Envision and decided to use it. I tend to juggle bank accounts, and I’d just gotten a package from Leanne that also had mail in it. After spending around 30 minutes on the phone to activate the darn thing, I thought I’d try it.

I went to a different ATM than normal and tried, but it declined my card twice. Dejected, I went home and discovered I had a missed message for two “fraud alerts.” I only have Google Voice, so if I get a phone call, it doesn’t register until I have Wifi.

Anyway, I called the fraud number and sure enough, it was from trying to use my debit card. The little voice asked me if I’d intended to use my card in – and at this point I was expecting to hear the bank name – “Bel Air Ree Us” and I had no idea what kind of store that was, but it said about $85, so I said yes. As I’d tried the card twice, I went through it again and this time, when the voice said, “Bel Air Ree Us,” I realized it meant Belarus.

Chernobyl or cash. This amazing country gets to little respect.

What a difference understanding makes

My Russian stinks. I am trying but I’m a terrible language learner and Russian is a hard language anyway.  What I need to do, people say, is watch Russian TV and videos to help learning. There’s a tutor at work and I’m working with her, plus using both Pimsleur and Mango. I also found some “learn Russian while you sleep” stuff on YouTube and have tried that. Nothing really has stuck so far. It’s a very, very slow process.

One of the options I might have for my next tour is in Kazakhstan, and I’m eyeing it because it would give me six months of Russian language studies. The position requires a certain level of language ability, and one of my hopes for this tour is to give me a head start because I think I need a two-year advance in order to get to that level. Seriously. I’m trying a lot of methods. Gosh, I even went to YouTube and pulled up an episode of “The Simpsons” in Russian, but it confused me because it seemed like it was people reading the script over the original, no real voice inflection and the same voice doing multiple characters. And by that, I mean the same voice from the same person, not the same person doing multiple voices.

Last week, I went to see “The Gentlemen,” which was showing in English. I successfully got my ticket and made my way to the theater. I had thought I selected a seat in the middle, but I wound up being close to the wall. Wall, empty seat, me, rest of row. I practiced trying to read Cyrillic during the coming attractions. I get hugely excited when I recognize a word.

But when the feature started, I didn’t recognize a word. The movie starts with a brief voiceover and then the screen opens up. As soon as I heard the voiceover, I realized there had to be two showings of “The Gentlemen” at the same time – one in Russian and one in English. The dubbed-in voices were not English.

At that point, I just decided to stay there and consider it a two-hour, $5 Russian lesson. Yes, I could have been more assertive and walked out and found the right theater, but I was locked in by the wall and decided the other people shouldn’t have to suffer with me packing up my coat and everything and tripping over them. So I stayed and tried to follow.

I’d read a little of the plot of the movie, but, watching it in Russian, it didn’t match what I’d read. I was thinking Hugh Grant had some kind of movie plot. The Toddlers – no idea. And who works on cars dressed like that? But I did catch “Balshoy Dave,” which is the translation of “Big Dave.” I was so excited when I knew words, but the whole plot – no idea. I came home and read the Wiki page (I donated to their fund-raiser, so I reference it guilt-free) and – yeah, I didn’t get that out of my two-hour Russian lesson.

On Friday, I went again to see it, this time going into the right theater and wow what a difference. It made so much more sense, although The Toddlers were still a bit baffling, as was the dress for the auto shop. But there’s no way I would have ever caught on to all the intricate plot details. It was very dialogue-heavy and understanding one word every five minutes or so didn’t do it.

Other than that, it’s been a fairly dull weekend. I’m trying to talk myself out of getting a dog. I have a massive case of puppy love going on right now for this little yellow thing that’s at a shelter, and the shelter is closing down next month. Looking at her photo, the little blonde bombshell might get up to about 40 pounds. Just having a dog is a bad idea for me right now, no matter the size. I need to keep telling myself that.

My distraction for the weekend has been buying Shelby’s mom’s TV. I’ve been having all kinds of laptop issues and in trying to rectify them, I lost the Hulu password, but it was still on my Firestick. I caught up on “The Conners” and “The Masked Singer,” the latter of which has sucked me in, not that I have a clue who the judges are, much less their guesses.

Now I’m on “Where Did You Go, Bernadette?”, which is about a family’s trip to Antarctica. It was recommended to me when I was on the cruise but I missed the showing. I’ve got the book on hold but it’s still got a wait.