Exploring the city, at least a little.

 Despite COVID, I’m trying to get out a little bit. Looking at the calendar, I could be down to my last six months here and I’d like to get into some of the nooks and crannies before I head off to the sandbox again.

The Prophet - what do you see first?

I’ve checked a few boxes, such as Stalin Line (the tank place), a couple outdoor museums and the biggie museum, the one of The Great Patriotic War.

But Minsk is a European capital, so there’s so much more to explore. My apartment is so centrally located that it’s a shame not to check out the neighborhood, which includes two museums less than two blocks from me.

On Saturday, I headed to the national art museum, which is literally on the next block. I went with a colleague, who parked in my parking lot and we just walked from there.

The place is huge! It’s actually in two buildings, but there was no map or anything so we wandered; we were in there about three hours and didn’t quite finish it but hunger wins. There were some really nice pieces in there, and most of it was paintings and such. I very much appreciated there wasn’t a trash can roped off in the middle pretending to be some kind of art installation; I just don’t get that at all.

But a lot of it was fairly freaky, and there was, as one may imagine, a very large and mostly depressing post-war contingency of art, plus a lot of soviet-influenced pieces. There were several oil paintings done on cardboard, which I have never seen before and more wood carvings that I would have expected. I couldn’t tell what kind of tree had been used; we tried to ask and it came back “clay,” so I think there was a miscommunication.

Son of Bitch. (I don't get it.)

One of the funky pieces was an optical illusion-type by an artist who had several colorful “landscapes” of what he called Saturn, including some kind of fair ride with “warning signs” (skull and crossbones) and some bizarrely-shaped women’s heads he called “Women of Saturn.” The piece I liked was called “The Prophet,” and at first glance, I thought it was of a natural window in a rock. When I looked again, I realized the opening was in the shape of a man. Cool.

Had a Ferris Bueller (or was it Cameron?) moment when I saw a joltingly real picture of a wooded area with lots of fallen leaves. It looked to real, it could have been a photo – but only at a distance. As I got closer and closer, I saw that the leaves were merely blurs of paint, scattered at random across the bottom but creating an amazing beauty. There were also several artists who had illustrated books and stories, and one that I wish I could have read was an illustration that translated to “Son of Bitch.” I have no idea what that was about.

On Monday – a holiday for us – I risked it and headed to the circus. They’re big in the Former Soviet Union (FSU!), but they’re not the big three-ring ones from my childhood. It’s a small venue with one ring, and it’s a permanent venue. The Minsk circus is, I saw online, the first permanent building to house a winter circus. AFAIK, there are two performances a day, and it was pretty packed. I’m sure I was the only adult there without a small child and most people wore masks, including the circus workers, but not the performers.

Fortunately, it was more of an athletic circus with no abused animals like bears riding motorcycles. They did have some animals, but it was limited to two chickens, two ferrets, about six dogs, six ponies and five or six horses.

The acts weren’t out of this world, but the amount of athleticism to do them is pretty incredible. After reading “The Orphan’s Tale,” I felt I was a little more aware of the work the trapeze artists put in, for one. Some of it hurt just watching. My favorite was some kind of 70s music going on with three guys jumping on a trampoline, as random as that sounds. But it was a nice way to kill an hour and a half on a holiday afternoon.

Next up in my museum exploration was to be the history and culture museum, which is a block the other direction from my house and I intended to go on Sunday. However, Saturday evening, a colleague and his wife had three of us over and we had such a good time that I didn’t leave until 11:30. I had an appointment at 10 a.m. on Sunday (getting my permanent eyeliner redone) and, following that, it started snowing really hard again. These little pellets about half the size of BBs came at me on the three-mile walk home from the eye place and at that point, I just wanted chocolate and a nap, so I did that instead. I considered it a good use of time.