Paddle, paddle, clap, clap, splash

On a lovely Saturday, I met a colleague and Shelby her pup for a morning walk by the river. We’d planned to try out the paddleboats, as both Colleague and Pup will (hopefully, for their sake) be leaving Minsk soon. There’s a bucket list of things to do, and paddleboating on the Svislach river is a must.

We met before the paddleboats opened, so I took the opportunity to film this Facebook post marking U.N. Public Service day. (That’s the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit’s bells ringing in the background.) I’d tried to film it the day before at home but had to rig up a backdrop and arrange the phone and wound up with what someone kindly described as a “hostage video,” so that got deleted.

That's her guilty face.

The Svislach River itself is wonderful and I am keeping up with the walks up and down various segments of it, but until Saturday I hadn’t gotten on it. We decided to get the four-seater “catamaran” so Shelby could have a place to sit ($6 for an hour), but she wound up mostly standing on the divider between the seats, which held the rudder control thing.

The part of the river we were on is the view on the way to work; there are a bunch of boring buildings on one side, slightly less boring buildings on another plus a domed concert venue of some sort, a place to go go-karting and the Isle of Tears.  You can also see a bit farther down to the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, too.

The Isle of Tears is a peaceful little island that commemorates Soviet soldiers from Belarus who died in the war with Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989, and there are lot of ducks that call home.  We circled it about three times, and on the second, we were just relaxing and watching the ducks. There are lots of mama and baby ducks all over and they would swim up to us because people tend to feed them.

Shelby is a really good diplo-dog, and she is a good rider in the car. She was also really good in the boat, right up until she took a flying leap off after the ducks. She sunk, then rose to the top, quite bewildered, and her mom hauled her back in, laughing hysterically. Shelby kept shaking off and both humans just laughed and laughed. She was really wet and all three of us smelled like wet dog.  No duck feathers were ruffled whatsoever. She didn’t even get close to them.

In other news, the Belarusian elections are scheduled for August 9, and there’s all kinds of stuff leading up to them. The president has been in power for 26 years and there’s a growing sentiment that it’s time for a change. Meanwhile, the president’s opponents are winding up being detained by law enforcement officials for what many deem false charges.

One of the prime opponents, along with his son, was detained by the KGB (it’s still called that here) on Thursday. That night, as I was watching “The Hunger Games,” I thought I heard people clapping and horns honking, but not constantly.

  

   

Euronews photo: https://www.euronews.com/2020/06/19/top-challenger-in-belarusian-presidential-race-detained

That evening, I’d gone out for a walk and got caught by a massive rainstorm when I was three blocks from home. I got home, shed all my clothes and took a shower, then grabbed dinner, so it was maybe around 7:30 p.m. when I put the movie in.

By the time Kato was being attacked my mutts, there was something going on. Keeping in mind this is two days short of the longest day of the year, it was still light out after 9 p.m. I looked out of my front window and saw/heard cars blaring their horns as they drove down the road in front of my apartment building. It’s Independence Avenue, and it’s a long, straight road, and there were people lined up on either side. Now and then, they would start clapping.

To me, horns blaring and people clapping signals a Florida State win, but that’s not what was happening here. These are straight-up protests. That’s right, clapping is form of protest in Belarus. In 2011, the president decreed that you can only clap in public for war veterans, so people lining the streets and applauding is a peaceful but unlawful protest.

As we get close to the elections, law enforcement officials have busted out the riot gear and paddywagons and have started detaining people. This is not just happening in Minsk; there are reports coming out of other cities, too.

Thursday remains the biggest protest I’ve seen. It was livestreamed somewhere and apparently people who were watching it on TV came out to join the line, which stretched over two miles. I watched out the window until about 10 p.m. before going to bed, but I heard it went until 1 a.m.

The following evening, like on many Friday nights, I met my colleague for dinner, and we went to a place right downstairs from my apartment. (I have fantastic restaurant choices!) Even just from the outside seating at the restaurant, we could see people walking up and down the street and applauding. There weren’t as many cars honking, but there definitely were more than a few.

There are uniformed officers as well as plainclothes cops around, but I haven’t witnessed anything that seems too heavy-handed, though I’ve seen videos and heard about some.

It is likely that protests will continue leading up to the elections, and who knows what might happen after they are over. I’m not sure how elections are done here, like if there are more races than just the presidential race or what.

It is definitely an interesting time to be in Belarus.

Landlocked but waterlogged

It’s the time of year I’ve been waiting for since I arrived in Minsk in late October. The weather, when it’s not crappy, is brilliant and the sun rises before well 5 a.m. and sets well after 9:30 p.m. (Thank God for blackout curtains.) Long spring days are lovely in Europe. It’s green and beautiful.

There’s a river meandering through Minsk, and I walk up and down it most days. Today’s walk was about 10 kilometers; since it’s Sunday, I had nowhere to be and just listened to podcast after podcast as I walked down one segment, turned around, and then walked back the other direction.

An aside on podcasts: Wow, these are great. I’ve just finished two series from the Washington Post’s Lillian Cunningham, Constitution and the Presidents. I haven’t found anything else intelligent to listen to so I am killing time with a Margaritaville podcast and listened to an hour-long interview with Mr. Utley of the Coral Reefers today.

Through that podcast, I learned that Jimmy Buffett does a European tour and I looked up tour dates on the off-chance he was planning a show in Minsk. (Don’t laugh; Sting is coming in October, or at least is scheduled to come in October.) JB doesn’t have Minsk on the docket, but apparently does shows in Dublin, London and Paris. The ones for 2020 have been pushed back to 2021.

My thought on that was, “Hey, I’ll be in Minsk in September 2021. Why not go see JB?” And, because sometimes I money outweighs sense, I researched it and discovered that London’s original venue still had tickets available. (Since the shows were originally scheduled for 2020, they’ve already sold out and under no circumstances would I pay $400 to any third-party vendor for a single show.) I now have three tickets, plans for September 2021 and a hefty credit card bill.

Meanwhile, back in Minsk, I’m still walking daily, which is keeping me sane. I love water and Belarus is a landlocked country, so there’s no heading to the beach or anything like that for me. However, in my walks both along the river and through town, I have come to realize that, despite its landlocked status, there is a vast amount of water around.

Looking out my window one day, I realized that the little park that runs down my street has fountains. I didn’t know this before because during winter, they shut off the water. (Plus, I am not all that observant.) Now that it’s spring, all of a sudden, there are fountains everywhere. Things I thought were just art have water spraying out of them.

None of the water turns on until 10 a.m., though, which saves me to some degree. At one point in my walk, just past Gorky Park, there is a fountain that doubles as a splashpad. Right now, during the pandemic (52k cases and counting) there are throngs of kids playing every day around 6 p.m. The parents usually lie out on beach towels nearby, so when I hit that point in the walk on weekdays I circle as wide as I can, since my weekday walk happens after work. On weekends, I set out early and there’s no one around. Well, barely anyone. This morning I noticed two middle-aged men there, one watching the other play in the water. It was a bit odd because it wasn’t hot, but I’m tempted sometimes so I won’t throw stones.

Shingled out

One of the weird bonuses of working where I work is that I have access to vaccines that aren’t always automatically given to the rest of the world. No, this isn’t about COVID; when there is a vaccination for that I’ll be standing in line same as anyone, I would guess.  But not every American has had the rabies vaccination and most probably don’t take a typhoid preventative every five years and haven’t had the yellow fever vaccination.

And now that I’ve hit the age for the shingles vaccine, the doctor at work encouraged me to get it. As I’ve heard how bad shingles can be, it seemed like a good idea. It’s a nasty, nasty thing to get and no one in their right might would want any part of it.

The vaccine consists of two shots; I’ve no idea if they’re identical or what, but before the first one, which I got in March, I listened to a lecture of side effects, read about more and signed a piece of paper saying I understood like could get ugly after it. The embassy doctor advised me to do it on a Friday in case I had any ill effects.

Dose one, no issues. Yeah, I had a little soreness in my shoulder but none of the flu-like symptoms I’d been warned about, so last week I really wasn’t worried about getting the second one. I’d planned to do it on Friday, when I was in the office, but I wound up having to go in on Wednesday to do a particular work thing, so I went ahead and lined it up for then because I wasn’t sure if I’d have to go in Friday, too. (We have a health unit at the embassy; I didn’t go into a local medical facility to get it.)

A meeting ran a bit late and I rushed in to the health unit, which thrilled the doctor because he’s pretty much starved for human contact. There is virtually no one in the office all week, and he’s in a location where the few people who are on site don’t run into him, so I was probably the first human being he saw on the job. We chatted, I got the shot, he reminded me that I should take an ibuprofen or two just in case.

That went in one ear and out the other and I pretty much forgot I got the shot, which had been around 4:30 and, when my shoulder started hurting on the walk home an hour later, I didn’t connect that to the shot. My mind went to the fact my shoulder hurt like it did before I’d had shoulder surgery and I had wild thoughts about having three shoulder surgeries in four overseas tours.

At home, I tried to chillax but the pain increased. At some point – maybe when I saw the Garfield BandAid – I remembered the shot and the suggestion to take ibuprofen, so I gulped down two around maybe 6:30 p.m. By around 8 p.m., I was in agony. The left shoulder hurt just as it had post-op.

A couple hours later, I downed two of the knockout PM pills, assuming I would fall asleep and wake up fine, like what normally happens. Nope. The pain was excruciating and just as bad as Day One after surgery. No matter how I arranged the pillows, I could not get comfortable and woke up screaming “Oh God” so many times my neighbors must have thought I found a new man. I took two more painkillers at 4 a.m. but didn’t get any sleep at all. The pain was so bad I was nauseous.

The next day plan had been to meet someone for breakfast and then have the three of us (the person and her pup) come work at my apartment but I felt so miserable I called it off. Feeling hot, I took my temperature and it was over 100, but again, this is not a COVID story.

 Come to find out, I was the poster child for side effects. Here’s what the CDC said about the shingles drug:

Most people got a sore arm with mild or moderate pain after getting Shingrix, and some also had redness and swelling where they got the shot. Some people felt tired, had muscle pain, a headache, shivering, fever, stomach pain, or nausea. About 1 out of 6 people who got Shingrix experienced side effects that prevented them from doing regular activities.  Symptoms went away on their own in about 2 to 3 days. Side effects were more common in younger people.

It's one of the occasions when I would have loved to have been “most people,” but I’m rarely most people. I guess I got lucky because not only was I one of the six who experienced side effects, but I experienced the whole lot of them, all day long. Fortunately, I’m teleworking now, which, that day, meant crashing on the sofa between emails. It was awful.

Our doctor came and checked on me and offered me Benadryl and some other painkiller. Those, combined with a single melatonin, helped me get sleep that night buy boy howdy, that was not a lot of fun.

I went down to the river to pray

Belarus is still open for business, and everything else.  We’re at about 28k cases as I write this but jumping up by about 1k daily. Plus, we had a parade last weekend.

Not another soul in sight

Yep, you read that right. Victory Day parade, not that I was anywhere near it. And although it was sparsely attended compared to years past, there were still thousands of people watching as well as many elderly people in it. Just not smart.

As far as work goes, my office isn’t going to open back up for probably months. It’s rather dejecting. I am getting into the office here and there but mostly working from home, like anyone else. And right now, I have plenty to do; I’ve got a recurring project I’m doing for the third time and then there is Russian – I need every minute.

Already I feel Russian is hopeless. I am OK reading and understanding; it’s very slow but I know what the printed words mean once I figure them out. But I just cannot speak or understand. I had my first lesson with the teacher and it went about like I expected. He probably thinks I am nincompoop but I haven’t landed on how to learn. There’s got to be a way.  I don’t know how people do this. I just don’t have an aptitude for it, but there’s got to be something I can to that will help.

Copyright infringement?

Meanwhile, since there is absolutely no commute involved in working from home, I have what seems like a couple more hours a day and no purpose to go anywhere. And as bad as getting dark so early was, it being light out from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. makes you want to go outside.

Well, when the weather is decent. Oddly, it snowed last week. Not much, but enough to remind me why I don’t like winter. We keep having brilliantly sunny days at or near 60 and then it goes back to cloudy in the low 50s.

But I am trying to get outside anyway, even if it’s chilly. We’re not locked down, and Minsk is blessed with green spaces. The Svislac rives twists through the city, and along both sides in many places people can find paths, parks and trails. Minsk’s version of Gorky Park is a couple kilometers from me and encompasses a pretty big area. There’s an amusement park, ice rink, planetarium and probably lots of other things over a series of long blocks on one side of the river.

In the mornings, I’ve started walking through it now that the weather is OK, or mostly OK. This morning it was 46 and overcast with a little wind; not ideal but if I wait until the afternoon more people come out. One day last week, I went in the morning and in the afternoon and the afternoon had far more joggers, walkers, fishermen, pets on excursion and people on roller blades, bikes and scooters going by. There’s still enough space to feel safe, though, but I prefer the solitude in the morning.

Ferris wheel at Gorky Park

My path this week has taken me on the main road, just past the circus and over the bridge to the park, where I pop off the road and wander through to the end of the park, then I switch sides of the river and go by the opera house and continue to the area with the stadium, which is close to my house. It’s really a nice walk; water just sucks me in. I found a place with a really big rock under a willowy tree and it’s just lovely to sit and pray. Despite the wanna-be fishermen sitting around with poles, the river doesn’t seem to have fish, or at least I haven’t seen evidence of any. But there are ducks, pigeons and occasional geese to watch, so there’s a nice calming effect.

The loop I’ve done this week is about 5-6k, so it’s something in light of our gym being shut down. I need to motivate myself to run outside but it’s just not my thing. I love walking outside; running is a treadmill thing to me. But maybe when it gets warmer in the mornings.

If I make it into the office this week, I plan on walking back by way of the river, which would lengthen the commute from about 2k to probably 8k. I went in two days last week and intended to do that, but bad luck struck and one was the snow day and the other was also gloomy, plus our mail came and my bag was a bit heavy to lug that far.

Our mail comes to Lithuania instead of directly here and someone normally goes to get it. However, we can’t be doing that right now, so last week was our first load in over a month; we had to have a contractor bring it to us. It was so nice to be reunited with stuff we’d all ordered back in February or so. My voting information came for the primary. That’s how far behind we are.

And there’s no end in sight. We’re so far behind everyone has pretty much lapped us.

I *could* spell cat

Like everyone else, I’m working from home. Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot I can do from home. The official case number in Belarus is rising steeply. Today, it’s about 16k and going up by about 1k daily. Those cases fall under “being treated” or something like that; there is also a figure of “recovered and discharged” and there’s no a lot of clarity of the honest total of diagnosed cases.

Anyway, point being, whatever number we have is now shooting up, so whereas a couple weeks ago it was fine to go into the office, now it’s riskier. As a result, I am stranded in my lovely apartment doing my best to not waste taxpayer money by doing absolutely nothing.

My days thus far have been filled with taking random online classes offered by our department learning institute. These are fun, interesting and sometimes enlightening, but not directly related to my job. I’ve been working here for over six years and have, this whole time, been taking classes that are related to my day-to-day duties, so I ran out of those long ago. I moved next to things that were interesting that, in a perfect world, I would do or at least benefited from learning about, like how to take more interesting pictures, how the consular section works and about some of the online programs I use.  

Those had value for me, but now I am sort of regulated to taking the most least interesting. Really, we’re taking about 2-10 hours classes with such titillating titles as “fundamentals of contractor-held property” and “centrally billed accounts training.” Some were no-brainers but relevant, like how to use an emergency radio (which I’ve been using for years now), but in all, I’ve been really scraping for the past week or two.

Fortunately, as part of the regular, non-COVID calendar, the summer class schedule included a “mentored” Russian class that’s 14 weeks long. I signed up for this while I has been going into the office daily, but now I am so glad I got accepted.  (I have no idea if they turn anyone down, but I had to fill in a justification of why I should be able to take it.) Technically, it starts on May 11 (Daddy’s birthday), but we got access to the course materials early.

The class is designed for people who have no knowledge or ability in Russian. I have very little ability, but after six months, I do have some knowledge, so the idea of going through the alphabet again is a bit disheartening. After checking out the materials, it appeared that I needed to go through every little screen to “get credit” for it, so I spent two hours on the first half of the alphabet (again). There are three screens with activities for every letter, and I made no shortcuts and did all of it.

The next day, I went back and discovered a different way to enter the course, which was through the mentor’s “homeroom” link. This time, I went in that way and it too me ALL THE WAY back to the beginning of the alphabet. Heavy sigh. I had to start over. I did, shortcutting (but still completing) the screens I’d gone through and then being thorough when I got to the last half. I ran out of daylight, shut it down and came back the next day.

Well, now, I cannot figure out how to maneuver to that “homeroom” link again. I went back in the browser history to try and then went through all the “practices” for the block letters but they didn’t register as completed in the “objectives” part of the course, so it looks like I haven’t even started. I’ve asked the mentor but it’s a very narrow question and I don’t guess I described it correctly because he sent me a different link (the one for the conference calls once we get going).

Dejected, I pushed forward anyway. The practices were incredibly hard for me; my language problem is not reading but speaking and spoken – I can’t pronounce and I can’t understand people talking. I can know someone is telling me, “I want two cups of black coffee with sugar please,” and understand the “I want” and “please” and possibly, maybe, the “coffee,” but the rest is just noise. Even playing the phrase in slow speed (thank you, Mango Languages) and staring at the words on the screen, I cannot tell what it is. Not good at all. One of the practices was to spell a word that was dictated. I had absolutely no idea what the first one was. The best I could guess was it had two syllables. I was right on that, but utter fail on the rest.

Speaking is not as bad but still brutal. I can sound out words very slowly, one syllable at a time, but I have trouble talking as fast as, say, the Mango Languages voice. I cannot tell you how many times I repeated “I like brown bread” last night and I still couldn’t match the speed.

Some letters complicate it for me, too. Especially vowels. There is a vowel that looks like an English “e” but it has two dots over it. That vowel hates me, as does one that looks like a backwards capital “N” with a squiggle over it. It’s a multi-talented vowel because every word it seems to represent a different sound.

And I need to know how to understand, more so than reading, I think. When I go into the doner place nearby and ask for “one schwarma” – which I can say – they come back with a follow-up question and I am lost. As I have yet to not walk away with a schwarma, it’s not like it’s life or death, but it’s really frustrating. This is so, so hard for me.

But I am plugging along, using several forms of learning. In the department’s class, I finished the block letters (though I still don’t think I’ve been credited for it – I have to find that darn link) and moved on to italics. And at this, I pretty much lost all hope.

As it turns out, Russian – a language that, one colleague told me, the more you study, the less you know --  in some cases,  has letters that look totally, totally different in italics than they do in block print. How do people learn this?

Up until now, I knew how to spell cat. It was C-A-T, and as the kindergarten song relayed, was basically the first word I could spell. (Hippopotamus was a lot harder.) And even now, I can understand that in Russian, there is no hard “c” and it’s represented with a “k.” I can grasp the concept that in other languages, words aren’t always direct cognates to English but are close. I’m OK with knowing that the English word “cat” is spelled “kot” in Russian. Not a problem there.

But oh my, these italics. The “v” sound, which is represented by “B” in Russian (I can grasp that mentally, too), somehow, in lower-case italics, looks sort of like an “e,” if the bottom stretch of the “e” made a loop like the top. I had trouble writing it in a pencil because I kept filling in the loops. That’s just weird. Why should something look vastly different in lower-case italics? The lower-case “g” looks like a very small, very awkward, backwards “2” or maybe “z.” The “d” sound in Russia is represented by a letter that looks kind of like pi, if pi had an additional line near the bottom, but the lower-cased italics letter looks a lot more like an English “d,” but it’s a bit lopsided. I can get used to those, even if it is confusing.

But man, the lower-case “OO” sound, which looks like a “Y” in regular block, turns to “u” in lower-case italics. Now that’s crazy. How did this come about, really? But the worst ones are “M”  and “T.” The lower-case italics “M” looks like a small upper-case “M”—points and all. And it’s important to remember that, even lower-case, it’s pointy because, for a reason I will never, ever understand, the lower-case italics “T” *also* looks like an “M” in lower case – with the rounded humps. It is totally crazy. No wonder Russians drink a lot of vodka.

It boggles my mind, and I have no idea how to grasp this. I could spell cat. It was really simple, a long time ago and for a very long time. Now, though, it’s spelled “k-o-t” as well as “k-a-m.”

I might never recover. Where is the vodka?

Anyone? Anyone?

Nothing is going on. It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything but that’s why. When “The Masked Singer” is the biggest thing you’ve got going, it’s a slow news life.

I am totally sucked into “The Masked Singer,” though. I can’t watch it when it comes out but I track it down on Hulu as soon as possible afterwards. The ironic thing is, I am one of the least culturally literate people ever. There are four judges and a host on the show, and I’ve heard of one (but not in a good way) and know who another’s father was. They make guesses and eight times out of 10 I have no idea who the guesses are, and then when someone is unmasked, I have to wait until the host announces who it is.

They’re down to the finals now, two men and two women. My sentimental favorite (clues point to Nashville) probably won’t make it another week. Another one I liked just bumped out. The guest host, Sharon Osborne (who I’ve heard of tangentially but know so little about I was surprised at the British accent) knew the person – Bret Somebody – from way back. I never heard of the guy, but I have heard of the band he apparently fronted/fronts: Poison, though I couldn’t tell you a song they did. Hair rockers from 80s or 90s is the best I could venture.  

That I’ve just written two paragraphs about a television show illustrates how bored I have been during this pandemic.

Another regular has been watching “Sunsets and Songs,” or something like that, via Facebook. One of my favorite songwriters, Paul Overstreet, and his wife got stuck in the Cayman Islands so he broadcasted a little show every night they were there, singing songs and telling stories. His wife filmed it and had the sunset in the background. I didn’t watch it live but would do the replay in the mornings. Now they’ve been repatriated back to the U.S. and I they are continuing it from their farm. It’s been a nice diversion but it’s only 40 minutes or so. Well, that’s if the internet works. Usually it doesn’t so it takes me about an hour to watch it.

Like most people who are lucky enough to still be employed, I am mostly working from home. I’ve been down to two days a week in the office but signs point to that cutting back further next week. Both April and May are holiday-heavy in Belarus; between local and federal holidays, there are seven in two months. Next week is a three-day work week: M-W-Th. When I left on Thursday, it hit me I wouldn’t in in there for solid week.

The work-from-home thing is pretty rough in many cases, though it’s nice to be able to do laundry while I am working. What I can do from home is a bit limited, but not as bad as I thought it might be. Mostly, the lax workload stems from the fact we are only focusing on the bare, bare minimum so it’s been hard to scrounge up work. The first two weeks I was fine because I finished up a huge project, but since that’s done and dusted, I have been taking online classes from our academic institution. The classes don’t directly relate to my job but might be useful down the road. If anything, they’re enlightening as to what everyone else does, so it’s not a total waste of time. It feels like it, though.

Belarus is closing in on 10k cases now and they’re escalating rapidly. Still, there’s no directives from the government to shut things down, although the vast majority of people are taking precautions.

The weather is finally looking nicer and lots of people want to go outside. Fortunately, Minsk has tons of parks and open green spaces, so walking maskless is a good option. Yesterday, three of us and my adjunct dog took a long, long walk along the river, which meanders through the city. It turned chilly twice and sprinkled, but other than that it was a really wonderful walk. Wish I could motivate myself to go alone.

When I got home, I did pretty much nothing but scroll through awkwardfamilyphotos.com and play on jigsawexplorer.com. It’s not been really exciting.

There’s been way too much screen time lately, whether it’s been online games, reading books or listening to podcasts. Even the Russian lessons I’ve been able to do involve screens – I use Mango Languages and have gotten into a lesson I found on YouTube. We have a language instructor at work but I’m just not advanced enough to be able to do lessons over the phone.

I ran out of books. A friend offered to loan me some actual paper ones but I can’t get them unless I go into the office sometime after she goes into the office, so that’s on hold. I also have about six on hold and they all say they should be ready in about two weeks. I’ve read so many books this past year – since discovering the Kindle – and they’ve been all over the place. The most recent one I read that really grabbed me was “Stranger in the Woods” by Michael Finkel. It’s about a man who lived in the Maine woods for 27 years with no human contact.

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.