Depressing sights

 

If you squint you can see the reactor. 
View from a fire tower.

A couple weekends ago, I went with a small group to the Belarus Exclusion Zone, a 30-kilometer area that was devastated by the Chernobyl disaster 35 years ago. Belarus suffered far more than Ukraine did; it dealt with 75 percent of the damage and is a much smaller geographical area than Ukraine. Belarus is only 5k from the reactor that caused the damage. I run further than that every morning. (Though not very quickly.)

A Minsk travel company, Walk to Folk, organizes tours and one of my colleagues contacted them about taking just a group from work on a tour. This was in part because we needed an English translator and in part because our boss would only agree to allow a group of us to go if it was only us in a van. (Not many people in Belarus have had the COVID vaccine, so it was a health precaution more than anything.)The company met us at the office at a horrific 5 a.m. and then drove us the four and a half hours down. Since this was a one-day trip, it was a very, very long time in a car – in the end, we got home around 11 p.m.

Once there, we suddenly became a “delegation” when someone from the Ministry of Emergency Services joined us, having come down from Minsk to accompany us on the trip. It was quite a surprise, and very “Big Brother”-ish, although it wasn’t anything nefarious. Just the same as in the Exclusion Zone on the Ukrainian side, the tour company has to apply for permits and needed copies of our passports to get them. The permits come from the ministry, so they saw a bunch of diplomats – and only diplomats – coming, so they decided to give us the quarter tour for the price of a nickel. It was quite nice of them, actually. (The chocolate factory did the same thing.)

At one point, I was talking to the representative and he asked if our trip was a team-building thing of some sort and assured him it was just that we had wanted to come and explained the parameters of our boss allowing us to come and he understood. He was quite nice and he was taking advantage of the opportunity to visit the park (it’s a nature preserve now) without having to be “on” – he took more selfies than the rest of the group combined.

Of the group, I was the only one who had previously been to the other side and the damage entirely paralleled it. One difference, though, was that we were giving much more rein to wander through the decrepit buildings, some of which had rotted and sagging floors. I mean, it’s been 35 years.

As on the Ukrainian side, the visuals are astoundingly depressing, especially considering the Belarusians didn’t know about the disaster immediately and continued to do things like go to school. There are discarded and abandoned items everywhere, and, although I don’t doubt that they’re authentic, it does make you wonder how they’ve survived exactly in the same place for so long. At the very first viewing, the guide pointed to a rusted toy truck lying in the grass -- a very sobering sight – and, after taking several photos at different angles, you realize that wow, how odd that the side of the road has been mowed but some truck (or shoe) isn’t completely overgrown. So there’s got to be a little bit of staging involved, but that doesn’t take away the authentic feel to it.

As a wildlife area, they monitor for forest fires and have about 25 towers around the area. At the one closest to the border – 18 kilometers – the reactor is visible, but only if you climb three of the five flights of stairs up the fire tower. It terrified me, but I did it. No way was I missing that.

Following the visit, because we were a “delegation,” we were shown the monitoring room, where a guy watches video feeds from the towers to monitor from fires. It was quite cool and a bit creepy – their cameras were WAY better than mine; the operator called up a picture of the reactor that looked like the ones I’d taken from the Ukrainian side. And he also called up, while we were watching,  video of us in the tour van!

There’s a river – the Pripyet, same name as one of the larger communities that was devastated (the one that has the Ferris wheel) – and there were several aged boats, which, me being me, loved. I hate to think of how many photos I took. I can’t imagine doing having done that at camp in 1982 with only 24 shots for a whole week! But the river was gorgeous; the tour company also offers a kayaking tour there.

Now that I realize that the tour company is operating again, I will have to look at other weekend trips. I’d been monitoring the site but not seeing any updates. Turns out, they’ve been operating through COVID but just hadn’t gotten a chance to update the English version of the website.

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend and three of us are headed to another city in the direction of Lithuania. Because I’ll be out of commission until Monday, I am having to put together four papers for the two classes I am taking. Needless to say, I had a crappy weekend. ALL I did was coursework.

But that’s better than being on a diverted/hijacked plane and being yanked off. The world is again appalled at what “Europe’s last dictator” has pulled. I cannot imagine what he thought the reaction would be, but it’s not looking good. I will refrain from commentary. 

Here's the State Department statement:

The United States strongly condemns the forced diversion of a flight between two EU member states and the subsequent removal and arrest of journalist Raman Pratasevich in Minsk. We demand his immediate release. This shocking act perpetrated by the Lukashenka regime endangered the lives of more than 120 passengers, including U.S. citizens. Initial reports suggesting the involvement of the Belarusian security services and the use of Belarusian military aircraft to escort the plane are deeply concerning and require full investigation.

We are closely coordinating our response with our partners, including the EU and Lithuanian and Greek officials. Given indications the forced landing was based on false pretenses, we support the earliest possible meeting of the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization to review these events.

Independent media are an essential pillar supporting the rule of law and a vital component of a democratic society. The United States once again condemns the Lukashenka regime’s ongoing harassment and arbitrary detention of journalists. We stand with the Belarusian people in their aspirations for a free, democratic, and prosperous future and support their call for the regime to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Saving Soles

 Since I’m down to maybe 3-4 months left in Minsk, I’m trying to wrap my brain around what I need to do, what I should do, what I want to do and what I can do. Stuff starts to get real about this point in a tour, when you scramble to figure what needs to be done before you leave. Places to see, things to do – you know.

Soles like new. Inside, not so much.

And of the random things to do, “get shoes resoled” fell low on the totem pole, but I found a place and had gotten my black shoes redone a bit earlier. The LL Bean shoes were originally around $80 and I bought them when I was in Minot, so they’re almost 9 years old. Here, getting them resoled took two days and only cost around $12! I was thrilled with the black ones and went this week to get the brown ones done. My small little victory. It’s really hard to do with little to no language skills. I know how to say “new” but not “shoes” or “soles.” Fortunately, when I went with the black ones earlier, I went the day after going with someone to scout the place, so the guy had an idea of what I needed. When I went to do the brown ones – at a different place because the original place was closed that particular day – I just showed the bottoms of the black ones and pointed to the brown ones. I guess it makes it easier that the shoes are identical except for the color.

A couple months ago, I finally splurged on some new clothes. Like pretty much the rest of my wardrobe, it all was from LL Bean. When I got the order in, I went to hang up the shirts. I think LL Bean is using different manufacturers now because I am no longer an XL in some of the shirts, but that wasn’t my takeaway. I hung up three new shirts and then counted all my hang-up shirts. I have exactly 26 of them. Sixteen are from LL Bean; all variations of the wrinkle-free oxfords. And the pants I wear to work? Every single day (except Fridays when my boss is working from home), I wear a pair of LL Bean Perfect Fit pants, which I have in a couple of styles and a range of colors. I have 13 of them. So essentially, every day, I wear three catalog items. Well, four, if you count my backpack. I have two of those – a backpack for M and F and then a slingy thing for the rest of the days. On Mondays I bring in my Russian textbook and then I take it home on Fridays; it doesn’t fit into the slingy thing. If I was better looking, I’d apply to be a model. I certainly feel like I should have some street cred with them.

Sums up my closet

Today, though is one of those unicorn days where I’m wearing zero LL Bean – at least now that I’ve warmed up enough to take off the vest. It’s Saturday, so I’m wearing Levi’s and my “Kurdagonia” shirt from Erbil. It’s also the first day of another four-day weekend, so it’s likely I’ll be wearing the same thing tomorrow, too.

No out-of-town plans this weekend. We have a couple of social work events on Monday and Tuesday, so that was reason to stick around. Today, I cooked for the Monday one. Ran myself out of red beans, so that’s something. Tomorrow, I’ll use the second-to-last brownie mix. Tomorrow my big thing is a massage. I’m going to splurge and do an hour and a half.

Still no trips planned to the grocery store. I was going to go this weekend but the one thing I planned on getting was bread to resume PB sandwich lunches and since we only have a three-day work week, I’ll just continue with rice or macaroni like I did this week. Geez, this morning, since I have no potatoes, I decided to eat a side dish of macaroni with my scrambled eggs. It was a bit weird, but I just can’t justify buying carbs when I have so darn many carbs in my pantry. But I’ll cave next weekend. The call of ice cream is strong, and I can justify it because I have a thing of caramel waiting to be ingested.

Next weekend, we have the road trip planned and now there are, I think, eight of us going. It’s only a one-day trip, but it’s a seriously long one day. Hopefully it all works out; I keep having fears something will happen.

I pulled out the Belarus map and realized that the next weekend trip isn’t exactly where I thought, so that will still leave one region unseen. I may try to do another little train trip either later this month or June to see it, especially if the EU hasn’t opened up yet. However, we realize that Ukraine is also open, so that’s a possibility. But I really want to get to Poland before I leave here, so I hope that opens up.

My next classes start on Monday, so I have to work around that as well. Going away for a full weekend isn’t the greatest idea because Sunday night is the day the assignments are due, and I’m doing two classes instead of one this time. It’s probably not the wisest idea, but for some reason it seemed that way at the time. So I’m just going to take it week by week and hope it works.

Eastbound and down

It’s Orthodox Easter Monday and the end of a four-day weekend. Next weekend, there’s another. I just couldn’t stand the thought of being locked up again and I had almost reached full immunity, so I took a train to a city that’s northeast from me (right in the corner near Russia) and then the following day went down to a city that’s pretty much due east of Minsk. I came home yesterday. I’m off today, too, but I have a class and other stuff to do so I came on back. Besides, I was limited to walking around and am pretty sure I saw everything I could see while on foot, including a dead man.

I’d met a friend for dinner on Friday night and, walking back up the pedestrian street to my hotel, saw both a police car and an ambulance. There were two uniformed officers nearby, standing near the corpse of an older man, who was sprawled out on the sidewalk. I guess he had a heart attack. My first thought had been a jumper but it wasn’t messy.

Previously, on the way to work last week, I witnessed the term “falling down drunk” in real life. Not being a drinker myself, it never occurred to me that could be a real thing. On Monday, I walked through “Old Town,” which is a cool area with bars and restaurants by the river. This was on my way into work on a Monday, and I walk out of my house at 7:45 a.m. Apparently Sunday night is a party night because there were people standing around talking or waiting for taxis. On my side of the street as I was walking, I saw a guy facing kind of a half wall, holding himself up on it. I kept walking and put together that he was peeing. Do men (besides Jerry Seinfeld in a parking garage) do this in America and I just never noticed? It sure happens overseas to the point where I just ignore it, which is what I did with this guy. As I got closer, he slowly turned, paused and then completely collapsed on the sidewalk with a smack.

But I don’t think the older man in Vitebsk was drunk. I really think he was dead.

Other than that, though, it was a lovely weekend away and at times I caught myself wondering why I hadn’t done it before. Then I’d realize, duh, COVID, and although at no point has Belarus shut down it wouldn’t have been a good idea. The first city I went to was, early on, Belarus’ early hotspot, too.

In two more weeks, a group of us are headed to the Chernobyl Zone and over Memorial Day weekend there is a smaller group heading another direction. Even though I’d really like to go international, it’s really nice to be able to go somewhere. It’s incredibly cheap, too. I think my three-day trip only came to maybe $100. It wasn’t intentional to scrimp or anything but I certainly don’t need souvenirs. I just took a million photos and walked by rivers.

Back at home, I finished up my first HR course. (Yay! 10 percent complete!) and am trying to figure out how to go through all this food. Today, I used up the rest of my chocolate chips to make cookies (they’re in the freezer), made Jiffy cornbread (which leaves one box) and finished off the chickpeas. I hadn’t intended to do that, but the brown sugar needed to go into an airtight container and I didn’t have one so I cooked the chickpeas. Unfortunately, though, the chickpea-rice-spinach concoction once again stocked my freezer. I really don’t need to cook at all and although I had planned on going to the grocery store, it turned out to be closed so I skipped it. The only thing I really want to get is ice cream (I have two things of caramel waiting to be consumed) but since I made cookies I can’t really justify that.

Next weekend, we’re having a little bike ride get-together so I’m hoping it’s decent weather. There’s been a lot of rain lately and it’s still chilly. I’m over it.

Still the same but much in the works

Tomorrow’s not only Wendy’s birthday, but it’s also the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, which affected Belarus way more than it did Ukraine. All the radiation blew northward and the border is really close. Belarus isn’t all that big, so proportionally, it really took a hit.

Last year, in my last hurrah before COVID shut everything down, I’d gone to Kyiv and to the site of the plant and the exclusion there. This year, I’m hoping to go to the Belarus side, which is now open (sort of) for tourists. There’s a local tour company that puts together excursions there and a small group from work are planning to go in a couple of weeks. It is a sad commentary to the times that I am looking forward to it.

Belarus side of Chernobyl disaster.
Photo: Walk to Folk tour company

But not this weekend. I am currently bored out of my mind. I’m not studying either Russian or HR, which are both viable options for productive things that I’ve shunned to sit here and veg out with some really bad movie with Edward Norton in it. (Although, with him in it, really, how bad can it be?) I was a little productive this weekend; I made M&M cookies, which used up the last of my M&Ms and one of three remaining Crisco sticks, plus I vacuumed and cleaned the bathroom. Since I hate those last two, I figure I get a bye for the rest of the day.

I did, as per usual, get up and at ‘em, but in my 8,000-step walk to get to a grocery store on the next block (I went via the river), I discovered it was closed, perhaps permanently. There are multiple businesses shutting down here in some political actions, but I don’t know if this particular grocery store is in that department. I’d tried to go last week and it was closed, too, but I hadn’t realized it was a permanent thing.

So this marks three weeks without hitting a grocery store and honestly, I still have plenty of food. I basically need bread to make my PB sandwiches for lunch; I’m still loaded on everything else. I really want to buy carrots and hummus but I am a little concerned that if I go to the grocery store, I’ll buy that and more. The same old is really getting old. It appears I’m down to less than four months, and with the pantry stock I just don’t see eating out any time soon.

And hopefully it’s not less than “less than four months.” Our relations with Belarus are a tad sketchy right now and people at work are a little concerned at what may happen. International relations geeks may have seen the news out of Lithuania that the eventual U.S. ambassador to Belarus (first since 2008) was in Vilnius recently. The foreign ministry there apparently announced for some reason that she was seeking to be accredited there and would be sort of an adjunct ambassador to Belarus. I’ve no idea where they got that, because it doesn’t work that way but it’s causing some people I work with to be a little on edge because we don’t know what’s going to happen.

Next weekend, though, I know what I hope to happen: we have a four-day weekend and I plan on getting out of town. I’ve now been vaccinated, although I don’t yet have full immunity, but Belarus has not at any point shut down, so I figured I’d just take the train. Belarus isn’t that big a country (one reason Chernobyl was horrific) and the border isn’t further than four hours in any direction. Minsk is conveniently smack in the middle.

There are a handful of major cities, and my plan on this long weekend (Friday is something that I don’t’ remember and Orthodox Easter is Monday) is to take an early train to a city in the northeast that’s almost on the Russian border, then take a bus the next day to another city that’s south of that and then come back on Sunday. Even with some pretty awful Russian, I managed to get the train tickets from cities 1-2 and 3-1 yesterday. I’m hoping to bus between 2-3 because it’s for some reason an hour shorter but I have both the train and bus schedules written down just in case. And Expedia came through with hotels.

As far as what I will do, I have no idea beyond going to the Marc Chagall museum and just walking around. It’ll be nice, I think, to just walk around a different city.

Last Tuesday, I got to do that, too. I was able to go to Vilnius for a meeting. The next morning, I woke up at 5:30 and just walked all around the Old Town. I’d been before – I took a Baltics trip from Istanbul – so I wasn’t in it for touristy things but just walked to be someplace else.

In Vilnius

In May, hopefully, I’ll get to explore Belarus a little more. Beyond this weekend’s trip, we have the Chernobyl thing planned and then a long weekend for Memorial Day. If I can do all those, then I really will have seen every corner of this country, albeit only lightly. There’s a lot of castles and things here that I don’t know if I’ll get to, but if I can at least do these things, maybe that will make me feel like this hasn’t been a waste of a tour as far as travel goes.

I’m still hoping to do some out of country travel and am eyeing places that are opening up. So far, Iceland and the Seychelles are open but I’m really just hoping that Poland starts letting people in. I’d also still like to see Bratislava, but that one will be more complicated because it involves leaving one country, flying to another and then taking a bus to another. Maybe July.

In a couple weeks, I am due to get a new boss, and my hope is that come June and July things will have settled down enough to take a week off each of those months to go somewhere. I have a lot of “use or lose” time that I need to figure out how to take between now and Baghdad, because, assuming I get to Baghdad, I won’t be able to take off until 2022.

Not hungry at all

Finishing up a long weekend here in Belarus, but it’s been a boring one. We were off both Good Friday and Easter Monday, and it’s the second consecutive Good Friday-Easter Monday long weekend where I’ve been stranded due to COVID. The good news out of that is that Christ has risen, of course, but a far distant second is that I haven’t had an opportunity to spend money. In any other normal time, I would have plunked down $400 for a flight to anywhere.

Instead, I’ve done pretty much nothing. The weather hasn’t been all that great, although it is finally warming up. (Think low 40s.) I tend to be up early and get my outdoor walks in before noon and it’s really chilly still. This morning, it wasn’t quite in the low 40s and was windy to boot – I wound up going two blocks and turning around to come back for the warmer jacket.

The only thing I’ve really accomplished this long weekend is to procrastinate studying. I did manage to finally get to this week’s assignment and discussion, but I’m even at this very moment dilly-dallying to put off working on the final paper.

Mostly, I’ve been watching TV and eating. Not a good combination. I mean, I have gotten 12k-14k steps a day – I’ve started out doing four miles each morning on the treadmill – but after that, not a whole lot. One of the more productive things I’ve watched was today, when I tuned into two different seminars on the class topic. Although I am a visual person, just reading from the textbook and the online forum just isn’t doing it for me.

Beyond that, I watched “The Passion of the Christ” and the entire Hunger Games series, which is kind of ironic considering the amount of food I’ve consumed. Gosh, being home is boring and when I’m bored, I want to do something. Eating is the low-hanging fruit.

The pit is where the Jews were massacred.

I did walk to the far-away market and bought veggies, which meant I could cook. This, in turn, led me to another game of Tetris, trying to fit stuff in the freezer. I’ve again completely exhausted my storage containers and am again vowing not to set food into a grocery store next week. Unless it’s for carrots, because I still have a jar of hummus I’m working on. Hummus is pretty wonderful.

But I managed to make progress with my pantry, which overflowth like that of a Victor of the Hunger Games. I really am trying to whittle it down and right now, I could live through a couple of hurricanes. I used up a Lipton Onion Soup mix, one of the three Jiffy cornbread mixes, the remains of the big canister of butter-flavored Crisco and the rest of the rock-hard dark brown sugar. I still have several Crisco sticks and half a bag of light brown sugar that’s solid, but not rock solid. I made blonde brownies for the first time in awhile with that – it melted the sugar rocks just fine, but they weren’t as chewy as I remember. I need to make a dessert that’s made up primarily of powered sugar because I have a ton of that. When you only use it to sprinkle on brownies, a bag goes a long, long way.

I’m still planning on saving the brownie mixes and the bags of M&Ms and chocolate chips for a bit longer, but I think I need to start making popcorn as my “chip” at lunch, and I’ll have to really douse it with the yellow butter flavor popcorn topper. I’m still working on my first bottle of that and I have two more. Not really sure what I was thinking on that.

 

Goal lines, groceries and goatees

 Happy post-Belarusian Freedom Day, which is an unofficial holiday that marks the declaration of independence from the Belarusian Democratic Republic, which lasted a year after WWI. The unofficial holiday is a big one for the opposition, and the opposition’s leader, who is still exiled in Lithuania, called for renewed protests following the fraudulent (legit fraudulent, not Trump-fraudulent) summer elections. People have still been protesting, but this past winter was super cold, with more freezing temperatures and snow than in the last 25 or so years.

Museum of Culture

 Now that the weather has improved (it’s about 40 and sunny today), some people are trying to get the protests going again, but Europe’s Last Dictator isn’t letting go. People are protesting on smaller scales, with basically people walking in small groups (think like 3-6 people) being considered a protest. And yes, these people are being rounded up.

 This weekend I have the duty phone and I’ve already had one call from the relative of American citizen who apparently didn’t know that taking pictures of what’s going on is a bad thing and got detained for a couple of hours. Hopefully there aren’t any more calls.

 To stay out of trouble on protest days, it’s best to not wear white and red, as these are the colors of the opposition. I have a Red Wings knit hat that Dana gave me (Hockey is for Everyone-themed) and people here love it, but I can’t wear it on Sundays. That’s been the main protest day.

 

The hat is a nice conversation piece, although my Russian stinks. (And always will, a fact I’m coming to terms with.) One of the groundskeepers at work and I have a friendly attempt at a Russian/English lesson whenever we meet. He knows I’m awful in Russian and we’ll stay “good morning” and try to do short conversation or something. I’m terrible. I can’t even say “have a nice day correctly.”

Anyway, he noticed my hat one morning and asked me something about Detroit. Although I wasn’t sure what he meant, I said yes and asked, “And you?” He said yes. Then I tried to asked if he played and thought he said yes, so I tried to ask what position. Well, I can’t remember the words for “forward” and “defence” (they’re in a script I’m trying to memorize), so I said “Sergei Fedorov, Igor Larionov” and then “Slava Fetisov.” Didn’t work. He said, “Russian.” Not what I was trying to convey. Undaunted, I tried again and I first mimed puckhandling towards the goal line while saying “Sergei,” And then did the same thing going backwards and said “Fetisov.” It worked! Turns out, he doesn’t play. He’s a fan and sits in the stands.

Museum of Culture

It looks like I might be able to put the hat away soon. We’re finally warming up, and that means my time is winding down. I expect to be out of here around September or so, though that’s not nailed down. It’s not like I’m counting down, but I have come to realize that I have way too much stockpiled food and need to start eating. Somehow, I have maybe four more bags of grits and I have only been eating them maybe once a week. I don’t think I’ll have to buy juice again, either. Some stuff I need on a regular basis, like fresh veggies. But what I have I am loading up with spices, because I overestimated the amount of this and that I’d be using. Some stuff I’ve been saving, like Jiffy cornbread. I bought a six-pack and have eaten three but since I’m down to three, it doesn’t seem like much so I haven’t touched them in a couple months. Same with the brownie mixes. I haven’t used a brownie mix since before Christmas, but the minute I make a batch, I’ll only have one left! It probably sounds very silly to people who can run to Publix anytime they want but it seems risky to me.

Also risky: COVID here. Belarus will start manufacturing the Russian vaccine soon and its residents will have options but right now, only medical personnel have been vaccinated. I think they’re starting another tranche. The virus just isn’t being treated like a serious thing here. We do finally have mandates to wear masks indoors and on mass transit, but when I go into stores, maybe 50-60 percent of people are wearing masks (not necessarily properly) and as I walk, I can see inside the city busses and trams with unmasked people inside. No one trusts the numbers here so I don’t even track them, but basically I wash my hands every time I arrive home or to the office.

Work is different, of course. We wear them indoors for the most part. I hate it and wish I could open a window, but it’s still pretty cold most of the day. My boss is a double masker and I rarely see him without one, although I’ve noticed a lot of people are closing their office doors lately because we’re allowed to remove masks if our doors are shut. (I had a door but it went away in an office re-do.)

A couple days ago, his door was open and I needed something, so I went in – and caught him without a mask. Not like I cared or anything, but what blew me away was that sometime in the past, oh, year since I’ve seen his face, he grew a goatee! I was utterly stunned. I had no idea.

I can’t imagine what the look on my face must have been, but he would not have seen it because I was wearing a mask.

 

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.