Belarus is a charming beautiful piece of land lavishly filled with blue lakes and green forests, castles and skyscrapers, sweet birch sap, bitter vodka and a mixture of both, bears and bisons, rough industrial workers and sissy eccentric poets. The capital of Belarus, Minsk is a two million metropolis, modern, clean and truly comfortable for locals and guests. The tranquility and order in streets and other public places is maintained by abundant police patrols. The crime rate is fairly low � you can freely use your gilded fake iPhone or wear diamond necklace while walking by a deserted moonlit park. Just stay away from infrequent opposition pickets and do not take the name of the Father of the nation in vain, then you can feel safe while staying here.
       The capital of Belarus is an ancient city. Through its history it belonged to Kyiv, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia. Though the first mentioning of Minsk dates back to the 11th century, only a few of the reminders of the stormy past survived the numerous wars. During WWII, the city was totally ruinated, and afterwards resuscitated from scratch as a model Soviet city. Wide streets stalinist empire style buildings, sumptuously decorated with hammers and sickles, marbled metro stations, cyclopean monuments to communist heroes and tyrants � it is the controversial legacy of the past epoch. After the collapse of the USSR, Minsk became the capital of the country and the area for the realization of the grandiose projects of the emerged regime, such as sports facilities, cultural and entertaining objects. Actually, the look of the capital have dramatically changed after the attainment of independence: ugly gray shacks make way for pretentious ultramodern buildings, cracked and potholed asphalt is replaced by neat colour paving tile, formerly half-empty streets are overfilled with cars, smiles appear on once sad, sullen faces of passersby. Walk by its clean mosaic trottoirs, watching senior gay couples leisurely passing by; sit on a fumed oak bench near a pair of kissing teenagers; look at happy faces of people � we are sure, you will certainly return here, maybe next life, if not next year.

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