Hi friends,
It’s Sunday
and a little cloudy and I wanted to write this yesterday but I hadn’t realized
that my internet/telephone credit had been used up. So my Guardian Angel Ivan
today helped me out again…
The week was
rather unspectacular filled with the classes, shopping for survival and regular
visits to my favorite ‘News Café’. Favorite for it’s coffee, decent tea,
excellent pasta and, yes, deserts. I’m by now a registered regular there and
almost always get my favorite table. I think I have to go after this so they
don’t get worried….
Although in the
‘Minsk in Your
Pocket’ guide (really good, check especially page 2 of the pdf version ;-) http://www.inyourpocket.com/belarus/minsk )
it is stated somewhere that you can’t get international newspapers (I also
haven’t found any). There you find FT, IHT, Süddeutsche, Daily Telegraph and others albeit not daily but at
least 3-4 times a week. Why not daily I have yet to find out. It is located in
the center opposite the British Embassy in case somebody of you also wants to
come…
So today is
Trinity and I am sitting here in the hope that the Holy Spirit might come over
me like about 2000 years ago with the apostles. But then again, who am I
compared to them…
Unspectacular?
Well, not quite: Friday night I again was invited to the opera by Priorbank who
is one of the large sponsors. The opera was Prince Igor from Borodin. Few
people know it except for some of the music which is played in concert. One of
the reasons that it rarely is performed must be the cost. I guess that the
total of the artists was exceeding 100 with a big choir (the national one) and
a big ballet contingent. The cast included singers from all over the CIS
including Kirgistan and the quality of those was outstanding. My favorites were
a young tenor and a bass, the names of whom escaped me as I lost the program.
But I wouldn’t be surprised hearing that they became international stars. Helen
from Controlling got the ‘assignment’ to accompany me, which made the evening
an even more pleasurable.
For those of
you wondering about economic aspects in Belorus: generally the price level of
daily goods is a little below ours. Petrol and Diesel I already mentioned.
Bread is about half of what it is in Vienna
and very good (dark) although there are no bakeries but only big ‘bakery
factories’. Fruit and vegetables in the market are slightly cheaper which
overall means that people here must spend a large part of their income for food
as the general income level is low. But it appears that also the rent levels
are low.
People are
mostly living in high rise apartments some of them 20 floors and higher.
Architecturally
they are as (un)attractive as anywhere else in the world but what makes many of
them stick out positively are the big tracts of green with playing grounds. I
mentioned already that the city is very green and because of the many high
risers it uses up much less space for buildings then let’s say Vienna (not to
talk about London…) which makes the city quite ‘compact’. I measured 15km from
north to south and 18 from east to west. And the population is about 1.85 mio
which makes it a similar size compared to Vienna.
As much as I like Vienna,
from an environmental point of view (‘ecological footprint’) this concept has
its values. Naturally it ‘helped’ that about 80-90 percent of the city were
destroyed and the planners could start with a ‘clean slate’. But at that time
nobody, of course, considered the ‘ecological footprint’, political reasons
prevailed…
Yesterday,
on one of my excursions I did see some one family houses, those people must be
really privileged although admittedly the sizes were modest. How exactly the
real estate market works I still have to find out….
At the
beginning I made a comment about the traffic and the cars. Here a correction:
there are a lot of cars older than 10 years but being kept in good shape. And
as apparently the size of number plates in Belarus
is identical to that in Germany
many of them bear the number plate holders of German car dealers as there must
be a booming trade in second hand cars from Germany. Without having taken a
count I would think that the ranking would be BMW, VW Group Mercedes and then Toyota and the rest
including a surprising amount of US models. There is practically no model of
car (including all the late models including the really expensive ones) you
don’t find here. How they keep them on the road remains a mystery to me except
that there are talented mechanics and a few car part warehouses that sell
anything you might imagine related to cars. They remind me of Chinese trading
centers full of max 12 sqm stalls with those dealers specializing in oil and
filters, spark plugs, accessories etc. and certain car brands, of course. How
it is possible that that many traders/people can make a living out of that is
also a mystery to me as prices are moderate, even for the imported stuff.
Well, that’s
it for today. It always surprises me how much an ‘almost no event’ week
produces in impressions but nobody told you to read all this anyway… But it may
give you an explanation why I do all this… it gives me real pleasure…
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