Minsk, Belarus

In 1991, the only member of the Belarusian parliament to oppose the dissolution of the Soviet Union was one Alexander Lukashenko, a former collective-farm director and Soviet army official who then became president in 1994 by winning Belarus's first ever democratic election. 25 years on, guess who's still in charge?

Belarus is commonly known as 'Europe's last dictatorship' and essentially it's true. No serious opposition leader has ever stayed out of jail for long. Belarus is also the last place in Europe that retains the death penalty. Most of the economy is state-controlled, albeit often via cronyism and corruption rather than formal socialism per se. Civil society is kept on a very tight leash. In short, this is a country that goes against almost everything that I believe in.

And yet, and yet...I've hardly encountered any police or security officials. The streets and parks are clean and safe at all hours. The metro and buses are cheap and reliable. Unemployment is minimal. Nobody sleeps rough. During a night out along Zibitskaya, where the best bars are, the clientele drank deeply, laughed loudly and sang karaoke lustily; they all looked as happy and carefree as anybody else in Europe. Not much English is spoken, but people are friendly and reliable wherever you go. It's cooler here than in Kiev, and mosquito-free as far as I can tell.

Does this mean I'm suddenly converted to Soviet nostalgia and to benevolent dictatorship? Not at all. But it's certainly given me something to think about. There is a growing worldwide cynicism about our smugly complacent Western liberal-capitalist-democratic model, and we can't just laugh it off.

It's time for an innovation: sound. On the Minsk metro, each impending departure is announced by a pleasing Fmaj9 chord (that's what you get if you play an F and the next four alternate white notes on the piano), as well as "Please mind the closing doors!", spoken by a camp version of Darth Vader.  I have recorded it for your listening pleasure and it's here.

One last thing. I had a bit of bother on departure. Foreigners are supposed to register with the police if they stay longer than 5 days: it's normally the hotel's responsibility to do the paperwork, but you have to do it yourself if you're staying at a private address, and evidently that's what AirBnB apartments are. Anyway, I hadn't registered, and so all of a sudden I was an illegal alien. I spent some time being interrogated politely by two uniformed officials, both lithe young blondes of course, at the end of which I was given an administrative warning and a long confession to sign (in Belarusian). How many of you have ever brushed up against the law in a dictatorship, eh? Beat that. I am now officially a Bad Boy and I bring excitement into all your lives. You're welcome.

Church of Saints Simon & Helena, at Independence Square

Memorial to 5,000 Jews shot in this place by the Nazis during one day in 1942.
This sculpture recreates the victims being herded down into the pit.
Each figure was sculpted individually by hand.
There are pregnant women, and children clinging to their parents. One man plays a violin.

This is the headquarters of the KGB.
Yes, it's still going, and yes, they still call it that.
Apparently you're not supposed to take pictures here.
Oops.

Statue of Lenin. (Independence Square used to be called Lenin Square).
One day this will be knocked down.

Island of Tears
Memorial to soldiers killed in the Sovet-Afghan war, 1979-1989.

Museum of the Great Patriotic War (WW2)

Homely Soviet-style AirBnB apartment

Edd vs Food #81
Potato cakes
In foreign fast food joints, it's easy to avoid linguistic confusion.
Just take a pic from the menu and show it at the till.
And then you can put the photo in your blog when you forget to take a picture of the actual food.

Kiev, Ukraine

During all the long journeys and lonely walks that have filled up my travels over the years, I've spent a lot of time lost in my own thoughts, time during which I turn over many profound questions in my mind; and as my flight to Ukraine came in to land, I found myself confronting one of the profoundest questions of all...

Do chicken Kievs really come from Kiev?

The answer, it turns out, is 'maybe'. Find out more here if you really want to, and see Edd vs Food below. Furthermore, nowadays the city is often spelled Kyiv rather than Kiev, but I'm old-fashioned as you all know. Continuing on the theme of trivia, allow me to clarify that this country is called 'Ukraine' and not 'the Ukraine'. Only two countries in the world officially start with 'the': The Bahamas and The Gambia. So now you know.

By most measures Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe. However the numbers are skewed by the ongoing civil war (or insurgency, or Russian invasion, call it what you will) in the east of the country, and by wide regional disparities more generally. Kiev itself is a bustling and prosperous city. Nonetheless things here are agreeably inexpensive. Metro tickets are the equivalent of 30p, and I have a spacious new-build apartment with gloriously powerful air conditioning for just £38 a night.

As with all the former Soviet republics, there are plenty of monuments to the Great Patriotic War, aka the Second World War. Also there is a memorial commemorating the Holomodor, the man-made famine of 1932-33 which killed somewhere between 3 and 7 million people, and which you don't always hear too much about back in England. Many people deny that the famine was imposed deliberately; but even if you take the 'good intentions' argument to its absolute limit, you can't avoid the fact that those who attempted to leave the famine-stricken areas were shot, or that people eating the dead bodies of their relatives resulted only in conditions being toughened still further (there were 2,500 'convictions' for cannibalism).

For the second time on this trip, I'm reminded of the idiots back home who still walk around in 'CCCP' T-shirts. Of course, even while the famine was at its height, the policy of forced collectivisation was vigorously defended by fellow-travellers in the UK, including many of the leading cultural & intellectual figures of the time.

On a happier note, I've taken in the first football match of this trip, in which Dinamo Kiev got beat 2-1 by Shakhtar Donetsk. In my unthinking prejudice I had always assumed that Ukrainian footballers had to kick balls through snowdrifts while wearing fur coats and Cossack hats. But it's 30°C here and I was sweating in the stands. Back in my apartment, the aforementioned air conditioning has been going more or less permanently. Unfortunately I have no such luxury in the metro, which is cheap and efficient but also crowded and fearsomely hot at times. And the people are friendly, but so are the mosquitoes...sigh.

On the whole, though, Kiev is a fascinating city and the Maidan on an evening is a magical place to be. More people should come here, and certainly I think I'll be coming back one day. In the meantime, I'm heading to the airport, where it'll be time for Check-In Kiev. Ha ha.

`The Maidan, epicentre of the 2014 revolution
That revolution was not without some unpleasant elements.
But more good than bad on balance, I think.

Looking out over the Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery to the Dnieper river

Humongously long escalators on the Kiev metro

St Andrew's church, overlooking Andriivskyi Descent

Kreschatyk St, the main central shopping area

Statue of Anna Akhmatova.
Regarded by many as the greatest female poet of modern times outside the English language.
Inevitably she spent much of her life censored, persecuted and impoverished by the Soviet government. 

Dinamo Kiev 1 Shakhtar Donetsk 2, at the Kiev Olympic Stadium

Comfiest digs of this trip to date.
Air-conditioned spaciousness on the 13th floor

Edd vs Food #80
Chicken Kiev, in Kiev. At the Hutorets restaurant, to be precise.
Here it's served on the bone, and there's no garlic in the butter.
Much more rewarding than that time I had Kentucky Fried Chicken in Kentucky.
But not as good as Denver Fries in Denver.

Alicante, Spain

43. Forty-bastard-three. When did that happen? I'm sure I was still in my twenties just a few months ago. Ah well, I of all 43-year-olds can hardly have grounds to complain. Still living the dream. For example, here in Alicante I'm having a few nights of drunken debauchery & riotous revelry with my good mate Mark. I can divulge no further details. Lo que sucede en Alicante, queda en Alicante.

Warsaw, Poland

Regular readers will have noticed that I always include the name of the country, as well as that of the city, in my blog datelines. You might think this is usually a bit pointless. However when I googled 'warsaw taco bell', I was directed to a town called Warsaw in the USA, in Indiana to be precise. There are no Taco Bells in Poland. And if I just titled my blog 'Warsaw' then possibly some of you might think I'm in Indiana, which I'm not. Although I'd quite like to be, as then I could get a Taco Bell.

This is my 200th blog! Trumpets, champagne, confetti, etc. Eleven years in and still going strong. It doesn't quite equate to 200 different places that I've visited, because there are numerous places from which I've blogged two or more times. But it's a milestone nonetheless. I'm going to have to think of something very special for Edd vs Food #100, although that's some way off yet.

While I'm in a counting mood, I recently totalled up all the countries I've ever visited, and it comes to 51. 29 in Europe, and 22 elsewhere. Some of my claims are slightly dubious, for example Liechtenstein & Luxembourg: I'm reliably informed that I was present as a small child in the back seat of a 1980 Saab during a family tour of Europe which fleetingly included both countries, but all I really remember is I-Spy books and blowing bubbles. Similarly, my claim to have 'visited' the United Arab Emirates rests on approximately 7 hours spent in a hotel just outside Dubai airport, midway through a return flight from a 2013 piss-up in Hong Kong.

Well, anyway, all of the above waffle is solely to disguise the fact that I only stayed in Warsaw one night, and that I don't have anything to report other than a) the photos below, and b) the fact that my long journey over land & sea from Helsinki to Warsaw is now complete. It's time to get back on a plane.

The Royal Castle, peeking out at the end of Świętojańska

Old Town Market Square

on Solidarity Avenue

Palace of Culture and Science (1955)
6th tallest building in the EU.
A Soviet creation, but thankfully too early for the worst excesses of Brutalism.

Another angle of the Palace of Culture and Science.
Even Soviet carbuncles can be preferable to studies in glass'n'steel blandness.

Ulica Nowy Świat (New World Street)
At this point the sun almost came out.

The Polish language. It's not that hard really.