Russian blogger ridiculed Minsk
Russian blogger Ilya Varlamov, specializing in posts on urbanism, visited Minsk and posted the first review, in which he traditionally notes only shortcomings.
“It takes a little over 30 minutes to get to Minsk. Along the road there are endless golden fields, many of which have already been harvested. The straw is collected in neat rolls, and it even seems to me that these are dummies. The road is perfectly smooth, the lawns are perfectly smooth. Tractors drive along the steep slopes of the overpass slope and mow the grass; people also stand on the dividing strip and mow, despite the terrible weather: it is drizzling with nasty rain in Minsk. But come on, it’s raining – they’re mowing the already mown grass!
It’s starting to seem to me that all these people who mow already mown grass in the rain are not real, they are just part of the “Welcome to Minsk!” show. But then they explained to me that they were real. And that even in winter they mow the grass, despite the snow. Minsk is truly impressively tidy, but you still have the feeling that you are not in a residential building, but in a museum,” wrote Varlamov.
He described in detail everything that he did not like in Minsk: what he considered ugly buildings, an abundance of protective chains and a lack of rainwater drainage, an excess of petunias in pots and underground passages. The blogger criticized the unnecessary, in his opinion, stairs and improperly constructed bicycle paths.
“The biggest problem with Minsk is that it is a city from a Soviet postcard. And here the reader may ask: what’s bad about this? Everyone loves Soviet postcards! And everyone also likes cities from Soviet postcards. They are so spacious, sunlit and green. Not life, but a fairy tale! There's just one problem. All these wide avenues, flooded with sun, look good only on postcards. Sometimes they look good from a car window. But if you yourself find yourself on these streets, there is nothing good anymore,” Varlamov wrote.
He also encountered nationally concerned citizens, of whom there are few in Belarus, but they are very active.
“In Minsk, I gave a long interview to one of the most popular Belarusian media. We talked about the urban environment, new areas, the pros and cons of the city. Belarusians left hundreds of comments on my interview, but most of them were on the topic “It’s correct to say “Belarus!!!”,” Varlamov wrote.
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