5 Belarusian Towns Perfect for Weekend Getaway

28.07.2023 - 19:38 / 34travel.me

5 Belarusian Towns Perfect for Weekend Getaway

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Maladziechna

It is the town that locals believe to be eternal. It will take you just an hour and a half to get there from Minsk. It has that strong belarusian spirit you'll definetly feel once you are here. For example, in the early 90s Maladziechna looked like a typical belarusian town with Lenin Avenue or Soviet, Komsomol, Any-sovietic-hero-name streets. A few years later street signs were replaced with the authentic historical ones, so as to now you could walk along the Old Place, Vilenskaya or Vol'naya Street and find out why the streets are named after Ignat Buinitski, Yazep Drazdovich, Yazep Lyosik, Kanstantsin Astrozhski, Uladzislau Galubok and other good guys. By the way, Communist Alley wasn't renamed. That was a those times authority’s joke: they wanted to show that it led to the dead end.

In 2011 Maladziechna was honoured to host the celebration of Dozhynki, a traditional harvest festival celebrated every year in one of belarusian towns, for which it means not just a party, but great reconstruction and infrastructure improvement. So the city center was renovated, the park got a real lake with a fountain, all this together with the Scandinavian style amphitheater looks very cool. A walk among the pines feels nice even in winter. There are attractions to see at the central square too: at first, a sculpture Paparats-Kvetka by Zhbanov at the center of the fountain that was accused of excessive nudity, secondly, a huge colonnade building of the polytechical college right behind the monumet to Lenin. The monument, by the way, also was supposed to be pulled down, but it turned out to be a sculpture by Azgur, a famous Sovietic artist whose works are protected by law. Other places to see are the district by the railway station (Velikiy Gostinets Street, on weekends you may be lucky to find a real pet market here), the concentration camp Shtalag-342, Masherov Street, the Protection of the Blessed Virgin Church (Staroye mesto Square).

Where to eat? Once you are hungry, drop by Bierloga (72, Velikiy Gostinets St). It’s a bar with excellent belarusian food at reasonable prices – draniki, babka, meat and yushka, their specialty. While you are enjoying your delicious soup, lots of stuffed animals or birds fixed on the walls will keep an eye on you, and so will the