Anyone who has not travelled to Belarus before will probably have several difficulties. 1. the visa, 2. dealing with language barriers 3. the lack of activities and 4. the lack of service. As you first leave the airport etc, expect BAD service from every angle, expect people to be rude and selfish.
Maybe I have painted this in a bad picture first of all, so I should expand on what I mean. The economic system has been designed so that foreign investors are taxed so heavily they keep away, as are independent shop-keepers. Thus it leaves a monopoly on the industry which is owned by the government. The people employed by the government do not receive scalable salaries (ok maybe very slight), so essentially people do not care.
That's right! Waitresses earn as much as doctors and in some cases...more!. Which is essentially the reason for the bad service. I argued with the reception at least three times, the shop keeper whom I wanted to buy some goods from looked at me as if to say "what do you want from me?".
We decided to go to the restaurant on the ground floor and was told by the waiter to leave our cloaks in the cloakroom outside. We did this and the cloakroom person turned us away, the waiter then took our coats back to the cloakroom and was told ok, but if we were not back by 11pm, she would lock up and leave our coats in the cloakroom. The hotel is also run so hugely inefficient, I pointed some things out to my partner who just found it incredibly funny.
The more you investigate Minsk, the more you realise how incredibly ineffecient it is as a city by the way!. You had one person watching 4 fruit machines (and quite often arguing with people who were using them), you had 2 doormen who did not take your bags, 3 security guards who read papers all day, the souvenir shop person. three people working in the cafe which was empty on most occasions I went in there. 2 people at the cash desk (and one at the currency exchange), most people I saw queueing there was 3 people. 2-3 people at reception. But the funniest thing of all was the floor ladies.
One on each floor which was the equivalent of a Russian tank lady (if you know the phrase you will know what I mean). Each one a complete a total hitler, taken by three shifts over thr 24 hour period. This equates to roughly 66 people employed by the hotel, who did nothing but make your life a misery. The rooms themselves reeked of smoke, the decor was like a trip back in time to the 1970s although the bed itself was quite comfortable.
I actually took the time out to read the hotel manual (purely because the lack of activities in Minsk) I noticed that they charged for extra things such as: an extra pillow (you only got one in a double bed), an extra cover (bearing in mind it was cold her anyway - without heating in the room), turning the phone on so you could make a call. It kind of put me off using any of the services in the hotel, so I didn't.
Plus the hotel spends its time in complete darkness!!!! but this is common across Minsk in general.
Expect to pay double for the taxis outside of the hotel than using a 152 taxi.
So thats the bad points, now onto the good points: the view from the hotel is very nice, the view from the hotel is breath-taking, one that I can only compare with the top of the Eiffel Tower, the food is great in this restaurant albeit a little pricey, the food in the Belarusian restaurant on the ground floor is good also, and they do have services such as a swimming pool and a gym which are nice for the hotel. The hotel is centrally located and is about 10 minutes walk from the nice areas of Minsk.
Should you travel to Minsk, here are my recommendations:
1. Don't stay at this hotel unless you want to feel like they are paying you to stay there. The other hotels are very expensive compared to this (Europe for instance) but if you can manage to work around the Tourist companies for a visa, do so.
2. Don't stay for a long time 2-3 days maximum. Minsk is not designed for tourists.
3. Expect people to be curt with you, no matter how polite you are with them. When I held open a tube door for a woman who was struggling with her child, she was shocked.
4. Keep on your toes, watch out for vehicles driving along pavements because they will run you over. It is their right of way, not yours. Also when crossing a road the green man does NOT mean you have right of way for vehicles turnaround around the corner.
5. Try and stick the tubes, they are very useful BR600 per entry into the tube.
6. Meals for two cost around BR70,000 (around £18/E20) in the centre; in the outskirts and away from the tube stations you can find these same meals costing around BR40,000 (around £9 / E10)
7. When you find a good restaurant, tip well BR5,000 (£1.10) is a average tip, BR10,000 is a very good tip and when I gave a girl BR15,000 (£4.00) she was ecstatic and the service was amazing every single time.
Enjoy!
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
