After a not-especially restful sleep and never figuring out how to get water on the train (thank God we had a water bottle!), we arrived in Minsk at around 7:45 AM. Max’s aunt met us and guided us on the bus to an apartment for our stay - small but efficient. We had chicken, rice, and tea. After a 4 hour nap, we headed out to the center of town.
Apparently the Belarusian ruble has fluctuated extremely from around 3000 BYR/USD to around 4500 BYR/USD due to political shenanigans going on the country. This makes figuring out what prices mean difficult. In addition, all change is given in bills, even down to the 10 BYR level (1/3 of 1 cent!). I think it would be an awesome idea to have a Monopoly set consisting entirely of Belarusian money, but sadly I did not save quite enough bills to accomplish this.
After changing money, we walked through a mall with about 0 recognizable brands - a first! We got coffee at the News Cafe, saw a map store (Max’s favorite), the KGB building, the Presidential Palace, and Max’s old technical university.
Max’s friend Max (a bank manager and Max’s former classmate) picked us up in his nice new SUV. He drove us around some more, by memorials to WW2 and the Minsk library. We had a nice dinner at the shooting club (the Russian equivalent of a country club) but didn’t get a chance to shoot skeet. I felt severely under-dressed at the restaurant based on the tables nearby, as well as the iPads we used to order our food. The food consisted of Georgian cheese bread as well as beef and potatoes. Conversation consisted of economics and political subjects - mostly how Lukashenko is screwing up the country. Other Max shook his head as Max and Sunny tested out the trampoline (set up with much other lawn furniture so that ladies and children could relax while men did the shooting). Max had way too much fun on this - I think it was his first time. Other Max drove us home and we went to sleep.