Today started out interesting because the area of Minsk we stayed in had no hot water. Apparently this is a regular ritual where throughout the summer, the gas company cuts off sections of the city at a time from gas. This is usually okay because many residents get out of the city for the summer and go to their dachas, country homes. In our case, we had to take turns boiling water, mixing it with cold water, and pouring it over ourselves. Pretty efficient system, if not fun, and we did get clean.
We headed out on the bus and subway to the Great Patriotic War museum. Along the way, Sunny noticed a little art exhibition. We stopped and bought some souvenirs, including a matryoshka cat doll for Mom. We went through the war museum and saw about Belarus’ experience in the war, which was basically totally devastating. Almost all of Minsk was leveled, except for about five buildings. After leaving the museum, we took a quick look to see if Belarus McDonalds had any interesting items but it looked bleak. We ended up grabbing food at a pretty decent pizza place.
Afterwards, we did some brief shopping in a Soviet-looking building that contained a department store. At Sunny’s bequest, we attempted to go to the circus but it turned out there were no shows until June. Finally, we ended up at the park where Sunny and Max enjoyed a nice, romantic Ferris wheel ride. I enjoyed some of Max’s childhood ice cream - a small cone with the ice cream entirely contained, reducing the probability of a mess to 0. I saw an approximately 12 year old boy give his little girlfriend some candy and look happy as a clam, which totally brought a smile to my face.
At this point, Max had to go visit his aunt for her birthday. She didn’t want us over as it was a bit awkward trying to communicate with us as her English was as non-existent as our Russian. We hung out for the next hour and a half at a cafe called Milk, using their Internet and only ordering water and orange juice. It seems as though there is no Google homepage specifically designed for Belarus, as this was the only non English speaking country I’ve been to that when you go to google.com, the page is in English.
When Max returned (out of cell phone credit already!) we headed over to a restaurant by the Italian embassy. I had mushroom bread and Sunny had ostrich stew. They overcharged my credit card by 2.5x, which only brought the price up to a decent LA restaurant. Afterward, we hit a bar (straight outta Madison!), danced to “Back in the USSR” ironically, and went to sleep.