Dear friends, just before the first snow, we set off on a journey to the west of the country to meet our wonderful guide Valentina.
Discover beautiful Grodno with us in our new video series “Cities in Belarus” (video is in German).
Get a great insight into one of the country’s most interesting cities, its culture, architecture and history with Valentina.
2021 was one more very challenging year for the tourism industry. Already at the beginning of the year we had many requests for tours to Belarus, but in spring it became clear that this season would be difficult again due to Corona.
We were all the more pleased that one of the most famous nature photographers in Switzerland, Frank Meile, decided to join us on a 19-days expedition through Belarus this summer.
On our YouTube channel you can see some of his impressions of this trip, an exciting clip that gives you a lot of the impressive flora and fauna of the country.
We hope the impressions make you want to travel to Belarus. You can experience many of these places up close on our small group tours.
More about the photographic work of Frank Meile you can find here.
Dear friends!
2021 has been not an easy year for Belarus, its people, and the tourism industry including us.
The happier we were this week as we were announced winner of the 6th annual Travel & Tourism Awards 2022 in the category “Best Belarus Travel Specialists – Central Europe”. The jury appreciated our efforts in building resilience creating new services like genealogy research and thematic group tours.
We are really grateful that during the pandemic we could help people from all over the world to find out more about their relatives who once lived on Belarusian territories.
We managed all this because of your support and interest to Belarus and its people. We would like to sincerely thank you for that and hope to see you sometime soon over here.
We wish you reflective holidays and a happy new year. Stay in good spirits with us.
And please keep following us on our diverse channels, from YouTube to Facebook and Instagram.
All the best from snowy Minsk,
g4 tours team
We are proud to announce that since November 2021 we started a collaboration with one the biggest travel portals in China. Our Chinese-speaking guests can find us now also here.
Please check it out, selected tours awaiting you. Duōxiè!
The Puslovski Palace, also known as the Kossovsky Castle, is an amazingly beautiful residence, one of the most beautiful castles in Belarus, along with the Nesvizh Palace and the Mir Castle. It is located in the Belarusian town of Kossovo, Brest region. This beautiful example of 19th century neo-Gothic architecture is also known as the Knights’ Daydream and the Miniature Castle. The palace was built by the Polish architect Franciszek Jaszczołd.
The building is crowned with twelve towers, the number of which is highly symbolic: each of them denotes a different month of the year. The four towers in the middle, in honour of the harvest months of May, June, July and August, are the tallest.
Kossovo Palace was famous for its splendid halls: the White Hall was used for exciting balls, the Black Hall for card games, and the Pink Hall for music.
Not far from Kosovo the prominent military leader and politician Tadeusz Kosciuszko was born. The owners of the land were very proud of this fact. They used their own funds to renovate the small birthplace of the national hero of Poland and the USA, an honorary citizen of France, honoring and recognizing his merits.
A beautiful park surrounded the palace, where more than 150 kinds of exotic plants grew. The park picturesquely descended to three artificial lakes and Kościuszko’s manor house.
You can visit Kossovski Palace and the manor house of Tadeusz Kosciuszko during our trip to Brest. Come and enjoy the amazing beauty of this place!
Autumn in Belarus this year is wonderful, it delights us with warm sunny days and mesmerizes us with the shimmer of golden and crimson leaves. I always want to share this beauty with someone else. And let this season passed with less tourists than normal, we are glad that the connection with Belarus in the world has not been broken.
Now we feel it, receiving requests for information about ancestors who lived in the territory of Belarus, but emigrated at some point. It is very joyful when we receive genealogical inquiries where we see an intention of our customers to visit their historical homeland in the future. It is always intriguing that when you learn something new about your family, the desire to see it with your own eyes only grows stronger. And we are all looking forward to the opportune moment when this can be accomplished.
In the meantime, my research work took me for a week to the beautiful city of Grodno, on the border with Lithuania and Poland, where one of the two historical archives of Belarus is located. I worked there primarily on a challenging genealogy request from one of our clients in Denver, USA.
Since the work in the archives took almost all my time, I decided to spend another day in Grodno, to capture the beautiful autumn views, making a short video about the city. And I was helped in this by our colleague, guide to the city of Grodno and its suburbs, Valentina.
We walked along the pedestrian street, went to the former Jewish quarter, visited the old and new castles and the church of the 12th century. Now we are working on editing and hope that visitors to our website will be able to see the video soon.
In the meantime, beautiful fall days to all! And, hopefully, see you soon!
Sveta
In Belarus, in the city of Brest, there is a spectacular Railway Museum, which was opened in 2002.
The Brest Railway Museum’s exposition is dedicated to the history and traditions of rail transport in Belarus.
On an area of nearly three hectares, you can see 70 pieces of railway machinery in the open air: locomotives, prewar, wartime and postwar steam locomotives, steam cranes, a collection of passenger cars from 1903 to 1940, sanitary and staff cars, a railroad car with an anti-aircraft gun, a station electric clock from 1953, a railway station bell, and many other rare exhibits.
A steam locomotive made in 1926 and a diesel locomotive that delivered a delegation to the Potsdam Conference are the pride of the museum.
A special feature of the Brest Railway Museum is that most of the exhibits are still in use. This allows them to be used for filming and various thematic excursions.
In the Brest Railway Museum the exhibits can be viewed not only from the outside, you can also see most of the exhibits from the inside.
The museum is very much loved by Brest residents as well as visitors to Brest. It is popular both among adults and children, but especially to visitors from all over the world interested in railway technology and history.
You can visit the Brest Railway Museum during our Brest tour that also features the spectacular Brest Fortress, Białowieża National Park, Polesia Region and many other remarkable places.
World Teachers’ Day has been celebrated every year since 1994 on 5 October.
In the former Soviet Union, Teachers’ Day was established in 1965. The first Sunday in October was designated as the day of celebration.
To this day in Belarus, as well as in Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, Teacher’s Day is celebrated every first Sunday in October.
Of course, teachers are congratulated on the eve, at work. It remains traditional to congratulate teachers with flowers, sweets and good wishes from students.
One way of congratulating teachers is the “self-governance day” held in some schools. On this day pupils do their own lessons and teachers rest and only observe. All kinds of competitions and concerts are also held in schools on this day.
There is probably no other cultural and linguistic area in the world with such a vast geography as the post-Soviet one. It is easily 10,000 kilometers from Minsk to Vladivostok, and yet for children from Minsk in Belarus, from Chuchotka beyond the Arctic Circle in the Far East, from the depths of Mongolia or from Tajikistan, September 1 looks the same. It’s off to school, for many for the first time.
The origin of this holiday is officially attributed to 1984, when the relevant directive was adopted, but Soviet children began to start the school year on September 1 back in 1935. After the outbreak of World War I, young socialists initiated an annual International Youth Day to hold anti-war actions and peace lessons in schools in all countries. September 1 has been the date of World Youth Day since 1932, at the suggestion of the Comintern for Youth. And as early as September 3, 1935, by a decree of the Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a single start for classes in all schools in the USSR was introduced on September 1.
Prior to that there was no strict date for the start of the school year. During the Russian Empire urban schoolchildren began their studies in late August – early September, and in rural areas – on December 1. This was due to the fact that the village children helped their parents to run a large farm, and could not go to school until the end of all the field work.
The first school day of the year begins with a solemn ruler, as well as a lesson of peace and knowledge, which has become a good tradition.
There is another wonderful tradition, inherited from the Soviet times: to give teachers flowers for the beginning of the school year, so children go to school on September 1, armed not only with bags, but also with flowers, which makes the whole atmosphere a holiday.
This year in the spirit of this holiday opened the doors of the International German School, the first in Minsk, and in general in Belarus. It gathers under its arches children not only from Belarusian families but also families who came from Germany and other countries. Agata Sidorovich, a German woman who not only fell in love with Belarus as the motherland of her husband, but also managed to create a piece of Germany in Minsk, realized this wonderful project. The project of German kindergarten, which has been successfully working for 4 years, grew and was complemented by the school project, where according to Belarusian traditions, on September 1, but with traditional German Schultüten, first graders went to their first lesson. You can watch the interview with Agata on our YouTube channel.
Among the highlights:
Minsk – Grodno – Belarusian Maledives – Białowieża National Park – Brest and Brest Fortress – Nesvizh castle – Naliboki National Park – Vitebsk and Polotsk
Discover beautiful Belarus with us and join our small group tours. Breathtaking nature, a vibrant cultural life and friendly and relaxed people awaiting you. Thanks to our experienced English-speaking guides, an absolutely safe and unique travel experience.
A journey to a country that has more to offer than its reputation: a long history under a wide variety of cultural and political influences and an eventful 20th century. As an important transit country for the flow of goods between East and West, it is integrated into modern Europe despite current developments. Minsk, a city of around 2 million people, is crisscrossed by the river Svisloch and numerous parks. Not only are there wide boulevards in the Soviet confectionery style, but also evidence of constructivist architecture from the 1920s and picturesque old town alleys. In addition, there is much worth discovering behind the scenes, not least wonderful people who do not want to be forgotten by “Europe”, as they are also a part of it.
The trip will provide you with a comprehensive insight into the country and its people. We will visit vibrant cities like Grodno, Brest and of course Minsk, explore natural landscapes that have become rare in Europe: untouched expanses, vast swamps and impenetrable forests, dotted with small and large bodies of water, crisscrossed by an infinite number of water veins. It will involve tours far off the beaten track, overnights in cosy home-stays in the wilderness of the two most spectacular national parks, Naliboki and Bialowieza, and the chance to see the last free-living European bisons and other rare species. You will meet with locals of all walks of life and get an authentic picture of nowadays Belarus. Book now!
Please note that as of 15. July 2021, there is no more quarantine restrictions in Belarus with a valid vaccination certificate (accounts for all vaccines).
Available dates for 2021/22:
November 6th – November 17th 2021
January 15th – January 26th 2022
May 7th – May 18th 2022
August 20th – August 31st 2022