A courageous guest from Germany, August 2020
The year 2020 was a real test for the tourism industry. Already in January we had planned to welcome a large number of tourists who wanted to get to know our country first hand, but at the end of February it became clear that this season would be difficult due to Corona.
So it was all the more surprising to receive an inquiry from Germany in early June for a two-week tour of Belarus. The arrival was planned for the end of August – beginning of September. Until the last moment we were not sure if our tourist Johannes would come, but luckily everything worked out.
Within 2 weeks we visited almost all of Belarus.
The program included excursions to the cities of Minsk, Vitebsk, Braslau, Grodno, and Brest; getting to know the provincial life in the cities of Glubokoe, Novogrudok, and Lida; visiting churches, places of worship, and mosques in Ivye and synagogues in Grodno, as well as the castles in Mir and Nesvizh. A lot of attention was also paid to nature. We hiked through the high moors in the “Krasny Bor” reserve in the north of the country, watched birds being caught and ringed by ornithologists, observed bisons in the natural environment in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park, where we also picked mushrooms and met the dawn with hot tea and lard bread. Also a bicycle tour along the Braslav lakes inspired our guest. He also had the opportunity to get to know the life of the simple Belarusians, their everyday life, traditions, national cuisine and to taste one or the other home-made brandy. We were lucky to take part in the international festival of ethnocultural traditions “Call of Polesie”, which took place in the south of the country on the bank of the river Pripyat. Time flew by and we are sure that our guest Johannes will not forget the joyful memories of his stay in our country so soon.
See more in our video with Johannes.