Я так глупая... Пропала карту Виса...

Nobody stole it from me, I am almost certain... Just dropped it because I was too paranoid to keep it in my wallet, and I must have dropped it from where I was keeping it. Two cards lost already on this trip!! Only one card left and that is a Mastercard credit card which I don't like to use, and Mastercards are less commonly used than Visa in Belarus.

And I haven't lost my wallet or any cards for 9 years. Unbelievable that I am so stupid as to do it on this holiday which I have been looking forward to for a long time.

Isn't it ironic how stupid and clumsy you can sometimes be at the worst possible times.
So I have had to spend hours trying to organise for anal banks to send replacement cards to me.

So I spent a fortune on mobile calls abroad, just to go though the same security checks over and over again.. Talking with call centre muppets... That's enough ranting though, and at the end of the day it's my own fault, for being clumsy.

Hopefully at least one of the cards should reach me.

По этому мне надо остаться в Минске через 1-2 недель... Но мне очень нравиться этот город. Он очень интересный, опрятный, зелёный и прекрасный. Люди здесь добры, но не так смешной как в Одессе!

Сегодня я посетила офис "БелИнтурист" в Минске.

At the BelIntourist office I had strong feeling that I was one of very few international visitors that day. They asked me what I thought about the country and how I had managed to find the office.
I gave polite answers to the questions, but the truth is that there is very little tourist information available about Belarus in English. And that which exists is very hard to find. Belintourist has a lot of work to do. They should start by translating ALL of their site into GOOD English. Currently only half of it is translated, and the translations are not done by native speakers.

Searching for Belarus and tourism related phrases often leads you to US departments "information" pages which paint a very black picture of Belarus as a tourist destination: There is radiation from Chernobyl, the KGB can come into your hotel room when you are out and search your bags... There is no hot water sometimes, everyone is really poor... foreigners are stopped on the street and asked for documentation... they can be taken to the police station for interrogation if the police feels like it... And so on and so forth... Of course I have had no such problems, because it simply isn't true. But anyone who reads this is very unlikely to want to go to Belarus (I hadn't read it until now) BelIntourist needs to search optimise their pages so that THEIR official information comes up on the top when people google these tourism related phrases.

Another funny thing at the tourist office was that they couldn't answer an incredibly basic question about registration for foreigners - what the rules are. I definitely would have expected them to know that. They DID find out for me, but it was very surprising that they didn't already know.