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About LinkBacksI am in a really nice town called Vitebsk at the moment.
This town is in North Eastern Belarus, not far from Russia.
The town is known for being an ancient city in Belarus.
Right now the whole town is undergoing a very thorough renovation.
Parts of the town have already been redecorated and looks fantastic. The architecture is lovely in the older parts of town. Classic Northern European, Baltic area buildings and several fantastic old cathedrals that have also been recently redecorated. There must a a thousand people working simultaneously on fixing up houses, pavements etc! No wonder there is 100% employment... All pavements have been re-laid and all facades painted.
This town could be a really nice tourist destination for people from Europe. It is very picturesque and has many interesting historical and cultural sites. However, there is very little shopping (most shops are very old fashioned), also there are not a lot of good restaurants. Good items for shopping are fabric, linen clothes and leather goods.
Some restaurants here are fine though; I particularly like an outdoors place which reminds a bit of a German beer garden. The selection of food is limited, but the atmosphere is very nice. I found a cafe called the Chocolate cafe, that does very good coffee and decent chocolate deserts. All and all Belarus in particular does not have a strong European cuisine - only local dishes are really good. Belarussian food is probably not that different from Russian food, which in turn is not that different from other Northern European food. All and all filling and basic food, some dishes are very cool and very tasty.
Two really good painters have their roots in Vitebsk: Mark Chagall and Ilya Repin.
I have not managed to find Chagall's house yet, but I'll go there tomorrow. I went to an exhibition of some of his litographies and Bible illustrations (they are very cool) in central Vitebsk.
The outskirts of town have not been renovated as well as Minsk and Gomel where I have also been. Some houses really look worse for wear...
People here are quite unused to seeing foreigners, I think. Today some repairmen were in the hotel and asked me where I came from. I told them and they asked whether I liked "their republic". I said I liked it very much. They lit up like you wouldn't believe. They said 'thank you' several times and were really pleased. Such a nice and unusual reaction! And at a cafe, the waiter spoke English, with a very strong American accent (although he'd never been to the US). He was delighted for a rare opportunity to speak English and seemed to take it as a personal compliment that I liked Belarus, and proceeded to say that he loved Swedish rock "it's sweeeeet" and Swedish socialism "it's freakin' awesome" (lol, sounded very funny when delivered in his Russian-American accent. I didn't want to ruin his enthusiasm by telling him that imho, the music is for the most part rather trashy and the socialism has definitely seen better days).
I have heard that there is a really large water park with an olympic size wimming pool somewhere in the city. I am trying to figure out where it is because I'd love to spend a couple of hours swimming. If anyone knows anything about this, please let me know!
Also, I am trying to figure out how to get from Vitebsk to Daugavpils in Latvia, via Polotsk (a historical city in Belarus, which has a famous monastery).
In central town, there is a very big EU-standard Tourist info sign, which looked very promising. I keep hoping to come across that sort of place.... I went looking for the tourist info office, and when I found the house, it was the building for a government youth movement and some form of militia office. A tiny little abandoned booth was the tourist info, and he guard told me it had been closed for good.
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Originally Posted by Hanna 
