Travel to CIS countries

Travel to Belarus 

Belarus is the country in CIS, former USSR republic.  It has borders with Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

Cities

• Minsk - the capital
• Brest
• Homel
• Hrodna
• Nesvizh
• Sharkovshchina
• Vitsyebsk
• Mogilev

Get in

 Visa requirements, basic information

 Visas on arrival are available at Minsk-2 airport, but not other entry points.

You can apply the visa from Belarussian Consulate or Embassy. The list can be found from Embassy & consulate list  Quick visa is more expensive, but you will get it within half an day.

By plane

Several European airlines have flights to Minsk (operating at National airport Minsk situated appr. 40 km from capital Minsk). Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Lot Polish airlines, Air Baltic, Czech Airlines, and some other carriers offer this destination. The only national airline - Belavia - could be competitive due to attractive tickets prices.

Flying directly to Belarus is VERY expensive, possibly one of the most expensive tourist destinations in Europe. Do you have time and want to save some money? Fly to Vilnius Lithuania with LAL(or Kaunas, Lithuania with Ryan Air) and take a train to Minsk. The train ride from Vilnius is only four hours and generally trains leave twice per day. You will save a great deal of money.

By train

Some of the entry/exit points along the Poland/Belarus border include:

• Kuźnica-Białostocka/Hrodna
• Terespol/Brest

You can take a local train between the two corresponding border towns.

Timetable information are available on sites like: Deuchebahn, Polish trains PKP (en) (pl), Commonwealth of independent states (CIS) trains (and others) , Latvia trains 1, Latvia trains 2  Lithuania train timetables trains and bus timetables at Baltic countries  Belarussian railway timetables:

Estonia train timetables 1:  Estonia train & bus timetables 2: NOTE! There is no direct train from Estonia, but via track Tallin-Tartu- Valga/Valka (Valga/Valka is city at Estonia Latvia borderthere is few trains going to Riga. Station name in Valka is Lugazi. Plan is that in year 2010 trains are going directly without train change from Estonia, Tallin to Latvia, Riga.

Passport controls happen in the train itself. In the get in to Belarus direction, they happen typically even before the train leaves the station in Poland.

Customs controls happen in a room of the train station in the Belarus train station. As of 2005, you are most likely to have a short chat with a customs officer - the system of green (nothing to declare) and red (something to declare) streams and random checks of suspicious looking people in the green stream - everyone is presumed to be suspicious. In practice, the rules seem to be fairly standard - declare expensive goods, you can import/export a small quantity of alcohol, cigarettes, computer equipment for personal use. However, the formal content of the customs form asks whether you are carrying any publications. So if you have, e.g. a US passport and are carrying a whole bunch of do-it-yourself-color-revolution materials and you have that subversive look about you, then you will probably be giving the customs people have a legal reason to detain you and/or deport you.

Warning: the customs room in the train station where you exit Belarus may be difficult to find (especially if you walk around the station rather casually and your Cyrillic is weak) and it closes a long time before the train leaves; if you arrive only 10 minutes before the train leaves, you will be refused customs control and access to the train. (please update: the delay before closing is unknown, but it is more than 10 minutes, and probably it is around 30-60 minutes).UPDATE 6/20/07-In the 6 months I've been here (I'm a US citizen), I've taken an overnight Minsk-Kiev-Minsk and the early morning Minsk-Vilnius one way. Both times, customs was carried out at the border while on the train. It added over an hour to the trip, but other than that, the officials were efficient and friendly. As far as I know, there is no more customs office in the Minsk train station.

On a local train between two border towns, chances are high that you will be accompanied/befriended by women trading underpants, soap powder, strawberries, cigarettes etc across the border. They may be friendly and casual or (leaving Belarus) they might put pressure on you to help them in their trade by carrying cigarettes over the border for them - the idea is that you buy it cheap in Belarus and that you resell it to them once you're in Poland. Chances are also good that their friendly mafia boss is with them and you'll all travel together in the same train carriage, so chances of you getting away and reselling the cigarettes independently are probably weak. Instead, just smile, use your common sense and probably best not to provoke them. Don't look to the border guards for help. They know the women traders and seem to have some informal deal with them (e.g. not being strict about visas etc) - the Belarus border guards are only worried about political subversives, they have higher priorities than defending you against women trading underpants and cigarettes.

 By car

At the Terespol/Brest crossing, there are six different controls, some sort of mix of anti-spam filter, passport control and customs control from the two sides. It would be nice to believe that there's a geiger counter to check for stuff which is radioactive from the Chernobyl accident, but it's unclear if this is used in practice - it's not done in any obvious way.

Expect to wait half an hour to an hour between the three controls on the Belarus side. The three Polish controls are typically faster. In reality, the border guards/customs officers from the two countries seem to be present together at many of the control lines, so it's not easy to know when you're still in Belarus and when you're in Poland.l

 By bus

Taking bus from any border counry of Belarus is easy. From all the Baltic countries there is a lot of bus trafic to Belarus here are some samples:

From Estonia, Tallin there is direct bus to Minsk .From Baltic countries: Olimp , Nordeka , Eurolines, Ecolines 

Taking the bus from Vilnius to Minsk is a quick (3,5 h) and fairly comfortable ride, as long as you stick to western international carriers such as Eurolines. Buy your ticket in advance. Before beginning travel to Belarus remember to check that all your papers are in order meaning you have valid visa & Belarus state travel insurance for your trip. For example quick, easy and comfortable way to begin trip is to begin trip from one of the Baltic cities that have Belarussian embassy or consulate.

 By foot

If you're at one of the double town crossings, e.g.

• Kuźnica-Białostocka/Hrodna
• Terespol/Brest

there may be some places where you can cross by foot - e.g. because you're on the last day of your Belarus visa and you want to be sure not to overstay - but more likely you'll have to befriend some people in a car who will adopt you for a few hours and will (implicitly) pretend that you're travelling with them. The border guards have no problem with this. Remember that the people in the car are taking a risk as well as you - as far as they know you might be a National Endowment for Democracy agent who will be discovered by the Belarus border guard and get them into a heap of trouble. So if they are Belarusians and they ask for a fee of US$5 consider it fair. See the section By car above for what happens in your adopted car.