"Grodno - Great City In The Russian Shadow" Top 5 Page for this destination Hrodna by bdro

I never had imagined that I should visit Belarus. Fisrt time was in April 2007. The language is very difficult for western people, not to say it's "Russian" for us :-). Very few people in Grodno understand foreign languages like English and German. And you can not read and guess what it means.

When you walk in the main street of a European city, you have a lot of windows. The shops fight to get customers. In Grodno you can take a nice walk, look at the signs in Russian – you don’t understand anything – there is no shopping windows. You don’t know if it’s a shop with shoes or a butcher shop. Only when you open the door. You see a wonderful shop, with lot of nice things. But the shops don’t do anything for promoting themselves.

Therefore, how can you get on in this country. It's possible to hire a tourist guide for a few days - no problem, but I am in a privileged position. My wife speaks Russian!!!

So thanks to her we visit the city, Grodno and it was a positive experience. We had good conversation with many people and I want to tell you about that later.

OK - now we have been in Grodno two times. Again in Three weeks in July 2007. I begin to understand a small part of Cyrillic lettes and it does everything a little bit more easy. Belarus is a nice country. I just can't understand the political position. Why do Belarus still in 2007 not open their country for foreign people? Why don't they want to trade active with the rest of the world? Why don't they want to normalies their friendship to the rest of the world? Why keep people and bind?

I love this country - but I really don't understand the politic. I am a normal businessman and this is too much soviet style for me.
But maybe one day the country will be more open.

Great buildings and architecture

Grodno is a very clean and beautiful city.

Much more clean than many European cities. But of course if you take a closer look - it's clean and nice - but it's a city with huge differences between rich and poor people - between new and old and run-downed buildings.

The Market

People from Europe (the western world) must experience this greatness you feel in Grodno. To take a look at the these fantastic old buildings. You must feel the atmosphere in this city, the marketplaces, the many great restaurants with good Belarusian food.

You must see and feel with the poor people from the countryside coming to city to sell a few eggs, a bundle of parsley, a few horseradish root, their homemade socks for children etc. (I will write about this another time).