Minsk - Day Four

Friday already the week was flying by, after a good night sleep I was feeling better but still not back to full health (In truth now back in the UK I still cant shake this nasty virus). The plan today was to try and visit the traditional village we were origonally meant to goto yesterday. However I was Running short of cash and needed to change some travellers cheuqes. Our first mistake was to jump onto the first passing auto taxi (kind of like a private bus) which dropped us off on futher out of the city.

There was only one back here a large Belarus Bank, which turned out to be well a little bit of a problem. First thing this largest bank was busy and operated a rather confusing ticket system thought this wasnt in any way clear even to Maia. WHen we finally got our number called the cashere seemed very confused she had never seen either travellers cheques or a european style passport, It took over an hour to explain, wait and finally recieve my cash (minus 1% unlike Minsk Transit Bank which took nothing). All told finding a bank and waiting for the cash took so long we decied to leave the village trip as Maias friend Anton a DJ on radio BA wanted me to record some English jingles for him.

Radio BA is located above a club Anton gave me a guided tour of the place he seemed like a really fun guy I could see why Maia likes him so much. noticed he was running Mac OSX on a beige box pc ;) After the tour I got ushered into a little sound booth and had to read off a list of phrases for the show punctuated by Anton asking for more emotion or extra emphasis on words. I still hd a cold so I am not sure whether they eventual sounds will be good enough to use but it was fun anyway. It was a pretty strange feeling to stand in a room reading into a microphone.

Maia had booked tickets to see a film (in English fortunatly). At first I thought it was a pretty ordinatry thing to do however Russian cinemas are a bit different, firstly it was the cleanest cinema I have ever been into but some considrerable margin. Secondly there were no popcorn not drinks vending just a screen and a chair.
The film itself Tideland was about Jeliza-Rose the daughter of a drug addicted father who moves to the country after an overdose leads death of her mother. It was incredibly dark but told through her childlike observations to take some of the egde off. Maia squirmed her way through several sections of the film.

After the film we grabbed some dinner and then did some late night shopping for our weekend at the Dacha. Shopping was a real eye opener the supermarker was very different to a English one. You had to pay for meat at the meat counter they wouldnt slice anything for us. We bought vodka, beer, tomatoes, meat, bread and some other bits and pieces.

Another early night in preperation for the Dacha tomorrow.