br23 blog - minsk, belarus

Today was supposed to be a Belarus Solidarity day again. People were encouraged to switch off the lights and lit up a candle on their window pane at 8PM. My mother actually did that, but unfortunately she didn’t see a single candle in any other neighbouring windows. Some friends from Minsk told me they saw […]

This week Belarusian Culture and Education Center in Poznan (Poland) started collecting signatures against Russian language broadcasts of “Deutsche Welle” to Belarus…
To the credit of “Deutsche Welle”, though, it must be said that two weeks ago their Belarusan page has became bilingual: in addition to Russian, about 30-50% of their materials are being published in […]

After looking at the more traditional outsourcing venues in Asia, the German bank decided to build its state-of-the-art development centre in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, which is within a two-and-a-half hour flight from Frankfurt. So, just what was the lure? Minsk isn’t the most forward, wealthy or democratic of cities, but hey, it’s safer […]

I’ve received an email announcement from France about an upcoming international conference on Belarus and Ukraine in Paris, in March 2006, and a culture week of Ukraine and Belarus, at the same time (March 20-25, 2006). Below you’ll find the complete text of the announcement with the details:
Call for papers
Conference «Ukraine and Belarus – […]

So, the tennis season is basically over. Max Mirnyi of Belarus had an average and somewhat boring year, finishing 34th in the world and making $1.1 million dollars (a total of $6.2 million), the only highlight of the year being his doubles grand slam victory at the French Open. And our starlet Victoria Azarenka was […]

Did you know that we have a lot of loan German words in Belarusian language? For the most part they came to Old Belarusian via Polish, when we were living in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, being a real European nation. Just to give you an example, here are a few German words that end […]

Several Belarusians who have been granted political asylum in Belgium went on a hunger strike demanding tougher measures from the EU authorities against the current Belarusian political regime. They demand an international investigation of the disappeared opposition politicians and an immediate release of the political prisoners in Belarus.

P.S. Two more additions to the blogroll:
• Freedom […]

On Saturday we had a party at our place and our Serbian friend brought a movie “Rane” (Wounds). To quote some reviews from IMDB, it’s a “dark, bleak, hopeless, harsh story” on how disintegration of Yugoslavia affected the people. This movie could only be Serbian. This is a “reflection on nation’s conscience in a bitter, […]

“Former U.S. president Bill Clinton will come to Prague next Friday. One of the initiators of the Prague forum is former Czech President Vaclav Havel. The participants are to include former Irish President Mary Robinson, Canadian former Prime Minister Kim Campbell, French ex-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, former Brasil President Henrique Cardoso and Open Society Fund […]

This year, on November 4, Russia for the first time in history officially celebrated the expulsion of Poles (actually, some Poles and a lot of Litvins-Belarusians) from Moscow. Back in 1612, the Muscovites drove out our Grand Lithuanian nobles from their capital, which our ancestors had occupied for several years. Nowdays the holiday is called […]