br23 blog - minsk, belarus

In the spring of 2006, shortly before the tragic accident Rydel won the Gran Prix in the content competition organized by tut.by .

• Contemplating Genocide at a Moscow Opera:
I try very hard not to be Russophobic, and most of the time I succeed. There is one place, however, where I frequently have fantasies of mercilessly hacking to death scores of Russians with a blunt machete — the concert hall. It’s one thing when high-school dropouts and small […]

On Saturday we visited Lobkowicz’s castle near Prague, saw the original paintings of Lucas Cranach, Rubens, Breugel, and many other famous painters, including unique paintings of Spanish artists from 15th and 16th century. Walking through the castle rooms I felt awed and even subdued by the weight of this centuries-old art and European civilization. And […]

• Belarus bids bye-bye to Kazakhstan
“If Belarus keeps playing this well, they sure won’t take other teams by surprise anymore. The men from Minsk have made it to the Qualifying Round for the second straight year. With a 7-1 rout of Kazakhstan Wednesday night at Riga Arena, Belarus wrapped up the second seed in Group […]

• BBC: Universe ‘child of previous one’
I hate journalists’ writing about science because they often times report about something they themselves didn’t quite understand and usually end up writing misleading and pseudoscientific articles. And even though BBC is usually better than the rest of the bunch, in this case I was left with the […]

That’s a photo of my grandma’s bedroom in her private house in a small town in Eastern Belarus. I took the photo exactly one year ago, on May 5, 2005.
In the corner you can see several Orthodox icons decorated with a traditional Belarusian towel (rucznik).
The portraits on the wall are of my grand grandmother, […]

ARTE (one of my most favorite TV channels on ASTRA satellite) showed a very good movie tonight. It’s called Molly’s Way, and it’s a heartbreaking story of an Irish woman who had an unforgetable night with a cute Polish guy in Ireland, and now she came all the way across Europe to a small town […]

I’m shocked. My dad just called from Minsk an told me that I won the main award at the 4th National Web Content Contest, organized by TUT.BY. This is the most popular Web award in Belarus, excluding the professional contests among graphic Web designers.
Br23 blog won the first place in blogs category, and the grand […]

“Muslims in Albania’s northern city of Shkoder are opposing plans to erect a statue to Mother Teresa, the ethnic Albanian Catholic nun in line for elevation to sainthood by the Vatican.
The dispute is unusual for Albania, where religion was banned for 27 years under the regime of dictator Enver Hoxha and where religious harmony […]

Last week I was invited to a workshop in Ukraine, to teach a two-day class about internet, blogging, web publishing and CMS systems to a small class of Belarusian NGO activists. This sounded like a great opportunity! I would’ve loved to share whatever knowledge I have about WWW publishing with my fellow countrymen, and even […]