Paviel Bielavus

Warsaw and Minsk, two capital cities, are separated by 500 kilometers only, but this distance separates Poland and Belarus not so much in geographic as in geopolitical aspects. Between the countries, along the Western Bug, through forests and grassland, there is a frontier between the West and the East, the European Union and something which is not the European Union at all, the democracy and the not-yet-a-democracy, Europe and something that resembles Europe, and finally between wide-gauge and narrow-gauge railroads which makes the population of “Minsk – Warsaw” train to wait nervously for two night hours for the permission to visit the land where we are expected, apparently, but not everyone is allowed to leave there.
Owing to the educational visit “Poland 89 – Belarus 91 – incomparable changes” organized by the Center for International Relations, after a week-long visit to Warsaw and numerous meetings with representatives of civil society and official agencies, at least I got the impression that Belarusians are expected within the “unified Europe”. Only we are expected not as a “blooming” country where streets and courtyards are lick-clean but as a country clean from insult and slander, interdictions and wild lies, truncheons and public fears.
The capital city could hardly be called a reflection of the whole country; however these administratively privileged cities bear the burden of responsibility for the perception of the country by its guests.
It is customary now to hear the best compliment for Minsk: “What a clean city you have!”, and the Belarusian Sasha Rybak, after coming back to Belarus as a global star, went to call Minsk the cleanest city in Europe. He is better placed to know, because looking from his Scandinavian Peninsula, he knows much more about Europe than modest small-town Belarusians. But the most distinctive feature of Warsaw is difficult to determine: it may be the railways which are located under the ground and surface all of a sudden at the city outskirts, or contemporary skyscrapers which neighbor the Stalin giant – the Palace of Culture and Science, or the “starówka” which was restored after the war in its original appearance. And now, taking a slow walk, you cannot even imagine that the buildings of this part of the city recently celebrated their fifty years only after the reconstruction. Warsaw’s dwellers, and especially their male part, are very proud of the city arms which represent a topless mermaid. Furthermore, I noticed that manufacturers of numerous tourist souvenirs increased the size of the mermaid’s breasts comparing with the classic size that she has on the famous monument on the market square in the Old Town.
Minsk is surrounded by the smooth circle of the belt highway in the form of a double-layer dog-collar which makes the fine lines of the canalized river of Svislach unperceivable on the map among its multilane streets. Meanwhile, Warsaw appears vast; its dimensions in the real environment, even without looking at the map, seem to be immeasurable. Also, the river of Vistula divides the city into two big parts, and when you are on the left bank of the river, the right part of the city looks like a totally different faraway world, and these two worlds are connected between themselves totally accidentally by seven Warsaw bridges.
Personally to me Poland is a country of trade. When I visited this country for the first time, I was very surprised by a great number of commercial signs, mostly of the yellow color with black inscriptions, which flitted in towns as well as along the roads between towns. Even an important part of Belarusians who live in near-border towns, before Poland’s accession to the European Union gained their living by carrying in cigarettes, vodka, diesel fuel for sale, and brining back inexpensive meat products and clothes. In today’s conditions the Warsaw trade spirit remains; it probably became more civilized and orderly, but still distinct with kabobs, Addidas, cheap shoes and arrows in the direction of modern hypermarkets.
A visit to a shopping center is an indispensable item on the agenda of Belarusians who come to Warsaw. Objectively, today the choice of shoes and clothes in the Polish capital is more varied than in Minsk. Every Belarusian will always say with satisfaction than “here everything is cheaper than in Belarus”. It is only because there is no well-designed system of rebates and sale promotions in Minsk. This is why Belarusians, running through Warsaw boutiques, are looking for the precious word of “Sale”, where numerous things turn out indeed to be cheaper than in similar stores of the Belarusian capital. It also concerns the food products, but here the psychological effect of perception of everything cheap applies, because when it is ten zloty there, and ten thousand rubles in our country, all prices instantly become small and easily perceptible. In this way, the perception of importance of ten-zloty or twenty-zloty bill is lost.
Numerous Poles who visited Minsk remark on the contrary that prices in bars and restaurants of the capital are much lower than in those in Warsaw, and this is why comparing of price indicators is rather a useless and subjective matter.
About two million people live in Minsk and Warsaw which makes twenty per cent of the total population of Belarus and about five per cent in Poland. This is what I would like to point out because in Poland there is no big flow which would want to move namely to Warsaw. There are big cities which are as good as the capital city: Krakow, Poznan, and Gdansk. In Belarus differences between the capital city and regional cities are important. The best universities of the country, the highest salaries, the promising jobs, and the great diversity of leisure areas, all this is concentrated in Minsk.
Minsk has a lot of differences from Warsaw, just as Warsaw differs a lot from Berlin, Prague or Paris, but one should not forget, especially Belarusians, that these wonderful cities are united by one main circumstance – together they form the face of the united continent of “Europe”.