Day 5 (July 10, 2019): A Day in Brest

It was a 5AM rise to get a train to the southwest corner of Belarus, to a city named Brest, of 330,000 people.  Why Brest?  Well, it's celebrating its 1000th anniversary this year, and it also had a couple of well-recommended sights.  Plus, we wanted to get a chance to get out of Minsk and see some of the country's landscape enroute to "somewhere else".  So we chose Brest, and weren't disappointed.

We made it to the Minsk Central Station by 6:15AM for our 6:50AM departure.  The train was the daily international service from Moscow to Brest.  We were surprised to find we were seated in a compartment with four bunks, which we had to share with two chaps from Spain.  It was awkward, but we enjoyed the trip while they slept, and pulled into Brest at 10:30AM.

Our first stop was Brest Fortress.  The Fortress, one of the most important places in Belarus, was built in the 1830s and occupies four square kilometres. Poland took it over this part of Belarus (and the Fortress) after WW1, but in 1939 it was assigned to the Soviet Union. Within the USSR, it earned the title of Hero Fortress because of the courage demonstrated by Soviet soldiers when they fought against the German army in 1941 as it made is first push into Soviety territory.  While the Nazis took the town of Brest – 90% of which was destroyed in the fighting – the two regiments garrisoned inside the fortress held out for a month under horrific conditions and were obliterated in the end.

After the Fortress, we enjoyed the Railway Museum, then walked the city for a few hours after an amazing lunch at a French Restaurant, which will likely be the top meal of our vacation!

Another early morning awaits, as we have a 6:20 train back to Minsk for a flight to Ukraine.

We had a top and a bottom berth in our "compartment".  Two Spanish guys had the top and bottom on the other side and slept the entire journey.


It felt a bit weird to share a compartment with two strangers who went to bed!  So I spent a lot of the trip outside the compartment looking at the passing fields, forests and villages.


A typical rural Belarusian train station.


The massive concrete memorial at Brest Fortress.


The Bayonet Obelisk, 100m high, at Brest Fortress.


The entry of the fortress represents a huge star cut into a concrete block. As you walk through, an announcement plays repeatedly in Russian, informing about the invasion of the German army.


As you walk up to the centre of the fortress you see "Thirst", a large monument depicting an injured soldier trying to get some water from the river. The monument reflects the bravery of the last remaining soldiers who defended the Fortress against the Nazis for many days without food or water.


St. Nicholas Garrison Church within the Fortress.


The "Railway Equipment Museum of the Locomotive Depot Brest" has a collection of 56 rolling stock items from Belarus' railway history.  It's an amazing open-air museum, which permits you to go inside several of the locomotives.




It's so amazing to see emblems of "CCCP" on the various locomotives and cars.  As a kid, the very acronym "CCCP" struck fear into the hearts of all of us.  We can still see it in our minds on the hockey sweaters of the USSR team in the famous 1972 game won by Canada.





The "avenue of lamps" is a very creative idea -- weird and wonderful iron designs adorn the street lamps for several blocks.  These are a few examples.



One of the best things Brest has going for it is the Jules Verne Restaurant, a top-notch restaurant featuring French and other cuisine.  (Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright.)  Such a restaurant find in a city of this size, in a far flung corner of Belarus, was over the top!  We took a couple of hours for a leisurely lunch.


The Brest Millennium Monument was unveiled in 2009 and is large landmark at the intersection of Sovietskaya Street and Gogol Street.  It relays the history of the city.


St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church survived two wars, although the Nazis melted its bells for war use, and the Communists turned it into an Archive until 1980.





The Brest Winter Garden is a botanical garden in a greenhouse of sorts.  A great place to stroll.


Brest's "Happy Boot" statue.


Lenin Square features -- no surprise -- a huge statue of Lenin.  The Nazis remaned it Adolf Hitler Platz.  As with Independence Square in Minsk, it's quite shocking to see a statue of Lenin so revered.  Across the former USSR, Stalin and Lenin statues have been taken down for 30 years, but Belarus still reveres Lenin.


Lenin.  Larger than life!


Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross stands at the edge of Lenin Square.


War memorial in Brest.


Our hotel -- a brand new Hilton Hampton Inn -- is across the river in a new "Tax Free Zone", which is a conglomeration of dozens and dozens of apartment blocks which have gone up overnight, along with commerce.  It shows the economic growth of the region.  After a day of skirting threatening rain, these black clouds over Brest (as seen from our hotel room) released their torrents just as we reached the hotel.