Before leaving Moscow Malcolm treated us to a little gem that is a very interesting tradition followed by the Muscovites. It is something they call a Christmas Tree. When a couple marry they buy a lock and take it to a special 'tree', lock the lock and throw the key into the river in the hope that their marriage will last forever. There were hundreds of thousands of locks on many of the 'trees' as can be seen in this photo of just one 'tree'.
Traveling to Minsk we passed a collection of Russian tanks that had been used to help Russia win the war against the Germans. Of course the 'boys' couldn't resist climbing all over them.
Our local guide for Minsk was Malcolm, the Tour Director, as he actually resides in Minsk with his wife of 12 months. He took us to an appartment building where Lee Harvey Oswald, (the alleged assassin of President John F Kennedy) lived in a subsidized apartment after defecting to Russia in 1959.
The Lee Harvey Oswald apartment building.
There's a monument of a little boy in Minsk and Belarussian women rub his private parts in order to promote fertility, as you can see it is very shiny.
We had pestered Malcolm to bring his wife to the hotel so we could meet her. On the morning we were leaving Minsk he presented us to Anastasia, an extremely attractive, petite blonde. She spoke perfect English and it was pleasure to meet her.
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