Halfway through our wait we were again visited. This time by a couple of real nasty types who came and stuck their heads in our window, dropping cigarette ashes on me in the process, and started talking to Igor. 

I had only a notion of what they were talking about as I don't speak the local lingo. But I heard the names of two major cities in Belarus mentioned and I figured these two wanted a ride. 

First, we had no room as the car was packed, and second I just hoped Igor would tell them no. All of a sudden Igor pulls out his wallet hands them DM50 ($32) and they left! I asked Igor why the hell he gave them all that money, and he said he figured that was the better solution... They told Igor they wanted a ride, but he told them 'no.' Then they threatened us saying if we didn't give them money or a ride, they'd make a phone call and arrange for us to "have an accident on the other side of the border." Igor isn't one who scares easily, but he must have thought these thugs meant business.

We eventually made it through the border and hit the road to Minsk fast. Luckily, we had no problems along the way. The road was surprisingly good too; divided highway all the way, and well surfaced.

Arriving in Minsk well after Midnight we tried to find a hotel. We pulled up to various people and Igor asked directions. We were directed to a couple of cheaper hotels first - Igor went in to enquire and came back to say "impossible here." 

The problem was me. Because I'm American I couldn't stay in just any hotel. It had to be an approved tourist hotel. So we looked for and found one of the Intourist hotels; luckily there was space. Igor booked a two-bedded room and told me of the prejudice pricing. The room was $40, but $30 was the charge for me, the foreigner, and only $10 for comrade Igor.

The next morning after a decent breakfast Igor went to change DM30 ($20) into the local funny money. He came back with a plastic bag full of it. It contained 3 or 4 packs of money a 1/2 inch thick each; we didn't know how we'd spend it all.We spent most of the day wandering around Minsk. Neither one of us had been here before. It's a rather non-descript city. Possibly the reason I say that is because of the miserable gray weather conditions, or maybe we just didn't see the right things. 

We had a substantial lunch with the money though, and plenty left over for diesel. After Minsk the road deteriorated and we couldn't go as fast.

Admittedly though, a lot of the reason for the bad conditions was because they were actually laying a new road for quite a bit of the distance and it was causing less distress than similar roadworks in my adopted home of England. 

The only excitement of the day was the herd of cows that wandered out onto the highway. Horns were honking, brakes screeching - yet they moved across at their leisure.

Upon approaching the Russian border we saw that the Russians and Belarussians weren't practicing a free and open border policy. This crossing was a mixture of trucks and cars and when we reached the last truck in the line we couldn't see the border. Luckily cars can go ahead of the trucks and we slowly drove by. These guys were here for awhile, some had the pots & pans out cooking their dinner. We drove on; the line of trucks nose to tail didn't end for nearly a mile.

We made it up to the car line and still had to wait over an hour just to get out of Belarus. The 500 yards of limbo between the Belarus and Russian checkpoints was pure chaos. 

We thought we had it made now that we were heading for the last border check of the trip, but we couldn't get to the front because the Russian side was a disaster.