MICE-Tourism

A review that every travellers MUST READ before they visit Belarus/Minsk :)
It was last minute plan to visit Minsk and when we arrived we knew that we'll easily get lost because most of the the sign and street names etc are in Russian.

Asked the hotel about tour recommendation and hotel staff recommended them. We contacted Michael by whatsapp and he replied me very quickly. Within 1 hour we already booked for 2 days tour to Mir & Nesvizh Castles also Brest Fortress & Bialowieza Forest.

The next day Michael himself arrived with Eugine, waiting in front of our hotel elevator at our agreed time, very on time to make sure that we wont go with the wrong guys :))

I travelled with my Japanese friend so we always speak English. Eugine & Michael told us since the beginning of excursion, that they will try to speak English in front of us so we always know what happened. Even when they speak Russian, after that they always translated to us what they just talked about. Very sweet of them :)

It was about 1.5 hours drive to the first castle and along the way, Eugine explained a lot about Belarus, Minsk and history about the castle that we're about to visit. Eugine is very smart, he's like Belarus Wikipedia, he knows everything! You dont have to google to search or ask something, just ask Eugine and he'll answer your questions, is faster than google :))

Second day we had a lot of fun, even the way to Brest was quite long, but feels like not that long because both of them try to entertained us (or maybe the other way around? :)) Eugine make sure that both of us well feed with healthy food such as banana and cucumber :)) we sing each other's anthem song together in the car, and surprisingly to me, they know a lot about the bands and music that I listened to. It was really a fun road trip, we made jokes and laugh a lot.

We went further to Brest to see the fortress. Also went to see the very cute Bison.. and we had chance to feed them (and other animals) as well. When interacting with animals sometimes is not easy because you cant force them to come to you / to like you, but Michael was trying his best for us to be able to feed all of the animals, especially the famous Belarusian Bison. Bought a lot of bread that can feed the animals in the whole zoo :)) and try to make a sound like them so those animals can come closer to us. One time we almost gave up with the pig, but he ran around outside the cage to get their attention.

Before we came to Belarus, we had no idea about this country, but after joined the tour, we really learned a lot and made us curious to know more about the country, the culture, the history and the people, especially curious to know how they live their daily life.

I travelled a lot and join some private tours before, but very rare to find nice gentleman guys like Eugine and Michael. After the excursion, we didn't feel that we join the boring tour, but feels like meeting two new nice and good friends as well as become a lot more educated with the Belarusian history after.

When you go to visit a country you wanted to have a good feeling after you leave the country, thats what we felt after excursion with them. Two days seems went so fast because we had so much fun. We even still laugh about it and talked about it after we came back from the trip. We miss having a good time with them in Belarus and hopefully can come back in a warmer season :)) good luck and keep up the good work Eugine & Michael!! Spasibo :))