No Photos again it's a bit tricky. This town is transliterated variously Grodno, Hrodno, Grodna etc.
Despite our fears the entry process into Belarus was pretty good. Apart from having to lug our fully laden bikes up four feet to get them on the train. We had to do this four times as we went on two trains, and on each train we first of all put them at the wrong end of the train.
(Sarah) When we finally clanked across the border - marked by a flimsy stretch of barbed wire the train halted and a large number of soldiers/officials got on and turfed us out of the luggage van. We began to feel a little apprehensive - but it turned out they needed to be at the back of the train so they could stick mirrors in the windows to watch the track. In fact the officials turned out to be charming. Ted although he is very numerate is completely incapable of filling in forms and transposes numbers. After 2 attempts at the immigration form the long suffering official would probably have written it out himself except I had borrowed his pen. Once in the terminal building at Grodna we lined up with a clack of ladies who seemed to have bought the entire stock of Poland's Pampers. Again the customs officials were lovely - laughing over the fact we were importing our means of transport. We asked them where our hotel was which involved the entire work force and Ted was whisked away to talk to a colleague on the phone. Perhaps in case I imagined that he had been taken away to have his toe nails removed, a nice man earnestly reassured me he was only talking on the phone. Of course this all took ages, so by the time we emerged from the station we were caught up in the mother of all rain storms. The only way of negotiating the puddles on the pavements was to ride our bikes and hope we didn't disappear down a huge pothole. However, miraculously Ted navigated our way to the "city centre" Hotel Tourist which in fact was 4 Km out. We had little confidence that our telephone booking undertaken in Russian would exist but we were ushered into the lobby - soaking bikes and all.
Despite all this the day was long and stressful. Starting with a series of phone calls to hotels in Grodno. This was the first time we had tried to book ahead and I am glad we did as the first four of the five hotels in town claimed to have no rooms. Looking for room on spec in the pouring rain would have been impossible and we probably would have got back on the train to Poland. I spent the first train journey in the luggage van with a group of people who were in training for the Park bench special brew drinking team, complete with the compulsory drunken lecherous couple. Sarah wasn't there because the was only one seat left.
I was anxiously watching developments through the glass door. All I could see was the male half of the lecherous couple who sprang up at each station and was then catapulted across the carriage as the train jerked to a halt. Several times he seemed to be about to leave the train only to reappear before I could claim his seat.
You don't want to underestimate the problems of finding your way around in a Russian speaking town. The alphabet is pretty scary and often the signs are in some fancy calligraphy as well.
This all sounds a bit grim - but Grodno is not the concrete jungle we thought it would be - the people have been really helpful and speak more English than in Poland. The town is quite small - the size of Wolverhampton and most of the buildings are low rise - built around 1900 in stucco painted pastel colours - I guess it looks a bit like a sanitised version of Havana. We are also sitting in the swankiest Internet caff so far. As it is run by the national PTT it is more Internet and not so much caff but a huge number of stations and fast connections.
You will see from the map that there is now quite a lot of blank space. This probably also means that we may be quiet for a bit.
