Minsk, Belarus

I finally have a card from an eastern-european country. I think it's because Bulgaria is in East Europe, that's why I don't receive postcards from there. But viva the private swap :) I've received a lovely photograph from Minsk, the capital of Belarus. It shows the town hall and the cathedral Virgin Mary. It's few I know about Belarus, altough I had a classmate from Belarus. As it can be seen in the article, they have the same microraions (микрорайони) like ours (Prytytski Square). Ours don't have lightnings in fact. These are the same panel buildings, made dirung the communist period, which americans show in their movies as a symbol of poverty in the Eastern Europe, which is a bit stupid, i think. It was curius for me to know that there is Russo-Belarusian pidgin language, called trasianka. 

Ратуша is a new word I've learned from russian - it means town hall. I'm not good in speaking russian, but I usualy don't have problems with understanding it - it's so close to bulgarian, and also I used to study it in school, so I'm happy when people write me in russian (even when I reply in english, I find it easier to speak english at the moment, maybe because of all movies and books and internet sites). The photograph is of the husband of Nargiza, and this is his site - http://zimani.net/eng/, where you can find a lot of nice photoes. 

And anouther interesting thing about Belarus - there is a residention of Ded Moroz (its Diado Mraz in bulgarian) - the eastern version of Santa Claus:  http://www.streamphoto.ru

When we were children in Bulgaria, we were expecting Дядо Мраз (Diado Mraz) on New Year's Eve. Now children are axpecting Дядо Коледа (Diado Koleda, or Grandpa Cristmass, or Pere Noel :) on the night before Xmas. Things are changing.