turning into Nemiga

We arrive at Maxi Bis.

This is a fine place to have a quick, cheap but nutritious lunch or dinner.

You know that the food is good because the moment that you leave it the sparrows are after it. (For every one sparrow in nearby Vilnius, there are at least five in Minsk, which in this respect is like London of a century ago.)

You can’t miss the building, which is on the corner of Pobediteley avenue (or Pieramožcaŭ prospect) and Nemiga (or Nyamiga). Here it is:

Appreciation of such design is not universal. Der Spiegel describes this as one of a pair:

Nemiga Street in the Belarusian capital Minsk, where an old church still stands in the old city core, between two monstrosities of postwar modernism. Bezjak made repeated trips to Eastern Europe over a period spanning five years.

(This is Roman Bezjak’s book Sozialistische Moderne / Socialist Modernism, which is perhaps less appreciative than Frédéric Chaubin’s Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed.)

Bezjak/Spiegel does have a point. But let’s go around the corner

and past the “old church” (the early seventeenth-century Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul, no less)

and on to the second “monstrosity”, which is the Na Namige (or Na Nyamize; here) shopping arcade.

next in the Belarus series