Minsk

Having witnessed blast doors in subways, wide 'easy to roll an army through' streets and statues of old soviet heroes, there really is nothing quite like being jolted awake in central Minsk at 06:18am by a full-on cold war air raid siren.

As I stood bleary-eyed by the window, curious to see if hoards of Minskers were actually fleeing to the metro stations, several thoughts passed through my mind: Is there ANY possibility of some kind of military attack on Minsk? Who from (Even Russia is a possibility these days)? Does being Belarus' only tourist make me immune? What the hell am I supposed to do? I felt so completely unprepared, it's been so long since I put my mind to thinking what to do in case of a nuclear attack, I hadn't even got any eggs?

After a couple of minutes I managed to catch a glimpse of 1 or 2 people, apparently oblivious to this terrifying noise, wandering up the street. 1 or 2 cars went past and without any warning whatsoever, and eventually, the alarm was silenced.

So at 04:31 GMT I'm writing my blog offline in the hope that I can find some free wifi in the city with which to upload it later on. If only the air raid sirens had hotspots on them, they'd have full citywide coverage for sure.