Introducing Minsk

Minsk is a mind-blowing experience. Ostensibly, it's a European capital, but officially, the city hearkens back to Soviet times: the KGB building is impossible to miss, and people speak about spies, wire taps and stool pigeons in their midst. Police and the military are everywhere. News is that Lukashenka is ready to send in tanks to squash protests. Yet never mind, a slick new nightclub is rolling out drum 'n' bass tonight. Before that, drop in to the new sushi bar.

Communist chic. Cappuccino communism. Minsk is a living oxymoron. When it all gets too bizarre to figure out - and it will - just abandon yourself and have a blast.

There's a palpable pride about Minsk, the pride of a survivor. It has come back from the dead several times in its almost millennium of existence (the city was founded in September 1067), each time triumphantly. Currently, it's the defiant capital of one of the few countries to actively snub US and European attempts at 'intervention', and the city which best approximates what life was like in the Soviet heyday of the 1970s: insular, cocooned, fun.

After Minsk was reduced to rubble during WWII, Moscow architects were given a blank slate to transform ruins into a model Soviet city. An excess of monumental classicism was to give the impression of a workers' utopia. The wide boulevards, expansive squares and grandiose proportions of the buildings in the centre do initially impress, but eventually they take on an oppressive weight. Aside from a minuscule reconstructed Old Town, the city has few cosy corners as antidotes to the concrete, colonnaded grandeur. Evenings, when buildings are beautifully illuminated, offer a softer view of the city.

Minsk, as a clean, safe city and with few tourist attractions, is best enjoyed as the locals do - hanging out in the parks and cafés, meeting people and trying to forget about what goes on behind the Presidential Palace's doors.