Minsk to Mist

In my previous post, I shared some of the things that were quite a cultural shock to me after my relocation to London. Regardless of whether they make me tick or ick, I’ve chosen to embrace the ways of my new home whenever possible. This post has a few more things that I have managed to remember from my first few months in the UK, although I’m far from claiming that it was a total recall on my part!

1. Post box toppers

OK, you hardly ever get to see these in London, but OMG, whenever you leave the Big Smoke for a few days or even for a few hours, you are likely to run into a wonderful crocheted post box topper! I honestly don’t know how someone could come up with that idea, and that just gives me pride in being a part of the humankind that can be so creative! Just look at this!

And these!

Photo credit: Facebook group ‘UK Post Box Toppers and More’

Not to mention this beauty I spotted in Southend-on-Sea!

My personal attitude: crocheting post-toppers is already on my retirement to-do list! (or at least it was, before they announced the introduction of those with solar panels…)

2. People being very sporty (and no sexist attitude towards girls)

Years ago, during one of my business trips to London, I went for a run in a park in pouring rain. If I did so in Belarus, I would be considered a lunatic at best. In London, other people just kept running. Because ‘just do it!’

Even before my big move I knew that the British are a very sporty nation, but I think I underestimated the extent of it! All the born-and-bred Brits that I know used to do at least some sports during their school years – football, rugby, hockey, sailing, rowing, etc. It did not necessarily translate in interest (or having the time and money) to continue with these sports as a grown-up, but I can see it built up the character of the people and helped them develop great qualities that are helpful in day-to-day life, such as being a team player, stamina, work ethics and perseverance.

Another thing that stands out for me as an expat is that… it’s absolutely fine for a girl to play football! This type of sport was considered to be ‘not-a-girl-kind-of-thing’ in former Soviet countries, and if a girl wanted to paly football back there, it would have been frowned upon, to say the least. I wonder if my compatriots could be inspired by how successful and admirable Lionesses are?

My personal attitude: go Lionesses!

3. Don’t you dare smiling at other peoples’ dogs!

According to Statista, dogs tend to be more popular than cats in the UK households (at least as of 2024). And even a brief walk around any major UK city can bring you plenty of opportunities to see dog parents walking their four-legged friends.

What struck me at first, though, is that admiring someone else’s dog, melting at them and – God forbid – petting them is close to an offense. Not that I would touch anyone’s dog without a permission anyway, and some of them are terrifying enough to make me keep my hands to myself. But if I’m out for a run (how British of me!) and a doggy approaches me to say ‘hi’, I’d at least want an opportunity to greet him or her back, say ‘awww, what a cutie you are!’ and inquire about the name with the owner. And that’s coming from me, a cat person!

Turns out, it’s very much not encouraged. Might be because people tend to be quite reserved (I’m an introvert myself, so totally respect that), or because dog theft rates are incredibly upsetting (about 5 furry friends are kidnapped in the country every day), which makes their parents wary of strangers.

My personal attitude: a bit disappointing and requires a lot of self-restrain on my part, but I get there might be many reasons for that.

4. Bringing children with you to a pub

OK, Belarus hardly has any pubs per se, and even those venues that position themselves as such in reality sit somewhere between a gastropub and a bar. While it’s perfectly fine to pop in with a child there during lunchtime for a quick bite, bringing an under-aged to a Belarusian ‘pub’ in the evening and drinking in front of them is massively frowned-upon. You can imagine what a cultural shock it was when I saw a family of five with a dog at a pub some time around 8 o’clock on a Saturday night for the first time. Turned out, it’s absolutely normal – as long as your child clears the venue by 10 pm. And you don’t end up puking in front of them.

My personal attitude: parenting must never be an obstacle to enjoying your life, so totally in for that!

5. Not removing the dish soap before you put the dishes on a dryer

This might be a bit of a stretch compared to other points on the list, but to be honest, to this day, it is freaking me out! In the former Soviet Union, assuming people don’t have a dishwasher at home, we tend to be quite OCD about removing all the dish soap with hot water before we dry the dishes or wipe them. Rumour has it that, if you don’t do that, some soap will remain on a dish anyway, and you will end up consuming it (which doesn’t sound appealing). Still not sure if it’s true or not, but I do prefer to remove as much soap as I can from my dishes before using them again.

My personal attitude: hell no!

What surprised you the most when you first moved to your new country? What you loved to learn about and what are you struggling with to this day? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Right after his death, a man’s soul was given a choice – to enter the heaven or to go to the hell. He asked if he could visit both before making a decision. The heaven seemed lovely to him, but a bit too boring compared to the hell. The latter was filled with parties, booze, promiscuous women. After that short excursion, he said: ‘I made up my mind, and I’d rather opt for the hell!’

Upon his arrival to the new place of residence, he saw a picture completely different to what was presented to him before. There were no signs of partying and fun whatsoever, just burning pots with sinners, unbearable heat and loads of hard meaningless work turning the coal.

• What the f***? – he asked the devil. – That wasn’t in the brochure, and that’s absolutely not what I was promised during my first trip!
• My friend, – answered the devil – I think you might be confusing tourism with immigration!

Many people from the former Soviet Union countries have heard this joke and, hence, try to stay relatively down-to-earth when it comes to considering a move elsewhere. I had visited London many times for business prior to my move, so I hardly had any illusions that making the most wonderful city in the world my home would be a picnic. I was already familiar with the cost of living (although before the cost-of-living crisis), the wonders of travelling on the tube during peak hour, the way your heart sunk when there was a fault on your train, which meant you would be running late for an important customer meeting, etc. Accepting all of these and many more wasn’t hard. Still, life in the UK still had a lot of surprises for me, and here’s a number of things I found shocking (mostly in a good way) in my first year as a Londoner (COVID aside…)

• Sandwich is a normal meal

OMG, I can still hear my post-Soviet mum saying in unison with all other mums ‘Sandwich is not a meal, it’s a snack at best!’ In the UK, it’s perfectly normal to have a sandwich or two (or more, no judgement!) for a meal and not bother with hot food at all. People born and raised in the former Soviet Union are sort of enshrined with an idea that 3 times a day one is supposed to have a HOT meal. It doesn’t matter much what sort of meal it is, as long as it’s cooked and served piping hot. And yes, hot sandwiches/ toasties are not considered a meal in Belarus either!

My personal attitude: I love sandwiches, so works for me most of the time! On the other hand, I’m in my 30s, which means I’m always looking for a way to have some soup…

• You don’t buy an air humidifier. You buy a DEHUMIDIFIER!

Let’s start with a bit of context here for those lucky people who didn’t have the pleasure of living in or at least visiting any former Soviet countries. Most people in that part of the world live in flats, not (terraced/ semi-detached/ detached) houses, and except for the new builds (‘new’ as in ‘built in the 21^st century’), there are no thermostats in flats. In colder months, people rely on central heating, with the idea being that the amount of heat you get in your flat is controlled… well, centrally, from a special unit reporting to something similar to a council in the UK. It means that you don’t get to decide when exactly the heating turns on and how warm it’s going to be in your flat – the council does. And boy, sometimes it gets TOO WARM!

To an extent that the air in Belarusian flats tends to get very dry, which is why many people buy an air humidifier, and I used to be one of those people. In fact, I was probably a bit too reliant on it.

How shocked I was in my first winter in the UK that Amazon did not show me a single air humidifier, but insisted on me needing a DEHUMIDIFIER! Wait, no, I don’t want the air in my flat to get even drier, I need to be able to breathe normally! It took me a while to realise that: a) now I’m in charge of when and to what I extent I heat my place; b) that was a start of my never-ending war with mould…

My personal attitude: how on Earth is it possible that the air in the flat is soooo dry, yet, the mould is still a b**ch and keeps coming back every now and then?!

• Going to the theatre is a WILD party!

When you are a kid in a former Soviet Union country, one of the first social things you learn is how to behave in a theatre or at a concert. Food or drinks are strictly not allowed in the audience, and even if you manage to smuggle any, your mum is going to throw a tantrum so hard as if you were trying to kill a few people, not just munch for a few seconds leading up to the play. Oh, and you HAVE to dress up for when you go to see a play, it’s a special occasion! Oh, and don’t you dare to clap or express your excitement any other way after a part of the play, only after it ends and there’s a curtain call.

Yeah, loads of rules that went right out of the window (or out of my head, to be more precise) after my first visit to a theatre in London. How (pleasantly) surprised was I when I saw that people in the audience didn’t care how they were dressed, munched away and filled up on drinks (alcohol in the audience, yeeeeeees!) and laughed, clapped and enjoyed themselves! And that wasn’t even a musical. That was a presentation of a book by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Not sure if all the musicals I have attended got the same level of excitement and noise…

My personal attitude: yes, please!

• And yes, drinks are oftentimes served in plastic glasses and flutes

If you want to drink outside a pub, you will be handed a plastic glass. If you buy a glass of champagne in a theatre, you will be given a plastic flute. Given I was never requested to give any of the latter back, I now have a neat collection of plastic champagne flutes that come in very handy in the context of my clumsiness.

My personal attitude: that’s brilliant and has probably saved me a few quid in terms of glasses that I didn’t manage to shatter!

TO BE CONTINUED…

That is the question I’ve been hearing a lot from both my compatriots in Belarus and my new compatriots in London, especially after they learn that I used to ‘have it all’ back where I was born.

At the age of 26, I was working for a major IT firm in Minsk, had my own flat (without any mortgages, etc.), two cars (one for myself, one for my partner at the time), decent salary, lots of visas that enabled me to travel the world, etc. And a few years later, at the age of 29, I uprooted my life and moved across Europe to start anew.

So yeah, what made me do that?

There were a few reasons for that:

• I simply wanted to live in London.

Prior to my relocation, I visited London quite frequently on business. And at some point, I realised that I got into a ‘London state of mind’ (hope Billy Joel forgives me for misquoting his song). My life consisted of three states – ‘I’m about to go to London’, ‘I’m in London!’ or ‘I’m looking forward to my next trip to London’. It felt like dating someone you really love without making any commitments to each other. So, it was time to move. Or to move in, to be more precise.

• ‘Having it all’ at a young age is actually a problem.

When I was 27, I fell deeply into a depression. I was struggling at work, didn’t have any hobbies, and was really unhappy with my more-than-decent life. By Belarusian standards, I was actually pretty well-off. After a few sessions, my therapist at the time reached to a conclusion that I was having… a mid-life crisis. (Apparently, you can have one prematurely).

The thought was hard to swallow at first, but with time, I started realising that I lost a sense of purpose. While you are in the process of achieving (and overachieving) financially, you think that, once you get your own property and don’t need to worry about money, you will be happy forever. Let me tell you now – it does NOT work that way. Always striving for something else is what keeps us alive. Mentally alive anyway.

Moving to a new place, especially as challenging as London is, sounded like a good starting point.

• I wanted to have better opportunities for the next generation of my family.

My partner at the time and I never had kids. We could afford them back in Belarus, but I just felt that I wasn’t ready to bring new life into the world until I was in my thirties. And that they should have better opportunities in life than I did.

Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate the good start that my parents gave to me despite all the trials and tribulations they had to go through shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And even in Belarus you can still have a pretty decent life as long as you work hard and know the right people.

But I wanted (and still want) my future children to have even more than I could afford back home. I strive for them to have one of the strongest passports in the world (trust me, when you need to get a visa to go almost anywhere, it doesn’t make travelling that much fun), get European education, speak one of the most common languages in the world as their mother tongue. And if I’m lucky enough to ever have a daughter, I want her to avoid (at least mostly) everyday sexism that is still rampant in many former Soviet countries.

What made you move to another country? What sort of life did you have back home? Has your new life after the relocation met your expectations? Drop me a few lines in the comments!

Hi there, and welcome!

I’m a Belarusian expat living in the UK, slowly learning to love Marmite (still not quite there yet). This blog is my space to reflect on what it means to rebuild your life in a new country — one bank appointment, rainy afternoon, and awkward small talk at a time.

A few years ago, I packed up my life in Belarus and moved to the UK. Since then, I’ve learned a lot — about why violating a queue calls for a death penalty, about navigating visas and GP appointments, and about finding your voice when everything around you feels foreign.

Here you’ll find stories about my day-to-day life, practical tips for other newcomers, and observations on the cultural quirks that make this country both confusing and delightful. It’s not all rosy — but I believe there’s beauty in sharing those moments too.

If you’re a fellow expat (Belarusian or not), someone planning a move, or just curious about life through someone else’s eyes, I hope you find a bit of comfort and connection here.

Thanks for stopping by — and please say hi in the comments or via email. Small talk is optional:)

Where are you from and where do you currently live? What makes you tick and what makes you ick about your birth country or your country of choice?