Belarus Country Info - Europe

Description and Basic Information

Belarus with its capital Minsk is located in Europe (Eastern Europe, east of Poland). It covers some 207,601 square kilometres (slightly smaller than Kansas) with 9,685,000 citizens. Belarusian and are the the languages spoken by people in Belarus. Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Russia and Latvia are bordering countries.

Belarus is in Eastern Europe. Belarus attained its independence in 1991. However, under authoritarian rule, it has retained closer political and economic ties to Russia than any of the other former Soviet republics. Traveling by car will get you far, since the infrastructure in Belarus was well developed after World War II. Gas is relatively cheap by European standards. Traveling by train around the country will get you to a lot of desired destinations relatively cheap and you will get a chance to capture a glimpse of Belarusian nature, as the forests and plains often start right on the edges of the cities. English is not widely spoken in Belarus, even though it is starting to be on the popular uprise. Inside of Belarus, you can get Belarusian rubles (as well as US dollars) from automatic bank machines for standard types of credit/debit card. Be very careful, exchange kiosks will not exchange any bill that is damaged or marked on in any way. Approximately half of the bills you currently have in your wallet will be rejected for exchange in Belarus. Be sure to take ONLY relatively new and undamaged foreign money with you. Fortunately, crimes against foreigners are rare, though criminals have been known to use force if met with resistance from victims. Historically, Belarus maintained an excellent health system, but when the Chernobyl disaster broke out, the medical care has damaged the system severely. Therefore, medical care in Belarus is neither modern nor easily accessible.

Pictures from Capital (Minsk)

Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their owners.

About Belarus

The topography features generally flat and contains much marshland. The average density of population is about 46 per km². The climate in Belarus can be described as cold winters, cool and moist summers with transitional between continental and maritime. Potential natural disasters are NA.

To reach someone in Belarus dial +375 prior to a number. There are 3,969,000 installed telephones. And there are 9,686,000 registered mobile phones. The cellular networks operate on frequencies of 900, 1800 Mhz. Websites typically end with the top level domain ".by". If you want to bring electric appliances (e.g. battery charger), keep in mind the local 220V - 50Hz. The following list are the 7 regions/states in Belarus we know off.

Demographic Statistics

In the year 2010, the total Belarusian population shrinked at a rate of -0.37% (or by 35,278 citizens). With 132,750 deaths and 93,819 babies born, the natural increase rate lies at -0.41%. 3,653 persons more in total immigrated to the country than emmigrated.

An overview of age distribution in Belarus: Each pair of bars represents a single age group (male/female). Each group is spanning 5 years. E.g. 0 to 5 years, 5 to 10 etc. and group "0 to 5" being at the left end and "100 +" at the right end of the chart.

Based on content from wikitravel.org. The original article can be found here based on the work of these users.
Geographic information is based on the data provided by geonames.org, CIA factsbook and Unesco.