The road to Grodno

Friday, September 17th, 2010

On the highway from Minsk to Grodno, Belarus

There's this very strange pattern that emerges in touring. You see the country you're visiting through the polarized glass of a van -- or at least more often than not I do. My visits to these countries tend to be more "Holiday Inn" tours. The kind where you go from the airport to the hotel to the meeting to the hotel to the theater to the hotel to the reception to the airport. That's not a complaint, just a reality. 

But the weird thing is that, as the "in-house" photographer most of my images of the world tend to be of the snapshot through the window variety. That, too, is not a complaint. Sometimes you see the world in fascinating ways through a car window. Its something of a great equalizer because in traveling every country what you see through the window is something of the commerce, and in a way, the life, of a country. Its a little like seeing someone through their arteries if that makes any sense. 

So, here's a little travelogue of images along the highway to Grodno on a Friday afternoon in September. I particularly like the grain flying off the back of the truck transporting it to wherever, and of the kitten -- and Chris and William and Irina's reaction to it -- a little road stop where we found ice cream. 

I also loved the just "in the moment" of this man on his bicycle. He stopped in for a beer at this restaurant where we had an amazing meal for $4 (and felt gipped when it turned out that the other van containing the rest of the company had found a great meal for $3). These are so often the moments I treasure -- the random image of this fellow in his army fatigue pants, his beret and the - "where the Hell did he come from. There's NOTHING around here, sense of things."