Granted, Minsk is a funny place to be a tourist, on the icy concrete fringes of the old USSR. But, dropped there with some time on your hands, there’s plenty to put together for a weekend, and some very decent coffee-drinking and people-watching to be had.

Minsk ain’t what it used to be – and thank heavens for that!

The first Saturday morning spent in Minsk, the greatest challenge was navigation. My map had helpfully transliterated street names, but the actual street signs are only in the Cyrillic alphabet, which I had yet to master.

That meant that I didn’t know where I was most of the time, let alone which way I was heading. Be brave, I told myself, ask for directions. To no avail. Met always with warm smiles, I nevertheless managed to baffle every passer-by with my lack of Russian language.

With the help of a guide book and some embarrassingly long scrutinizing of Cyrillic signage, I found my way to the city’s lovely cathedral, and small historic district.

The Cathedral of the Holy Ghost is a veritable gallery of unusual icons, the most precious of which is the miracle-working ‘Icon of Minsk’, if you can locate it through the fog of incense. Legendarily, the icon was crafted by St. Luke the Evangelist, and attracts devotees from all over the country to seek its healing power.

I drank strong coffee in a café that would have been at home in Tallinn or Krakow, and watched some frail old ladies fortify themselves with vodka before afternoon mass.

That afternoon I was keen to see KGB headquarters, which turned out to be somewhat uninspiring in the end, but I spent an interesting hour wandering the sculpture gardens, stopping to listen to recitations of the angst-ridden national poetry of which Belarussians are immensely proud.

After a spot of the greatest shoe shopping a lover of perspex platforms could wish for (gotta love that regional sense of style), I finished my Saturday with friends at a surprisingly smart and cheerful pizzeria on Victory Square, where our quite modest bill nevertheless reminded us where we were.

The stack of notes it took to cover it was deeper than a Belarussian poet and a babushka’s hip flask put together.