Grodno

Grodno (Belarusian: Гродна Hrodna, Russian: Гродно Grodno) is a city in Belarus, on the Neman River, close to the borders of Poland and Lithuania (about 20 km and 30 km away respectively).

Understand
This is a very pleasant town, with a nice pedestrian area and central square worth a visit, but it may remind you more of western Europe than the former Soviet Union until you get out of the center. There are still some interesting remnants of the Soviet era which might be hard to find elsewhere, such as Lenin statues or some street names.

Visa-free regime
Western parts of Grodno oblast form the so called “Grodno tourist region” foreigners from EU and some other western countries can visit without a visa for up to 15 days. Instead of a visa a tourist voucher for about €12 is needed. These can be obtained online from travel agencies like “Grodno Visa Free” or “Belarus visa free”. It is not necessary to book more tourist services than you need in fact. For stays longer than five workdays (Saturday is a workday!) a registration at the migration office is needed. If you stay in a hotel, registration formalities are done by the hotel. Individual travellers must either by go to the OVIR, queue, fill in forms and so on, or do it online on the site of the Ministry for Internal Affairs. Health insurance is needed, but not necessarily from a Belarusian company. Registration is free of charge.

By plane
On Fridays and Tuesdays, there are flights from Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad to Grodno at 09:10, and Grodno to Kaliningrad at 11:30. Flight duration is around 45 minutes.

By train
The train station at Grodno is where the change of car trucks (wheels and axles) takes place to accommodate different track gauges on east and west routes. It is a place of almost terrifying size, disorder and noise. Carriages are uncoupled from the others and, in turn, lifted about ten feet as the trucks are changed. This is done without notice and while the operation takes place one has a good view of the acres of rusted, obsolete and unused equipment that litters the area. Cigarette smuggling is very common, and many people will be doing it.

Domestic trains from Minsk are daily, departing 16:22 taking five hours, with several night trains. There are several international trains from Russia, the one from Moscow is daily and for a 16-hr journey. From Saint Petersburg there is up to three departures a week taking 22 hr. During summer additional routes are added, Odesa (39 hr) via Kyiv, Simferopol (37½ hr) and Sochi (62 hr). From Poland, you can take a train in Białystok. There are two direct trains per day, at 06:50 and at 19:02. A ticket is about 20 zł.



By car
Roads are pretty good, you can easily get here from Minsk, Brest, Vilnius (Lithuania), Białystok, Warsaw (Poland).

Be aware of borders, and possible waiting in line (especially on the Polish border Kuznica-Bruzgi or, with usually smaller lines, Berestavitsa). Even if there are only a few cars waiting in the line, you might spend there considerable time due to their still surviving Soviet police attitude. To get your stamp, you have to be proactive and decently remind the policeman of your presence.

If coming by car from Poland or Lithuania, be sure to fill the customs declaration, even on one day trip using the visa free regime. You can fill the declaration online and just bring a printed copy of it. When coming from Poland, do not use the motorway bypass of Grodno, as a motorway fee is required for this and there are reports of cops checking for these just after the beginning of the bypass near the Polish border. You can pay the motorway fee at the first petrol station beyond the border, but there is no need for it if you are going only to Grodno.

By bus
There are a lot of buses from Minsk (costs around 45 Belarus rubles for the express route, which takes 4 hr) from Vostochnyj Station or from Druzhnaya Station (behind the main train station), few from Brest (the same price), few from Vilnius, one bus from Warsaw (departure around 10:00-11:00 from Warszawa-Stadion station); a few buses from Moscow.

Get around
There are plenty of buses and trolley buses going around town. In the evenings though, they get down to travelling on the outskirts once an hour or two. A ticket for a trip costs 0.13 rubles. Buy the tickets from kiosks near the bus stops. If you speak no Russian, just say "Talony," and hold up fingers to indicate how many.

When you get on the bus, find a grey metal device that they have near the windows, put your ticket in and clamp down on it with a little lever next to it. Then, it is validated and if a ticket controller comes in, you will get no fine.

Taxis are cheap and plentiful: taxi trips within the city cost about BYN5.00.

Do

 * Bike. The relatively flat and beautiful landscape around Grodno present a good place to bike. When planning your biking trip, use OpenStreetMap based app, such as mapy.cz, as these seem to have the best coverage.

Buy
Booze (especially vodka), cigarettes and petrol are the most popular items for visitors from the west. These are much cheaper than in Poland or Lithuania due to the small excise duty. Also other articles are cheaper, but not that remarkably. You can find numerous large western-style shopping malls in Grodno and surrounding area. When buying petrol, there is no need to look for the best price, as these are the same at all petrol stations. Also, you have to pay for you petrol before fueling. If your tank got full before you could spend all the money paid in advance, go back to the petrol station and ask them to get your money back. No language skills are needed for this, as the petrol station staff will understand what you want.

Be sure not to exceed the import duty. From outside the EU (Belarus), you can import only 10 packages of cigarettes, 1 liter of booze and only the petrol that fits into your car tank, no canisters allowed. Of course, you can bring more if you are willing to fill the declarations form and pay some tax. You can see a lot of people smuggling excess amounts of these articles, but this can not be recommended, as the border controls are sometimes quite thorough.

Sleep
A good way to find cheap accommodation is to rent an apartment for a short period. You can find ads in the newspaper Iz ruk v ruki or on this website (in Russian)

Connect
EU citizens be careful, as the free roaming area ends here and instead begins an area with extremely expensive roaming, so it might be better to switch off you mobile connection if you are not planning to buy a local SIM card.

Some restaurants feature free Wi-Fi, but this is not as common as in the EU.

Stay safe
Grodno is a safe city, resembling its Polish counterparts much more than you would probably expect.

Consulates

 * 🇱🇹 Lithuania Lithuania https://consulate-grodno.mfa.lt/
 * 🇵🇱 Poland

Go next

 * Białystok
 * Druskininkai

Day trips
Belarus side of Augustow Channel. 30 km away from Grodno, near the Sapotskin village and near the Polish border, you can visit the still functional Augustow Channel, with interesting drawbridges and sailing chambers. In summer, this place gets quite lively, and you can even get here by boat from Poland. From Grodno, you can get here by bike or car.