"Better than expected"

Despite bad press, lack of advertising and difficulties with visas the Europeans go to Belarus. They can be tourists, teachers or  businessmen  and their number in Minsk is growing. Belarus-Minsk.com has asked some of them to tell about their impressions about this country.
Two Spaniards, Victor Belenguer and Francisco Sanchez de Mora, share their experience about living in Minsk. Victor have been in Minsk for more than two years, Francisco just came over.  Both teach Spanish language and literature in Minsk Linguistic University.

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Belarus: Capitalism's Unlikely Frontier

With Russian subsidies declining, President Lukashenko is looking westward for investment

French software startup Abaxia was hunting for an offshore research and development site in 2006 when one of its employees suggested taking a look at his native country, Belarus. "I had to get out an atlas to be sure where it was," recalls Ongan Mordeniz, Abaxia's R&D chief.

Today, more than half of Abaxia's employees work in the former Soviet republic of 9.5 million, wedged between Russia and Poland on the EU's eastern rim. The company and two affiliates employ 85 engineers at a software development center in Minsk near the former Communist Party headquarters, which is now President Alexander Lukashenko's residence. They're among an estimated 10,000 professionals working for outsourcing operations in what is now the region's No. 3 country for such shops, behind Ukraine and Romania, according to the Central and Eastern European Outsourcing Assn.

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