Navahrudak
Navahrudak was interesting to our group as a famous place of Jewish resistance during the Second World War, a place with its own dramatic history of pain and honor. And, of course, as an atmospheric town that has preserved its pre-war features and partly its architecture.
According to the purpose of the project, our task was to record how much the cultural and historical past of this former large shtetl is relevant today for the residents and visitors of the town. And what are the similarities and differences between the tourist-attractive Navahrudak and the not-too-famous and not yet suitable for tourist trips Іzabielin
At first glance, this is a picturesque town located near an old medieval citadel and has an atypical landscape for our eyes. The citadel offers the most wonderful views – it is impossible not to take pictures against the background of these poetic hills and heights. Crooked streets tend to go down, then up. The wooden buildings resemble old photographs from the beginning of the 20th century, making you want to remove the color, add old sepia with scratches, smell the fireplaces, hear the sounds of the old shtetl and the conversation in Yiddish and Polish.
But this is a deceptive feeling.
Despite its age and tourist attraction (there are many monuments and museums, and almost every building in the center was Jewish property less than a hundred years ago and has its own history), Navahrudak is not developed in the sense of guest infrastructure and has a “Soviet flavor” in everything.
There are two or three hotels here that can suddenly be unavailable during public holidays. And if you are relaxing on the terrace of a private hotel in an old historic building on a hot summer day, you may be visited without warning by an official ministerial delegation. With its ministerial goals, nothing personal.
It should also be borne in mind that you may not be able to have lunch at either of the two cafés in the town center on a weekend or holiday. In the first one, “we have a banquet at six” (while half of the space of the café is not occupied). And in the neighboring one, “try it, but there are also tourists there today”. That is, you are not considered a tourist, unless you arrived within a group of fifty people at the same time and did not order dinner in advance.
You can find delivery of pizza and sushi in the dormitory area at the town exit, but you can hear that “now all the dough is ordered, come in two or three hours”.
At the moment, there are only three places in the town where, in general, you can eat soup and hot meal. One of them is quite far from the center. We didn’t find any rental bikes or any other municipal means for independent transportation (except taxis), but we were lucky enough to be in this town with our own car. The fact that there is neither Jewish kosher cuisine, nor Belarusian noble or peasant food, nor a medieval tavern is disappointing. Perhaps, all that is left to do is go to the always welcoming town café near the local history museum, which is located in a cute old building, and drink a very tasty coffee with a cake, which will definitely remind you of a pleasant memory from your travels in the Polish or Lithuanian provinces.
That is, if you are traveling on your own, in order not to end up on the street and not to buy food in a grocery store, you need to follow the regime and take care of accommodation in advance, book a table in a café, call all the museums and places you plan to go to, so that to be welcome there for sure. When we planned our expedition, that’s exactly what we did. And we had interesting meetings with the town and with people who told us about the town and its curiosities. But it was necessary to calculate the time and distance in order to have lunch and dinner in time, just like in a pioneer camp.
The second option – in order not to spoil your mood and not to get unpleasant surprises – buy a regular sightseeing tour and go “like all normal people” by a big bus. In this case, your trip will be organized in full, with included excursions and the purchase of magnets in the souvenir shop near the citadel.
But if you have a desire to get to know Navahrudak without a travel agency and get your own impressions as souvenirs, we suggest you take a look at the materials recorded by us during the expedition (below here and in the video versions of our events). And also use infrastructure information that will help you plan your living and the content of your trip, in the section For tourists.