Minsk - Post Report Question and Answers
What is your housing like? What are typical housing sizes, locations, and commute times for expatriates?
Apartments are located downtown and near lost of restaurants. Most houses are new and have yards, some have small yards. We got lucky and live in a nice big house only 15 minutes drive away from the Embassy, near a forest and a lake. There is another family that lives in our neighborhood but it's a bit of walk so it takes effort to arrange playdates for the kids. The lake is great place to meet it has a biking trail around it and it's a great evening activity for those who live near by, it has a few playgrounds and outdoor gym equipment. There is a tennis club right be the lake as well. During the summer the lake is hopping, there are outdoor sitting areas with grills, coffee and food trucks, bouncy castle and trampolines, Segways, electric scooters and other rides for rent, as well as wake boarding but it gets very crowded as well and summer this year was very short. During the winter people skate on the lake and sometimes there is a sauna on wheels and you can see people getting in and out wrapped just in one towel. We love our house it's big and spacious, we are have a grocery store that we can walk to although it doesn't have everything we need so we end up going grocery shopping to a couple other places on the weekends. - Oct 2021
The housing is great, we live in a spacious house. Typical housing: large stand-alone houses for families are in the suburbs, approximately 30 minute drive to center of city. Residences are gated and have large yards. Spacious apartments are in the center of the city. Commute times vary according to location. - Apr 2019
Houses and apartments, some right downtown (apartments), and some on the edges of the city. We're in a huge house on the edge of town and it takes about 10-15 minutes to get to the school, and about 20-30 minutes to get to and from the embassy. Our house, and the other expat houses I've been in (both from the US Embassy and others) are pretty nice. The apartments I've been in are also fairly nice, once you get past the poorly lit, creepy, Soviet hallways. Some of the newest buildings no longer have those hallways and are much more like I've seen in Western Europe, though. - Oct 2011
