CITY SLICKER; MINSK

When Chernobyl exploded nine years ago, emitting radiation 100 times greater than at Hiroshima, Minsk, 200 miles north-west, was badly hit. Tomorrow's 'Network First' (ITV, 10.40pm) follows the life of an eight-year-old boy who was conceived shortly after the disaster, born with severe deformities, then abandoned by his parents.

General idea: Minsk (population 1.6 million) is the capital of Belarus (population 10.3million) and an ancient principality dating back 900 years.

Sad truth: Minsk really dates back to the Second World War. Only two buildings survived Nazi and Soviet bombing.

Dress, traditional: the Russian peasant look - bright shawls and long dresses for women, baggy dark trousers and puffy blouses for men - narrowly wins over European influences. War-torn rags would be honest.

Dress, day wear: despite having access to European fashion, it has plumped for the Moscow option; young men dress like Mafia gangsters and young women like prostitutes.

Local myths: the landlocked country, which is pretty short of sizeable pools of water, likes to think that a river runs through its capital. In fact, the Svisloch is just an outsized stream.

You thought Milton Keynes was badly planned: Minsk built its airport in town, on Chkalov Street, runway next to the hospital. The newer airport, Minsk-2, outside town, is keenly promoted.

Bars, clubs, restaurants: all three are rolled into one at the Spanish Corner, which has fine Spanish food, a variety of music and cold beers, and a cosmopolitan atmosphere - no mean feat in Minsk, but it's twice as pricey as London.

Legends: the Romashka. During Soviet days this was one of the greatest - well, one of the only - night-clubs in the USSR, famed for its Nezhny cocktails (vodka, brandy and champagne) and raucous atmosphere. It's closed now.

Shopping: Universal Department Store and Byeloruss Supermarket have all the essentials but charge the earth.

Buildings of note: not one. The best buildings in Minsk were built by German POWs. These include the yellow-stone monstrosities on Victory Square and more expensive flats scattered throughout the faceless concrete city.

Things to do: Leave. Failing that? The Bolshoi Ballet and Opera Company (Byeloruss) are still going strong and the local circus very reputable. Be warned; it's Soviet circus, big on ridiculing animals, bears ice-skating and such like.

Nothing unique then? Minsk has possibly the world's best Second World War museum, which opened six months before the war ended. Diaries, paraphernalia, eyewitness accounts, photos and endless pieces of battle equipment fill 32 halls and archives - 129,268 exhibits in all.

So Minsk is proud of its performance in the war? Yes. Should it be? Nope. Half the town was killed, concentration camps were everywhere and it fell, twice. Some say invaders felt an aesthetic duty to raze the place.

Current obsessions: flags - last Wednesday, 300 students marched on the presidential HQ and hung one of the newly approved flags on a public toilet opposite. Many were beaten and detained by the police. And radiation (see introduction).

Identity crisis then? Not half. The new flag is the same as the flag Belarus had as a Soviet republic - minus the hammer and sickle.

Publications of note: Pravda is still popular. During the Communist revolution, Minsk fell quickly - on the first day in fact. It had a staunch totalitarian tradition and yearned for order and leadership.

Pub chat: "I mean, what's so bad about mining for salt..." "See that river? It's a stream. See this town? It's a lunatic asylum."

Stewart Hennessey