Towards the end of an interview in Minsk, capital of Belarus - a country that my credit card issuer did not appear to accept was an independent state - I ventured the opinion that perhaps the powers-that-be should cut more of the red tape that I found assailing me as I prepared to attend this week's visit by the Minsk 2019 Coordination Commission.

After all, I argued, I felt persuasively, if you are going to host an event as large and international as the European Games, there must be something to be said for making it as easy as possible for Europeans to enter the country.

And to be fair, Belarus will allow stays of up to 30 days without a visa to anyone with tickets or accreditation to an event that will take place over the last ten days of June 2019.

George Katulin, Minsk 2019 Organising Committee chief executive, heard me out, then gently explained that Belarusians needed a visa to enter the European Union.

"We need to pay at least sixty euros," he told me.

He went on: "We have around a thousand athletes with contracts with the Ministry of Sport.

"So that means we need to apply very approximately five thousand times a year for travel documents.

"It is a lot of work, a lot of money."

The 63-year-old former swimmer and karate national team member, who is an experienced sports administrator, then made a comment that at first puzzled me.

"I could make a movie about that," he said.

When my puzzlement registered, he went on to tell the following story, as a badminton test event for Minsk 2019 unfolded in front of us.

"We had a bodybuilding world championship in Germany in 1993," he said.

"It was in the early days of independence [for Belarus].

"We applied for visas to the Germany embassy.

"One of our guys was refused a visa because he was a citizen of Russia.

"He was a 55-year-old veteran.

"When this happened, he said, 'I have to go, I have put in six months of heavy training to be ready, I have sold my car'.

"I then used all my connections with the Ambassador of Germany to try to get him a visa."

It was at 7pm one evening, long after normal closing hours, that Katulin and the bodybuilder learnt their pleas had been successful.

The bodybuilder at once burst into tears and embraced him.

At the Championships he became a world champion.

If Katulin handles the inevitable small tensions and differences of opinion that will arise with the European Olympic Committees as the Opening Ceremony for the Games approaches in similar vein - i.e with firmness but patience and a willingness to listen, if necessary at length, to other points of view - then the partnership should remain sound and the Games should be delivered on the ground to both parties' reasonable satisfaction.

This would be no small achievement in a country which strikes the visiting Westerner in some ways as a throwback to the 1980s, and an economic environment for sports property owners which is making life more difficult than for a decade or more, especially for multi-sports events.

Passage of the potentially difficult and tension-filled last few months should be further smoothed by a Games concept that is very much in tune with these relatively straitened times.

There will be no white elephants in Minsk: nearly all the venues already exist; a high proportion are flexible multi-sports arenas and, in a country with a strong sports culture, they buzz with activity, whether on the part of professional sports teams or members of the public.

There may be technical issues arising from the inevitable complexities of putting on an extensive 15-sport event.

Foreign visitors may at times need to be patient.

There may be problems delegating authority in a country in which so much power is vested in the hands of one man - albeit a man, President Alexander Lukashenko, who genuinely loves sport, as a display of some of his personal sports gear at the National Olympic Committee (of which he, by the way, is President) clearly demonstrates.

But for me, the main question-marks around Minsk 2019 lie elsewhere.

How great will interest be among broadcasters?

Will the second edition of the Games take it further along the road to establishing the event as a permanent and widely anticipated feature of the international sports landscape?

Will foreigners come to one of Europe's lesser-known corners in worthwhile numbers?

Katulin acknowledges that predictions on this last score are difficult, but suggests that 100,000 foreign visitors - the largest number from Russia - might be a reasonable estimate.

The Games, he says, "will be a unique chance to show the rest of Europe that we are modern, active, friendly, with a rich history not only in sport but in culture".

I had discovered earlier in the day that gymnast Olga Korbut had been born in what is now Belarus.

Now Katulin lays claim to painters Marc Chagall and Chaim Soutine, some of movie star Harrison Ford's relatives and the first printed book.

I am gobsmacked.

As I said before, there is nothing like visiting a new country to see things from a different perspective.