For men on this forum who are interested in travel to Russia, I am offering my learning. For people from outside the former Soviet bloc, going to Russia is not very easy or user-friendly. The problems can surprise even experienced world travelers.
This is the first of a long series of informative (I hope) posts.
I have only been to Russia 6 times, and seen very few places in this gigantic country. I know that some of the men who post here have much more knowledge of Russia than I do.
Disclaimer 1: I don’t pretend to be an expert, I’m just passing along what I’ve found out. Anyone with corrections or additions, please reply here! What I will be writing is what I know, what I think, or what I think I know... I always might be mistaken! So be careful, in relying on any information here.
Disclaimer 2: Russians tend to be really proud of (and defensive of) their homeland. I expect that many Russians would tell you that some of what I will post here (that puts their country in a poor light) is b*llsh*t. With respect, I believe they would be mistaken.
I respectfully request that replies on this thread stay on topic; otherwise, it gets confusing for guys who are simply trying to find useful information.
Seemingly, far more of the men in this forum travel to Ukraine than to Russia. Ukraine is a lot easier and often less expensive to manage. I hope this post will help people with Ukraine experience, to understand how travel in Russia is different. I’ll start with some practical differences:
o Visas: In Ukraine, ordinary visits from the U.S. (and a number of other countries) don’t require a visa. In Russia, almost every person not from the former Soviet Union requires a visa to enter the country. A visa may be required if you are only changing planes in Moscow on your way to a third country. Russian visas are not very simple or cheap, and I’ll write a lot more about this in the future.
o Distances: Even after losing numerous of the Soviet republics, Russia is still the largest country in the world. The scale of distances is mind-boggling. The country has 11 time zones. Sometimes I look up a gal’s town, and find that it is many hundreds of miles beyond an exotic Russian city that I already considered almost the “end of the world.”
o Domestic Travel: If your goal is not a major city, once your plane lands in Russia, you may still have a big trip ahead of you. In general, managing trains and domestic flights is more complex than in Ukraine. If the town you want is lucky enough to have an airport, you may find that only one very obscure airline flies there. If you know that airline’s safety standards, you might want to take the train anyway.
o Pedestrian Safety: Seriously, Russian drivers are often incredibly aggressive, and I have read from multiple sources that it is not uncommon for a Russian driver to mow down a pedestrian without ever slowing. I once came sufficiently close to this myself. Drivers in Ukraine seem a lot more considerate: don’t rely on such courtesy in Russia! For those concerned about safety, crossing busy streets in Russia is more likely to hurt or kill you than anything else visitors encounter.
o Poverty and Pollution: Anyone who has visited rural Ukraine, or some of Ukraine’s drearier towns, knows something about poverty there. Poverty in Russia is on a massive scale, and it covers almost the entire country. A few of Russia’s biggest cities seem to be boiling over with money and wealth (in the right neighborhoods), but almost everyplace else looks to be a century or two behind. Ukraine has probably done far more than Russia to remedy the hideous industrial pollution from Communist days. Although Ukraine has its Chernobyl “exclusion zone,” some of Earth’s most polluted places are in Russia. Fortunately, those of us traveling there in our search for romance are unlikely to encounter the worst neighborhoods, it is worthwhile to remember how much these are a part of Russian reality.
How Travel to Russia is Different from Ukraine, Part 2
These differences between the two countries are more related to culture and ethnicity.
o ‘User Friendliness’: Ukraine is a somewhat more European, western-oriented, and cosmopolitan than Russia. I think that Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, is perhaps the easiest place for a foreigner to manage of any of the cities of the countries where Russian is the historical language. In other words, if you are used to Kyiv, any other city or town you visit will be somewhere between slightly more difficult, to a whole lot more difficult, for foreigners to navigate and get used to.
o Languages: In both Russia and Ukraine, once you leave the big cities, people who can understand or speak English become hard to find. In both countries, almost everyone knows Russian, although some people will pretend not to understand because of anti-Russian feeling. In Ukraine, the only other major language is Ukrainian, which is very similar to Russian. But Russia has many nationalities, with populations fluent in such exotic languages as Altay, Chukchi, Tatar and Tuvan.
o The South (Caucasus Region): If you paid any attention to the war with Georgia last year, or the long bloodshed in Chechnya, you know that Russia has ugly conflicts with some of its southern neighbors and ethnicities. South Russia, and the former republics beyond its frontier, have many ethnicities and languages, and places with violent and tumultuous history. These ethnic groups and their languages are mostly related to Turks and the Turkish language. Many of them include high percentages of Muslims. They generally look and sound different from the majority Russian population.
o Ethnic Violence: Without making too big a deal out of this, people who like they are from the Caucasus are often viewed with suspicion and/or contempt. There have been numerous violent attacks (often by white supremacist skinheads), including a murders totaling (probably) in the hundreds. Fortunately, this kind of violence seems less of a problem in Ukraine. I think that if your appearance is anything like northern European (and perhaps also east Asian), you don’t have anything personally to worry about here. If your appearance doesn’t fit these categories, I suggest seeking more information, and using some caution. Regardless of how you look, the risk of such attacks to visitors from countries NOT formerly in the Soviet Union is probably small.
o The East (Siberia to the Pacific): The east of Russia is almost its own world. Poverty tends to be extreme here. Roads resemble the moon’s surface (if the moon were sometimes awash in mud). Many of the people look very east Asian. This huge territory could swallow the contiguous 48 states of the U.S. without getting indigestion. Imagine a gigantic wilderness region (including much natural beauty), with towns and villages few and very far between. Even today, it is not easy to get here from the European part of Russia. Researching flights from Moscow to Vladivostok, the airline I found stops twice to service the plane along the way!
o Crime: This is a big problem in Ukraine; in Russia, it is worse. One example: a friend from Russia told me of a relative visiting other relations in their home city in the Ural mountains area. The part of the family living there told there visiting relative, “don’t travel in the city alone, it is too dangerous – we will come to get you.” They considered their city too dangerous for a Russian visitor: foreigners, beware!
I don’t write any of this to discourage anyone from visiting Russia. I love to travel there! Only, be aware, and be prepared.
My next post will be: Planning Your Trip to Russia
Nice post Durak! I have been to Latvia once and Ukraine many times. I married a woman from Odessa (which was a disaster) but that is a story for another day.
I visited Voronezh about 5 years ago and am thinking about another visit in the near future.
Rotov-On-Don, Sochi?
I've read there are still many factions that are in a state of civil unrest. Travel here is safe as long as you don't wander too far East. And furhter to the South the troubles with Georgia still looming...
Any thoughts on travel to this area?
1. Sources of Information – Spend a few hours reading online about the place you want to visit. There are many, many sources of information about Russian destinations and travel on the internet. Wikipedia often has good basic information. Often there are travel/tourism sites for individual cities. For information on dealing with the bureaucracy, I especially recommend waytorussia.net . Study your town’s location on the map. If it isn’t Moscow or Sankt Peterburg, learn the name of the “federal subject” (main administrative unit) it belongs to (republic, oblast, krai, okrug). For example, Julian asked about Sochi, which is in Krasnodarsky Krai.
2. Restricted and/or Dangerous Regions and Cities – This is a tricky subject, that is special to Russia. Most places in this huge country are NOT restricted, but some places are subject to travel restrictions, usually because of: (A) unrest or war, (B) proximity to a difficult frontier with another country, or (C) the desire to protect sensitive information in areas of technical or research activity. In any of these places, you may need to make special preparations (and incur extra expense), to be allowed to enter. See http://www.waytorussia.net/RussianVisa/Types.html (scroll way down - “Restricted Cities in Russia” is the last heading) for a summary.
If you need a special permission from local authorities, either get help from the person you want to visit, or contact a travel agency with offices in the restricted region: they will know who to contact, what forms to submit, etc.
To use Julian’s example again, Sochi is in category (B): it is on the list because it is 20 miles from Georgia (the country Russia was beating the crap out of last year), not because of any threat of violence there. Russia will be hosting the 2014 Olympic games in Sochi, which the government would not have proposed unless they were confident of security.
For case (A) – regions that are restricted because of violence – use your judgment. If you like hang gliding, make African hunting trips, or have crossed an ocean in a small sailboat – then you probably trust your ability to manage risk, and are willing to pay the price if you get it wrong. If for some reason the rest of us can’t understand, you wanted to visit Grozny (the capital of Chechnya), and could get permission to go there (almost impossible), I would recommend that you first get all your affairs in order.
I recently read up on Nalchik (because of a pretty gal who lives there). I the order of my discovery, here is what I learned:
o it is a restricted city, that requires special permission to enter
o it is about 75 miles from Chechnya
o a few years ago, Islamist fighters made an attack in the downtown, setting off a bloody day-long siege with Russian soldiers
I thought, “how about that?” Actually, I would consider visiting such a place, but in Nalchik there may be a heightened risk that western tourists could be kidnap targets. So before deciding to go, I would do very serious homework.
2a. Restricted Regions, Short Version – Not an issue for the vast majority of Russia. For most restricted places, getting there is just an issue of extra paperwork. If going there would be incur too much hassle, or too much risk to personal safety, then ask her to meet you in a non-restricted town. Russian women who are seriously interested in someone often make such trips (I would certainly offer to pay her expenses). I only put this matter high on the list, because if the town you want to visit IS on the list, you must figure this part out before going to the next step.
3. Timeline – It is possible to go to Russia on impulse, especially if you don’t care about expense. For example, an American guy (who didn’t already have a visa) could decide on the morning of July 1 to be in Moscow by the afternoon of July 8, and have an excellent chance of making it – if:
o everything went smoothly
o he didn’t mind making two trips to a Russian consulate, preferably in New York
However, if you want to make your trip economically and smoothly, I recommend “starting the clock” at least eight weeks in advance. If (for example) you left yourself 4 weeks, things can get pretty stressful.
4. Get a Visa – In order to enter the Russian Federation, you will need a visa. (I assume that if your passport was issued by, say, Ukraine or Belarus, you’re probably not reading this topic.) For those who haven’t gotten a visa before, it is literally an adhesive-backed document that a foreign consular official will permanently affix to your passport, taking up the entire passport page. Americans, expect to spend between $150 and $400 on the visa. Because Russian visas are a bit complicated, I will make a separate post about them later. For now, I offer 4 pieces of advice that connect trip planning with the visa:
First, apply for your Russian visa from your home country (exception: if you are a European from a Schengen country, you can apply in any Schengen country). While it can be possible to get a Russian visa from a third country, I have not yet been able to confirm what is possible for a tourist. I wouldn’t take chances. Remember, no visa, no entry. I may modify this recommendation, if I can get better information about Russian consular policies.
Second, allow enough time. For Americans, I recommend starting the visa process 40 days before your departure date. You can apply for a visa up to 90 days before departure, but not before that.
Third, getting the visa can interfere with other travel (your passport must be physically in the Russian consulate). Depending on your country and how much you want to spend on visa processing, your passport will be out of your custody for a time ranging from a few hours to a few weeks (in the U.S., the shortest guaranteed time you can get is 3 business days, NOT counting the day your passport arrives at the consulate). So unless you have a second passport (some folks do), or you want to try to apply for the Russian visa abroad (which I don’t recommend, see above), you won’t be able to visit Paris or Kyiv at the same time as your visa is processed. For those of us who make frequent trips, this is can be a drag, but you can pay extra for faster processing (so your passport is gone for less than one week), and make this planning easier.
Fourth, don’t overstay your visa! A Russian visa provides gives you permission not only to enter, but also to exit the Russian Federation. (That’s right. If your passport is lost or stolen, YOU CANNOT LEAVE RUSSIA until you get a new passport AND visa, OUCH!) If you try to go through passport control at 12:05 AM on the day after the exit date, you will probably find yourself in a situation that will make you very, very unhappy. So be careful to plan your travel so that you’ll be sure of leaving (allowing for the possibility of late trains, missed flights, etc.) absolutely not later than the exit date. The simplest kind of visa will allow you up to 30 days in Russia, so if your visit is planned for a week or two or three, you should be fine. If your travel plans involve “running it close,” be extra careful.
If you know someone well, you may be planning (or at least invited) to stay in their home. This is no problem, but may involve some extra preparation when you get your visa (as will be explained in a future post on visas). Otherwise, if you are new to Russia, you will want to book a hotel or short-term apartment. The guys who visit Ukraine know all about this. For reasons of Russian bureaucracy, life can be a bit simpler if you book a hotel, but some Russian hotels are really primitive (Soviet style), some are incredibly expensive (more than $1000/night), and some are both crummy and fairly expensive. In America, you can often get a nice, clean room with a good bathroom between $50 and $100 per night. I'd be very surprised to find the same quality/price combination in Russia.
If you book an apartment in Moscow or Sankt Peterburg, the process will look much the same as in Kyiv. But beware, there have been scammers who will take your deposit money, and leave you arrived in town with your luggage and no place to stay. Personally, I’ve had no problems. Unfortunately, the great majority of Russian cities and towns have very little tourism and lack apartment websites. Probably, your best bet is to ask the person you are visiting to look for an apartment for you. It’s best not to expect anything fancy.
Usually, if you can book a place online, they don’t want payment in full (because of percentage fees), so you will make a deposit online, but need cash to pay the balance. This may mean bringing a lot of cash with you; I don’t like to do this, but it is a necessity.
6. Booking Travel to Russia
I use travel websites, as I guess most of you guys do. Your website may not accept your city as a destination, or may tell you there are no flights. In this case, just “back up” to Moscow (or if you are going to the far East, perhaps Vladivostok), and search for tickets to that city. You will then need to plan domestic travel for the rest of your trip (see below).
Don’t be afraid to fly Aeroflot, their post-Soviet safety record is good, and their service (in my experience) is fine. Often, they offer the best fares. The biggest drawback would be getting help in English at the airport desk in Russia.
I recommend that when your flight involves changing planes, allow at least 2 hours for the change. Hopefully, you won’t need so much time, but here are some of my adventures nearly missing flights:
o had to get the other “terminal” in Moscow, actually several miles away, and difficult to get a bus/taxi if you don’t speak Russian
o a long bus ride from the plane to the terminal in Paris, a quite long walk with numerous stairways inside the terminal, and then a second long bus ride to get to the second plane
o having already been through security in Kyiv, having to go through security immediately on exiting the plane in Frankfurt, and then needing to go through security AGAIN before getting to the departure gate at Frankfurt
If you will be leaving from a U.S. airport during summer in a region that is prone to summer thunderstorms, consider that your flight can easily leave an hour or two late, making you late into your connecting airport.
7. Booking Travel Inside Russia
This is only necessary if orbitz (or whichever website you use) couldn’t get you to your destination city. Your regular travel websites can’t help you with this. I have had a little experience, but there’s quite a lot I haven’t attempted. You’ll be looking for planes, trains, or a combination that can get you from your city of entry to your destination city. Aeroflot has a domestic route system, and there are numerous small airlines, some of which serve only a few cities. Their websites are often in Russian. Sadly, Russian domestic airlines have a poor safety record by western standards. But they have got to be safer than traveling Russia by road! There are a few websites that can help with train tickets, but again it helps to know Russian, and they are not so easy to use.
If you want to plan or book travel inside Russia, feel free to PM me: I will do my best to help you with research.
If you want to go to a town within 100 miles or so of a big city, you can probably get there using local buses or trains that you can't book in advance, and don't need to anyway. Finding information on these services can be tough, but again the person you are visiting can tell you exactly what you need to know.
This is not complicated, but it takes some planning.
I don’t buy rubles in America, they fees are ridiculous.
Russian cities have lots of ATMs, and they work fine. There is a small risk that an ATM can be hacked (so thieves can get your PIN), so it’s best to use ATMs at banks or other well supervised locations. There will be a service charge for each transaction (around $5 with my bank). This means that a few big withdrawals are better than a lot of small ones. If you want to use ATMs, contact your bank before you leave home, and say, “I will be using my ATM in Russia from ___ to ___,” and make sure that their security department won’t block your card. There will be some limit how much money you can take at one time, or in one day.
To pay for your hotel (or especially, apartment) you may need a big wad of cash, and you’ll have to bring this with you (the ATM probably won’t dispense enough). In Russia, American currency is regarded with deep suspicion (it is too easy to counterfeit). Most people WON’T accept:
o small bills to make up a large amount, or even small bills period
o notes that have ANY marking (including tiny official-looking stamps often put there by banks or other institutions)
o notes that have been creased by folding
o notes that are faded, dog-eared, stained, or have ANY KIND of damage or obvious wear
I don’t know whether Euros (or other non-American currency) have to pass the same tests.
But if you must bring a bunch of dollars with you, get the newest, most perfect $100 (or $50) notes you can find. When I was a kid, you could go to your bank and ask for new (never-circulated) bills, but this is nearly impossible to find now. So I’ll go to several branches of my bank, explain what I need, and ask, “can you find (10, 15, whichever) near-perfect notes?” The tellers have been amazingly patient with this (most of them have had other customers with the same request). But often, if I get 15 notes, 5 or 8 of them won’t be good enough on close inspection, so I'll go to another branch and repeat the process. And for heaven’s sake, don’t ask a teller to do this for you, if you are not a customer of that company!
When inspecting your currency, be especially careful to look for those tiny ink-stamps (less than an 1/8 inch across), and creases.
You can see, this can take some serious time, so don’t leave it to the day before your trip! I recommend to start “cash hunting” at least a week before departure.
Julian, PM me and we can talk about your future travels. My RW's hometown in in southern Russia in the Causcuses. She is presently on vacation at a resort town on the Black Sea up the coast from Sochi and then will go back to the parent's apartment for a week before taking the train back to Moscow. She will be a great resource for getting around the region you mention.
If all goes well, she will come here in a few months on the K-1 and then next year we will travel back there to meet the family.
From my own modest experience within Russia, travel was no problem. For internal flights I used S7 (formerly Siberian) who have a wonderful website in English, and whose service was terrific (my flights were on new Boeing 737-800s), Aeroflot and Transaero (both of whom also have websites in English). I would have no hesitation in using any of them again.
The only train I used was the Airport Express in Moscow, from Domodedovo Airport to Paveletsky Station - this is seriously the ONLY way to get into the city without hassles. I had to suffer the domestic terminal at Sheremetyevo, and vowed that I would never go there again, even if I had a gun pointed at me. Getting there was a pain, but that was nearly three years ago, before the new rail link was completed. The metro (underground) on the other hand is one of the joys of any large city - while you can rave about Moscow (especially the architecture in the Ring stations), which is really easy to use if you know the Russian alphabet, the one I really loved was Kazan. This is new (2005) with the cleanest, prettiest stations and rolling stock I've seen anywhere. There were only five stations when I was there, but has now expanded to 14 and is still growing.
Buses and trams around town are the same as any city - just make sure that you know where you're going. I found drivers and conductors to be generally helpful, especially in Kazan and Izhevsk. The minibuses whizzing around ever few minutes were a revelation - even if they get cramped when full up, you know you'll get to your destination VERY quickly! All local public transport is very cheap by western standards - e.g. 6 roubles (about NZ 35 cents) for a tram in Izhevsk. Long-distance buses are a bit more fraught, but again they're easy to book - just bowl up to the ticket counter at the rail or bus station (depending on the city) and make your request. This is one area where it does pay to know a little bit of Russian, especially if your girlfriend is not with you.
"The only train I used was the Airport Express in Moscow, from Domodedovo Airport to Paveletsky Station - this is seriously the ONLY way to get into the city without hassles"
Agreed, and its dirt cheap compared to getting a taxi, and avoids the rush hour traffic which around moscow can be crippling. Trains run about every 1/2 hour in both directions so just turn up and ride. "adyin" is sufficient russian to buy a ticket :-).
Random visa tip - get the visa dates declared as 2 days or so before/after expected arrival/departure. They wont mind if you arrive late or depart early but NOT vice versa :-).
Another random tip - russian tourist/accommodation businesses seem to by and large act honourably and provide decent level of service, may come as a pleasant surprise if you accustom to the Ukraine norm (i.e. zero)
I seem to recall that a couple of years ago when i was living in ukraine, i arranged a trip to st petersburgh via a ukranian travel agent. maybe someone else can confirm this is possible.