Russia

ABOUT THIS TRAVEL

16 days in RUSSIA, dec 2003- jan 2004

Kind of travel: me and a girl in a wholly independent travel

When: heart of the 2003 winter

How I moved: mainly by train, sometimes by bus

Where I slept: on the train and in old soviet style hotels; (there's nothing cheaper)

What I liked: the charming atmosphere on the train, the frozen  Volga and the unexpected safety, it turned out a very off-of-the-beaten-track travel

• PREPARATION

• ITINERARY

• IMPRESSIONS ABOUT RUSSIANS

• ABOUT THE RUSSIAN TRAINS

For me Russia has always been a kind of mystery every time I looked at the globe: almost 150 millions of people living in17 millions of square meters, an huge area rarely named, as something non-existent. In addition the idea of this land covered by ice and snow during the winter really charmed me.
I wanted to travel in Russia, to come back with an idea of its immensity; that’s why I skipped S. Petersburg and I had a quick view to Moscow, preferring moving inland towards east till entering in Asia.

LANGUAGE

Lonely Planet says:" In Russia your fun will be proportional to your skill in reading and speaking the language". In September I started studying Russian for more than 3 months. It has been quite tough, but I liked it (I still like since I’m carrying it on) anyway at the end I can say LP statement turned out to be true! It’s very important at least to be able to read cyrillic.

HOW TO GET THE RUSSIAN VISA

Visa are always a pain in the ass, and the russian one particularly!!!You need patience and money, but nowadays it’s possible to get a visa to travel freely in the country without being obliged to book in advance the accommodation.
Here are the steps:

• in www.getrussia.com you find the forms to get the invitation ($30 (11/03)). In the form you’ve to indicate the itinerary. I wrote one completely different than the one I did, but in the visa it’s not specified so it seems what you write doesn’t make a difference. I wondering what’s the purpose.

• When you’ve got the invitation and the voucher by email bring them to the nearest russian embassy or consulate. Don’t forget to bring all the other documents they request: passport, photos, sanitary insurance, flight tickets… Pay an amount of money depending on the days you can wait for the visa (in Milan for 1 day $ 250, for 8 days $30 (11/03)) than you can go and get it.

• Do you really think is over?? Nooooooo, you must register your presence once you are in Russia by 72 hours. You can do in a hotel or, like me, waste one morning doing it in an agency in Moscow, which address you must request to the agency who sent you the visa. Of course it costs!! $20 for two registration, but at least it took few minutes.

Total cost of the 30 days visa: $80, but I was free as a bird!!!!!!!!

We, me and a girl, arrived in Moscow were for one day we have been guest of a russian friend of her. We had to get the visa registrated, to leave the not-essential stuffs of our too heavy backbags, to learn how to read the complex train schedule and how to buy a train ticket, then we were ready to head toward the Urals!!!
I remember clearly the night we left: the long train waiting on the side of the snowed and frozen platform, where the "pravadnitsa" (the women who look after for each carriage on the train) were standing to check carefully the ticket and the passport of any passenger. I was looking forward to get on the warm train while I had to took off one of the two pairs of gloves to hand my document to this serious tough woman and finally she let us on: this was the beginning of the travel. After 8 hours in a snowy and cold morning we got off the train in Nizhny Novgorod. It was wonderful to walk still in the darkness through the town while huge snowflakes were covering everything, frozen Volga included. We walked few hours before finding a cheap hotel (1300 rubl =45 $ for a double (12/2003)) where we could warm up our frozen bodies.
We spent two days hanging out in the town, visiting the Kremlin, the Volga riverbank, downtown and of course drinking the typical russian cafe with milk (cafè c malakò). But my best memories are the trips on the funny trams, where, at random you could get on the cold vagon, so cold that the windows were frozen inside, or the warm ones, so hot that I felt to be in an overheated oven!! While concerning the outdoor temperature it wasn’t so bad since in Nizhny Novgorod it has never dropped below –11 C.
Time was flying and we had to leave again towards Kazan, the capital of the Tatarstan region. Definitely being the most caratheristic town, Kazan has been my preferite one of the whole trip. The colorful trams seeming like sliding on the snow, the big outdoor market where you can find everything you need (if you dare to take off your gloves and remove the ice layer that covers the displayed goods). But the best was the white endless frozen Volga where we walked for hours reaching the fishermen who fished in the small holes through the ice.
It has been a long travel (15 hours, 800 rubl= 26$) the one who took us to Yekaterinburg, where we arrived in the middle of a windy night.
Yekaterinburg is a big industrial town, one of the ones closed to the stranger till the 1991, being centers of the military and nuclear research during the cold war. Frankly after Kazan it appeared us being a kind of unexpressive town where it is difficult to focus a downtown or some typical features. Anyway 50 km north of Yekarinburg we visited a nice typical rural small town called Revda, whose images of the kids dragging sledges loaded with water tanks, or of the colourful smoking wooden houses plunged in the snow are still my best memory of the russian countryside.
Time was flying and the 2003 was about to be over. We spent the new years eve in one of the main square of Yekaterinburg, in a kind of entertainment park built by ice, where you can slide down several meters high ice slides and surely experience the fun of smashing against somebody drunk crawling on your way.
Our last leg before coming back Moscow was Samara a town 25 hours far from Yekaterinburg heading south-west. Although it is definitely not a touristic highlight and no agency would suggest it (frankly no agency would suggest you the whole trip) I liked it. I felt really off-of-the-beaten-track, in a place where you can enjoy the russian style of life: walking on the Volga riverside and crossing it on foot, seeing all the kids sliding down the slopes in the parks, eating some strange fried stuff at the funfair, poking around in the indoor market buying caviar, salami, smoked fish, in one word: travelling.

Get out from the airport I had a positive impression about Russia: nobody bothered me to take a taxi or any kind of other service, further on the minibus I met a funny man with who I tested my first words in russian and, probably surprised by my efforts, took me to the metro paying us the ticket.
The continuation of the travel confirmed my initial impression that Russians don’t seemed surprised or became curious seeing a stranger, so you don’t feel peered walking in place such as stations or outskirts. While this "indifference" towards me, walking with a huge backbag and speaking an unknown language, let me to feel at ease almost everywhere, on the opposite unfortunately I found almost everybody I dealt with quite rude and unpatienced. I did every effort to try to communicate in their language, but from their own almost nobody strove a bit to understand, but started shouting roughly, as very upset by the difficulty of the communication. This happened to me so many times in so different situations: buying the ticket (a big effort!!), on the train with the "pravadnitsa" (the sleeping car chief), asking to somebody an information on the road or at the bus station, buying some food at the market, registering the visa, paying for the room of the hotel, ordering at the restaurant, in the shops… (read the story) I noticed that this rudeness was normal even among them; on the opposite dealing with me many times they seemed softer, simply they stopped yelling before because I didn’t answer, or maybe they were sweetened by the fact I greeted and smiled before starting to speak; sometimes they seemed surprised and a little upset (or maybe embarrassed) by such kindness, like something they were not used.
Definitely greeting is not the preferred habit in the russian land. They should learn by Africans; in Mali it took about one minute to exchange the greetings to the respective families with everybody they meet walking. It was nice, but not a pleasure since it happened while your brain was toasted under a 50 C sun; in Russia maybe you would freeze up, but at least wouldn’t fry! :-)
I think such rudeness is their way of communicate, I mean their normal attitude, but for a stranger something so hard to get used to. Anyway several times I found out behind this thick bark an helpful person whose helpfulness didn’t match with his tone and expression. So I ended up with my personal explanation: when you deal with a Russian, his not promising external attitude could not be representative of his real intention!!!!!
The real exception I met was the family in Moscow where we have been guest for a bunch of days. They turned out to be so kind with us, despite stilll now, I think, they don’t still figure out what the hell there’s of such interesting for an Italian in getting to Yekaterinburg, Samara, Perm to see the russian people in the winter time!!!!! :-)
(Thanks Miscia and Irina!!!!!)
For instance I remember the guy who, getting off the train in the darkness in N. Novogorod, seemed quite upset to suggest us a hotel. Then he grabbed one of our heavy backbag and started walking fastly inside the station, where he stopped saying seriously he wouldn’t have got out if I hadn’t worn the cap, since it was cold (funny innit??). I thanked, but no way to get rid of him. He proceed outside and without saying a word he walked for a quarter of hour in a snowy cold night, while we were behind him wondering where he was heading and if we were supposed to follow him. After a while we ended up at a hotel outside which we seriously greeted and disappeared.
One normal russian behaviour among the people is to push like hell getting on and off the means of transport, especially minibus and metro. I think you don’t need to travel till the Urals to experience it, since Moscow is enough to understand what means to have no pity for anybody getting off the underground. The funny thing is that it’s considered so normal that nobody complains or gets angry if you smash him against the others pushing from the back. In Italy one time would be enough to end up in a brawl.
One positive characteristics I noticed was that people tend to be very honest as concerns the money, in particular in the prices and in the change. It has never happened they charged me more being a foreign, even the poor and frozen women of the stalls said my the standard price, that I knew since I listened speaking to the other customers. And sometimes as happened when I forgot getting the change, they joined me to give me it, obviously yelling.

ABOUT THE RUSSIAN TRAIN

The disappointment I got by the people was fully compensated by the memory I still carry for the russian trains. In Russia trains are the main mean of transport and the huge distances turn in very long travel through the endless russian land, hence trains become a kind of house for the Russians.
Before travelling here I expected to wait hours freezing up at the stations for trains that nobody knows when they arrive, or to buy tickets for placed already busy by somebody else. Nothing of all these things. Trains are very punctual, even in very long travels, and the ticket system is very efficient. What can be quite difficult, especially for the first times, is to buy the tickets, since the serious woman beyond the window of the ticket office presumes you say her the number of your train, don’t expect she will find the train for your destination, for this you must translate the schedule... good luck! (read the funny story)
Even the condition of the train stations surprised me positively. Also the ones of the big cities were clean and well organised, and apart from the drunks I didn’t find any bothering person. Anyway stations still remain the main place in the towns from where you must keep out as much as possible.
You can have overnight travels in first class (never experienced…sigh…I’m too poor L ), second class (kupè) and third class (platzcart), my preferred one!!! Third class means a sleeping car with 54 beds without compartments. Maybe it could sound spooky, but I promise you, I felt at ease. First of all russian trains are clean and tidy since the woman in charge of controlling each sleeping car (the pravadnitsa, (provodnitsa)) usually is very efficient. It’s right the pravadnitsa the character who you’ll have to deal with for everything you need while travelling on her sleeping car. It’s a russian woman so forget smiles, greetings and every other sign that could show humanity, but, most of the time you won’t get disappointed by the way she keeps the sleeping car. For example it was a morning I was travelling on the train from Yekaterinburg to Samara when I experienced the cleaning time in the sleeping car: a serious pravadnitsa entered, obviously without asking, and pushed everybody out while hoovering and, dragging her vacuum cleaner, moving everything she found on her way. Then, after one minute she moved to another compartment leaving our well cleaned.
The pravadnitsa is also the person who wakes you up and takes you a cafe when you reach your destination, even if it’s in the middle of the night. The cafe, in particular the cafe with milk, will soon became your best travel mate when you are on russian trains. In fact in every sleeping car there’s a Samovar, a huge (1 meter high) cup containing boiling water heated by a fire burning underneath it. If you have your own cup you can get as much as you want hot water for free and using some very cheap Nestlè powder, you can prepare your cafe.
One thing that I really didn’t expected was the unbearable hot temperature inside the trains. Many nights I slept so bad for the hot and in particular for dry air that I was looking forward to getting off for some fresh air. What I can suggest you is to bring light cloth and some water.
I like travelling by train, and particularly on the russian ones in the winter time. I remember once in the evening when the train stopped in a small station and looking for some food for my dinner I got off. It was cold, so I opened the heavy wooden door to enter the station hall. The hall was high cold and almost empty, apart from few drunks crouched on the chairs; it seemed time stopped forty years ago there. Dominating everything there was a huge map of the russian railway painted on the wall, as to remember how small was such place compared to the immensity of Russia: once again I felt a point on the map, and I wondered how representative could be the small part of Russia I was travelling in compared to the whole. I would have stopped there to peer every corner of places such these discovering a reality different than the one of the cities, but where to sleep and how to move in such places with so tough weather conditions? A lot of time during this travel I felt the temperature like a kind of constraint for my curiosity of wandering everywhere, like a kind of big window that let you to see but not to explore such places. However the snow and the ice were the charming ingredient of the landscape and I don’t think it would have been the same without.

Funny stories

1. MONEY: ALL AND IMMEDIATELY!

2. THE ADVENTURE OF BUYING THE TRAIN TICKET

THE ADVENTURE OF BUYING A TRAIN TICKET

We entered in the ticket office at the station in Kazan, hoping to manage to buy quickly and painlessly the ticket to Yekaterinburg. Unluckily we hadn’t a clue of how tough it’d have been. Remember you need to indicate the train number to the woman of the box office, so first of all you need to translate the schedule in order to identify it. The train schedule was a huge panel, at least 7 meters high, indicating all the trains passing, leaving and arriving at the station using always the Moscow time. While it’s not so difficult to figure out which are the trains to your destination and at what time they leave, it’s not easy to understand in which days they run. In fact there was the note section in the schedule specifying if the trains were in the even or odd days but were also indicated a lot of other numbers. After a while meditating about the different possibilities we chose more options and started queuing. In the hall there were many queues apparently not so long, but they turned out to be very slow. One hour later I was still standing more or less in the same place, when I group of militaries entered and skipping the queue crowded in front of the window. This made me freaked up and I started complained, but people around me explained they had the priority. Several time the police entered to kicked out the drunks sat on the benches hoping in a shelter from the outdoor coldness. The police was very determined shouting and pushing them out around the other indifferent Russians, I guess that situation wasn’t something new for them.
Trying to communicate with the people around me I knew an english speaker guy, no way!!!!! Taking him in front of the train schedule I immediately asked explanation. He peered it, thought a little bit and then said he didn’t understand what it meant. Shit!!!!Then finally my turn came and the mess started. The woman of the ticket office, among a lot of things I didn’t understand, said my train there wasn’t, but I could get another, but that in third class was full…. while I sked her to write the train numbers on a piece of paper trying to pass her it through the hole of the window.
It took a while and at the end I got a ticket for a train that arrived at my destination in the middle of the night. At first I thought:" who minds, I’ve the ticket, that is important", I didn’t know it would have been the longest night of the whole travel.

Kazan, my preferite town in the whole travel, it’s the capital of the Tatarstan, a russian republic characterized by a strong presence of Turkish. This republic placed on the Volga river bank in the middle way between Moscow and the Urals, in the 1990 tried unsuccessfully to get rid of the central control of Moscow declaring its independence. Still nowadays the relationship with the russian government is very delicate and the tatar nationalism is quite spread. For instance in Kazan you can  see the tatar flag flapping at the top of the main buildings or the name of the streets both in russian and in tatar language.
The developing change of the town was quite evident from the renovation of the old abandoned buildings that dominated the center. I think many things’ll be quite different in few years; the same "wind of change" that it’s blowing in a large part of the european Russia.
We found a nice accomodation in a hotel nearby the station paying 1200 rubl (33 euro (12/2003)) for a double, even if the employers were as moron as usually, especially in the restaurant were one evening they literally kicked us out saying they couldn’t cook anything.
Regarding kindness, to buy the train ticket was an adventure even more than usual, read the story.
My best memories of Kazan were the colorful trams sliding on the snow throughout the town, the typical outdoor market, the immense frozen Volga and the completely iced sidewalks, making of Kazan a kind of huge ice rink.
The market was quite big with different kind of stalls, but a typical scene was a middle aged serious woman with thick clothes cover by an hoarfrost layer standing patiently in front of her goods placed over some wooden boxes. Some sold just two or three rotten pomegranate, or some khakies, while others had a bunch of frozen fishes: life can be very tough here.
Just I saw it I couldn't avoid of walking on the frozen Volga reaching a big boat stuck in the ice and a group of fishermen who were holding the fishrod over their small hole drilled through the ice. Other than the sound of the cold wind sweeping the flat ice, it was silence: the fishermen didn't speak each other, but were immobilized, like being surrounded by  hundreds of km of nothingness.

Samara

Being one of the military production centre during the cold war, Samara was one of the cities closed to the strangers till the 1990. Definitely it’s not considered one of the main tourist highlight in Russia, but maybe right for such reason it turned out really worthwhile to stop there a bunch of days to visit this interesting slice of Russia.
Samara lies on the Volga that, like in Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan, in winter becomes an endless iced plateau. In certain points, signed by some wooden branches stuck in the ice, it’s even possible to cross all the Volga just walking on the frozen water. Running along the Volga there’s a beach and a nice promenade, where Russian play football (even with –10 C!!!), cross country ski, bike (on the snow!!!), push down hill the kids on the sledges or just drink, drink, drink…
As in Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod there were many buildings being renewed, but what was quite peculiar were the abandoned wooden houses spread everywhere also in the centre; it seems such houses were one of the last signs of the recent far past in Samara.
One of the reasons that led me to enjoy the town was the kindness of the Russians I found here. Coming from Yekaterinburg, where I’m really sorry to say that I met almost just impolite and unhelpful people, here in Samara I got stroke by the normality, that to me seemed abnormal kindness, in the approach of everybody, even at the ticket office of the train station, the woman smiled to me; no way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s right the super modern train station one of the things that surprised me in Samara. It’s a huge glass-aluminium structure with a sort of tower ten floors high with every kind of service inside, rooms and showers included, but nothing like an english ticket office, of course.
In addition if you love drinking lots of litres of beer, the kiosk outside the Ziguli’ beer factory in Samara is your place. In fact here you can refill your tanks paying the beer 0.3 euro for litre. It was funny to see the Russians filling the trunk with transparent tanks full of beer that at the first glance seemed petrol.
The drawbacks of stopping in Samara is that definitely it’s not easy to find a cheap accommodation. The cheapest we found was a central very crap place with a doubles for 1300 rubls (38 euro (12/03)), but it was so bad we didn’t sleep there.
Finally coming back to Moscow we got a train from central Asia (Tashkent- Moscow), and this 21 hours travel, so different from the others on national russian trains, turned out to be a real adventure. First of all no more pravadnitsa (the efficient russian woman in charge of controlling the sleeping car), but an indifferent and not-cleaning uzbek man, then we slept in the compartment with two very nice Kazaks; they settled down playing BADDAMON all the day and eating a whole chicken for breakfast. In addition the train was literally falling apart: holes in the walls and burnt lights in the compartment. In short less cleaning, less control, but more smiles: what we lived was a sample of central Asia or, even better, a sample of another travel.

Yekaterinburg
(ex Sverdlovsk)

Buying the train ticket to get to Yekaterinburg it’s not that easy, since somehow you must guess the name of its train station is Sverdlovsk and by the serious woman beyond the window don’t expect any answer (in russian of course) different that: "There’s no station named Yekaterinburg! I can’t issue any ticket". But surely you’ll have experienced the same if are coming from Nizhny Novgorod, whose train station is named Gor’kij, so it won’t get you so unprepared.
I got a little bit disappointed by this big city, where the centre is not so defined as it’s in N.Novgorod, Kazan or Samara; so even if there’re nice places in the town, wandering around can turn out quite disorienting, or maybe just because it was the only town I visited not on the bank of a big river like the Volga, that in the others for me became a sort of charming reference. From a certain point of view I found Yekaterinburg less russian than I expected, despite being so far eastwards from Moscow. On the opposite the town is quite european and even in the people there’s not that much of asiatic.
Nevertheless there was one the funniest attraction I saw in this travel: it was a kind of entertainment park for kids where by huge ice bricks were built slides (a big one 7-8 meters high), a labyrinth, a small theatre, statues… maybe some years ago I would have spent days sliding down, but now I’m too lazy to freeze my bum, so I enjoyed just watching :-)
As concerns the accommodation in Yekaterinburg I don’t have so nice memories; in fact we arrived by train in the heart of a cold and windy night and we asked for a room in the hotel right in front of the station (800 rubls, 24 euro for a double). A man took us to see the room of this big abandoned-like concrete building, walking in the semi-darkness of the long desolated corridors full of old beds, sinks, toilets, pieces of cupboards… that seemed have been tossed there several years before. The room was even gloomier than the corridor, that we preferred to face the coldness and the wind of night.
We started walking to the centre through the empty city looking for another accommodation till the 8.30 am, when we found a sort of mini-apartment for 1600 rubls in a soviet style hotel (read the story).
Unfortunately I must say I got very disappointed by the attitude of the people I met in Yekaterinburg. I hardly remember about somebody who has not been impolite or rough with us: from the woman of the ticket office at the train station and the employers of the hotel to the young girl waiting for the bus. Once we wanted to buy a ticket at the bus station and while I was trying to understand why the woman beyond the glass was yelling, the people in line behind   started aggressively teasing me aloud and at the end I had to quit. Maybe we have been just unlucky, but in three days we met a lot of people. On the opposite in Samara Russians appeared to have a really better attitude towards us, in fact in two days I never argued with anybody; I know generalising is meaningless, but these were the facts!
Anyway getting to Yekaterinburg turned out to be worthwhile, especially because it let us to do a very interesting day trip in a cute small town 50 km northwards called Revda, where I fell in love for the russian colourful wooden houses covered of snow with their smoking chimneys.

Tips

1. PREPARATION
     Visa
     Money
     Outfit

2. TRAVELLING
     Train
     Train tickets prices

3. SAFETY
      Drunks
      Street crossing
      Postcards

4. GENERAL

VISA: do you wanna travel as free as a bird? click here!

MONEY:

• Remember that Russia is not a low budget country to travel in. Of course is not like travelling in west Europe, but forget the south asian budgets! In two people, travelling with the pubblic means of transport, sleeping in the cheapest hotel and esting one time per the restaurant, it was about 35 euro a day.

• It quite easy to find place where you can change money. US dollars are always accepted and most of the time euro as well.

OUTFIT:

• looking the average winter temperature in Russia is quite scaring and thinking to backpack there even more. Trekking shoes with thick socks, leotard under the pants, very expensive thermal shirts under a sweater in turn under a warm swedish jacket, a cap (often double), a scarf (sometimes I wore the mask to shelter the chin and the mouth) and two pairs of gloves was my outfit. I’ve never frozen up apart from the hands every time I needed to take off the gloves, namely to take a picture or to show the passport that happens very often. But frankly I’ve been lucky since in such period the temperature was over the average (between –5 C and –12 C, left alone –18 C in Moscow the last day) so I’ve never faced the real coldness (luckily!). Hence, as I presumed, the hands and the feet are the most critical parts.

TRAVELLING

TRAIN:

• To buy a train ticket can be quite time consuming and irritating. Consider at least 2 hours and go equipped with a piece of paper and a pen. Remember you’ll be asked of your train number and you’ll have to show the passport. If you wanna travel in third class (plazkart) you must buy the ticket at least one day in advance. Don’t underrate it; read the Lonely Planet session about the train tickets and the schedule, if you wanna halve the wasted time and your frustration in such operation! Alternatively if you can spend a bunch of dollars more you can have the ticket issued by any agency, I think often it’s the best choice

• Watches inside the station and even immediately outside are set to the Moscow time wherever you are in Russia

• It’s very important to be able at least to read the cyrillic and memorise the main word about the schedule (leaving, arriving, moscow time, local time). Lonely Planet is indispensable in it

• Pay attention that in Russia train ticket prices depends on the period; considering the price of the first week of the year, they vary according to a coefficient from 0.90 to 1.3 (on the trains there’re tables indicating all the details). August and the last week of December are the most expensive periods. prices depend on the period. The 31^st of December you can travel by train paying just half of the price you’d have paid the week before!!!!!! Below are the prices I paid in december/january 2003/2004

• On the train you have to rent the sheets, pillow case, mattress case and towel (30 rubls= 0.9 euro). The pravadnitsa will give you them and ask them back.

• Third class (paltzkcart) is safe, don’t hesitate to travel in

• If you are used to sleep at the station, in Russia forget it. We tried unsuccessfully, because the police , used to kick out the drunks, control the station. Also to enter the waiting room you have to show a valid ticket for a night train

• One of the most irritating things queuing at the station to buy the ticket is to see the militaries skipping all the queue: however it’s their right, so don’t complain as I did

• The hotness and the drought inside the train especially during the night sometimes didn’t let me to sleep. Be prepared with light clothes ready in you rucksack and a bottle of water

• Bring the nestle’ small packs of coffee and a glass to have coffee for free on the train using the samovar (typical russian pot to heat the water for tea and coffee)

• If you’ll get used of the tidiness and the rigour of the national russian trains, you’ll get very disappointed getting one from or to central Asia: the are a mess, but at least people smile!

SAFETY:

• Watch out the drunks, if they aim you they can be a danger, in such cases smile and greet them getting further

• In the cities for pedestrian to cross the street is a danger. Take for granted drivers won’t stop, and in the winter time when streets are covered by snow and ice the risk is even higher. In Moscow to cross large streets, I experienced "the group street crossing ": I mean people waiting at the side of the street till a big group is gathered, then they dare to cross. The problem is that it can take several minutes to the group to reach a sufficient number to discourage the driver to knock down pedestrians, so you must be patient. I wasn’t and once I had the green light I tried by my own, but after few meters I had to run back

• Forget the postcards other than in Moscow, and, even here, for the stamp you must go to the post office. Do like I did: don’t send postcards

GENERAL:

• orget easy and cheap international phone calls, and don’t use the mobile for them, I paid something like 3$ per minute!!!!!

• Remember: Russians usually seem rougher than they are, don’t pissed off for them. Smile and greet anyway.

• Organise your belonging so that it’ll be easy to remove your passport because you’ll be asked to show it very often.