Moscow and St. Petersburg undoubtedly share the title of the most popular destination when it comes to tourism in Russia.
Rightly so, both politically and culturally central to the nation, between the two they concentrate almost 700 of the country’s state museums.
According to the CEO of the travel agency Discovery Russia Varvara Topolyanskaya up to 50% of the routes booked by the football fans travelling from Australia to Russia include Moscow even without the Socceroos playing there.
We came up with this must know things for those of you visiting the Russian capital:
Understand its map
In the old times of Rus’, 800-1200 AC, the layout of the Russian cities, unlike square city design in Australia, reminded a ring inside a ring, inside a ring structure.
With the fortress, Kremlin, surrounding the heart of the city, this design had a better protection from the attacks by the neighbours.
Moscow compounds of 4 rings built outside Kremlin: the smallest is the Boulevard ring (Boulvarnoe koltso), then the Garden ring (Sadovoe koltso), and 2 more built solely for transport.
And then you have main streets shooting off from Kremlin and cutting through those rings.
Given this circularity, you can jump on a trolleybus B, ‘little bug’, doing the a full circle of the Garden ring and enjoy your almost free excursion from the window of the public transport.
Visit Metro
One of the longest metro systems in the world, the Moscow underground, preserved its historic value with some of the stations showcasing the art-deco in soviet realms.
Travelling through this functional art gallery can be time consuming but you can sweep through it by taking the circular line and have a decent image of it.
Kievskaya, Belorusskaya, Novoslobodskaya and Komsomolskaya, all built in 1950s, present a contrast to the pre-war era Revolution Square (Ploshchad Revolutsii) station on the dark blue line with the famous polished bronze dog and soldier monument.
48 stations are recognised as sites of historic heritage.
Often the visitors forget to look up and miss the ceiling treasures of mosaics representing the scenes from the soviet industrialisation life.
The underground is both safe and dangerous place.
During the WWII it was used as a shelter from bombings and in the modern history Moscow metro has seen several terrorist attacks.
Stay connected
While trains in the Moscow metro might be inferior to the Western or Asian models but the Wi-Fi covering all metro stations is quite outstanding for the Russian capital.
For the World Cup the Moscow city council plans to expand its Wi-Fi coverage even further and offer free internet connection in 99 percent of the capital.
The hotspots can be found in parks, museums, cafes and central streets.
However, in early April there was a major leak in the Wi-Fi network operating in Moscow metro, which allowed gathering phone numbers of its users.
Since then, the network operator said the personal data would be more secured.
How do I do it all if I don’t speak Russian?
Firstly, during the World Cup there will be no shortage of languages spoken by the local tour guides – you can choose from 24 languages offered on the official tourist sites dotted around the city center.
Deputy Mayor for Transport and Road Infrastructure Development Maxim Liksutov assured that Moscow metro is no exclusion.
Around 400 metro staff members in 76 stations can speak English.
The ticket offices will be marked with the stickers ‘We speak English!’
To get around by public transport you need travel card called ‘Troika’ which can be bought at any metro station.
A special World Cup edition will also be sold in some of the hotels in Moscow and St Petersburg and will include trips in both cities.
Don’t get lost
The maps.me App has designed a special edition of its routes for the World Cup in 8 languages which includes all the host cities.
It allows you to download the data for the particular city with all the landmarks and places of interest with a brief description of each.
You can also choose the most convenient walking route to get from point A to point B and see the most of what it can offer.
Challenge Russian driving
The viral Youtube videos with Russian driving might have scared away some of the potential drivers, but those who were only more intrigued, can use the car sharing service that will be available for holders of driving licence.
At least 6 out of 15 carsharing operators, YouDrive, Delimobil (already in English), BelkaCar, EasyRide, Car5 and Carlion will have its services translated in English before the World Cup.
If you register in one of these systems with the electronic copy of your passport and licence, you can track and then pick up an available car.
At the moment the price per minute is set at around AUD .18 cents.
