A number of football fans travelling to the World Cup in Russia have found out the hard way how easy it is to get lost in such a huge nation.
A group of four Spanish fans and, earlier, several Swiss fans, gained some notoriety after incorrectly booking a hotel in Rostov Veliky - 1,300 kilometres away from the Rostov-on-Don World Cup venue, according to various media reports.
With the help of resourceful taxi drivers and the local emergency call centre, both sets of homeless fans still managed to make it on time to Rostov-on-Don, where their teams played group games.
Hotels in Rostov Veliky, in turn, have checked their bookings to warn fans guests from making any further mistakes, said the Russian news agency Interfax.
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In a similar error, three Chinese World Cup tourists were stranded in the train station of Volgograd, wrongly buying tickets for trains departing from the city of Vologda, 1,500 kilometres away.
English lecturer Anton Lebedev from Saransk also gained some fame with local media, after helping a couple from Colombia who had booked a hotel in the Saransk suburb of Penza, and not the neighbouring capital of Penza, 150 kilometres away.
The Lebedev family welcomed the Colombians to their home, with one of the guests turning out to be Hector Mantilla Rueda, the mayor of the city Floridablanca, which, like Saransk has about 300,000 inhabitants.
