Choosing where to spend your year in Russia can be one of the most difficult and important decisions you make, and this page should provide some idea of the options open to you. St Petersburg and Moscow are the great cultural centres; they are many times bigger than any other Russian city, they have some Western shops and are geared towards tourists. However, there is a Russian saying to the effect that St Petersburg is not quite Russia, while Moscow is not Russia at all. If you want to know what 'real' Russian life is like, then you'll have to go to a smaller city or town, or a country village. It is always possible to visit these places if you don't want to spend a whole year there.

This page includes information about getting to Russia in the first place, travelling around once you're there, and life in St Petersburg, Nizhnii Novgorod, Samara and Sochi.

Getting there

Getting to Russia in the first place can cause as many problems as anything you do when you're there. No matter how many potential problems you think of, there always seem to be more which you could never have predicted. On a brighter note, if you are sensible and fairly organised you can avoid most of the obvious ones. Here are a few guidelines:

Visas

The visa regulations for Russia are constantly changing, so check what the latest ones are before you send your passport and money anywhere. The best way to do this is to call the Edinburgh consulate; their website is generally up-to-date but this is never guaranteed. Their address is: 58 Melville Street, Edinburgh EH3 7HF, Telephone: 0131 225 7098 and Fax: 0131 225 9587. They are open Monday-Friday from 09.00 to 12.30 and from 14.00 to 18.00. The Edinburgh office is much more efficient than the London one, they actually answer the phone too.

Make sure you send them everything they ask for; if you get it wrong they will keep your money and send the rest back to you. If you're going to be there more than three months you will probably need to send them proof of a negative HIV test; find out about this and have the test in good time as the results take a couple of weeks to come through.

When you are in Russia you will need to register your passport at the local OVIR office; the company which gave you the visa will probably do this for you. Make sure you know when your visa expires; there have been cases of students having to bribe the airport officials to let them leave after the visa expiry date.

If your passport or visa is stolen, report it to the police and to the British Embassy or Consulate to find out what to do next. You may have to return to Britain to get a new one. This is a very good reason to only carry a photocopy of your passport and visa around with you and leave the original documents in a safe place.

Travelling to and from Russia

• Make sure your suitcase is lockable.
• Take out travel insurance; check that it covers you for cash as well as your other possessions.
• If you're going to St Petersburg look into flying to Helsinki and getting the train; this can save you money if you get a good deal since the direct flights can be very expensive. Look at websites like www.go-fly.com, www.easyjet.com and www.buzzaway.com for good deals. Sometimes it helps to have an ISIC card; you can get this from travel agents.
• Make sure you know where you're staying when you get to Russia so that if your plane is delayed, or the person who is supposed to be meeting you doesn't turn up, you know where to go.
• Make sure you have a contact 'phone number for the person who is meeting you.
• If you have excess baggage when you leave, get to the airport early and they'll often just ignore it, especially if the flight is not full. If they do try to charge you it will probably be a fairly extortionate amount (about $12 per kilo); arguing with them (and even bribing them if you're confident it will work - sometimes they suggest it) sometimes helps to reduce that, especially if you explain that you've been there for a year. Don't be afraid to try, as it will probably work and could save you a lot of money. To find out what to pack and what to leave at home, see this page.

Travelling around

Try to travel around Russia a bit while you're there; long-distance train journeys are very cheap and an experience worth having! Internal flights have a notoriously bad safety record; it's up to you whether you want to take the risk. See the useful links page for sites dealing with travel and some tourist information.

St Petersburg

Many students decide to spend their year abroad in St Petersburg (or 'Piter' as the locals call it); it is a beautiful city and there's lots to do. The main street is Nevsky Prospekt which has The Admiralty at one end; the golden spire is visible along most of its length. Nevsky Prospekt crosses some of the city's many canals including The Moika, on which you'll find 'The Idiot' cafe (in a basement, cosy and entirely vegetarian) and St Isaac's Cathedral. This has a colonnade; the view is amazing. The famous Bronze Horseman stands nearby.

The next canal along is the Griboedov, where you'll find the Church of the Saviour on the Blood, so called because the altar was build on the exact place where Aleksander II was fatally wounded. From here you can easily walk to Palace Square where you'll find the Hermitage; legend has it that if you were to glance at each of the exhibits on display you'd be in there for nine years, and only about a quarter of the Hermitage collection is displayed at any one time. In Palace Square there are usually a few artists who offer to paint your portrait; there are also horses and a tame bear who will pose for your photographs. On the other side of the river Neva you can see The Peter and Paul Fortress.

A lot of the Western-style shops are on Nevsky, there are also cinemas showing Russian, European and American films. The metro is the best way to get around; it runs until midnight and starts again at about 6am. Except for a brief time in winter, the bridges over the Neva rise to allow ships through for a few hours in the early hours of the morning, be aware of this when you're planning to go home and check local newspapers to find out when each bridge rises.

St Petersburg is a very polluted city and it's best not to think about what you're breathing in every day. Don't drink water straight from the tap as it contains bacteria and heavy metals; you can kill the bacteria by boiling the water (so it's safe in tea), and if you're only there for a year you won't be too much in danger from the metals. Cleaning your teeth with tap water is okay so long as you don't drink any of it. It is not advisable to swim in the river, although you will see people who think it is.

The climate is very damp, which makes it feel extra cold in winter despite the fact that it only goes down to -25 or 30. This never lasts very long; the temperature changes dramatically very quickly and most of the time it seems to be thawing - until the next cold snap. In December you only get about six hours of daylight every day, but in May and June the sun never really sets and you have the White Nights.

You'll never be bored in St Petersburg, whether you want museums, art galleries and concerts or bars and clubs. You can also travel to some interesting places; the royal palaces at Pushkin, Peterhof and Pavlovsk are well worth a visit, as is Repino on the Gulf of Finland and Vyborg on the Finnish border. You can get to all of these by elektrichka (suburban train), although having done it I wouldn't recommend going to Vyborg this way if you don't want three hours on a hard wooden seat. The train to Helsinki goes this way so you can take that; if you want to go on to Helsinki you have to get a visa to get out of Russia but this isn't too difficult. It's also worth travelling to the Baltic states; Tallinn (Estonia), Riga (Latvia) and Vilnius (Lithuania) are not too far by train or coach. The town of Pskov is close to the Estonian border; it's a small town with lots of pretty churches, and the Pechory Monastery is not far away. This is worth visiting; it's built in a hollow and as you walk down the hill all you can hear is church bells. Beware of old babushkas who try to convert you forcibly to Orthodoxy!
Joanne Chapter

See the useful links page for guides to the city and some general information.

Nizhnii Novgorod

People from Nizhnii Novgorod say it's the third biggest town in Russia. People from elsewhere say it's the fifth, but hey, what do they know? Either way it feels a lot smaller, because it's only really grown in the 20th Century, with the GAZ car plant in the south and the huge military factory in the west. This means that quite a lot of the town is nondescript, modern, Soviet, grey tower-block stuff, but, that said, the centre, which is far smaller, makes up for all of this in terms of sheer prettiness. The main shopping street is Bol'shaia Pokrovskaia (locally known as the Pokrovka), which in summer is lined with market stalls selling knick-knacks, ice creams, pottery, paintings and some of the best shwarma kebabs ever made by human hands. The Russian custom of going for a stroll (guliat') is observed enthusiastically and the atmosphere, as you walk down the elegant 19th Century boulevard with beer or Coke in hand, is beautiful.

Nizhnii is not exactly brimming with life in the evenings. There's an opera house, a drama theatre, and a concert hall, all of which concentrate on the classics, so if you've never seen Evgenii Onegin, you won't be short of opportunities. Popular culture is not so vibrant - there are no really famous bands or DJs from Nizhnii, and many of the nightclubs are tacky strip bars for people with more Jeeps than sense. Cindies is stylish and exclusive by comparison. There are some nice bars and cafes though, and Russian, Tatar and Georgian restaurants are all to be found if you look hard enough - and they are nnnnnnice. Recently, huge, state-of-the-art cinemas have been popping up around town which show all the latest Hollywood blockbusters and little else, and there is a cinema on Pokrovka that shows more independent stuff and new Russian stuff and British and European stuff, dubbed into Russian by a maximum of two voices. There is also a scandalously run-down little cinema that shows Russian classics and is wonderful. There is allegedly a refrigerated shed somewhere that shows films in English on a tiny screen, but no two people have ever directed me to the same place when I ask where it is. I believe it to be mythical.
Nathan Lechler

Related links:

• Guide to the city including photos.
• Nizhny Novgorod on the Net: search engine and subject gateway.

Samara

Samara is located about 1000km south-east of Moscow, or, more significantly in terms of your access to the capital, 17 hours by train from there. It is a city of 2-3 million people, although you would never guess this as it is quite compact and certainly doesn't feel like any British city of that size would. It is an economically well developed part of the provinces (thanks to Nestle and Lada), although the gap between here and Moscow is huge, and the cheaper cost of living reflects this.

The central area is an interesting and often incongruous mix of traditional wooden houses, elegant but faded imperial buildings, and solidly monumental Soviet edifices. There's a theatre, concert halls, mainstream and arts cinemas, any number of dingy cafes and bars, slightly fewer appealing ones, infinite identical markets, and the usual array of shops selling pretty much everything you'd need. There's even a metro line, but this is more a status symbol for the city, rather than being that functional.

It is situated on the Volga, which this far south has widened out into a mighty river that never fails to amaze and inspire. The embankments are a pleasant and sociable place to sit or stroll in the warm months, and the sandy beaches are packed with swimmers and sun-bathers. The countryside on the other bank of the Volga is quite wild and hilly and worth a visit. There are few Westerners living in Samara, and people are generally interested to know and meet you and find out why you have come to their city. As an English speaker there are opportunities to get involved in teaching and giving talks at the universities and schools, which can be a good way to meet people.

Spending time in Samara, will undoubtedly give you an insight into life in Russia beyond her two main cities, arguably a sense of the 'real' heart of Russia, and will bring home the vastness of Russia's spacious expanses.
Alyson Tapp

Sochi

I spent a week in Sochi, which is in the south of Russia on the Black Sea, near the border with Georgia. It was only the end of March but already around 20 degrees (not the sea, though!) which was a welcome change after the never-ending snow, slush and sleet in St Petersburg. We went as a group of seven girls, which was seen as very strange by some of the people we met; women are really not expected to travel without a male escort. We went there by train; two days each way. Russian long-distance trains have three main classes: ìÿãêèé (miagkii) - the most expensive and comfortable, this is a coupe for two people; êóïå (coupé) - you get a coupé for four people, there are about 10 coupés in the carriage (i.e., about 40 people sharing the bathroom...); and ïëàöêàðòíûé (platskartnyi) - this is an open carriage with about 55 beds. You can meet some interesting people this way, as we did travelling ïëàöêàðòíûé all the way from St Petersburg to Sochi. It also felt surprisingly safe. There's an urn at one end of the carriage, so take teabags and mugs. You can get out at the main stations for a walk, and to buy freshly baked pies, salads, snacks and drinks from babushkas. Just be careful the train doesn't leave without you though, you don't get any warning that it's about to go.

Sochi is a great place to go; it's a mixture of beautiful scenery and tourist tack. Shopping at the many markets and department stores (where you feel everything has been there for the last 20 years) is fun, and there are lots of good Georgian restaurants. Our favourite was Cafe Lino on the sea front, but avoid the one next door with plastic seats (can't remember what it's called, but it's recommended in Lonely Planet) as the waiter conned us and the food was terrible. You can go walking in the hills nearby, and the snowy peaks of the Caucasus mountains provide an impressive backdrop to the town. The botanical garden is also worth visiting; you take the cablecar to the top of the cliff and walk down, it's a beautiful park and the views are amazing.

We did have some unpleasant experiences with cars following us at night and screeching to a halt next to us; once some men got out and this was the only time in Russia that I was really scared. Try not to travel as a group of girls. However, Sochi is a great place for a holiday, especially if you need some sun after the long winter in St Petersburg or Moscow.
Joanne Chapter

Related links

• Search engine and subject gateway about Sochi