Some people balk at traveling to Russia. Cold war memories of grey cities and grey unsmiling people come to mind. The truth is much different, and St. Petersberg is a great place to dip your toes into the great motherland, Russia. In this part of the story, I’m going to go through the steps you need to get there on the doorstep of the hotel and away again. The next part will describe what you’ll see when you get there. We’ll also concentrate on 4 star travelers, but a lot of the information is applicable to everybody. We were there last year during Tour de Europe and also our last day was the day that MH17 was lost. Most Russians seemed to be aware of Tony Abbots threat to ‘shirtfront’ Vladimir Putin and were laughing about it, confident their ‘black belt’ president could take care of himself.
As our tour is a driving tour, we’d planned to drive through the Baltic States and cross by ferry to Helsinki in Finland and board the train to St. Petersberg. The cars were to be secured in Helsinki as it is not recommended to drive into Russia. There are three main reasons for this. Firstly, our insurance with the Citroen lease deal does not allow it and even if it did, Russian drivers appear to disobey road laws regularly causing some massive accidents. Check out ‘Russian Car Crash Compilations’ on Youtube as an example. Secondly, Russian customs regulations can meet a 4 or 5 hour wait at the border. Thirdly, not many hotels have parking in St. Petersberg.
The next step is to get the Russian Visa. Its relatively straight forward, but you have to do a bit of preparation. You’ll be going for a Tourist Visa, and as with all Russian Visa categories. you’ll need to be ‘invited’ to visit the country. This is easier than it sounds. Most hotels are accredited to issue these invitations. So, by booking the hotel, they’ll automatically e-mail you the official ‘invitation’ and a voucher to prove that you will be staying there. We use the Corinthia Nevsky Palace as our base in St. Petersberg. Its an excellent 5 star hotel while being relatively inexpensive. Hotels used to be expensive in Russia, but recently the prices have become reasonable (especially compared to Paris or London). Current pricing is less than 200 Euro a night (for June 2016) with breakfast included. The Corinthia is also on Nevsky Prospekt, the main street in St.Petersberg.
Once you’ve got the paperwork from the hotel, you need to put together a basic itinerary showing date & method of entry & exit to the country such as this example:
Tour Itinerary
Date of travel and entry to Russia: 16th July 2014
Method of travel: by train from Helsinki to St. Petersburg
Destination in Russia: St. Petersburg, Corinthia St. Petersburg Hotel, 57 Nevskij Prospekt
Activities: Sightseeing in St. Petersburg
Date of travel & exit from Russia: 20th July 2014
Method of travel: by train from St. Petersburg to Helsinki
You’ll then need to go to the Russian Embassy website to apply online. They need a lot of detail especially about which countries you’ve visited in the last 10 years. Once you’ve finished you print it out, and send it with all the other documents and the required payment to the Russian Embassy. They can get a bit suspicious if you’re trying to go with the lower cost options (hostels etc). The next step is to book your train tickets (around 140 euro for a return journey). As with these sort of arrangements, most of this needs to be done well in advance. I’d recommend at least 2 months.
Once you have your documents you’re set to go. The next part is not too hard and the next few paragraphs contain some tips and observations.
On our European driving tour, we overnighted in Tallinn, Estonia (Nordic Hotel Forum) before taking the short ferry to Helsinki. Noted that there are three huge booze stores next to the ferry port, then noticed the number of Finnish registered cars pulling up to be filled up with all sorts of alcoholic beverages. Turns out that grog is much, much cheaper in Estonia than Finland (alcohol is tightly regulated in Finland). Foot passengers had trolley loads of slabs walking onto the ship (Viking Line of course). Once in Helsinki, Tour de Europe stays at the Radisson Plaza next to the main railway station ready for the 8 am departure of our high speed train to St. Petersberg. The train journey used to take 6 hours due to a change of engine at the border (Russian loco’s use a different voltage to Finnish trains). The new trains are high speed (200kmh) and use a dual voltage system so that the trip now takes only 3 hours. Once a new track has been built direct from Helsinki to the border another half an hour will be knocked off the journey.
Once on the train, you will be visited by a few people. First will be conductor with a ticket check and the Russian Customs and entry forms. Secondly, the Finnish border guards to stamp you ‘out’ of Finland. They look very imposing with black ‘swat’ style uniforms, tatts and crew cuts. Next will be the money exchange cart to change your euros to roubles. Once you hit the border at Vyborg, the Russian border guards looking very neat with pressed green uniforms will come and scan your passport through their hand held scanners. The main question they might ask is how much foreign currency you have (you’re supposed to declare anything over $10,000 USD). That’s it for the formalities. An hour or so later you will arrive at Finlandskaya station. If your hotel offers a pick up service its a good idea to use it (usually booked through the concierge).
Getting back to Finland is about the same except for the tip that the money exchange cart is the LAST opportunity to get rid of your roubles as they can’t be exchanged outside Russia. Also, don’t try to take religious icons out of Russia no matter how good they look, they are a prohibited export.
The next post will deal with things to see and do in St. Petersberg.
Good travelling
HARRY