| Russia
Without Tears |
| How To
Enjoy Russia |
| Russia
is a relatively cheap place to live. My monthly budget in Irkutsk is
$500, and I ski and eat out a lot. Traveling, too, is not just for the
wealthy. A train trip that takes days generally costs under $50, and lodging
for $10 a night is not so difficult to find. Museums generally run a few
dollars at the most.
However, as
they say, no lunch is free. Russia is a maddening maze of bureaucracy and
regulations that nobody – not even those charged with enforcing the regulations
– understands. Luckily for you, I have spent years in Russia and know the
ropes. I have nearly been thrown out of the country, but if you read this
article, that will not happen to you.
You might ask,
“Why
bother?” There are plenty of other countries in the world. |
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Fair enough.
But
there is only one Hermitage Museum. There is only one Trans-Siberian
Railroad. There is only one fiery, volcanic Kamchatka. There is only one
Lake Baikal. There is only one St. Petersburg. At the very simplest, perhaps,
Russia covers over 1/7th of the world’s land. You can’t be a world traveler
and leave it out of your itinerary.
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You do not
need my advice on how to enjoy Russia’s fabulous museums, parks, and train
adventures. You won’t find any of that information here. What you will
find is information on how to avoid pitfalls. |
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| The first
pitfall is the visa. Going to Russia is not as simple as going to England
or Spain. It’s a little less complicated than getting security clearance
to visit a CIA weapons lab. Read on.
To get a visa,
you need an official invitation from the Department of Ministry. A
lot of people make their livings filling out these documents, so don’t
expect the system to disappear any time soon. If you are organizing your
travel through a tour agency, university, or place of employment, you will
be a much happier camper if you have them obtain the invitation for you.
This saves trouble with visa registration later (see below). However, if
this is not a possibility, a numbernother of organizations sell invitations,
my favorite being www.visatorussia.com.
The invitation
will need to list your dates of travel and your “itinerary.” |
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Offshore
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| This is a
list of every city you intend to spend more than 3 days. You are allowed
to list up to 5 cities. Always list 5, even if you don’t currently plan
on going to that many. It’s easier than getting a second visa if you change
your mind mid-trip. This does not mean that you can’t go to places not
listed on the itinerary, but it can sometimes cause problems with visa
registration.
The invitation
will be either for a business or a tourist visa. Tourist visas run
for a maximum of 3 months and are less flexible. You need proof of hotel
reservations, theoretically for your entire trip. Business visas are far
more flexible but the invitations tend to be more expensive. I personally
prefer business visas.
The whole process
of getting the invitation and then the visa may easily take two months
and will rarely take less than one, so plan ahead. If you can help it,
do not buy a plane ticket until you have your visa in hand.
The second
pitfall is visa registration. Russia does not believe in letting anyone
– citizens or foreigners – wander about unsupervised. |
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| Anywhere you
go and stay for more than three days, you will need to inform the authorities.
Do you really
have to bother with visa registration? That depends on whether you
like living on the edge. Police officers occasionally stop people on the
street and check their documents. This happens primarily in Moscow and
in the Caucuses. You can always claim to have just arrived that morning
and are within your three days (police of my acquaintance have actually
suggested this to me). This does not mean that you won’t be fined;
having your documents in order also does not mean that you won’t be fined.
The Russian police are notoriously corrupt. Some travelers argue that you
are much more likely to get in trouble if you try to register your visa,
thus alerting the authorities of your presence.
The other time
that it might matter, is that hospitals may refuse to admit a patient not
registered within their “jurisdiction.” |
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| I’ve never
actually heard of this happening, and it’s best to stay out of Russian
hospitals anyway.
That said,
failing to register your visa is a breach of a law the Russian government
takes very seriously, and – at least in theory – can lead to incarceration.
Since there is no defense (you did break the law, after all) there is nothing
the US government can do to help you, other than trying to see that you
are not mistreated in the tuberculosis-infested Russian correctional system.
Suppose you
do want to register your visa. If you are studying or working, your school
or employer should be able to register you – if you got your invitation
from your school or employer. If not, there is usually nothing they can
do (this is the primary reason not to use services like visatorussia.com).
Similarly, if you stay in a hotel, they should register your visa. They
often forget to do this out in the boonies, so you may have to remind them.
What if
you aren’t staying in a hotel? In Moscow or St. Petersburg, many hotels
run a side-business of registering visas for a not-unreasonable fee (usually
$15-20). Ask around. Similarly, many travel agencies will take care of
your visa registration for a fee.
The other option
is to go to the local registration office and do it yourself. Do not, for
the love of all things holy, attempt to do this. You will be asked to produce
dozens of documents nobody has ever heard of or knows how to get. You may
even be required to take a chest x-ray.
The third pitfall
is foreigner pricing. Many Russians see foreigners as a bottomless pile
of cash, and they are going to do their best to reach the bottom, anyway.
Prices for foreigners at museums and theaters may be 10-20 times the normal
rate, raising the price far above what the entertainment is frankly worth.
The babushkas who take tickets at the door can smell a foreigner a mile
off; sneaking past them is not an easy trick..
This is primarily
a problem in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and you are unlikely to encounter
it much elsewhere. However, most of the good museums and theaters are in
Moscow and St. Petersburg.
There is a
way out. Students studying at Russian universities or “long-term”
workers in Russia generally get a by on the foreigner surcharge. This is
one of the primary reasons to travel to Russia as a student or a volunteer
(getting
an actual paying job is extremely difficult). However, even if you
just want to be a tourist, many schools run fairly cheap study programs
for negotiable durations (usually there is a 2-week minimum). You aren’t
obligated to show up to class, and the cost of a week of study (about $80
or so) is about the same as the foreigner surcharge at some theaters. It
is no surprise that many people choose this path. Example programs are
CRLC Moscow State University (www.ruslang.ru).
Similarly, a business visa rather than a tourist may get you around the
foreigner surcharge at some places (the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg
is one).
These are the
three primary pitfalls you are likely to encounter in Russia. Forewarned,
they should present you with no problems. Enjoy.
Russian
Language Programs
Job Opportunities
in Russia
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