The first thing we had to sort out before the trip was airline tickets. Unfortunately we didn't manage to catch any in action. You can get to St. Petersburg by air from Prague on Smartwings/CSA or Aeroflot. Unfortunately, low-cost Pobeda does not fly from Prague. It flies only from Karlovy Vary and Bratislava and only to Moscow, which would mean a train transfer to St Petersburg. Smartwings and CSA operate their routes together, yet the prices differed (albeit only in the 100s of crowns). For this reason, we flew to St. Petersburg with Smartwings and home from Moscow with CSA. Both companies pretend to be low-cost in terms of service, unfortunately the prices are conventional. Both tickets together came to about 6000 CZK. Another cheap option is Wizzair, which flies from Budapest. But there you have to make a date. In April, when I bought the tickets, they were already unfavourable. But recently, when I was curiously looking, I could get a ticket there for a nice 1200 CZK.
When we got the tickets, we needed to get a visa. Although it looks like better times are ahead, they won't let you in without it yet. Apart from the hassle of dealing with them, the biggest disadvantage is their price, which varies depending on the method of securing them from about 1300 CZK to several thousand. Probably the worst option to get a tourist visa to Russia is to use an agency, of which there are hundreds on the internet, but prices start at 2500 CZK or more. The second option preferred by Russia is to go through the Russian Visa Centre. It will handle everything you need for you, but in addition to the official fees, you pay 500 CZK for processing. However, they are still cheaper than agencies and I paid 2100 CZK at the VHS. The cheapest and most complicated option is processing through the Russian Embassy in Prague. This is an option mainly for Prague residents. I, as a non-Praguean, didn't even try it, because it is variously written that you can get kicked out at every stupid thing there, and I didn't want to go to Prague several times unnecessarily for an annoying Russian official. Also, they communicate with you exclusively in Russian. Moreover, according to unverified information, they claim that they take one person a day, or that this visa processing option is cancelled in Prague (it still works in Bratislava). However, if you are successful, you will pay a processing fee of 1050 CZK on the spot. And if you add the price of the invitation letter, which you have to arrange yourself, which starts at about three hundred, you will reach the minimum price of 1350 CZK.
Note: Sometime from April 2020, there will reportedly be no need for an invitation letter and the length of stay will be extended from 30 days to 90 days.
Note 2. You can also look into Russia free of charge. For Kalinigrad region it is possible to arrange electronic visas, which are free of charge !
So how did I handle the visa. I used the already mentioned Russian visa centre VHS on Sokolska street in Prague. The visa cannot be processed earlier than 3 months before the planned departure. You need a valid passport, a copy of it, a certificate from your insurance company about valid travel insurance and a passport photo. You may or may not have an electronic form with you, which can be filled out on the Russian Foreign Ministry website. Once I had all the necessary things sorted out, I made an appointment on the VHS website and made my way to Prague. I was expecting annoying arrogant behaviour, but instead a nice and helpful lady was waiting behind the counter to discuss everything with me. I had the form already printed out, but she went through it with me and modified it so that the visa was granted without too much trouble. For example, I had my return date according to my ticket, but she advised me to write it down later in case the plane was missed. Probably the biggest adjustment was the entry: "planned cities visited", which in my case was 9 places. She advised me that it might already look like I was going to do business, so she crossed it out and wrote only the four cities we agreed on. I had the invitation letter sent directly to them. To top it off, she still didn't like my passport photo, where there was a shadow (I noticed it quite late). So she simply took a photo of me, saying that if there was a problem with the photo, they would use this one and I would pay the extra 150 CZK. Fortunately the photo was accepted. The whole thing took about 15 minutes. After that, it was just a two week wait for processing. Plus, you don't even need to pick up the passport in person and just need a person with the confirmation form you get.
As soon as I received my visa, I set about buying train tickets. The often stated information on the internet that you can't buy tickets until 45 days in advance doesn't apply. It is not true and it was already 90 days in advance. Another untruth I came across is the mention that you can only register on the Russian Railways e-shop with a Russian ID. This is not true. They didn't ask for an ID at all when registering, and for tickets, a travel document is sufficient. The plan was the following route St Petersburg - Moscow - Kazan - Ekaterinburg - Novosibirks - Krasnoyarsk - Irkutsk - Vladivostok. Except for the St. Petersburg - Moscow route, where we took the Sapsan, we opted for the third class, called Plackartnyj. First of all, it is the cheapest, but more importantly, you get to know the local people and the Russian culture of long-distance travel better. Although we expected cattle trains like in Ukraine, all trains except for one trip had air conditioning and a vacuum toilet. All trains had outlets by the transverse beds. On the newest cars, there were also at the longitudinal ones. I bought my tickets about three weeks before departure. There was practically no problem with purchasing until Irkutsk. Complications were only on the route from Irkutsk to Vladivostok. For one thing, it takes 3 days straight to get there and there are only 2 trains a day. The problem was that almost a month in advance there were no two free beds anywhere near each other. Thus began a lot of dilemmas. Going to Vladivostok at all ? Or spend more days at Baikal instead. At first I convinced myself that we would skip Vladivostok, but then my traveling honor spoke up and thought it would be a shame not to make it to the end of the Trans-Siberian Highway. Janet had the same dilemma, but she too decided to drive the entire route. So now the problem with the places. I tried different combinations of +- 1 day departures and nothing everywhere full. I finally found two seats apart, but in two adjacent sections with the caveat that in Russia they're already progressive and you can cancel your ticket for 100 rubles up to 6 hours before departure and they'll send you your money back. Our plan, which we hoped would work out, was to try to ask on the spot if they sell seats off the internet and try to get two seats that way. I'll tell you how that worked out later, but it had a good ending.
Money. In Russia, 90% of things can be paid by credit card. The most convenient is to use the Revolut card, which offers the most favorable rates and works smoothly everywhere in Russia. We mostly paid in cash for accommodation, where they didn't take cards much, then for some buses and mhd. All the metros could be paid by card. In Vladivostok, even the shuttle buses could be paid for by card. I had 16,000 Rubles in cash for the whole trip, which is about 6,000 CZK and it was enough for me without any problem. Towards the end I was paying in cash to get rid of all the money. Otherwise I paid the rest by card. Accommodation we dealt with hostels. St. Petersburg and Moscow hostels mostly wanted payment in advance via booking. However, the quality of the hostels was the worst I've encountered so far. I haven't seen such dirty toilets and showers as we saw there for a long time. For this reason, I do not recommend taking a hostel with a rating below 8.5. This was the line between an amazing hostel and a disaster.
With that, we were all done and dusted. So the itinerary was 4 nights in St. Petersburg - transfer to Moscow and travel from Moscow to Kazan - 1 night in Kazan - 3 nights in Yekaterinburg - 1 day in Novosibirsk - 1 day in Novosibirsk - 1 night in Krasnoyarsk - 4 nights in Irkutsk - 4 days by train to Vladivostok - 1 night in Vladivostok - night transfer to Khabarovsk - 8 hours return by plane to Moscow - 2 nights in Moscow and return home.
Now all we can do is wait for July 17, when our great journey begins. As we do so, we are full of anticipation for what we will experience from the video below.
Useful links:
Russian Visa Centre VHSElectronic visa application form
Smartwings airline
ČSA airline
Aeroflot
Pobeda airline
Ural Airlines
Russian railways
