By Gilbert Doctorow, Website, 5/5/25
I open this installment of my travel notes with remarks on my experience in arranging and enjoying the past three days in Moscow. What I have to say is not intended to give tips to the Community which might be useful on any future travel to and in Russia that you may be considering. All the cutting edge services I mention are accessible only if you have a Russian bank account and credit cards, from which follows the possibility to put bank Apps on your telephone and enjoy the conveniences I outline here.
My purpose is rather to share my observations on how ordinary Russians live – which, to put it succinctly, is very well indeed. For those who occupy management positions in business or even are just employees with skills in demand, their salaries support the good life I describe here. For pensioners, whose monthly allowance is very meager, there are non-monetary allotments from the government, like a couple of train trips cross country for free each year or greatly reduced airline ticket prices that make it possible to enjoy the good life even on a very small nominal budget.
I must explain here that a few very large Russian corporations see you through many different sides of consumer life. One of them now is Sber, formerly Sberbank, which has its finger in all kinds of pies and offers their Russian customers many services quite remote from banking such as shopping for and home delivery of groceries. But the single biggest helper in the travelers’ needs is Yandex, Russia’s equivalent to Google.
Yandex began life as THE search engine of Russia and then used its skills and proprietary software to take over the lives of its countrymen as a benevolent monopolist. Occasionally you encounter the downsides of its lacking competition in management failures. But nearly all the time Yandex subsidiaries do a commendable job.
Had I so desired, I could have bought our train tickets to Moscow online from Yandex Travel (Puteshestvie) but we have an old fashioned instinct and wanted to consult with a railways sales person about our choice of train and the discount that suited us best, so we made the purchase at the main railway station in Petersburg.
What it was like on the Sapsan high speed train connecting the two capitals and covering the 700 km route in exactly 4 hours I will explain below. There were several pleasant surprises for us at the level of on board service even in the Economy railway car that I will share below.
As regards reserving a hotel in Moscow, I used Yandex Travel, which served as a very efficient substitute for booking.com. I quickly waded through their list of 4 and 5 star hotels in the city center, deciding finally on a Movenpick which is managed by the French hospitality services giant Accor, and is managed very well as our stay there proved.
For those who follow the money, I inform you that since I dithered in placing our booking in what is a peak travel period, the Standard rooms were sold out and we necessarily moved up to a Superior room for the ruble equivalent of 120 euros per night without breakfast. If that sounds like a lot, bear in mind that a 22 meter very well appointed room such as we received would cost the double in any European capital and probably the triple in New York. No breakfast, but if you use your wits and order breakfast from the menu, you can nicely get by for 10 euros per person, enjoying a royal omelet and a double espresso worthy of Milano. If you are indifferent to prices, a buffet breakfast with shampanskoye is on offer for 30 euros per person. When you come after 10 am on weekends, you are treated to live piano music over breakfast. But the little secret which reception does not share with everyone, is that at level -2 the hotel has a splendid swimming pool, sauna and well-equipped workout gym available for free to guests.
Who, you may wonder, are the guests? With the exception of myself, the hotel guests this weekend were 100% Russians, nearly all couples, many with young children. I would estimate the age band of the adults as running from 25 to 35.
The Movenpick is situated 200 meters from the Taganka Theater, a landmark in Russian cultural and social history going back to the 1970s when it was directed by the free spirit Yuri Lubimov who gained special renown for staging Hamlet with the bard Vladimir Vysotsky in the title role (which I saw together with my future wife seated on stairs leading to the balcony since all seats were sold out).
In the early 1980s, Lyubimov fell afoul of the authorities due to caustic productions including Brecht’s Threepenny Opera and Good Person of Szechwan. He was compelled to emigrate, first to Israel as a refuge of convenience. He then traveled around Europe and the USA directing operas, which was an entirely new domain. Finally in the 1990s he returned home to Moscow. His theater was returned to him and he became a celebrity among Russia’s freedom fighters and a close friend of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose 80th birthday was feted in the theater in the presence of notables including foreign ambassadors and the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov. I know. I was there, and strolling around this quiet corner of Moscow brought back these recollections. Moreover; Solzhenitsyn’s Museum of the Russian Emigration Abroad is just across the street from the theater, while a monument to Vladimir Vysotsky is around the corner.
It is now typical of Moscow that such small oases of culture and desirable residential buildings are to be found on one side or another of the 8 lane ‘boulevards’ like Zemlyanoi Val on which the hotel is situated that run through the center of Moscow and set this city apart from all other European capitals. Called boulevards, they are in fact highways and the only way to get across them as a pedestrian is via underground passages.
Returning to the subject of Yandex, I note that their taxis swarm the streets of Moscow and wherever in the city you may be, when you order a taxi on your telephone App, you are likely to be picked up within 5 minutes or so. The operator finds you by geolocation software and their system remembers where they delivered you recently so that when you type in the first letters of your destination they identify a driver and show you the price for various categories of car, from Economy on up.
Yandex Go, as the taxi service is called, covers the entire Russian Federation. When we arrived in Pskov on 29 April having crossed over from Estonia, my Yandex App instantly found me a driver ready to take us to our home in Petersburg 290 km to the north.
Yandex also provided us with our entertainment for Friday evening in Moscow. Their search engine listed the very few concerts being presented on this first day of a long holiday weekend when most theaters are closed. We chose the Zaryad’ya Concert Hall where Mariinsky and Bolshoi theater chief conductor Valery Gergiev was putting on Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony. Then we bought our tickets via the Yandex theater ticketing system.
Bruckner is not a favorite composer of ours, but we were keen to discover the concert hall which dates from 2018 and is where Gergiev holds his Easter Festival each year.
The concert itself was less than enjoyable. The symphony seemed disconnected and going nowhere, though there were some glorious moments of rich polyphonic sound. Saying that, I think of the comment by Hungarian conductor Ivan Fischer to those of us who came to the final rehearsal of Dvorak’s Rusalka in the Brussels opera house some years ago: ‘This opera is magnificent and if you don’t enjoy the show you have me to blame for a poor presentation of the score.’
It could well be that Gergiev gave a poor reading of the score. Boring or not, over its two hours of uninterrupted music, his rendition of the Eighth Symphony left no one snoozing. Gergiev loves FULL volume and his combined double orchestra from the two opera theaters blasted us a good deal. On the positive side, we learned that the acoustics of the Zaryad’ya concert hall are wonderful.
The Zaryad’ya seats 1,600 and it is notable for the seating configuration which wraps around the orchestra from all sides. I know of nothing similar in our part of Europe.
Another unusual aspect of the Zaryad’ya is security. When buying tickets online you are obliged to enter your passport number, issuing country, etc. And when you come to the hall, you must produce your passport together with your ticket to gain entry. I have not seen such tight control anywhere in Petersburg venues.
*****
I close these Travel Notes with some observations on the Siemens-built Sapsan trains that operate on the Moscow-St Petersburg route.
They are in perfect condition, withdrawal of the manufacturer from the Russian market notwithstanding. Punctuality is remarkable, as are cleanliness and high quality service even in Economy Class. Security is uppermost: your passport is entered into the system with your ticket; and you are allowed to board the train only after the attendant standing at the door to each wagon checks your passport against the data shown on the electronic gadget in her hands. Inside the train, it is clear that there are not only attendants to serve you but also guards to maintain order.
Our train mostly cruised at 200 km per hour. For much of the route, there was little sway or vibration, but in places there were both phenomena. The reason is that the Sapsan is running on normal Russian railway track, which is all welded to eliminate the clack-clack but is not of such precision as the French TGV rail beds, that are segregated from ordinary train tracks.
Though every seat was taken in our rail wagon, there was dead silence. Nearly all passengers were looking only at their mobile phones but no one was conversing. The reason? The train offers a broad selection of movies in all imaginable genres that you can choose to watch via their wifi channels on board. All films are Russian: there is not a single foreign film. And the majority of films are about war. There were only a couple of romances or situation comedies and a few cartoons for the kids, including the ever present Masha and the Bear. When watching, you are obliged to use earphones so that you do not disturb others.
The wifi also offers a direct connection with the bistro car so that you can order sandwiches or beverages that an attendant will bring to your seat.
As for price, in Economy it was about 50 euros per person for a round trip ticket.