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FlighT booking
Starting from Germany there are tons of cheap flights to Russia. Luckily Pobeda is now departing daily from Allgäu Airport Memmingen, which is super handy for us living in Munich. You can get flights for 59€ one way right now. All you need for your booking is a scan of your passport.
My flight was booked on 22.09.2016 and cost 9377.88 RUB (=ca. 130€) return.
VisA
I’ve heard that you’ll need an invitation to travel to Russia. This is a whole lot easier right now because there are agencies who’ll book your visa for you. I’ve requested mine on www.buch-dein-visum.de gebucht. All you need herefore is:
- Passport in the original (not older than 6 months and needs to have 2 blank pages)
- Biometric passport photo in color
- a copy of your travel insurance
- Certificate of residence (if you’re not of German nationality but living in Germany, not older than 1 month) – an enrolment certificate works for students
Your passport will be sent back and you’re ready for Moscow.
A visa costs 85€.
How to get to Allgäu Airport
My film team and I took the comfortable Memmingen Airport Express bus from Munich central station. I’ve already taken the bus several times and the journey takes around 1,5 hours. The bustimes are timed in order to have enough time before takeoff and landing.
Flight
The flight from Allgäu Airport takes around 3 hours. Pobeda flies with the newest machines, which are super comfortable and clean. Given the fact, that it’s a low cost airline you should think of bringin food and drinks because they won’t serve on board service.
Currency
You can order Russian Ruble beforehand at your bank, which takes around one week. Otherwise you can withdraw or exchange money at the airport, which is the handiest way. The exchange rate is approximately per 70.
Off to the city
We’d arrived quite late and took a cab to the city centre (around 30€). I’ll get to speak of taking taxis below. The less expensive way would be to take an UBER Pop (around 12€) to the city centre but then you’ll need internet at the airport. You can also take the Express Train to the city.
Moskau has three airports. Pobeda flies daily to Moskau Vnukovo.
Hotel
We stayed the Hotel Kitai Gorod , which cost 9900 RUB (around 130€) for two nights. The location was absolutely fine, nothing special but clean and the location was very good. We could reach all sights on walking distance. Moreover, it lies directly at the metro Kitai Gorod.
Metro
Russian metros are so impressive. I’ve found a couple of beautiful metro stations photographed by David Bureny in this article. However, taking the metro has to be learned. Even though I had all stations written in Cyrillic in my guide we always went in the wrong direction. Not to mention that Russians barely speak English.
Taxi and Uber
We were warned of Russian taxis and of course bamboozled once. There are official taxis but also some where you need to negotiate the price beforehand. We didn’t know that and the taxi driver wanted so much money for a 10 minutes ride. As soon as we got back to the hotel we only took UBER. UBER Pop is allowed in Moscow and you can get around really cheap. But avoid the rush hours! One evening we waited 40 minutes for our UBER.
WIFI
There aren’t any mobile packages for Russia but there is Wifi everywhere. Therefore, just ask the waiters at the restaurant or bars.
Best time to travel
I must say that the temperatures where quite a shock for me. 3 degrees Celcius was not was I was expecting after beautiful warm autumn temperatures. It was super freezing already in October. We were told that the best time to travel is May to June.
I hope you liked this article and please don’t hesitate to ask!