Russia Travel Forum

Well, I have been talked out of my little dalliance with internal flights so I move onto trains!

How easy will it be to get train tickets when in Russia? I am arriving in Moscow
on the 8th of May and want to travel to St Petersburg on the 12th at 16.30.

Also want to travel back to Moscow at 16.00 on the 15th.

Will it be easy to get a seat on these train?

I am not interested in sleepers as I have been on them in other countries and really don't like them!!

It will be easy for you to get a ticket. A few days in advance is a good idea though, so get your train ticket the day you arrive. To make it easier, write down what you need (Moscow - St P) first in Russian so you can give it to the ticket salesperson. Better still, print out the train number with departure time as well so they'll know exactly what you want. If you really want to fly internally from Moscow to St P it is not bad anyway - I did it last year and it takes around 45 minutes.

Thank you Tartu2005

Where should I go to buy the ticket? Any idea how much it will be?

Sorry to be a nuisance!!

I'm guessing this is the one you want?
Train no.160 (Aurora Express)


You need to go to Moscow Leningradsky station to buy it. It's about 50 euro one way.

You can reserve online too... but since you have to show passports et al to buy, I'd buy the ticket in person...

Thank you very much Tartu2005

It's almost as expensive as flying!!

I can do it for free (almost). You can get on Aurora for 3 Euro each way. That is cheaper than flying, LOL.

The way to do:

1) Go from Ireland to Bratislava by airplane
2) Buy Bratislava-Moscow-St.Pete train ticket (CITY-STAR). It does not matter, do you go to Moscow only or Moscow first than St. Pete, the price is the same ca. 100 Euro.

Slovakia, Czech, Hungary, Serbia, Poland are the cheapest places to buy Russian train tickets, much cheaper than in Russia itself.

Here is in more detail how it works (there are two CITY-STAR types to Russia sold in Slovakia and two sold in Serbia):

http://deals.virtualtourist.com/viewDeal-20752-1213-1--Republic_of_Serbia-viewDeal.html
http://deals.virtualtourist.com/viewDeal-20751-1213-1--Republic_of_Serbia-viewDeal.html
http://deals.virtualtourist.com/viewDeal-19733-906-1--Russia-viewDeal.html
http://deals.virtualtourist.com/viewDeal-19734-906-1--Russia-viewDeal.html

That is interesting information and I'm glad you posted it. But my flight is already booked! I'm transitting through Zurich with Swissair.

yes... it's why it would be so good, one day we may have a "sticky" train ticket place, these things (CITY-STARs) are since a while but it's buried deep inside Russia/Slovakia/Serbia transportation tips or deals - and why someone who is going to Russia would pay attention to Slovak or Serbian ticket deals? It's not natural and so the information while is there on VT is not very easy to retrieve. I am still thinking, what would be the best.

For instance I have an almost ready Transsib ticket calculator - it's already there, you can in theory even now calculate the Moscow-Beijing-HaNoi round-trip ticket. But I need more things to do and I am doing it in my spare time.

Hi John!
You can buy online ticket here:
http://www.ticket.rzd.ru/wps/portal/pp

the price from 470 +143 rbl/ person/direction to....the sky the limit.
But You have to knew russian language...... I will try booking on next month ( 45 days before departure), because we will go from 30.may to 4.jun. Budapest-Moscow-St.Petersburg-Moscow-Budapest

Thanks.

I have seen that website! I don't speak any Russian though!