Buying Tickets

Getting in and around Russia has never been exactly easy. Minus acquiring a visa, one of the biggest difficulties now though is deciding from a dizzying array of travel options.

All the major international carriers now service Pulkovo-2 and even budget airlines like AirBaltic and Germanwings offer regular flights to St. Petersburg.  

If you’re time-rich but money-poor one of the cheapest ways to get into the city is a bus from Helsinki. It’s an uncomfortable trip, with frequent stops at various shopping centres, but they only cost around 700 Rbl. The coaches and minivans leave from outside the FinnKino complex near the Helsinki bus station.

In addition there is a recently opened ferry line and international trains which originate all over Europe.

Once here, traveling inside and outside the city is simple enough. 

If you’re thinking of travelling long-distance by train and particularly like torture, buy your tickets from the ticket windows (kassa) at one of the train stations. We recommend going at 6am on Sunday morning when there are less people. People in the queues are not shy and retiring types and will push in all over the place so don’t be afraid to get pushy back. When choosing a ticket window, ensure they are not due to take a break in the next hour or two. Most cashiers don’t speak English so it can be handy to write down on a piece of paper the dates and times that you would like to go and try to copy down the name of the city – for example москва (Moscow) – in Russian just for clarity.

You can always buy from a ticket agency for a less painful experience, they will usually charge around 200Rbl commission per ticket.

It is possible to buy tickets online too. The official booking site is www.rzd.ru. It does have an English version but it does not always work and usually the booking page itself is only available in Russian, so it is useful to get a Russian speaker to help you. Bear in mind you can only pay with credit cards (no debit cards) when buying online. When you have booked you need to take your booking number and passport with you to collect the ticket at the station. In the ticket halls there are machines where you should type in the booking number and your passport details and the machine will print you a ticket.

If you can't get the help of a Russian the easiest way to book online is by using an agent such as realrussia.co.uk. It’s all in English, straight forward and they can sell you tickets for trains going to all kinds of places across Russia.