Travel Notes

Rail Rates Up

New price increase seeks to 

offset preferential pricing

Prices for train tickets in Russia rose 30% on January 15. According to Railway Ministry officials, the price hike will help cut losses and raise salaries of railway workers by 15%. A Moscow-St. Petersburg ticket in a kupe (sleeping berth) increased from R795 to R1,035. An Aeroflot air ticket on the same route costs R1400. 

Head of the Russian Railway Mini-stry’s PR department, Eduard Gindeleev, said his ministry had no other option. Even at this new level of pricing, passengers are covering just 62% of the ticket’s cost; the rest is subsidized by the state. Part of the reason for this high subsidization is that Russia has as many as 42 million passengers who are entitled to preferential pricing on rail tickets.

Pulling the 

Rotten Tooth

Central Moscow hotel

closes up, comes down

On March 7, developers will begin demolition of Moscow’s Intourist Hotel. Of late, the 30-year-old hotel had been dubbed “the Rotten Tooth,” because its boxy look did not fit with the historical tableau of neighboring buildings on downtown Tverskaya street. 

In January, the Intourist closed its doors to its last guest. The 22-story hotel was completed in 1970 and never had a reputation for top quality service. Yet it did offer its guests value for money, namely a splendid panoramic view of the Kremlin and downtown Moscow from its upper floors, with rooms priced well below the capital’s notoriously high lodging rates (in recent years). Not surprisingly, hotel managers said the Intourist’s occupancy rate was as high as 90% of late. 

The Intourist was the last of a series of rectilinear high-rises built in Moscow in the wake of Soviet leader Khruschev’s visit to New York in 1959. When the hotel is completely removed (it is to be gradually “downsized” floor by floor rather than demolished with explosives), developers intend to build a lower, 400-room five star hotel in its place—one surely more in keeping with the downtown’s historic skyline (see page 64 for commentary).

Delivering Profits

DHL announced plans to invest over $2 million in the development of service centers in Russia in 2002. As a result, the company’s turnover is expected to exceed $3.5 million, more than double sales for 2001 ($1.5 million). The company’s new strategy provides for the opening of at least seven offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Opening the Spigot

Customs Committee looks to

raising currency export quota

According to the chairman of the Russian State Customs Committee, Mikhail Vanin, his agency will propose to the Russian Central Bank new regulations that would allow individuals to take out of Russia up to $10,000 in cash without having to produce a special spravka from a bank, certifying the provenance of the sum. Today, the limit is $1,500. Anyone attempting to take out more than the limit without a special banking document can face smuggling charges. “If the Central Bank finds it possible to raise the non-declared sum of currency taken out of the country,” Vanin said, “I think the number of such violations will go down by the thousands.” In his view, the $10,000 sum is in keeping with customs rules of most developed countries (e.g. the US).

 A Farewell

Moscow’s fabled pet market has been closed by police. The gates to the famous Ptichy Rynok (Bird Market) in eastern Moscow were welded shut on December 29, 2001, and its stands, normally teeming with caged or tethered wildlife of every description, were deserted after police moved on traders. City officials said this was the definitive closure of the Stalin-era market. Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov said the market failed to meet sanitary norms and that traders will soon be offered an alternative site farther from the city center. 

Six convents and five monasteries have been resurrected or built in the Novosibirsk region in recent years. Igumen Philipp (above) is a young priest in the youngest monastery in Novosibirsk region, established at the Church of Archangel Mikhail. Priest Philipp has in his “team” five priests and 15 monks who aid local orphanages, veterans homes and who work to revive the traditions of spiritual life.