Travel Notes

Training in Style

Suites include showers, DVD players

Russia’s first fully en-suite tourist train, the Zolotoy Oryol (The Golden Eagle), took its inaugural trip from Moscow to Almaty, setting off from Paveletsky railway station on March 27. 

The twelve-day trip took Australian tourists from Moscow to Almaty, Kazakhstan, via Volgograd, as well as historic cities in Uzbekistan: Bukhara, Samarkand, and its capital Tashkent. 

Zolotoy Oryol has 12 passenger carriages, two of them with banquet rooms, a kitchen carriage and a bar carriage. Compartments accommodate two passengers and are equipped with air-conditioning, a private toilet and shower, a TV and a DVD player.

Upon its return from the Central Asian route, the train will be lengthened and sent out as the Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express, a $25 million, 21-car en-suite private train that will run the traditional Trans-Siberian route. 

The new train was to begin its maiden Trans-Siberian voyage on April 27, launched by HRH Prince Michael of Kent at Moscow’s Leningradsky Station. The cars feature gold and silver class accommodations and is a joint venture of GW Travel (which also runs the BAM route, see story on page 40, gwtravel.co.uk) and Zircon Limited.

Pass Laws First

...ask questions later

Russia has done it again. The country is only beginning to realize that a new law passed on January 15, supposedly to ease the process of legalizing migrant workers, has only made things worse, especially for foreigners who travel frequently.

Previously, a registration stamp in a non-Russian’s passport or visa served as a residential permit for up to one year, regardless of travel, but now a foreigner will need to re-register every time he leaves Russia or travels within the country for more  than 10 days, The Economist reported. 

The new law also sets out procedures for registering foreigners which are so confusing that some hotels in St. Petersburg have stopped admitting foreigners altogether, as missteps can incur fines of up to $30,000. The St. Petersburg branch of the Travel Industry Union said in an official letter to the Federal Migration Service that the city’s hotels found it impossible to comply with the new rules, which require them to manually deliver registration paperwork to the FMS office within a day of a foreigner’s arrival. But FMS is open only four days a week, and even then they are understaffed to handle the paperwork generated by St. Petersburg’s many hotels. 

No Booze Aboard

Ministry may ban in-flight alcohol

Having a drink on the plane is a perk few Russians would refuse.

Still, Russian airlines could become alcohol-free by the end of the year if the militia’s transport division has its way. They are urging Russia’s transportation ministry to ban all alcohol on Russian airlines in order to improve safety and curb the increasingly common drunken brawls aboard planes, Kommersant daily reported. 

However, experts warn that the liquor ban would not work, since sneaky Russians would either get drunk before boarding or in the plane’s bathrooms. 

Russians often bring their own booze on board planes, as many airlines have stopped serving free drinks as a way to cut costs.

Alcohol abuse and debauchery are particularly common on charter planes bound for traditional holiday destinations like Egypt, Turkey and Croatia. In fact, several airlines have suggested that the prohibition should only apply to charter flights. 

Toll Highways

Plan seeks to better roads

The Russian government passed a law on toll highways, in hopes of setting right at least one of the country’s (according to Gogol) perennial problems: fools and bad roads. 

Toll highways are to be funded through concession agreements, Vedomosti reported. The state will set up a land lease price and the operating company will establish the tolls. Special transport, such as ambulances, will be exempt from tolls. According to the law, an existing road cannot be turned into a toll highway unless it is reconstructed. There must also be an alternative, toll-free route that is no more than 50 percent longer than the toll highway. 

Several toll highways currently operate in Russia: a 20-kilometer chunk of the M4 route in Lipetsk region (toll: R20), and local roads in the Pskov and Altai regions. Voronezh region recently abandoned toll collection on a newly-built road due to low traffic and experts warn this may recur on other local roads. The interstate routes and roads in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and in vacation towns in the South have the greatest potential as toll highways, experts say. 

Migrant Crackdown

Detention centers to house detainees

The Federal Migration Service in April raided outdoor markets looking for unauthorized guest workers, while government officials have promised searches of construction sites and other illegal labor-heavy businesses. The move came after new rules went into effect April 1, banning illegal foreign workers from trading in markets and setting other limitations on immigrant labor. 

As the government struggles to curb illegal immigration, special detention centers for foreigners awaiting deportation are appearing across the country. Previously, deportees were kept in general detention centers alongside criminal offenders, but now Russia is trying to embellish its migration tack. 

The first special center was opened on March 22 in Kazan, capital of Tatarstan. It has no bars or barbed wire and detainees can spend up to two weeks there in relative comfort before being deported. The Russian government has promised to cover the cost of the detainees’ stay. 

Stukach.ru?

Online security clearinghouse

A new website, 112.ru, will be officially launched by the Russian government in the first half of this year. Now operating in beta, the site intends to facilitate public access to legal and criminal  data and alerts provided by police, the FSB, justice, emergency situations and health ministries, the migration service, as well as the customs and tax police. The site will contain information on 11 million voided Russian passports and other invalid documents, on criminals being sought by police, and serve as a clearing house for security-related news. The site will also offer citizens the opportunity to report suspicious activities online.