August 27, 2013

Useful Resources for Tourists Visiting Russia


Useful Resources for Tourists Visiting Russia

Real Russia

This is a list of frequently asked questions for tourists. Generally it is about how to obtain your visa, what you do with it and what you can do in Russia. This guide is the technical side of obtaining your visa, and doesn’t include many lifestyle tips!

Just Go Russia

This one is a little short and is only lifestyle tips. They’re great if you’re worried about how to behave in Russia, but it’s not too technical about the actual process of getting there.

A Complete Guide to Applying for a Russian Visa

This is a comprehensive and fairly definitive guide on how to apply for a Russian visa. Whether it’s tourism, business or charity work, this tells you everything you need to know to make sure your visa is sorted, so that your trip may come off with at least one less hitch.

Russian Invitation

This short guide is only about the letter of recommendation process when obtaining your visa. It can be the most confusing and difficult part of the process to understand, so this guide really helps. It covers the possibilities, the reason to have one and how to get yours.

North European Cruises

This nifty travel guide will help those who have just arrived in Russia, especially those in St Petersburg. It’s a lifestyle guide about how to behave and function and includes some links at the bottom which will take you to further guides for Russian tourists. It doesn’t cover the technicalities of visas, but does help you if you are confused about practical life in Russia.

Way to Russia

This site is great. It is an inclusive guide that covers mostly everything. It has lifestyle tips, advice and guides to get your visa, what you should do in Russia, how you should behave. It also has a link to a Facebook group that is a kind of forum where tourists can contact each other.

Go to Russia

This guide is a brief look at the technicalities of getting to Russia. It covers questions about visas but doesn’t help too much when you get there. Though it is helpful and even covers questions for people taking a cruise.

Russian Tour Guide

This independent tour guide site is great for tours. But their blog is the best; it features guides, shows you what to do and is a great way to learn about your trip before you even get there

Russian Dos and Don’ts

A good guide of do’s and don’ts while traveling. Partly it is about how to combat American stereotypes and partly is it a great resource detailing what it is like to be Russian and to live in Russia. An authentic guide for those who wish to take the road less travelled.

Frommers – How to Behave

This is a dense guide about how to behave in Russia. It includes money and travel advice, food and medical attention and of course how to get your visa and what it does.

Ask Me I’m Local

A scheme in which volunteers will find English speakers and help them around Moscow. It can help people feel more accustomed to the city and not nervous or afraid of what it has to offer. It combats a lack of information available for English-speaking tourists.

Ten Things to Never Say or Do in Russia

This is just a quick guide of how to behave in Russia. It offers interesting insights on differences in manners and expectations. Definitely one for a young person staying with a host family!

Women in Russia

This one is unique. It is written by a Russian bride who moved to the West ten years ago.  It is a strict guide about how to behave, and also includes some tips of where to travel.

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Some of Our Books

A Taste of Russia

A Taste of Russia

The definitive modern cookbook on Russian cuisine has been totally updated and redesigned in a 30th Anniversary Edition. Layering superbly researched recipes with informative essays on the dishes' rich historical and cultural context, A Taste of Russia includes over 200 recipes on everything from borshch to blini, from Salmon Coulibiac to Beef Stew with Rum, from Marinated Mushrooms to Walnut-honey Filled Pies. A Taste of Russia shows off the best that Russian cooking has to offer. Full of great quotes from Russian literature about Russian food and designed in a convenient wide format that stays open during use.
Fish: A History of One Migration

Fish: A History of One Migration

This mesmerizing novel from one of Russia’s most important modern authors traces the life journey of a selfless Russian everywoman. In the wake of the Soviet breakup, inexorable forces drag Vera across the breadth of the Russian empire. Facing a relentless onslaught of human and social trials, she swims against the current of life, countering adversity and pain with compassion and hope, in many ways personifying Mother Russia’s torment and resilience amid the Soviet disintegration.
Murder and the Muse

Murder and the Muse

KGB Chief Andropov has tapped Matyushkin to solve a brazen jewel heist from Picasso’s wife at the posh Metropole Hotel. But when the case bleeds over into murder, machinations, and international intrigue, not everyone is eager to see where the clues might lead.
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
A Taste of Chekhov

A Taste of Chekhov

This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words

93 Untranslatable Russian Words

Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.
The Little Humpbacked Horse (bilingual)

The Little Humpbacked Horse (bilingual)

A beloved Russian classic about a resourceful Russian peasant, Vanya, and his miracle-working horse, who together undergo various trials, exploits and adventures at the whim of a laughable tsar, told in rich, narrative poetry.
Moscow and Muscovites

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 
The Samovar Murders

The Samovar Murders

The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow’s Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.

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