Travel Notes

Metro Expansion

Three new Metro stations on the Lyublino line have been completed after three years of construction work. One reason for delays is that the Russian government, which finances the construction, simply does not have enough money to purchase the necessary materials and pay the contractors. At the moment this line is one of the less travelled, but when more transfer stations are completed it is believed that the total number of passengers will increase.

Finnishing with the Savoy

Finnair has made a ‘strategic decision’ to sell off its 49% share in Moscow’s Hotel Savoy because of changing circumstances in Moscow’s hotel industry. When Finnair entered the hotel business in Moscow there were no high-class hotels. They saw this as an opportunity to improve their profits from their Moscow routes. However, times have changed and there are now several high-class hotels in Moscow. The Savoy is still one of Moscow’s most luxurious, though, built in 1912 for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty.

Transport prices to rise

Prices for Moscow’s public transportation will be raised from 1,500 rubles to 2,000 rubles per ride in the new year, according to the Russian press. But while it is already approved by the Moscow mayor’s office,the city’s 1997 budget draft allowing for the 500-ruble increase has yet to be endorsed by the City Duma which may veto this unpopular fee hike. Stridently opposed by many Muscovites who are already struggling to pay even 1,500 rubles, the planned fare hike will offset losses sustained by Moscow’s heavily-subsided public transportation system.

Trump card?

During his November 1996 trip to Moscow, US multimillionaire Donald Trump held “very preliminary” discussions with a top city official on Trump’s possible investment in two of central Moscow’s decaying landmark hotels, the Rossia and Moskva. Besides these two hotels, Trump has also expressed interest in building two “super-luxury residential towers” in Moscow. But, due to the huge expenditure involved—Moscow city officials have estimated the pric

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Phoning Home

Making phone calls in Russia has never been an easy task, and improvements in recent years have been uneven and often accompanied by major price hikes. As phone company Rostelecom tries to shed its image as one of the world’s most expensive operators, Robert Greenall takes a tour round the quagmires of telecommunications.

Standard Western ads about the joys of long-distance phoning must  seem an absurd mockery to many Russians. When even a call to the next block in Moscow can entail shouting and despair, what must it be like to call your babushka in a remote village outside Vladivostok?

Well, the chances are, babushka won’t have a phone anyway, but the answer is, as with just about everything else in Russia – people get by somehow  or other. And the good news is, dialing abroad can be considerably easier than dialing inside Russia, and the lines are a lot clearer too.

For those who need the whole range of services, from local to international, here are some guidelines.

Phoning locally

Local calls within cities and towns are relatively easy to make from private phones. Though charges have been promised for calls made from company  phones in the near future, all these calls remain free for now. This is not to say that, if you are someone’s guest ,you should not ask before using their phone, simply out of politeness. Using public phones for local calls  is more challenging. The nationwide Soviet system of two-kopek pay phones collapsed several years ago and is now totally fragmented. Some Russian cities, including Moscow, use a citywide token (zheton) system (St. Petersburg uses metro tokens). This is notoriously unreliable, and frequently zhetons are wasted because of phone malfunctions. As a general rule, don’t put them in the slot until the call is answered. These zhetons are available in post offices and metro stations, and cost R2,000 ($0.36). A dwindling number of other, mostly smaller cities have free pay phones.

Public phones can be used only for local calls. However, both Moscow and St. Petersburg have international direct-dial card phones. The cards cost R50,000 ($9.00). The disadvantages of this system being that the cards are sometimes hard to come by, as are the phones themselves – in Moscow they are restricted to the larger metro stations, in St. Petersburg to central city streets.

The worst headaches: living with the system

The fun really begins when you need to make a long-distance or  international phone call from Russia. When dialing from a private phone, dial 8, wait for the tone, then dial 10 if the call is international, the code(s) and the number. For internal (CIS) calls, unless you are phoning a number within your oblast (region), the total number of digits after the 8 should always be ten, and this may require adding one or two 2’s or 0’s after the city code. If you think this is difficult, just wait till you get to a phone where you have to dial the number you’re calling from after the one you’re calling to (this is not just a provincial phenomenon: some Moscow and St. Petersburg exchanges still have this too).

For international calls in particular (and some intercity calls), you may need help from an operator. To book an international call, dial 8-194 or 8-196 and ask for an English-speaking operator. You should do this in advance of the time you want to call, and they will call you back, but this does not guarantee you will get the call on time.

There are two other ways of phoning long-distance: from a post office or from a peregovorny punkt (long-distance pay phone center). These are often in the same building and look similar, the main difference being that in the first the operator connects you and in the second you yourself dial.

In the post office, write on a piece of paper the number, the person you want to speak to and the length of call. You will be called into one of the booths after about an hour (half an hour if you asked for srochno [urgent]).

Peregovorniye punkty have no single system. Some use zhetons, some cards, others require that you pay a deposit before making your call, yet others let you pay when you are done. Check whether you have to dial 8 before the number, and whether you have to press a button when connected. Many major city punkty  now have instructions in English.

As if this jungle of systems and non-systems wasn’t enough, if you’re staying in a hotel that is anything but five star you will have to get used to the various ingenious (or sometimes simply aggressive) ways administrators think up to avoid residents sneaking away with unpaid phone bills. Usually you will have to buy a numbered talon (coupon) – read this number to the operator when you call.

And now the good news...

Fortunately, modern technology has created a number of ways to beat  the system. If you have an AT&T, Sprint or MCI calling card, you can call an AT&T USA Direct , Sprint Express, or MCI World number  in Moscow  and be connected with a US operator. You normally pay about $3-3.50 per call, plus $2-2.50 per minute for a call to the US. All these services can be used to call collect or to call 800 numbers (toll charges  apply, however).

Very much cheaper are call-back services, which take advantage of market differentials while providing similar quality to that of the local phone system. If you set up an account, you can dial a number in the US and are automatically phoned back and given access to a dial-tone which allows you to make calls anywhere in the world.

Other innovations avoid the Russian phone system altogether, like cellular phones (currently all the rage) or direct satellite links. Short-term visitors may come across these if they stay in top hotels in Moscow and St. Petersburg, whose phone numbers have satellite codes like (501) or (502) rather than the traditional (095) and (812) city codes. Not surprisingly, phone charges from these hotels are astronomical by any yardstick.

Meanwhile, those who do not have access to or cannot afford these options can at least take comfort in the increased number and improved quality of international lines, and in the recent price reductions in international rates from Russia (see table below). Perhaps all is not so distressing after all.