Travel Notes

VDNKh worries

Soviet park continues to fade

In the blackest of ironies, a Russian Tu-154 plane was demolished by a crew at VDNKh on the same day as the tragic crash of the Perm-bound flight (see page 13). 

The old Soviet plane, once the pride and joy of Soviet aviation, was long a favorite attraction at the Soviet-era park. Since the late 1960s, visitors could peek inside the plane, sit in the cockpit and generally explore the plane at will. But the Tu-154 was broken up in September at VDNKh as visitors looked on. The move angered the internet community, and blog photos featured the dismembered Tu-154 with its insides sticking out. The official reason for demolition, articulated on the exhibition center’s website, is that the aircraft was dangerously worn-out. 

Still on view at VDNKh are a Yak-42 plane and a Vostok rocket. Earlier this year, VDNKh spokesman Oleg Gladyshev denied that the planes would be removed. Yet, there is no sign of the planes or the rocket on planning images for the park’s future development. 

Copter Taxi

One way to avoid capital’s traffic

The tedious journey from one Moscow airport to another may soon be reduced to a few pleasant minutes in a helicopter taxi. For a price. 

Three companies – UTAir, Eurocopter Vostok, and Russian Helicopter Systems – have signed a joint agreement for creation of a helicopter taxi service in Moscow. The service will shuttle passengers between airports, as well as to nearby Russian cities such as Nizhny Novgorod, Kaluga, and Tver, Kommersant reported. UTAir airline has existed since 2002 and has 133 airplanes and 177 helicopters, employed as far afield as Krasnoyarsk region. The company charges approximately $50,000 per hour to hire a helicopter that can seat five.

Quick Trips

Visa-free from Helsinki

Visitors who come to Russia on ferries will soon be able to stay in Russia for 72 hours without a visa. The Duma has approved legislation that extends to ferry-arriving tourists the visa-free privileges previously granted only to cruise ship passengers. 

The new amendment was lobbied for by the St. Petersburg administration, which hopes to increase tourist flows from Europe. The city projects that the new rules could triple its inbound tourist visits. To accommodate the future boom, St. Petersburg is constructing a new passenger seaport on Vassilievsky Island. It will reportedly be able to receive 12 million annual visitors arriving on ferries and cruise ships.

Metro Expansion

Moscow broadening infrastructure

Transport Minister Igor Levitin has announced that the Moscow Metro will add 43 more stations between now and 2015. Expansion of the capital’s transport infrastructure between 2010 and 2015, Levitin said, entails the construction of 79 kilometers of new rail lines and seven metro depots, with hopes of extending coverage of the metro to the 24 percent of the capital’s population that is not served by metro lines. 

The development plan also forsees upgrading suburban train lines, constructing 685 kilometers of toll roads, and reconstruction of 860 kilometers of existing roadways. The five year transportation plan has a budget of R4.9 trillion.

Four new metro stations – Dostoyevskaya, Marina Roshcha, Volokolamskaya and Mitino – will be opened in 2009.

Solzhenitsyn Street

Appropriate renaming planned

Central Moscow’s Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya (“Greater Communist”) street may soon be renamed Solzhenitsyn street, despite a law that forbids naming streets after people who have been dead less than 10 years. The Moscow City Duma voted for a special amendment that would allow the renaming just a few months after the great writer’s death. 

The street, in the central Taganka neighborhood, is located near the Moscow headquarters of Russkoe Zarubezhye, a non-profit bookstore and conference center funded by the Solzhenitsyn Fund. The rule was bent once before, when a street in a suburban neighborhood was named after assassinated Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov.

Klin Christmas 

Factory displays its wares

A new museum was opened in Klin by the town’s Christmas ornament factory. The museum has about two thousand items, including historical Christmas tree ornaments. The museum was previously housed in a factory building but is now in a more spacious location, which will have room for workshops and glass-blowing demonstrations. 

Klin is known for its association with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (whose house museum is located there) and was historically a way station on the Moscow-St. Petersburg road. It became a craft center for ornament making at the beginning of the 19th century.