Moscow is not bad. It just depends what you are into. It's like New York City in a way. It's big chaotic and the most important place in the country. It's also absurdly expensive and a relatively bland architectural expanse of concrete blocks outside the center. A bit like New York City if you are familiar with soviet cinema you'll recognize the scenes of hundreds of films. If you aren't you probably won't have a clue why a hundred Russians are taking selfies on a street corner. I dunno if that makes sense. St. Petersburg is like a true European city with unending attractions of palaces cathedrals canals museums. It's population is geared for foreign tourism and much more friendly than business first Muscovites. Unfortunately is not the center of the transport network. It will have significantly less direct flights to the cities you might want to go to. Almost every train to another host city will have to go through Moscow anyway. If you like the seen to be seen opulent displays of wealth then Moscow is your jam. If you are football first and foremost and want to have a convenient base to hit up as many host cities as possible. Moscow is the spot. If you want to hang out in a super cool Russian city and attend a few games in sort of a 50/50 fashion. then st Petersburg is going to offer more. The only other city id recommend a first time Russian visitor base themselves in is Kazan. The culture shock in most of the others is going to be real.
I'm going to want to see a few different cities like I did in Brazil, so splitting time between Moscow and St. Petersburg works for me. Of course, everything is dependent on the schedule and draw and what tickets I can get. Obtaining match tickets was a massively time consuming task in 2014, and probably will be even harder for 2018. I'll want to see all 3 US group stage games (obviously assuming they qualify), but I learned in Brazil moving city to city wastes time (usually a whole day wasted moving) and gets expensive. I skipped US-Portugal in Manaus because of that, and really enjoyed just hanging out in Rio with a huge group of US fans watching it in a bar we took over.
Well Russia kinda makes that easy. The only cities really worth visiting are Moscow Piter Kazan and Sochi.
man, so tough. seems like St Petersburg is the cooler city but Moscow is the better city to base myself in to get to lots of other cities....
Russian cities tend to be rather boring. The main attractions in the country aren't in them. Kazan however is a very unique city. It's a bridge between Europe and Asia. It's half Tatar and half Russian. There's beautiful architecture in the Kremlin, cathedral, Kyl sharif mosque. And if you don't know a lot about Russian culture I think it's a perfect city to really realize the multi ethnic multi religious nature of the country.
For me the charm of the country has always been the smaller towns and rural villages. The nature setting is pretty stunning as well as the chance to go just about full anthropologist in some fairly unchanged cultures, but just about everything is east of the Urals and basically another continent away from the host cities. All of Altai, Tuva, Baikal, Kamtchaka, Sahka etc are six to eleven hour flights away. Tobolsk is a ten hour train ride from Yekaterinburg which is the furthest east host city. In terms of near the European host cities. Easy to reach between St Petersburg and Moscow: Veliky Novgorod. Suzdal. Rostov Veliky Sergiev Posad Yaroslavl Kostroma Harder to get to in northern Russia: Kizhi. Solovetsky Islands. Kargopol
Rural Russia also just has a very different feel and pace to it. Even Veliky Novgorod which is a mass tourist destination outside of the major holiday months of July and August still has this slow feel. People are much friendlier, although they don't speak any English, and for the most part it's one of the few places in the world where you are extremely unlikely to find other foreigners. Most foreign people who visit Russia outside of Moscow and St Petersburg do bus tours. Russians themselves generally prefer beach vacations which leaves a lot of these places kind of ignored. Although Suzdal and the rest of the golden ring as well as Novgorod are still pretty popular. I spent a whole June day in Suzdal a few years back and saw only a couple other people. I was in Novgorod last May and saw hardly any tourists, Russian or otherwise.
growing up in close proximity to one of the more densely populated Russian/Ukrainian enclaves in the world i am very familiar with the Russian love of the beach
Did anyone use Frequent Flyer miles for Brazil and have any issues? I didn't have enough miles at the time, but was planning on using miles for Russia. Looking at American's Website, the last half of May is all blocked off for Chicago to Moscow. Fingers crossed their map for June doesn't look like the last half of May.
I flew on award travel on Delta miles to/from Brazil. I booked well in advance, but then a few weeks before the tournament, I managed to score Opening Match tickets in one of the last ticket releases. So I had to rebook my outbound to arrive the day before the Opening Match and I was able to do it. That's just like starting from scratch. It's still remarkable to me, but I did it. I did fly business class too and also I was both Delta Medallion Diamond and United 1K back then, and I know that makes a difference. Returning is easier I think, if you have some flexibility. My plan was to leave right after the group stage but when the US made the knockout rounds I changed my ticket again to stay a few extra days so I could attend the US-Belgium match in Salvador. Had we won and went on to play Argentina in Brasília, I would have extended again (damn you Wondo) and there were plenty of award seats available. That doesn't mean it'll be easy for Russia next year. I have no idea. The airlines make award travel harder every year with their new policies to screw us. I have both Delta and United miles so I'm hoping I can get one of them into Moscow or St. Petersburg the day before the Opening Match. I don't know if I'll be lucky enough to score match tickets again, but I'd like to be there for it. I'm not an AA flyer so I don't know anything about them, but I think all the US carriers are similar.
AA allows free changes of date as long as the origin and destination are the same as long as you use it within a year of booking. It will cost $75 if done less than 21 days before departure. I'd probably book two one ways if you want to do this.
Consider Helsinki or Kiev. Helsinki is 3 hours by train to St. Petersburg. Kiev is an overnight train to Moscow.
Lol I think we all knew Budweiser was going to win that battle. Someone here brought up how Brazil had a similar law that got temporarily removed.
I honestly wouldn't have even thought of it but being in NY, Helsinki is a non-stop flight and probably avoids the WC surcharges
From the limited research I have performed, it feels like this world cup will be difficult to navigate. Granted, Brazil was difficult to navigate but I was living there at the time so I had that going for me.