Blog
Two trips to Russia on a US passport: John’s chronicleJohn is American, lives in the United States and has been to Russia twice in the space of a year: two weeks in the summer of 2025 (Moscow, St Petersburg and Sochi/Adler) and almost a month in Moscow in January 2026. The second trip had an unusual reason — he went to have surgery at […]
Nine Trips to Russia from the Czech Republic: Natálie’s ChronicleNatálie is 25, she studies and she lives in the Czech Republic. Since February 2023 she has entered Russia nine times, and she has done it in almost every way you can imagine: by bus from Riga, crossing into Kaliningrad from Gdańsk, and on foot through the Narva–Ivangorod border post. She started with a traditional […]
Sixteen Days at a Boxing Camp in Sochi: Samuel’s ChronicleSamuel lives in Montreal. He had wanted to visit Russia for a long time, and what finally pushed him was a YouTube video about a boxing camp in Sochi. He wrote to the coach on WhatsApp, booked a hotel the same way, flew Montreal–Dubai–Sochi and spent sixteen days there in June 2025, training on the […]
Altai and Baikal in 20 Days: Dan’s Chronicle from Prague to KazanDan lives in the Czech Republic, and in August 2024 he and a friend gave themselves twenty days to cross Russia from the Altai mountains to Lake Baikal. They flew Prague–Baku–Novosibirsk on a 30-day tourist visa , and came home from Kazan the same way. In between: a private car doing 500 km at speed, […]
The History of Russia and the USSR (Told in 5 Minutes)Russia went from a handful of medieval principalities to an empire spanning eleven time zones, then to the Soviet Union and, since 1991, to today’s Russian Federation. If you just want the headlines: Ivan the Terrible was the first tsar (1547) , the Romanovs ruled for three centuries until the 1917 revolution, the USSR existed […]
“They Warned Me I’d Be Arrested”: Bonnie’s Moscow ChronicleBonnie was nineteen when she decided to travel to Russia. She lives in Bath, in the south of England, and everybody around her — friends, family — was against it. Some of them warned her she would be arrested simply for entering the country. She went anyway, in September 2025, for a little over two […]
Why Russian Banks Reject Your Banknotes (and How Much You Can Exchange at Once)If you’re travelling to Russia with euros or dollars in cash, be ready for this: Russian banks can turn down part of your banknotes because of their physical condition . I’m not talking about notes torn in half. I’m talking about a folded corner, a small oil stain, a pen mark or simply an old […]
Does the MIR Card Work Outside Russia? Countries That Accept ItLet me say it upfront so you don’t waste your time: the MIR card is practically useless outside Russia . There are only two places where it works with reasonable normality, Belarus and Cuba. In every other country that shows up on the official lists, a single bank accepts it, often only for cash withdrawals […]
Fuel Shortage in Russia in 2026: A Guide If You’re Travelling by Car or MotorbikeYes, you can still travel to Russia by car or motorbike in 2026, but since late May the country has been dealing with a fuel crisis you can’t ignore when planning your route. Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries (the НПЗ) have cut petrol production and, with summer demand at its peak, this has led […]
“I Told Everyone I Was Hiking in Germany”: Kira’s Trans-Siberian ChronicleKira, from Germany, had dreamed of the Trans-Siberian for years. The problem was that nobody around her — family, friends, her partner — wanted her to go. So she learned Russian on an app, planned the whole thing quietly, booked her hotels and her trains, and told everyone she was going hiking in Germany for […]
From Sevastopol to the Summit of Elbrus, Solo: Gabriel’s ChronicleGabriel lives out in the countryside, in the Ardèche region of France, and he has been passionate about mountains and Russian culture for several years. In May–June 2026 he set off alone for three weeks across southern Russia, on nothing more than an electronic visa, for a route well off the beaten track: the spa […]
Moscow and St Petersburg with three teenagers: Jacobus’s chronicleJacobus Möller travelled to Russia from South Africa at the end of June 2026 with his wife and their three teenage children, and came back on 11 July. Two weeks, two cities — Moscow and St Petersburg — no visa needed, and an itinerary built around a question most guides ignore: what do you actually […]
From Norway to Moscow in a 1991 Cadillac: John’s ChronicleJohn Andersen lives in Larvik, in southern Norway. In September 2025 he drove the whole length of his own country to the Arctic, crossed into Russia at Storskog, and kept going: Murmansk, Nikel, Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and finally out through Minsk. He did it at the wheel of a 1991 Cadillac Brougham, which turned out […]
Nineteen and Bound for Russia: Ernst’s Chronicle from Pechory, St Petersburg and MoscowErnst Selin is 19, from Sweden, and travelled to Russia with a Russian friend in the summer of 2026 — a first big trip that took him from a ferry out of Stockholm all the way to Moscow, and home again through the Narva border. His account is short but full of the wide-eyed wonder […]
Moscow Solo at 85: Bente’s ChronicleBente Petersen is 85, from Denmark, and has spent a lifetime travelling and working all over the planet. Russia, though, was the one place that always felt both mysterious and strangely familiar to her — and when she finally started going, in her late seventies and eighties, she fell for Moscow completely. This isn’t a […]
Into Russia via Kaliningrad in Winter: Joseph’s ChronicleJoseph is a young Englishman who had already spent nine weeks studying Russian in St Petersburg back in 2023, and had been longing to return ever since. When a job change gave him a free month, he seized it — even though that month was December, hardly the easy season. He entered not by the […]
Moscow to Vladivostok: Rajendra and Jayshree’s Month in RussiaRajendra and Jayshree are a couple from Auckland, New Zealand, in their late sixties, who had dreamed of Russia for years. In May and June 2025 they finally did it, and not by halves: a full month crossing the country from Moscow all the way to Vladivostok on the Pacific, with St Petersburg, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, […]
From Brussels to Shanghai by Solar Bike: 3,600 km Across Russia, Claude’s ChronicleClaude Brouir is a Belgian traveler from Brussels who took on an out-of-the-ordinary challenge: to link Brussels and Shanghai on an electric-solar bike. Between May 2 and June 2, 2025, he crossed Russia over 3,600 km, from the Latvian border to the Kazakh border, passing through Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Ufa and Omsk. He entered […]
Flying into Russia from China: Shea’s Moscow and Kazan ChronicleMost people reach Russia from Europe, Istanbul or the Gulf. Shea, who lives in Vancouver, did something different: he flew in from Beijing , as part of a longer summer trip through China, and spent June 2026 in Moscow and Kazan on a regular tourist visa. He speaks a little Russian, which shaped almost everything […]
Kazan, Moscow and St Petersburg: 13 Days in Russia (a Reader’s Chronicle)This chronicle comes from a reader who lives in Singapore and spent 13 days in Russia in early June 2026, travelling with her mum. She did the classic line in reverse — Kazan, then Moscow, then St Petersburg — entering the country on an electronic visa (eVisa) through Kazan, after a connection in Istanbul. She’d […]