Nine Trips to Russia from the Czech Republic: Natálie’s Chronicle

Natálie 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 paper visa and switched to the electronic visa as soon as it became available. Along the way she has been to Moscow, Smolensk, Kaliningrad, Saint Petersburg, Kazan and Ufa, and she has climbed a mountain in the Southern Urals.

What makes her account unusual is not the number of trips, but everything around them: the people who told her she would end up in prison, the migration card she had no idea how to fill in, the euros she had to change in a hurry in Narva, the registration that nobody in Ufa knew how to process. If you are planning a first trip from Central Europe, this one is worth reading slowly.

What follows is Natálie’s own account, with her tips and her own photos. Thank you, Natálie, for sharing it.

Natálie’s trips to Russia at a glance

The routes, on a map

How I found a way in

Russia has always fascinated me, and my big dream was to take a train all the way from the Czech Republic to Moscow. I never managed to do that, but in 2021 I met a friend from Moscow online, and a year later we decided it was finally time to meet in person. So I started looking into how you actually get to Russia.

Given the current situation, there was very little information available. I had no idea how visas worked or which routes existed to cross the border. I even tried to get in touch with a driver who offered private transfers from Prague to Moscow. In the end he refused to take me: the route went through Belarus, and it was unclear how an EU passport check at the border would go, or whether they would let me through at all.

It wasn’t until the end of 2022 that I stumbled upon an amazing Czech girl online who helped me. She had visited Moscow on her own in November 2022. She recommended this website to me, which I then used for the step-by-step guides on filling in the paperwork for a standard paper visa, and she suggested taking the bus via Riga. I bought the invitation letter required for the visa from a Czech travel agency. I handled the whole visa application on my own: traditional paper visas at first, but as soon as Russia introduced the simpler one-month electronic visa, I switched to that. Trips to the embassy in Prague were quite expensive, and getting the e-visa online saved me a lot of time and money.

I even managed to exchange some money before my first trip, at a currency exchange back home in my city. The clerk had to duck under the desk to get the Russian rubles and handed them over almost secretly, but at least I had some cash to start with.

So I set off for Russia for the first time in February 2023. Everyone around me tried to talk me out of it, saying I was crazy. My dad was convinced they would throw me in prison and I would never come back. Even on the day I left, some friends advised me to buy cigarettes to bribe the border guards and to hide all my gold jewellery so it wouldn’t be confiscated at the border. Despite all these terrifying scenarios, I went anyway.

First trip: Olomouc – Riga – Moscow (February 2023)

My journey began in February 2023 in Olomouc, with an all-day bus ride to Riga, where I had to change to the bus to Moscow. The whole route, waiting times included, took 45 hours. I still remember that strange feeling of sitting as the only foreigner on a bus heading for the border. It spooked me quite a bit when the driver insisted that we were not allowed to use our phones at the border at all, and definitely no photos, adding that the last time two girls took a selfie there it cost them 1,000 euros.

The first problem came with the migration card. The driver handed out the paper forms to everyone and I had no idea what to write on them. Luckily, a very kind Russian family living in Germany was sitting next to me and helped me fill it in. I remember them fondly: even at the station in Moscow they said a warm goodbye and insisted on waiting with me until my friend came to pick me up.

We got through the border reasonably well, although there was a long wait. There were no major problems and the border guards didn’t even ask me any questions. The drive from the border to Moscow was long, and my mum back home was terrified because I couldn’t let her know I was okay: I had no local SIM card, no internet and no mobile signal. But I remember looking out of the window at that beautiful snowy landscape and feeling a strange sense of coming home.

Two weeks in Moscow, and a day in Smolensk

My friend was waiting for me in Moscow and I stayed at her place for two weeks, so we had to sort out the foreigner registration. In Moscow that went smoothly and fairly quickly. They were two fantastic weeks: I met a lot of her friends, saw the main sights, visited Bunker 703 and a Witcher-themed bar, and took a trip to Smolensk. It was in Smolensk that I went to a proper Russian banya for the first time, and I really didn’t expect it to be such a wonderful experience. The “1418 Steps to Victory” memory museum also left an enormous impression on me: walking through the whole thing was genuinely moving.

I never once ran into a negative reaction from local people. Quite the opposite: everyone was very kind, curious about where I was from, what life is like back home and what people in the Czech Republic think about Russians.

When I got home, the attitude of the vast majority of people around me flipped completely. Everyone who had tried to talk me out of it suddenly started asking me curiously what it had been like and wanted to see photos. My grandmother was so thrilled that she wanted me to put together a photo presentation and give a talk about the trip to everybody.

Kaliningrad, via Gdańsk

My second trip was the following summer, to Kaliningrad via Gdańsk, in Poland. That was a noticeably easier and, above all, faster route. I went back to Kaliningrad several times after that. I visited a number of historical forts, saw battle re-enactments on Victory Day and spent time relaxing in Zelenogradsk, the city of cats.

It was there, however, that I kept running into problems with registration, even in hotels. They either didn’t offer the service at all, or simply didn’t care. One hotel issued me a plain confirmation receipt (a spravka) saying I had stayed with them, instead of an official registration. To this day I don’t really know whether it was any use, because nobody ever asked me for it.

Saint Petersburg, crossing at Narva – Ivangorod

One of my later trips took me to Saint Petersburg, which I fell in love with even more than Moscow. This time I crossed the border at Narva – Ivangorod. It was only on the bus that I found out that carrying euros in cash into Russia was forbidden, so I had to change them in a hurry at a very bad rate at an exchange office in Narva. Be very careful with this.

That border crossing was probably the worst I have experienced. We waited for hours outside in the street, people were cutting the queue and the guards were letting people through only a few at a time. There was nowhere to use the toilet, and since I was travelling alone I couldn’t even go to a local shop to buy food: I didn’t want to leave my luggage unattended on the street. On top of that, the Estonian border guards asked a lot of questions about which Russian cities I was going to visit and what the purpose of my trip was, and they went through my entire suitcase. I wouldn’t take that route again.

Saint Petersburg was gorgeous, although the overall impression was slightly spoiled by the persistent street vendors pushing photos or city tours at every corner.

Kazan, Ufa and Mount Iremel

From Saint Petersburg I flew to Kazan, and I deeply regret spending only a few days there. It is a stunning city with excellent food. I also went to a local water park, but it was overcrowded, so I wouldn’t go a second time for that reason. I was surprised by how much emphasis they put on safety: we had to sign a liability waiver saying we were entering at our own risk.

From Kazan I carried on by bus to Ufa. That city really won my heart. It might not be all that attractive to a typical tourist, but to me it felt pleasantly like a huge village. It was in Ufa that I saw truly massive mountains of snow for the first time in my life, and it was an unforgettable sight.

I went back to Ufa several times, and some of my stays stretched to a whole month, mainly thanks to my partner, who is from there. On one of those visits we hiked up Mount Iremel. It was a wonderful walk in nature, and getting there in a classic Russian buchanka van was an experience in itself.

What I have learned in nine trips

Money, payments and tickets

Foreign bank cards do not work. I always bring cash in US dollars and change them locally at Russian banks. One important detail: the dollars have to be in absolutely flawless condition, brand new, clean, untorn and with nothing written on them, or the bank won’t exchange them. Domestic flight, bus and train tickets were bought for me by my boyfriend with his Russian card.

Navigation and maps

At first I used Google Maps, but it is not up to date in Russia at all. Shops and businesses often no longer exist or have moved; I got caught out like that in Saint Petersburg, hunting in vain for traditional Pavlovsky Posad shawls. I definitely recommend downloading and using Yandex Maps, which work much better.

Cleanliness, services and safety

I was surprised by the incredible cleanliness of the streets, the excellent city infrastructure and the warmth of the people. I wasn’t used to being able to order food at 2 a.m. and have it delivered to the door, or to shops and repair services being open on a Sunday afternoon (phone repairs while you wait, for example). The food was delicious and the quality of the groceries high, often better than in the Czech Republic. I was amazed by the wide roads, the beautifully kept parks and, above all, by how safe I felt everywhere. Not once did anyone bother me in the street, and that was a wonderful realisation.

Bureaucracy and registration

What did surprise me, on the other hand, was how demanding the bureaucracy is. At the office in Ufa, for instance, the officials had no idea what to do with a foreigner’s registration or what paperwork was needed. We tried registering through the Gosuslugi portal: we waited several days, but the application eventually disappeared from the system. At the migration office they told us the online system wasn’t reliable and that it is always better to handle registration the traditional paper way.

SIM cards and internet

For a while I used a Russian SIM card registered in my boyfriend’s name. Later I tried an eSIM, but it hasn’t been reliable recently: on my last trip it worked for exactly one day of the whole stay and then stopped completely. Internet access is generally more complicated, and even connecting to Wi-Fi requires a phone number. Luckily I always ran into kind people on the buses who lent me their phones to send an SMS after crossing the border.

Pharmacies and healthcare

I was very surprised by how well Russian pharmacies work: you can find everything you need and the pharmacists give genuinely good advice. The standard of local doctors and medical care is very high too. Russians, on the other hand, couldn’t believe how casually most doctors back home in the Czech Republic approach patient care, something I have unfortunately experienced first-hand in most cases.

The reactions of friends and acquaintances

Although curiosity and even enthusiasm for my travel stories was the general rule, I unfortunately also ran into harsh negative reactions. Over a single photo from my first trip, taken on Red Square, I got nasty messages from a then-“friend” from university. She even wrote to tell me she would make sure I never graduated and never found a job in my life. Sadly, that is the other side of travelling to these places nowadays.

If you want to compare border experiences, there are other readers who have crossed the same posts: Michael queued for five hours at Narva, Etienne travelled to Saint Petersburg via Riga in winter, Joseph entered through Kaliningrad and Bonnie was also warned she would be arrested.

Have you travelled to Russia recently and would you like to share your experience? Tell me about your trip here and I will publish it in this section, with your name or anonymously, whichever you prefer. Accounts like Natálie’s are the ones that really help the people who are planning their trip.