Travel Advice

Postal Service, Telephone, Internet

• Postal Service
  
• Internet
  
• Telephone
  
• Electricity
  

The postal service in Russia is quite inexpensive and reasonably reliable. There have been reports of letters being stolen or lost, but currently it is rather an exception than a fact. Whatever the situation, one can always rely on the government registered mail service, which is slightly more expensive. It normally takes 3 or 4 working days for mail to be delivered at distances less than 500 kilometers and up to 2 weeks if the letter travels all the way across Russia, say, from one remote and isolated place near Murmansk to another next to Magadan.

A letter sent by Air Mail from Europe, Japan or the USA would reach Moscow (or some other major city in Russia) within 4 or 7 days. How fast it makes to its next smaller destination, depends where the place is and how regular it is connected with the first place of mail arrival. 10 to 14 days of delivery would be a fair estimate for most of Russia.

To give you a general idea of what the postal charges are, we have picked a few types of services:

The express mail delivery services (FedEx, EMS, DHL and all their relatives) are widely available in Russia, but are significantly more expensive and, unfortunately, are not always that much faster or reliable (our own multiple experiences).

Internet is nothing new or scarce for most of Russia. Most of the bigger cities would have Internet clubs or some other similar places providing Internet access. Access from a club normally costs 25 - 35 Roubles an hour. Doing this on a regular basis from home is anything down to 7 or 8 Roubles per hour, especially if one uses it solely for e-mail purposes or late at night. Some households are on what is called leased lines (or full time unlimited access) and enjoy full time access with only the total of traffic being billed (getting more and more popular around the country).
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Internet is nothing new or scarce for a lot places in Russia. Most of the cities bigger than 200, 000 inh. would have Internet clubs or some other similar places providing its access. Using one from a club normally costs 25 - 35 Roubles an hour. Doing this on a regular basis from home is anything down to 7 or 8 Roubles per hour (especially if one uses it solely for e-mail purposes or late at night).
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Telephone calls
One is not normally charged per minute for local area or city telephone calls in Russia. The charges are commonly covered by a regular fixed flat monthly payment. Some households do pay per time even if talking locally. If you stay with friends or a Russian family - check out before you jump on the phone to read 'War and Peace' to some of your local friends.

The long distance calls placed via the regular telephone service from home or a post office are not cheap. Buying a prepaid Internet Telephone card can very often be a good bargain. It works exactly the way a telephone card would work: dial a sequence of access numbers - then the number of the place you need to talk to. The best bet, though, is having access to the Internet (IP) phone (perhaps some of your friends would have one) which provides good communication at extremely low rates (0.06$ per minute to the States).

Most hotels in Russia should have a facility for making international calls from your room. To make an international call, you should
- dial 8
and then wait for the dial tone,
- then dial 10,
then the country code e.g. 44 for UK; then the STD code without the 0, followed by the number e.g.: 8-10 44 20 7123456. If you are travelling further afield you may not have this facility, and you should ask at reception to book a call for you.

The rates, the telephone providers have, vary with the time of the day and the date (week-ends and holidays).

Connection to the places and countries, where computers and Internet access are still limited, will hardly cost much less than a regular phone call (e.g.: Lybia, Iran, Sri Lanka).

Electricity
The nominal voltage in Russia is 220 Volts with the mains frequency of 50 Hz. The plug type: two round pins (similar to the ones in Europe, but a little thinner). Make sure to bring an adaptor if your appliances are different. There are plenty of places where such adaptors are absolutely not available.
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