Tips for Traveling in Russia

Series Summary

If you're planning on traveling in Russia, you'd better be armed with more than a stupid smile and a couple of Yakov Smirnoff jokes. While the Yakov Smirnoff jokes could pave the way to an eternal friendship (look what it did for US/Soviet relations during the cold war) you might be safer using actual Russian phrases for travelers.

In this series of free foreign language videos you'll learn basic Russian for a variety of situations. Expert Nikolai Pankratz shows you how to say several Russian greetings, apologies, and other basic words and phrases. You'll learn what to say through airport passport control and customs, how to communicate at your hotel, how to order food in a restaurant, and much more.

Video Transcript

"Nikolai Pankratz with American Resource Network for Expert Village. Today the topic is about traveling to Russia and getting the basic language down. Phrases, words for you to get around Russia. Now the reason I am doing this is because I've been through this many times and I hope that my advise and what I'm going to give you today is going to help you. Now the first thing and I'm sure Expert Village is going to be very happy with, I'm going to throw in a few suggestions. Make sure that your visa passport, most America people don't have a passport, make sure your passport, you have an American passport. Which you can actually get through a post office. Not every post office, but post offices do that. You have to get your basic pictures, the paperwork and the post office, pay the fee and you have your passport. Now the second thing there's different agencies set up that will do the visa processing for you. You need to have an invitation from Russia so, but the agency would tell you how to do it. So basically you get the visa, the passport and then you're ready to travel to Russia. But before you do so make sure you have the most important things with you, because even though I spent seventeen years of my life in Russia and left Russia many, many, many years ago, I still went back and made the common mistakes and you will be very grateful that you've seen this video, because this is very important. So we're going to talk about this in the next clip."