Moscow is the biggest city in Europe, side by side with London, where 15 million inhabitants concentrate, still influencing the businesses, the culture, and the politics in the former Soviet republics. In the Russian-speaking zone, Moscow City is the point where everything happens. However, get around Moscow is easier than you may assume, I have explored the city basically by metro.
By metro is the easiest way to move from one side of the city to another, as well as to skip the traffic jams that get intense during the rush hours when people go to work and return home. Moscow metro system can be confusing because two or three lines can pass by the same station. The trick is to guide yourself by the lines represented by the colors. When asking Muscovites about how to go to a specific metro station, they tend to say something like “you have to take from station A red line to station B blue line”. Then, it becomes easier to visualize what route you’re taking.
Ok, but there are about 200 metro stations in Moscow. And a practical solution is to use the app Yandex.Metro (available on Android and iOS) to navigate easily through Muscovite metro stations. This app is available in English, Russian, and Ukrainian. And it also works in Kyiv (Ukraine), Kharkiv (Ukraine), Minsk (Belarus) and Istanbul (Turkey), San Francisco, Rome, and a couple of other cities around the world. Yandex.Metro helps to find the fastest routes from the metro station you are located to another one you wish to arrive, without struggling to read and memorize the name of the stations in Cyrillic.
In order to move easily across the metro stations in Moscow, a practical way I recommend for travelers is to buy the Ednii (Единый) card, which costs some around 650 rubles including 20 rides, while each ride costs around 50 rubles. Carrying this card, you don’t need to carry small cash and coins all the time and stress about having change for the payment, nor standing in the lines to buy a token whenever you pass by the metro stations.
Another particularity of Moscow, as well as Saint Petersburg, is that you find some metro stations beautifully decorated as nowhere else in the world. Take time to visit the stations: Komsomolskaya (Комсомольская), Kievskaya (Киевская), Mayakovskaya (Маяковская), Novolobodskaya (Новолободская), Arbatskaya (Арбатская), Elektrozavodskaya (Злетрозаводская), Park Pobedy (парк победы), Prospek Mira (Проспект Мира), Ploschad Revolyutsii (площадь революций) and Taganskaya (Таганская). To appreciate the beauty of these metro stations calmly, avoid the rush hours early morning and in the evening.
Metro stations in Moscow are generally safe and the police are present daily. Just be careful with pickpockets, as in any crowded place in the world. I would only avoid walking alone in the peripheral areas at night, as this is where there is a chance of encountering neo-Nazis and other types of extremists. I hope I helped you to drive the subways in Moscow. Enjoy your trip!
Originally posted 2021-07-31 00:33:04.
