On Jul 13, 6:18*pm, Tristan Miller
wrote:
In article , Ian Jelf wrote:
In message , Tristan Miller
writes
* The pricing is simple: it's 26 RUB for each journey, regardless of
distance or number of interchanges.
How do you buy tickets? * Just individually at the ticket office? * Is
there anything like Oyster or - more usefully for us - a Paris-style
Carnet?
I don't have any experience buying tickets, as my girlfriend gave me a card
good for ten trips. *It was an ordinary-looking paper card that must have
had some embedded magnetic strip or chip in it; just like in London you
swiped it at the entrance to the station, and a display on the pillar told
you how many trips you had remaining. [...]
You tapped it on a reader, like an Oyster card, or shoved it in a
slot, like a paper ticket?
[...]*This card was not valid on the
buses, which used separate single-use tickets (again, purchased for me in
advance by my girlfriend, whence I know not) which were validated upon
boarding. *The marshrutkas are cash-only; you pay the driver 25 RUB. *When
several people board at once, rather than pay the driver individually, you
just give your fare to the passenger sitting next to you, who passes it on. *
Whoever sits closest to the driver ends up with a big wad of cash which
they give the driver, telling him how many passengers it's for.
So perhaps best for newcomers to try and sit at the back!
[snip]
I've been warned about that. * We're urgently trying to learn to
decipher Cyrillic letters. * (SWMBO is very good at that sort of *thing,
as I discovered in Greece.......)
If you know the Greek and Latin alphabets, then Cyrillic will be easy to
pick up. *I've never had any training in Russian but within a couple days
of my first trip there I had no problem reading the signs. *There are 33
letters, of which about two thirds closely match the sound of the Greek or
Latin letter they resemble. *That leaves only Ж, И, Й, Н, Ц, Ч, Ш, Щ, Ъ, Ы,
Ь, Ю, and Я. *И (I) and Н (N) you will decipher immediately because they're
so ubiquitous and found in international words and famous names; the first
time you see a statue or picture of Lenin with the sign "Ленин" you will
figure out those two letters right away. 
I see a statue of Lenin fairly quite here in London, and from a train
no less - it's on the back of a workshop sandwiched between the
Walworth Road and the Elephant & Castle to Loughborough Jn/ Denmark
Hill railway line (the LCDR's City Branch, if anyone still calls it
that, aka the Thameslink route). You've got to be quick to catch it,
so I'm afraid any Cyrillic inscription thereon has evaded me thus far!
Very interesting post about the Moscow Metro, thanks - hasn't been
anything along these lines here for a while. Any other broader Moscow
recommendations that stand out to you as worthy of imparting to us utl-
ites? Afraid I'm not going there imminently, but would love to at some
point in the future.
And do I detect a Russian girlfriend in there? Her name isn't Anna
Kushchenko per chance... ;-)