In message
, at
04:39:21 on Sat, 10 May 2008, Boltar remarked:

premium priced Tourist Travelcard. I can't think of a city anywhere that
makes it easy for people with loads of fresh, high denomination currency
to use standard public transport services. Many systems are farebox no

Paris - queue at the ticket office at the gare du nord , buy a Mobilis
(or whatever they're calling it this year). Sorted.

Kiev - queue at ticket office , buy tokens.

New York - ditto above , or you can get the equivalent of a
travelcard, can't remember its name.

Brussels - ticket machines accept notes and give change.

Depends where you are. Before they replaced the old machines when the
Euro came in, it was coins or nothing. Amsterdam is getting better, but
their machines don't take notes, many don't take credit cards (even
though they claim to) and the local smart-card money dominates.

etc etc

Yep, different at every place.

to find the public transport at Singapore Airport, try to find a NYC
transit bus to take you into town at JFK in NYC.

Or do what everyone else does and get the airtrain or local bus to
howard beach subway station.

Local knowledge, again.
--
Roland Perry

On 10 May, 15:11, alex_t wrote:
The latin alphabet is used frequently in russia

Russia uses Cyrillic alphabet and latin alphabet is used very rarely
(the only related example I can think about is tiny transcriptions of
station names on some Moscow Metro maps).

Its everywhere in advertising and most russians learn the latin
alphabet at school.

B2003

On May 10, 3:11*pm, alex_t wrote:
The latin alphabet is used frequently in russia

Russia uses Cyrillic alphabet and latin alphabet is used very rarely
(the only related example I can think about is tiny transcriptions of
station names on some Moscow Metro maps).

I think there is almost a one-to-one translation between cyrillic and
latin characters, so it's nothing like the leap that one has to make
to understand Japanese.

On May 10, 4:03*pm, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
09:35:03 on Thu, 8 May 2008, MIG remarked:

Even if you happen to use
one such gate to enter the Tube system, you will still be leaving it
by a gate with a reader or a standalone target - all of which will
show you your balance.

I can't remember the last time I went in or out of an LU gate that
displayed anything at all apart from maybe "Enter" or "Exit".

The display of your balance is somewhere that you have to train yourself
to look for (otherwise you miss it), but it's there.

If it's in a position where you have to stop and lean back to peer at
a tiny display while a queue builds up behind you, as opposed to being
on the large display facility in front of you, it's not really of any
practical use. I am sure that, even on the older gates, information
used to be given on the large display, but maybe I am imagining it.

I think there is almost a one-to-one translation between cyrillic and
latin characters, so it's nothing like the leap that one has to make
to understand Japanese.

It is certainly not as different as Japanese, but one-to-one
translation is a huge simplification. Many characters look the same,
but have completely different meaning.

Its everywhere in advertising and most russians learn the latin
alphabet at school.

You won't find latin alphabet used a lot unless you are looking at
advertising specifically targeted at foreign tourists (and/or you are
in the international airports) - the usual street signs, metro signs,
traffic directions are all in cyrillic even in the centre of Moscow.

On May 10, 6:32*pm, alex_t wrote:
I think there is almost a one-to-one translation between cyrillic and
latin characters, so it's nothing like the leap that one has to make
to understand Japanese.

It is certainly not as different as Japanese, but one-to-one
translation is a huge simplification. Many characters look the same,
but have completely different meaning.

Ah, maybe, but isn't there generally exactly one latin character
corresponding to one cyrillic character, even if not the ones that
look similar?

(I deduced this from changing some text from a Macedonian font to
Times New Roman, and getting what looked like recognisable slavic
words in latin.)

CJB wrote

workers use Oyster. So the lack of cash change is a real problem. The
situation would be marginally better if the airlines sold Oyster cards
on board, or if Oysters could be bought from vending machines.

Oysters CAN be bought from vending machines. Heathrow may not have any
of course.

"2007-01-04 Oystercard card vending machines have been installed at
several stations (I have seen them at Liverpool Street and Euston).
They are cash only and sell an oystercard for £3 that then needs credit
loading at a ticket machine."

--
Mike D

Ah, maybe, but isn't there generally exactly one latin character
corresponding to one cyrillic character, even if not the ones that
look similar?

Not exactly, it is usually much more complicated (but I don't think
that I can reproduce it well in this encoding).

Some tricky differences a
Russian "A" is pronounced as English "uh"
Russian "B" is equivalent to English "V"
Russian "C" is equivalent to English "S"
Russian "E" is pronounced to English "eh"
Russian "P" is equivalent to English "R"
and so on

And one letter to one letter does not always work:
(trying cyrillic characters)
ý is pronounced as English "shch" ("sh" + "ch" quickly)

A 15 centuries old mess ;-)

alex_t wrote:
I think there is almost a one-to-one translation between cyrillic and
latin characters, so it's nothing like the leap that one has to make
to understand Japanese.

It is certainly not as different as Japanese, but one-to-one
translation is a huge simplification. Many characters look the same,
but have completely different meaning.

In Bulgarian you can make some progress once you know their b is our v,
their p is our r, an r-shared thing is a g, c is s, H is n, backwards-N
is i and n is p, etc etc.

Also seems to work in Republika Srpska, though they ought to get the
Finns to send them some spare vowels.

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK