Travelling to Russia - easy or hard???

[casanovawa]

Hey i am thinking of travelling to Russia in July, maybe St Petersburg and Moscow for about a week or a little less.. I was reading up on Visa's last night and came across not only the $110 cost of getting a tourist visa into the Russian Federation, but all this mumbo jumbo about needing to get an invite etc from in Russia and then the person at the hotel being your host and having to put in papers... Came across some service that can issue an invite for $50 or so....

When i travel i usually stay in low cost accommodation like backpackers or often with people on couchsurfing etc... just wondering if these options are removed by the seemingly overly beraucratic way of tracking new arrivals and whether only certain hotels are licenced ot offer these invitations/hostings etc...

In short is the getting of all this stuff a PITA and it not worth it and i explore the many (seemingly) much easier countries around Europe, or is it not as bad as it seems at face value???

Any experiences or suggestions would be appreciated...

 

[JetLagged]

Have you thought about popping in to a TA and asking them - given the number of people who travel to the Russian Federation (espeically St Petersburg and Moscow) each year, they 'should' know what is happening!

 

[tuppaware]

I've been told that its best to go with a tour group... to save on problems with corruption and crime. Even on the tour that my partner went on about 5 years ago the Bus driver had to give a bribe to the police or something.