Sizzling with energy and bright lights, bars, clubs, designer shopping malls and upmarket restaurants, Moscow is a true world capital (and the most expensive). Here, business and pleasure definitely go hand in hand. It’s hard to believe that not so long ago this pounding city was dowdy, the only colour coming from the high red walls of the Kremlin and gaudy St Basil’s Cathedral.
Some of the finest modern architecture has sprung up in glitsy 5-star hotels and familiar old buildings have taken on new style, dressed up in fine furnishings and every comfort and facility. Traffic-jammed streets make getting to meetings on time virtually impossible – unless you take the excellent Metro where stations are lit by chandeliers and three minutes is considered a long time to wait for the next train.
Red Square is still the first stop on any Moscow visit. No matter how many times you’ve been there and seen it, it never ceases to capture the imagination. Likewise the Kremlin, with its majestic white cathedrals topped with countless glittering gold domes and crosses and interiors to take your breath away, and the endless treasures in the Armoury. High on the must-see list after that has to be the Tretyakov Gallery, packed to the gills with Russian art and magnificent icons, and the European art in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, which by reputation in Russia is second only to the Hermitage in St Petersburg.
St Petersburg
With palaces, parks, canals, grand squares and magnificent architecture lining street after street in the city centre, Peter the Great’s ‘window on the west’ captivates all who see her. Golden domes and needle spires dominate the skyline, curving waterways with tree-lined embankments lead to the wide River Neva, spanned by elaborate bridges and slicing the city into two distinct parts.
Designer shops vie for your attention among pastel-painted palaces on Nevsky Prospekt, the 5km-long, people-packed, traffic-filled main thoroughfare. Everything in St Petersburg is on a grand scale.
The State Hermitage Museum spans five palaces and has three million works of art, many of them displayed in rooms as spectacular as the exhibits. Another new 5-star hotel seems to arrive every year; smart restaurants, cafés, bars and clubs are everywhere.
Opulent summer palaces of the Tsars are must-do forays into the outskirts of the city. Peterhof on the shores of the Baltic was built to rival Versailles.
Moscow and St Petersburg thrive on both business and tourism. Although you can get by with English in the tourist centres, it definitely helps if you can read the Cyrillic alphabet and speak a smattering of Russian. In provincial cities both skills are essential, as few concessions are made to foreigners and you can feel frustratingly lost without at least a basic knowledge and understanding of the Russian language.
Ekaterinburg
Founded by Peter the Great and best known as the site of the assassination of Tsar Nicholas II in 1918, Ekaterinburg is considered Russia’s third major city after Moscow and St Petersburg.
It sits on the River Iset in the middle of the Urals, a geographic boundary between Europe and Asia, and throughout its 300-year history has been famed as a centre for mining and metallurgy.
Between 1924 and 1991 Ekaterinburg was re-named Sverdlovsk in honour of one of Lenin’s comrades, local communist leader Jakob M Sverdlov. At the centre of the Soviet war machine, building tanks and manufacturing armaments and missiles, for decades it was a city firmly off-limits and closed to foreigners.
Now well and truly open for business, with a population of 1.5million ‘the capital of the Urals’ is one of the country’s biggest centres for heavy industry with an increasingly important financial sector.
Ipatiev House, where Tsar Nicholas II, his family and their servants were murdered, was demolished in 1977 to avoid it becoming a pilgrimage site. Today a spectacular new Russian Orthodox cathedral, The Cathedral on the Blood, has risen to take its place and a monastery has been built where the bodies were found.
For lovers of the arts, a visit to the Opera House, one of the city’s most beautiful buildings, is a must. The ballet and opera season runs from September to July. The Museum of Fine Arts has a unique collection of Kasli cast-iron moulding, stone and gem cutting and modern jewellery from the Urals, together with its collections of European and Russian art spanning icons to the avant-garde.
As befits a hard working city where science, technology, universities, finance, banking and industry sit side by side, Ekaterinburg has an array of restaurants, bars and cafés with Russian, European and international cuisines, and a lively nightlife at weekends.
The number of Western-standard business hotels is growing. The award-winning, five-star Atrium Palace Hotel in the city centre is stylishly modern; the 4-star Trans Hotel is in the same complex as the British Consulate and US Consulate General and there’s a new 3-star Park Inn hotel close to the commercial and business district.
BMI has three flights a week to Ekaterinburg from Heathrow. The city is a major stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Kaliningrad
On the Baltic coast and sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, the enclave of Kaliningrad is isolated from the mighty landmass of the Russian Federation. A part of Germany until the region was annexed by the USSR after World War II, its capital city, which takes its name from that of the enclave, was formerly Konigsberg, a Hanseatic city that was once the capital of Prussia.
Razed to the ground in 1946, other than the old red brick cathedral there is little to show of Kaliningrad’s German history. The city was rebuilt in typical austere Soviet style, with monuments, museums, parks and gardens. Here you will still see statues of Lenin and busts of Karl Marx lining the streets.
As a University City and scientific centre that was also a major military base, it was closed to foreigners until after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The region is still of strategic importance to Moscow, particularly for the ice-free port of Baltiysk where the Russian Baltic Fleet is housed.
After years in post-Soviet doldrums, Russia’s decision in to grant the region special economic statues and investor tax advantages has paid off. Manufacturing and industry are flourishing. The city centre has been renovated and a gleaming new Russian Orthodox Cathedral built to reflect the new boom-time.
The European Union also provides funding for business projects. With two EU-members as neighbours, Kaliningrad has begun expanding trade westwards. Western restaurants and designer shops are springing up. There is one official five-star hotel, the centrally located Triumph Palace Hotel, which has a conference hall and business centre, and the air-conditioned rooms have (dial-up) internet connection.
The launch of daily direct scheduled flights from Gatwick to Kaliningrad by the Russian airline KD Avia has made reaching the city simple. The flight time is under two and a half hours, departure is in the late afternoon and a full meal is served.
The airline is promoting its base at Kaliningrad’s Khrabrovo airport as a hub and spoke operation, with connections to 11 cities across Russia, including Moscow and St Petersburg, plus Astana in Kazakhstan, as well as 15 cities in Europe.
