LANGUAGE

Will I be able to communicate in English?

English is widely spoken in good restaurants, expensive shops and in the busier, tourist areas of Russia. Most hotel staff around the country also speak English. This is, however, not always the case in regular bars, standard shops and amongst most taxi drivers or metro staff. Nevertheless, most people are responsive and will try to help you even without language knowledge. Cyrillic is the alphabet used in the Russian language. A phrasebook detailing the Cyrillic alphabet is recommended for travel.