Planes, trains and automobiles

There is nothing like a good obstacle to mark the one month countdown to the start of a trip. This week has seen a couple of problems and I’m hoping that there won’t be any others. We were lucky enough that they were only minor glitches and that we were able to resolve them - it wasn’t quite as painful as a Steve Martin movie.

Aside from our main flights (Auckland-Hong Kong and Hong Kong-Moscow), planes are not the preferred mode of transport. I’d rather take trains when I am overseas, especially in Europe because they are just so much better than the trains in New Zealand. I grew up with an impressive electric train set (more for my dad’s enjoyment than mine) and always wanted to go on the ICE train that they have in Germany. I finally managed this at the end of 2011 from Frankfurt to Amsterdam via Cologne and it was glorious! In Italy I made use of the fast Frecciarossa and Frecciargento trains which were very similar to the ICE and took less time than a plane to get from city to city once you take into account the time spent milling around plus the time spent getting to and from the airport.

We do have one flight booked though, UTair flight 718 from Tallinn to Moscow, which has turned out to  be a bit of a nuisance this week.

The only train available between Tallinn and Moscow is the 34 which leaves Tallinn at 5pm and doesn’t arrive in Moscow until after 9am (about 14 hours once you take into account the different time zones). Given that sunset in Tallinn will be at 10.40pm and sunrise in Moscow at 4.45am, it seems like a lot of wasted daylight hours.

Using Skyscanner, we found a direct flight that was cheaper than a compartment on the 34 train and only slightly more expensive than a regular seat. Scheduled to depart Tallinn at 2.45pm and arrive in Moscow at 5.25pm on our penultimate day, this flight was perfect.

It was perfect until I got an email on Monday telling me that the flight had been cancelled. UTair had automatically rebooked us onto a flight for 7am the following morning and while our flight out of Moscow is scheduled to leave at 8pm, we didn’t really want to risk it. Who knows what could happen on the day, ideally I would like to get home again! Besides, we have a non-refundable room at a fancy hotel booked for the Saturday night.

From what I could tell, the only way to change our flights on the UTair website was to cancel the rescheduled flight and book an entirely new one.  I could have tried the call centre, but they are based in Moscow so that call probably would have cost me an arm and a leg. The annoying thing about this is that we are happy with that flight but just want it a day earlier!

Luckily I was able to get a full refund for the first flight (although I am still waiting for the money) and even though it is just over a month and a half out, the cost of the new flight was only $20 more than the original one. It could be worse, it could have been completely non-refundable.

The bus to the Tallinn airport only starts at 6am which means we will now have to sort out a shuttle in order to make the 7am flight. Sigh. One option is to sleep at the airport, but we have already paid for our hotel and I guess it’ll give me a reason to get up to see the sun rise over the Old Town.

The other issue I’ve had this week involves the Russian Railways (RZD) website and my ANZ credit card. 

Trains are awesome, but boy do the Russians make it difficult for a foreigner to book tickets! We were able to book our St Petersburg-Helsinki tickets on the Finnish Railways (VR) website, but not the Moscow-St Petersburg ones. RZD has an English version of their website, but that doesn't extend to their online booking system. If you want to book tickets directly through RZD, you have to do it in Russian. I think intermediaries are a rip-off and I try to avoid them at all costs, so I was determined to make the RZD booking system work.

There are several step-by-step guides on the internet on how to navigate the RZD booking system including the ones published by Valigia Pronta and The Man in Seat 61. These guides made it pretty easy, plus learning to read Cyrillic is helpful even if I don’t understand what most of the words mean! As long as I get to the right train station, onto the correct train, and into the women's toilets rather than the men's, I will be happy. 

I followed the instructions in the guides and created an RZD account. All was well, I managed to find the high speed Sapsan train that I wanted and entered our personal details (surname, first name, passport number):

But then came trouble. Neither my ANZ credit card nor ANZ debit card would work. It kept coming up with a weird error message even though my credit card had worked on the UTair website. Charlotte’s credit card is also an ANZ one so I didn’t even bother trying hers.

The hunk kindly lent me his ASB credit card, which worked. The RZD payment page took me through to an ASB security portal which asked me to verify some of the hunk’s details like his birthday and card limit. After this, the payment went through. I think this means that ASB has a more flexible security system in place, but it is making me wonder if I should apply for a credit card with another bank to take with me in case I have more ANZ-related issues while I am away…