Services Abound in Russian Hostel

The St. Petersburg International Hostel in Russia does more than provide inexpensive accommodations for young travelers. It also has just launched an Internet site offering information that independent, adventurous travelers will find very helpful.

St. Petersburg is the second-largest city in Russia--and the one with the most Western European influence. Created by Peter the Great in 1703, it’s actually built on swampland and linked by more than 300 bridges. The city is known for its wide boulevards, canals and magnificent buildings such as the Winter Palace (which houses parts of the Hermitage museum). The fortress of Peter and Paul, across the river from the Hermitage, was the first building in the city. Today it houses the tomb of the Romanovs--Csar Nicholas II and his family, who were killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and moved to this burial site in 1998.

The St. Petersburg International Hostel is in the historic city center, just a five-minute walk from Nevsky Prospect--one of Russia’s grandest streets.

Many of the city’s key sites are along Nevsky Prospect, which runs from the Hermitage and Palace Square to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. Lonely Planet’s “Europe” says the St. Petersburg International Hostel “could not have a better location. . . . It’s a five-minute walk northeast of Moscow Station.”

The St. Petersburg International Hostel was one of the first Western-style travelers’ hostels in Russia. Californian Steve Caron opened it with several Russian partners in 1992. After graduating from USC in 1989 with a bachelor’s degree in theater and business, Caron traveled to Russia to study Russian theater, culture and language in St. Petersburg. He found accommodations for foreigners to be expensive and limited, so he created a travelers’ hostel with Western standards.

The St. Petersburg International Hostel meets the standards of the worldwide organization Hostelling International. Caron and his partners went on to establish and administer the Russian Youth Hostel Assn. (Internet https://www.hostelling-russia.ru), which now has seven hostels throughout the country.

The St. Petersburg hostel is in a pre-Revolution Russian building with parquet floors, high ceilings and large rooms. “Let’s Go: Europe” describes it as a tidy hostel with all the basics.

Nightly rates with breakfast are $19 for a bed in a dormitory room and $24 for a bed in a double. Rates drop an average of $4 per night after Nov. 1. Students and members of Hostelling International save about $1 per night.

English-language movies are played nightly, and walking tours are organized daily. Internet access is available.

Concerned about the limited availability of accurate and useful travel information, as well as the confusion and frustration that travelers often face when they travel in Russia, in 1995 Caron and his partners opened Sindbad Travel, Internet https://www.sindbad.ru/en, a full-service student and youth budget travel agency located in the hostel. Guests can book tours, adventure trips and train tickets.

Sindbad has offices at St. Petersburg State University and in the Ukraine and Georgia. Caron plans to expand the network of hostels and Sindbad Travel offices.

The St. Petersburg International Hostel’s Web site, at https://www.ryh.ru, includes links for Russia and the neighboring states. You’ll find information on safety and visas; where to find English-language Russian newspapers, so you can read local news before you arrive; entertainment activities; travel safety advisories; transportation information and railway schedules; hostel guides; weather and news reports; currency converters; an ATM locater; and a language translator.

In addition to information from the Internet, travelers should invest in a guidebook that includes the names of key sites and streets in Cyrillic script. Even if you can’t pronounce an address, you can always point it out. Lonely Planet guidebooks have this feature, as does “Let’s Go: Europe,” which has a 23-page chapter on Russia.

For further information, contact: St. Petersburg International Hostel, 3rd Sovetskaya ul., 28 193036, St. Petersburg; telephone 011-7-812-329-8018, fax 011-7-812-329-8019, e-mail ryh@ryh.ru.