Yekaterinburg

Currency budget Russia

Cash, as everywhere in Russia — foreign Visa and Mastercard do not work, in shops, online or in machines. Bring euros or dollars in clean notes, enough for the whole trip, and change them at a Sberbank, VTB or Alfa-Bank branch with your passport. Prices are well below Moscow’s.

ATMs & cards

No foreign card works in any machine. Change cash at bank branches in the centre, in stages, and keep it in two places. Some visitors on long stays open a local Mir card; for a few days it is not worth the paperwork.

Budget the whole trip in cash before you arrive. Foreign-issued UnionPay fails more often than it works.

Wherever you are: if the machine offers to charge you in your home currency, decline. That is dynamic currency conversion and the rate is set by the ATM's operator, not your bank.

Safety all of Russia

An ordinary large Russian city: the centre is fine on foot at night and street crime is low. Winter is the hazard — weeks below −15°C, pavements of packed ice, and icicles and snow sliding off roofs in the thaw, which kill people in Russian cities every year; walk away from the eaves. In the forests around the city, ticks carrying encephalitis are active from spring into high summer. The national caveats about travel to Russia apply here as everywhere.

Our own assessment, not a sourced index.

Entry & visa Russia visa rules

Health & emergencies all of Russia

Required to enter

No vaccinations are required for entry from Europe or North America.

Orientation, not medical advice — entry rules change and what you need depends on your own history. Check with a travel clinic four to six weeks before you go.

Food tip

Pelmeni, which the Urals claim as their own, are on every menu and are best in the plain canteens. The city has a good restaurant scene for its size, the Georgian and Uzbek places are the dependable ones, and Ural cuisine — game, mushrooms, river fish — is the thing the better kitchens are trying to revive.

Nightlife

The best evening between Moscow and Vladivostok: a real bar scene, a few good cocktail bars and a student crowd, all within walking distance of the pond.

• Vainera Street — the pedestrian street and the bars off it
• Plotinka — the embankment on summer evenings
• Malysheva Street — restaurants and bars along the main east–west street

Closing: Around 02:00 in the week, and later at weekends.

Getting around

• Airport: Koltsovo, south-east of the centre, with flights from Moscow in about two and a half hours
• Trans-Siberian — about 26 hours from Moscow on the through trains, and the first big stop in Asia
• Tram — the network covers the whole city and is the cheapest way around it
• Metro — one line of nine stations, north to south through the centre; useful if your hotel is on it
• Yandex Go — cheap, but paying in it needs a Russian card, so agree cash with the driver
• On foot — the centre between the pond, the Church on the Blood and Vainera Street is walkable, and the painted Red Line on the pavement links the sights

eSIM

A data eSIM for Russia, installed before you fly and working the moment you land: Not hereWorks hereRevolut No local plan

Must-see

Nearby day trips

Say a few words

Russian

• HelloЗдравствуйтеZDRAST-vooy-tye
• Hi (informal)Приветpri-VYET
• Please / you’re welcomeПожалуйстаpa-ZHAL-sta
• Thank youСпасибоspa-SEE-ba

Learn the Cyrillic alphabet before you go — an hour of work, and it turns most street signs, menus and metro maps into words you can half-read, because so many are borrowed. English is common among younger people in Moscow and St Petersburg and rare elsewhere. Translation apps with offline Russian are worth downloading before arrival.

Religion

Russian Orthodox

The Orthodox church is woven into the state and into national identity, and church attendance rose sharply after 1991. Visitors are welcome: women cover their heads in a church, men take hats off, everyone stands — there are no pews — and nobody minds a quiet foreigner at the back. Islam is the second religion and the majority in Tatarstan, the North Caucasus and parts of the Volga; Buryatia around Lake Baikal is Buddhist, and its datsans are working monasteries rather than museums.

Do's and don'ts

Do

• Take your shoes off in someone’s home; slippers appear immediately
• Shake hands firmly, and only after you have both come inside — a handshake across a threshold is bad luck
• Give flowers in odd numbers. Even numbers are for funerals, and the rule is taken seriously
• Carry your passport and migration card; the police can ask and occasionally do
• Dress up for the theatre and the ballet, and leave your coat in the cloakroom — wearing it inside is not done

Don't

• Do not expect small talk or smiles from strangers; a neutral face in public is normal, not hostility
• Do not photograph military sites, airports or anything a sign forbids — this is enforced
• Do not discuss the war, and understand that the laws on "discrediting the armed forces" and on "LGBT propaganda" apply to visitors, in conversation and on your phone
• Do not refuse a toast at a table without a reason; refusing the third one, to the women present, is worse
• Do not put an empty bottle back on the table, which is a superstition everyone observes without explaining