Directions in Russian: Asking the Way & Using Public Transport

You will learn

• to ask where places are
• and how to get to them
• to understand directions

and there will be some information and advice about public transportation.

Before you begin

A word of advice: when a person gives you directions, it is unlikely that you will understand every word. But remember, you don’t need to! You want the gist, the crucial words which will tell you where to go.

Study guide

🔊 Dialogues: Asking for Directions

1. Lyena is looking for a post office.

2. Ira wants to get to the Arbat.

Practice what you have learned

1. Nina is still finding her way around in a new area. From her house she has been given directions to various places. On your recording you will hear these directions, but not the places! Follow the instructions each time, then see if you can complete the questions she asked.

2. A tourist is given some directions and writes them down in translation. Unfortunately there is one mistake in each set of instructions. Listen to your recording, then correct his notes.

🔊 Dialogues: Public Transport

3. Which trolleybuses go to the Pushkin Museum?

4. Masha wants to get to Pushkin Square.

отсюда from here
Пушкинская площадь / площадь Пушкина Pushkin square

Practice what you have learned

3. Below are signs you may see on a city street. Look at the numbers of the bus, trolleybus or tram routes which go from each stop and then listen to the dialogues on your recording. Can you tell which stop you need to wait at to get to each place?

4. On your recording you will hear a sightseer asking how to get to various famous places. He understood at the time, but later it was just a jumble of words. Listen, and see if you can find the necessary stations on the subway map below.

* This is a simplified version of the map. For the up-to-date version, see Read and understand.

🔊 Dialogues: Catching the Right Tram

5. Misha is looking for Vagan'kov cemetery.

6. Where does he catch a No. 23?

7. In the tram Misha battles his way to the exit.

Practice what you have learned

5. On your recording you will hear people asking for directions. Listen several times then tick the correct answer.

You will need the word телецентр ‘television center’.

6. You are a tourist trying to get out of a bus.

To use

To understand

Ordinal numbers
(1st - 12th are in lesson 7)

Words such as to, through and from are called prepositions. As you would expect, they are particularly useful when asking for directions! You met quite a few in this lesson: в / на to, через through and до up to. Easy enough to learn, but unfortunately there are other changes. Each of these prepositions is said to ‘take’ a particular case, that is, it makes endings change in a particular way. Two cases are common when you are talking about going to places - the accusative case, used after в, на and через, and the genitive case used after до. In lesson 3, you saw that a feminine noun has a new ending if it is the object of the sentence (this is its accusative ending). It ends in exactly the same way after the preposition в or на meaning ‘to, into’ and after через meaning ‘across’. For example, the word for street is улица: to ask how to get to Dostoevsky street, you would say:

Как пройти на улицу Достоевского?

Masculine and neuter nouns do not have different endings for the accusative.

One warning: в and на can mean ‘to, into’ if they come after a verb implying motion. However, they can also mean ‘in, on’, in which case the endings are different, i.e. Кремль в Москве ‘the Kremlin is in Moscow’ (see the grammar section in lesson 2). Certain other prepositions, like до, take the genitive case. Look at the following examples:

какой автобус идёт до Арбата?
какой автобус идёт до улицы Достоевского?

A masculine (or neuter) noun will simply add -a (sometimes spelled -я). A feminine noun will end in -ы (sometimes spelled -и) after these prepositions.

7. A tourist visiting Belarus, Ukraine and Russia is asked by a Belarusian border official which places he plans to see. He produces the following list of cities:

Here is a script of what he could have said, but you will need to add the cities with the correct endings. (When talking about movement to a city, the preposition в is always used.)

(I) Я еду , потом (II) , потом (III) , потом (IV) , потом (V) , потом (VI)

8. You will be traveling by bus, so you will need to ask:

You will be travelling by bus, so you will need to ask:
какой автобус идёт...

Read and understand

9. Members of a tourist group in Moscow spurned the services of their guide, asking only for a map of the metro and instructions about how to find some famous places. They managed admirably! Follow their instructions and the map, and mark out the route they would have planned in order to take in all the places.

* For the full up-to-date scheme, see the official Moscow Metro map or Moscow Metro map on Metro News.

10. Below are two types of tickets commonly used by Muscovites. On what forms of transportation can they use each ticket?

I.

II.

Note: the paper punch ticket (талон, see II above) is now outdated. Today Muscovites use the "Тройка" (Troika) travel card, bank cards, or a phone / QR code to pay for public transport. The types of tickets keep changing, so the exact ones shown here may already be out of date.

💡 Did you know?

Getting around in the city

For many years visitors to the Soviet Union were quietly discouraged from traveling around the city by themselves. Tourists were transported from one worthwhile ‘sight’ to another by coach, and rarely met Soviet people.

Fortunately the atmosphere has changed, and since public transport within cities is good, if crowded, we would recommend that you make your own way about. Especially now that you have learned to ask directions!

Some of the large cities have good subway systems, as well as trolleybuses, trams and buses. In the main cities you will also find маршрутные такси, minibuses carrying about 10 passengers which follow a fixed route (normally indicated on the side window). You can ask the driver to stop anywhere along the route (just give the name of the place with пожалуйста). Finding a taxi is not a problem especially if you are near the airport, where there are always those wanting to earn some money. You probably won’t need your Russian though - they seem to be able to negotiate their deals in any language! 🙂

Tickets

On the subway there are turnstiles that only let you through once you have paid at the entrance. However, to use trolleybuses, tram or buses, you need талоны or, more colloquially, талончики. These small tickets are available from the conductor in a tram / bus / trolleybus - he (she) will come to you or for you 🙂. Those who use public transportation a great deal buy the more economical and convenient единый, a travel pass valid for one month.

By the way, despite inevitable tension and friction caused by overcrowding, it is unusual for children or elderly people to have to stand in public transportation.

And how it works today:

Getting around a Russian city today is much easier. In Moscow the old paper талончики and the monthly единый have been replaced by the «Тройка» travel card, and you can also just tap a bank card or phone at the reader – on the metro, buses, trolleybuses and trams alike. Conductors have mostly disappeared; you pay at the entrance yourself. The fixed-route minibuses (маршрутки) that once ran everywhere have largely been replaced by regular buses. Trolleybuses, too, have almost disappeared from Moscow, though you will still find them in many other Russian cities.

For taxis, the smart way is to use an app such as Яндекс Go, where the price is fixed in advance and you pay by card. This matters most at airports: drivers who approach you in the arrivals hall may still charge several times the normal fare, so it is much safer and cheaper to order a car in the app instead. To plan a route on public transport, a maps app (Яндекс Карты, 2GIS) will show you exactly which bus, tram or metro line to take.

Your turn to speak

You have just arrived in Moscow. You need to find out where the pharmacy is, how to get to Pushkin square, which trolleybuses go to Arbat and where the trolleybus stop is. You will be using the following phrases:

извините, пожалуйста, ...
скажите, пожалуйста,...
где здесь...?
как проехать в/на...?
какой троллейбус идёт до...?
а где остановка?

FAQ