Formal Semantics in Moscow 3




Venue

The conference is going to be held in the 1st Humanities building of the Moscow State University (MSU). This building is situatied in the MSU campus at the Metro station Universitet (red line, bottom). For the MSU campus map see WAFL3 homepage. The building you need is marked with "1" at the map.

The conference will be held in room #1060, 10th floor. There will also be a notice at the information board near the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (room 953, 9th floor). Registration etc will take place at the same room.

Since a few months, security policies at the MSU has been restricted, so you need to have your ID with you and present it to the security guard at the entrance to the building. You will be in a special list of conference participants. Shortly before the beginning of the registration till 10.30 there will be a person at the main entrance with a FSiM3 sign to help you in.


Currency

Russian currency is Russian rouble, 1 r. = 100 copecks (kopejka). 100 roubles is rougly equivalent to $3.90 or EUR 2.85. There are two main ways to get Russian currency. The first is to use currency exchange service. There is a lot of agencies doing the service, especially in the center of the city. One can locate them by big signs showing the current exchange rate for dollars and euros. A good rate would be some 20-30 kopejkas lower that the official Russian central bank rate.

Some agencies try to "legally cheat" on the customers by stating two exchange rates: one for "sums of more than $10000", which is at the top of the sign, and "normal sums", the rate for which is much lower, and which is placed into the bottom of the sign. Another issue is the rate for American dollars, which may be very bad (because rouble is strengthening against dollars). To overcome both problems, try to convert your money in Sberbank - the largest Russian bank which has a lot of departments all over Moscow. All of them have characteristic green signs.

The second way to get roubles is to bring your credit card and to directly withdraw money in roubles: there is a lot of ATMs in Moscow. ATM fraud occurs in Moscow sometimes, but not so often, so it is usually pretty safe to use ATMs. (If you are worried that you will not be able to determine if there is some card-number-stealing equipment on the ATM, it is better to use ATMs inside of bank departments and such and not the ones just in the street - bank employees regularly check them.)

Many shops and virtually all restaurants accept credit cards, but not all of them (e.g., many small groceries etc. do not accept cards).

Transportation

The most important of all possible means of transportation in Moscow is the underground, or metro, in Russian (the stress is on the second syllable). The exits are marked with a big red letter M
Usually, a station has several exits leading to different sides of a street or a square. There is no specific timetable, and the trains run every 2-3 minutes (during the day) or 4-6 minutes (in the late evening).

The trains in two directions (at most stations) run from the different sides of the same platform. All trains stop at all platforms (there is no express trains etc.) However, some trains do not go to the last station of the line, especially late in the evening. In such a case, all passengers leave the train and wait for the next one.

Unfortunately, the Moscow "metro" is not very English-friendly, so it is better to have a metro map in English with you. Changes of line should not be very difficult, though, since the lines are marked with colors, and one can find the needed passage by the color. A more difficult task is to find out the train in which direction one should take: there are signs with the names of the stations corresponding to each direction, but they are in Russian only. One of the possible strategies is to try to identify the last station in the direction you need and to look for its name in cyrillic letters. (So it is better if your map has both English and cyrillic names of the stations!)

The official map (found in the metro itself) looks like this . This map also allows you to find the best itinerary between any two stations (just click on the station's names) and to calculate how much time it will take in minutes.

More information about public transport, such as a printer-friendly version of the metro map, ways of getteing to/from the airports, information about buses, trolleybuses, trams and minibus-shuttles ("marshrutka") you will find at WayToRussia. Note that the prices given there are no more actual, here are the new prices.

Ticket prices (metro):

Ticket prices (buses, trolleybuses, trams):

Marshrutka fares are now 15-25 roubles, depending on its itinerary; look for the signs inside.

All the metro entrances, buses, trams and trolleybus in Moscow are now equipped with turnstiles you have to put your ticket into. Here you can find an instruction how to do it in metro. In other kinds of transport you just do it the other way round, that is, you insert your ticket not "bottom-up", but "top-down". In marshrutkas you just pass the money to the driver, no tickets are usually given.

Emergencies

If you are lost and need help, you may always call us - we will do our best to help you.

Igor

Anna

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