How to get from Moscow to Paris cheaply. One traveler’s story

As I scrolled through the news feed once again, I noticed that too many people I knew had decided to add romance to their lives and had gone to Paris. I remembered that I had never realized my childhood dream – I wanted to see the Dame du Lac wall with my own eyes, not in a picture.

Travel in numbers

In fact, my entire trip consists of a huge number of numbers, and if you remember the 6th grade math course, you will have no trouble planning something similar for yourself.

• Travel time from Moscow to Paris: 35 hours, in which I managed to sleep for four hours.
• Travel time from Paris to Moscow: 44 hours, of which it took four hours to sleep.
• Expenses for all types of transportation on the way: about 35 thousand rubles.
• Expenses during the trip: about 15 thousand rubles.
• Number of transfers: three.
• Number of countries visited: four (Belarus, Lithuania, Germany and France).
• Types of transportation: five (car, train, bus, plane and feet).
• Number of days: six.
• 118,503 steps traveled during the trip.
• Luggage: a backpack weighing 8 kg.

What you can not take with you in hand luggage, told in a previous article in the link below.

Before the start

Everything began with a full-scale preparation. We had to think over a thousand little things that could go wrong: visa, tickets, local currency exchange rates, border crossing, accommodation in Paris and other things.

Visa

The visa issue was resolved surprisingly quickly. I was lucky that the previous few visas were French, and the embassy in Moscow announced an extension program for those whose visas expired in 2020. This was exactly my case. Then I collected documents, made an appointment, waited and received the coveted “paper” in four days.

Tickets

I bought all the tickets after consulting with friends and colleagues. Initially I planned to go through Finland. It seemed to me that the route “Moscow – St. Petersburg – Helsinki – Paris” would be the most successful, fast and easy. It turned out that while I was gathering information, bus tickets from St. Petersburg to Helsinki ran out. I had to urgently work out a route, which I eventually took: “Moscow – Minsk – Vilnius – Paris”.

One of the variants of the route was as follows: Moscow (Russia) – Minsk (Belarus) – Vilnius (Lithuania) – Eindhoven (Netherlands) – Brussels (Belgium) – Paris (France). And then in the opposite direction. Thanks to my colleague Pauline for this plan. Apparently, she wanted to get rid of me.

First, I bought a flight “Vilnius – Paris – Vilnius” with a connection in Frankfurt am Main. Then the Minsk to Vilnius bus. And at the last moment a seated train to Minsk from Moscow. I didn’t take return tickets from Vilnius to Moscow at once – I bought them as the trip went on.

Currency

I had to do a little bit more with money. I had to make a foreign card in advance, get the exchange rate and get cash for emergencies. Half a day of comparing rates, studying conversions and percentages led to the fact that I had € 650 on my hands.

Accommodation

There were certain difficulties with hotel accommodation in Paris. Accommodation prices had skyrocketed quite a bit and continued to rise like yeast. I was looking for something like a private room with a shower, not a Bigfoot den. I would have been fine with pallets covered with a sheet, but, you know, I wanted coziness.

Day one. “Thank you that the train is not from an Emir Kusturica movie.”

At 6:00 my “luxury” train to Minsk departed from Belorussky station. I found myself on the platform slightly in advance and squinting my eyes after waking up. While waiting, I was kept company by scoundrels, cleaners and some marginal elements that I had no desire to analyze thoroughly.

My seat in the car was like a chair in the theater, when you come on the countermark. Only there you at least don’t have to straddle your knees to fit. The next eight hours were filled with homesickness, intuitive yoga, and a complete lack of sleep.

Upon arrival in Minsk, the first quest was to find the train station from which the “ikarus” departed towards the European Union. Having opened the map with all the markings, I found out that it was less than one verst, i.e. one kilometer. Having made sure that it was the right place, I began to study the map for nearby interesting things – there were still five hours before departure. The first place I found was the Minsk Museum of Skateboarding of the USSR, which I had not heard of before. About 750 different variants of boards from the first American boards to the latest ones from all over the world, different facts about the development of skateboarding and other cultural attributes fascinated me for several hours and did not want to let me go.

On my return to the station I took a snack and humbly waited for my flight in the company of dogs, carts, suitcases and people of all classes and bloods. At 19:00 local time the bus arrived at the station. On boarding the driver immediately warned that the travel time would be longer than the stated four hours.

At 22:00 at the border there was a queue waiting for us. Enough to miss the plane from Vilnius at 6:00. I hoped that my expectation of a late border crossing would be justified. Who would drive across the border at night? Right?

Back in Moscow it seemed to me that there should be three ways open at the border: for cars, trucks and passengers. In fact, there were only two. From the window of the bus I counted 15 trucks (I lost track of passenger cars after the 20th car), which were humbly waiting for the kindly admonition “please pass through”. I don’t know how, but our driver managed to sneak in at the beginning of each queue to shorten our crossing.

Day two. “Wait or I’ll have to sleep in the bushes.”

At the border, we were asked to leave the bus three times. The first time for inspection on the Belarusian side, the second time – on the Lithuanian side and the third time – again on the Lithuanian side, but already for clothes inspection. No one had any problems with documents and luggage, which allowed us to leave for Vilnius.

We arrived at our destination at 2:00. That means that I still had a chance to catch the plane. But there was no sleep in the near future – I hadn’t slept for almost twenty-four hours. The driver, a kind-hearted man, agreed to take me and a few other pilgrims to the airport for a symbolic €5. I was overjoyed, and the task of looking for a cab was over at once.

At the entrance to the airport I got the news: the hotel staff in Paris had failed to charge my card for the room. That meant I had six hours before my reservation was canceled. It was a stab in the back, but I realized that a tearful message asking them not to leave me on the street was not needed by any Frenchman at 3:00.

Three plans popped into my head. “Plan A” – I leave everything as it is, drive up and quietly check in, ignoring the cancel message. “Plan B” – I get there and will look for another hotel on the spot. “Plan C” – I try to spend the night at Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral.

I waited for boarding, got my tickets and walked to the gate. At the entrance I was asked to wear a mask and only then was allowed on the plane. It’s worth noting that in all the airports I found myself in during my trip, everyone wore masks.

The plane to Frankfurt was half-empty, and I was forced to fly for two hours alone in my row. If you can’t sleep on the plane, you can do something useful. For such an occasion, a few ideas were collected.

Already in Germany I was woken up by a flight attendant and asked to vacate the aircraft. Obediently, I went to the transit zone and began to argue with myself whether I would have time to visit Frankfurt in three hours. We agreed that there was still a way back when we could try to do it, and now it was not worth risking it.

Waiting at the airport and the way to Paris flew by unnoticed. Perhaps it was the habit of waiting and a couple of cans of energy inside. For the first time I exhaled with relief when I entered the Charles de Gaulle airport at 14:00 local time. Half the journey, you could say, was over.

The hotel did not expect me much, but consoled me that my room was kept, even though nobody had seen my message. I could not figure out the payment at once, because the ATM “ate” my card. The password I had set before the trip didn’t work twice, which threw a firewood of anxiety into my hearth of excitement. Having sorted out this rough patch, I was able to check in and exhale a second time.

After hearing stories of crime flourishing on the streets of Paris, I packed only the essentials, placed my money and phone in my belt pouch, tucked the gas canister in my pocket, and set off in the direction of the Eiffel Tower. I didn’t make a plan for visiting museums and sights, letting myself decide everything in the process. Already in the evening, when I returned to the hotel, I found out that during the day I had walked 31,200 steps and seen the main tourist havens: the Eiffel Tower, the Tuileries Garden, the Louvre and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris. By the way, I wouldn’t be able to spend the night there anyway – it’s still undergoing reconstruction.

Day 3. On a tour of the “13th neighborhood”

After waking up in the morning, I got ready, loaded up on proteins and carbohydrates and set off towards Lisse. First, I had to get down to the metro, not get lost on the subway, travel the lion’s share of the way on trains and get to Évry-Courcouronnes station and from there walk to the wall.

First I took the wrong train, then I didn’t find a change and had to walk down the street to the next subway branch. At the station where I was supposed to take the train, I was told that the trains weren’t going in the direction I wanted. It seemed that the universe was putting me in a bad way, and also that I had a badly worked out route. Taking a train to a station 10 kilometers away from the wall, I decided to let go of the problems and be in the moment. Arrived at the place, caught a bus and went on my way.

Already on the approach to the park of the commune of Lisse, I saw the top of the Dame du Lac wall and immediately cheered up. Soon a panorama with a view of the lake and the wall itself opened up in front of me. In essence, my goal had been achieved and my dream fulfilled. Even though the wall is fenced off and guarded by police, you can still get there. All you have to do is climb the fence. But I didn’t tell you that.

It was only a matter of time. I had to relive everything that had happened to me in the last three days in reverse order. I spent the rest of that day in Paris, walking along the Seine, eating croissants and choosing return tickets from Vilnius to Moscow.

Days four through six. “Please put me to sleep.”

The return trip turned out to be less stressful. All the routes and transfer points were already known. I had done the right thing in making a reserve of five hours for connections while buying the tickets. Since all the time there were delays that did not depend on me. So, the plane from Paris left late, but that only shortened my wait in Germany.

After spending hours at Frankfurt airport again, I started buying return tickets from Vilnius to Moscow. This time my connections didn’t want to dock, but overlapped. As a result, I could catch the bus to Minsk, but I couldn’t catch the train to Moscow. Thinking and talking to myself for a long time, I accepted that I would take a night bus from Minsk. A whole 11 hours.

When crossing the border from Lithuania to Belarus, I was lucky again. This time we were pulled out of the bus only twice, and the procedures were much faster. At that moment I hadn’t slept for about 28 hours – since leaving the hotel in Paris. It was slightly affecting my mood and body function. But I realized that it was necessary to live till the night bus to fall asleep there and forget about it on the way to Moscow.

According to the established tradition, the transfer to Moscow was with a “touch of luxury”. I got a seat at the edge of the window (where the beam is in the middle of the glass), from where a huge bolt threatened me, trying to crack my head on every bump. Habitual yoga could no longer throw up new poses in which to be comfortable. The companions, who sat down at one of the stops, were drinking alcohol, and the smell of their cigarettes was so strong that I even remembered the Lord’s Prayer, though I had never known it. I managed to fall asleep only at the approach to Moscow in the morning.

At 5:00 the bus stopped at Novoyasenevskaya station, which symbolized my arrival back to the capital. Rather ragged I fell out into the air, breathless from the smell of my neighbors, and realized that this journey was over.

No matter how difficult or silly my trip seemed, after a week of sleep I wanted to do something like this again. Would you dare?