Personal experience: how to ride a funicular in Moscow and not to get mad

However, unpleasant surprises for the future travelers await on the way to the checkout, and there are many of them.

Oleg Goryunov

The authors of the cable car project seem to have foreseen everything except ... sloppiness.

Take, for example, the idea of creating a "transfer station": those who were content with a short trip to it from the observation deck on Vorobyovy Gory, in this case, have the opportunity to transfer to another metropolitan attraction - a river tram.

For those who originally traveled around Moscow by river tram, there is an opportunity at the Novaya Liga station to change to a funicular.

One misfortune: the Novaya Liga station does not always work, and, according to a local ice cream saleswoman, the transfer station does not have a work schedule at all: "When they want, then they open".

What if you sailed on a river boat with small children to the transfer station of the New League funicular, and it is closed?

There are two options for solving this problem: walk to the metro bridge, cross the Moskva River, and walk to the Luzhniki funicular station.

The second option is to climb up the "million" steps of a staircase that is in emergency condition and does not have a ramp, even an emergency one.

Those who, from the bank of the Moskva River, still managed to get to the observation deck on Vorobyovy Gory, are in for a surprise: the ticket office of the funicular, like the Novaya Liga station, is closed...

The same ice cream saleswoman suggests that tickets can be purchased from the machine, but the machine does not offer discounts to children, and at the box office you can buy a ticket at a discount.

But where is this box office?

The funicular ticket office is located on the second floor of the station building in ...a cafe!

Of course, you can understand the owner of the cafe: why not make an agreement with the cashiers of the Moscow City Funicular to sell tickets to his cafe? While the children languish in line with their parents, out of boredom they buy something tasty in the cafe - the cashier of the cafe itself is always free, unlike the funicular.

It is clear that the owner of the cafe is a very enterprising person, but where are the authorities looking? And why build and equip a cashier on the ground floor? The cashier of the funicular told the NI correspondent that she herself did not understand why the authorities had moved them to the cafe, saying that the ticket office on the first floor was not broken, it was fully operational.

It all sounds like someone's cruel joke or ...a violation of the rules of the trade.

The funicular ticket office located in the cafe is not all that makes you mad. Having bought a ticket from Vorobyovy Gory station to Luzhniki station and back, you should know that in Luzhniki they will force you to leave the booth for some reason, go down several flights of stairs, validate your tickets and only then you will earn the right again sit in the cable car...

Who and why came up with such rules, no one can explain to you - the rules are such, and that's it.

Anyone with the slightest knowledge of safety will tell you that boarding a cable car is the most important and dangerous part of a cable car journey.

However, the slovens working on the Moscow funicular, either do not know about this, or simply do not give a damn about the safety and comfort of millions of Muscovites and guests of the capital.

And why in Russia a lot is still being done through the... "cafes"?