Russian travel.

[onekatietwo.livejournal.com]

Hello, I have a few questions regarding traveling to Russia. I'm going to Moscow and Petersburg for a few weeks and I just have some questions. I think that's way too off-topic for here, so I was just wondering if anybody knows of any active-ish, english language communities that might be able to address those kinds of questions and could provide some good discussion. I'm not having much luck with live-journal's search feature.

Thanks, and feel free to delete this if even this question is too off topic. Apologies if so!

Edit:
Ok. So you guys seem plenty willing to help even if it's a tad off topic, so I'll share a few general questions here. But basically any 'from america to russia' tips will be appreciated!


So first off, I'm not overly concerned about language issues. For one, I have at least some experience with Russian. I'm pretty rusty, and very basic, but it should be enough to get me by considering the nature of my trip. Additionally, I can read Russia pretty well (again, at a very beginner level, but still,) so that should help.
Also, I am going on a kind of class trip. It was supposed to be a 3 week intensive language study, but not enough people from little town in the US were interested in putting down tons of cash for 3 weeks of basically torture in Russia. I thought it sounded awesome, though!
Anyway, it's basically been reduced to a tour trip, which I don't think is as exciting (I was really excited to actually learn the language a bit!) but still pretty awesome, considering I've never traveled. We have a member of the faculty from the Russian department at my school coming along and kind of guiding the trip. She's fluent in Russian and I've heard she doesn't even speak with an accent because she has Russian family. Additionally, a couple of the students are at a very high level of Russian speaking. With all these crutches, I think I'll be ok.


So my first question: Jogging in Russia. I've recently started jogging and I thought it would be cool to continue while I'm in Russia. We're also going to have some 'off time' where we will basically be sitting around doing nothing, or doing whatever we want to do and I thought jogging would be a cool way to kind of see a bit of the city, and also pass some time.
However, I don't know if this is safe at all. Do you think it would be safe for a lone 20-something American girl to do some jogging in the mornings in Moscow and Petersburg? Maybe if I could get another student to come with me? We're staying at a hostel, but I don't have the name or exact location right now.
This might not be important at all because I'l probably just be exhausted all the time from all the things we'll be doing.

Second: How do Russians typically drink their coffee? I mean specifically coffee from cafes and stuff. I do love my coffee and tea and I would like to know how to order it so I'll get something that I enjoy.

Third: This is a slightly academic, guided (sort of) tour trip, but we have a lot of say in what we do and wwhere we go and we have plenty of time to do our own things. We probably have a ton of the general, standard tour things scheduled in, so I'm just curious about other, less typical things I should do/visit/see while I'm there.

I'm particularly interested in things to see around Petersburg. My instructor is not as familiar with Petersburg and said she doesn't have much planned for there. I'm big into Russian literature, especially Petersburg literature, so I'm REALLY excited to go there, more so than Moscow, honestly. I'm just worried I'll end up not knowing what to do with myself and just sit around all day consequently. Any tips?

Thanks, everybody!