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ruby2zday
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Posted 6 years ago

I will be travelling to Baku from US in a few days. This is the first time I am going someplace I will be completely illiterate in terms of languages and am a bit nervous. I\'m trying to buy the train tickets online on the azerbaijan railway website but I can only get parts of it translated. I got all the way to the part of payment. My options were azeri cash (or something similar) or goldenpay. I chose golden pay and entered my credit card information. When I hit the button to submit there is a large box of text that pops up in Azeri that I can\'t translate at all and then it times out and I have not bought tickets. I emailed the goldenpay folks asking if you can use a foreign visa or mastercard for that and they said yes but it doesn\'t seem to work and I don\'t know if it\'s me or the website. So . . . any insight on that would be helpful. Alternatively, does anyone know the hours the baku railway station is open for buying tickets? We will arrive very early in the morning and will have time to kill so figured we could buy tickets right away. It will be on a Sunday. Any tips on navigating that for someone who doesn\'t speak the language would be helpful. Thank you in advance.

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Flo
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replied 6 years ago

Hi and welcome to railcc!

Unfortunately I cant really help with the credit card issue. :(

Did you check your spam folder? Maybe you actually purchased the ticket but the confirmation mail got in the spam?
Did you contact your bank/credit card provider? From my experience some banks (at least in Europe) automatically block transactions in Russia and other ex-Soviet countries due to fear of fraud. Maybe the transaction has to be authorized manually by your bank.

I obivously cant test the whole booking process myself since I dont have plans to go to Azerbaijan in the near future. ;)
Still, the booking went smoothly until I select GoldenPay and have to enter my card details.

Do you know about the different types of carriages on the train?
- PL/Platzkartny: open couchette coach with 54 bunk beds. Beds are arranged lenghtwise on one side of the corridor and sidewise on the other. There are lower and upper beds, lower beds are also used for sitting during the day. I\'d recommend a sidewise lower bed as you can usually store your luggage below these beds securely overnight.
- KP/Kupe: sleeping car with 32 berths in 8 compartments. Four beds (two lower, two upper) in each compartment. More privacy and comfort than in Platzkartny.
- SV/Spalny Vagon: sleeping car with 16 beds in 8 compartments. Two beds (two lower) in each compartment. Probably some extra features such as TV set (but I am not sure about this particular service).

If you don\'t manage to book online it won\'t be a problem to buy the tickets locally at Baku station. When I checked the online ticket booking process there were still enough places available for today\'s departure. Also I think that since in ex-Soviet countries online train booking is not that common yet, many passengers will simply buy their tickets locally before departure.
I dont\'t know about the opening times of Baku station but since there are trains arriving early in the morning there should be open ticket desks too.

From what I\'ve read there is english speaking staff too; but I would also write the basic information (date of travel, departure/arrival station, number of travellers, travel class) on a piece of paper. In Azeri and maybe English too.
I usually to this in countries such as Bulgaria or Ukraine which have cyrillic alphabet.

Hope that helps. :)

Would be great to hear from your experiences and maybe see some pictures of the train!
We could then write a short article to help future travellers. :)

Flo