Until recently, visitors to Moscow had little choice but to pay for hugely expensive hotels. But now there is another option: growing numbers of clean modern hostels that opened over the last five years, charging around $20 per night. Hostels now offer more than 3,000 beds in Moscow and their number grew by almost a third since May, the city's tourism committee said.

直到最近，到莫斯科的遊客別無選擇，只能花大錢投宿極其昂貴的旅館。但現在有另一種選擇：過去5年來，愈來愈多乾淨的現代化青年旅館開業，每晚住宿費只要20美元左右（約台幣580元，下同）。莫斯科市觀光協會表示，該市這些青年旅館現在提供3000多張床，而且5月以來增加了近1/3。

“It's very well located... and it was cheap as well,” said Mexican student Carolina Felton, 22, who was visiting Moscow as a tourist and sharing a dormitory room with seven others, as well as a bathroom and kitchen. “A hotel is way beyond my price range,” said British student Mike Loader, who was visiting Moscow for sightseeing and to research Soviet history, calling Moscow a “premium” and “expensive” city. Both were staying at a hostel close to the Arbat pedestrian street, in one of the most attractive areas of the city center. It sleeps around 30 people in dormitories with up to 12 beds, starting at just 550 rubles per night.

墨西哥22歲的學生卡洛萊娜．費爾頓正在莫斯科旅行，她和另外7人同住一個宿舍房間，並共用浴室和廚房。她說：「地點好……又便宜。」正在莫斯科旅遊及研究蘇聯史的英國學生羅德則表示，莫斯科是個「天價」又「昂貴」的都市，「我根本住不起旅館。」兩人住在靠近阿爾巴特步行街的一家青年旅館，這也是莫斯科市中心最有吸引力的地區之一。旅館宿舍可住30人左右，共有12張床，每晚住宿費550盧布（550元）起跳。

The owner, Daniil Mishin, is just 18 and comes from Ukraine, where he and his parents own several more hostels. He said they got the idea when travelling in Europe and decided to recreate the hostel concept locally. He and his family have opened a total of seven hostels in Moscow and their home town of Sevastopol, Crimea. Business is going well, he said, with his most recent hostel in Moscow opening in early August. Occupancy rates are currently at around 80 percent, with bookings for months ahead.

旅館老闆米申剛滿18歲，來自烏克蘭，他和父母親已經開了好幾家青年旅館。他們是到歐洲旅行時得到靈感，決定把青年旅館的概念搬到莫斯科。他和家人總共在莫斯科和老家克里米亞的塞瓦斯托波爾開了7家青年旅館。他說生意不錯，他最新一家青年旅館8月初在莫斯科開張。目前住房率約80％，未來幾個月也已經有人預訂。

“Everything has changed: the market has gone mad,” concluded Mishin. Whereas a year ago the guests were almost all young foreigners on a shoestring budget, that has now changed. The guests are “people of different ages, different professions, completely different social circles,” Mishin said. And recently the first Russians started checking in. “It is about a year since Russians started going to hostels,” he said. “They realized that you could live comfortably in the center, and pay 500 rubles per night for nice conditions.”

米申總結：「一切都變了，市場簡直瘋狂。」1年前，投宿青年旅館的客人幾乎全是預算有限的外國年輕人，現在已經變了。米申指出，客人「來自不同年齡層，職業也不一樣，完全不同的社會階層。」最近，第一批俄羅斯客人也開始上門，他說：「俄國人開始到青年旅館投宿是大概1年前的事，他們開始發現並了解，你可以舒適地住在市中心區，一晚只要付500盧布（500元），而且各種條件都很好。」

The concept of hostels did not exist in the Soviet era, when travelers would stay at large state-owned hotels. Extremely basic communal dormitories were used not by travelers but by students or migrant workers. Due to visa restrictions, Russia has relatively few independent travelers, and the idea of cheap, basic accommodation took some time to jump the border. There still isn't a Russian word for the concept, known as “khostel”.

前蘇聯時代，根本沒有青年旅館這個概念，遊客多半住在大型國營旅館。一般觀光客不住極其陽春的公共宿舍，只有學生或外地民工才會去投宿。受限於簽證，俄羅斯自助旅行的遊客相對很少，廉價陽春的住宿形態花了不少時間才跨越障礙成形。目前俄文還沒有青年旅館這個字，而逕稱之為khostel。

Yet hostels fill a vital niche in a city where hotel rooms are among the world's dearest, at around 149 pounds ($243) on average in 2010, according to the Hotel Price Index, a survey of rates at top destinations. By contrast, the average hotel room in Dubai cost 120 pounds and in London 114 pounds, while in the tourist mecca of Prague, the average room costs just 67 pounds.

青年旅館填補了莫斯科市一個重要的利基，據調查最熱門旅遊景點旅館住宿費用的「旅館物價指數」指出，該市旅館住宿費高居全球最昂貴之林，2010年平均每晚要大約149英鎊（6900元）。相形之下，杜拜的旅館房間平均約120英鎊（5560元）、倫敦114英鎊（5280元），布拉格旅遊聖地平均住房費更只有67英鎊（3100元）。

Despite the mushrooming of hostels, there is still little choice of moderately priced hotels available in Moscow city center, dominated by four and five star hotels. “There is a lack of reasonably priced hotels,” said Anton Melnikov of estate agents Knight Frank, linking the problem to the high price of land. “They will develop, but not in the center.”

儘管青年旅館蓬勃發展，莫斯科市中心的平價旅館少之又少，主要還是四星級和五星級旅館。〔全球首屈一指的〕房地產經紀公司「萊坊」的梅尼科夫認為，這個問題和地價偏高息息相關。他說：「平價旅館太少，它們將會發展起來，但不會在市中心區。」

Large new hotels need to recoup the cost of costly plots with high room rates, while hostels do not have such costs because they are usually housed in existing buildings, some in former apartments knocked together. "Tourists will have to stay in the outskirts, get on the metro and ride to the centre," Melnikov predicted. "In Amsterdam, Brussels or London, you will always be able to find a cheap hotel in the center ... but in Moscow, you are not going to find this," he said.

大型新旅館為了填補昂貴的地價，只好提高住房費，青年旅館則不用負擔這類成本，因為它們通常利用現有的建築物，有些則是把老舊的公寓打通合併。梅尼科夫預言：「遊客將不得不住在郊區，再搭地鐵到市中心。但在阿姆斯特丹、布魯塞爾或倫敦，在市中心區就可以找到便宜的旅館……在莫斯科絕對找不到。」

In this photo, people eat in the kitchen of the Bear hostle in Moscow, on August 4, 2011.

在這張攝於今年8月4日的照片中，幾個遊客正在莫斯科貝爾青年旅館的廚房用餐。