Rolphdinho,
The ticket should be bought best from Wasteels in Bratislava, in my opinion the railway station office is not as good.
Reason: Wasteels issues hand-written tickets and will have no problem with border points like Naushki(GR), Mandschuria(GR), Tumangan(GR).
However, the border points are not in the Slovak ticket computer, only Naushki (as station), Zabaikalsk (as station) and no Tumangan.
They can issue to border-points as well, it just takes 24 hours and a lot of red tape.
In my opinion legally - looking at SMPS legal guide book - the CITY-STAR tickets to borderpoints are LEGALLY more beneficial even as from price point of view it's the same.
Besides, the large white envelops Wasteels office would write you look more cool than boring pieces of cardboard or the railway :)
The Wasteels in Bratislava is at the railway station, it's just a different office. The price is the same 172 Euro for the round-trip, they accept credit cards.
I did not buy tickets from Wasteels in Bratislava, I bought from a small rural railway office in Sturovo (was closer to my house in Hungary and I was lazy), I got them within 5 minutes and paid with c/c.
bmta:
1) The CITY-STAR ticket one-way obviously is not good for Moscow-Naushki travel. An MPT through ticket would be better - but NO POINT-TO-POINT, please. You lose a lot with losing the degressivity. It is perfectly fine to issue a Moscow-Beijing through ticket with Moscow-Vladimir bed reservation and nothing behind. Normal ticket agency won't do it because they are lazy asses to think, but TSI should do it because that's the rule in the books. Once it's done he could buy city-to-city bed supplements according MPT tariff, regardless is it within Russia or across the border. Unlike the through ticket itself, the bed reservation is OK to issued within the same country using MPT tariff - see UTTI's case last year.
2) From Austria on - if you plan to reach Moscow first the CITY-STAR ticket from Bratislava is better. it's 172 Euro and the one-way Bratislava-Moscow ticket alone is 77.42 Euro (plus sleeper). The Moscow-Naushki(GR) part of MPT ticket is 5875 km, which would be - see here
http://www.gdo.kiev.ua/files/db.php?god=2004&st=2109
70.59 CHF "base" price, without the multiplier. Russian rail has multiplier well over 2.0 (I don't remember, I calculated it last year, before the multiplier raise it was 1.72, than it became like 2.3, I am sure in May it will be more again), so let's silently assume it's 2.3. We have at least 160 Fränkli (ca. 100 Euro) for Moscow-Naushki part of Moscow-Beijing ticket, plus the 77.42 Euro from Bratislava to Moscow. Obviously, that's already more than the 172 Euro. And we did not calculate the possible multiplier increase in May.
Hence my verdict: from Bratislava it's better to use the CITY-STAR to Naushki even for one person, one-way (marginally) than 'cutting' into TCV/VZ part till Moscow and MPT part from Moscow. For two persons or for the round-trip it's significantly better. If the Russians will 'surprise" us this May with MPT tariff multiplier increase, than it will be even better for CITY-STAR because CITY-STAR is not MPT tariff and the price increase won't happen at least until December 12. The worst solution is cutting the ticket into many point-to-point ticketlets, all degressivity will be lost and Russian domestic tickets are more expensive than MPT anyway
The tickets issued to borderpoints rather than to stations can save you money and some trouble. Why? Because you can save precisely on the sleeping car supplements. The CIV tickets issued till borderpoints point behind the last station of Vostok-Zapad tariff are the argument the traveler can argue and expect to pay sleeper supplements according MPT/EMPT tariff of SMPS, not the significantly more expensive Vostok-Zapad/TCV. According SMPS "Tariff Handbuch" ("Тарифное руководство") the traveler has to get the bed reservation according the tariff of his goal. Now, let's take the "goal" called Naushki. With a CITY-STAR "Bratislava-Naushki" some Russian ticket agencies will argue, the "goal" of the passenger is to reach the station of Naushki, settle there, get roots, marry a girl or so :) Because the station of Naushki is just a station: you can de-train there and so on. One agency in Moscow, the TSI will issue supplemental MPT tickets to CIV tickets and MPT bed supplement will be issued for the through tariff, but some are reluctant.
The situation will immediately change if you have a CITY-STAR to Naushki(GR) instead of Naushki. There is no physical station called "Naushki(GR)", that is the tariff break-point between РЖД (Russian Rail) and МТЗ (Mongolian Rail), it's a singularity, a single point on the rails which is the same as the border. The station of Naushki is in the tariff a different thing that Naushki(GR): Naushki(GR) is 6 km further from Moscow than Naushki.
At the moment you have the ticket to Naushki(GR) immediately you can argue with right: your goal is somewhere in Mongolia or behind, the Naushki(GR) indicated in your ticket is a point closed to passenger de-raining, you have to stay on the train. That puts you in entirely different legal position, you can demand all your bed reservations even within Russia to be issued according MPT tariff, not the more expensive "Vostok-Zapad".
This is probably what happened with Utti precisely last year. Utti bought the CITY-STAR ticket to Ussuriisk and had supplemental tickets from Ussuriisk to Tumangan (Korea) with single through reservation from Moscow till Tumangan in NKorean sleeping car. That was fine. As he de-trained in Russia earlier, he was surprised he got all his further reservations even ones going back to Moscow according MPT tariff, not Vostok-Zapad and saved quite a bit of money.
Indeed: the Russian ticket agency took his pre-existing CITY-STAR together with his pre-existing supplemental ticket to North Korea as one whole thing and as a proof, his "goal" was Korea. Hence - correctly - they sold him the Irkutsk-Moscow bed reservation as MPT, not "Vostok-Zapad"/TCV.
Sorry for this long rambling... anyway, to summarise: everyone should buy CITY-STAR tickets till "GR" points if possible. On the Far East there are three "GR" points in the tariff of "Vostok-Zapad"/TCV. These are: Naushki(GR), Mandschuria(GR), Tumangan(GR), precisely in that spelling. Don't ask me, why "Наушки" got English spelling and Man Zhou Li got German or why they use Mandschuria(GR) instead of Zabaikalsk(GR) which would be the same. That's how it is there in the book... :-/
Why would like one to get MPT instead of "Vostok-Zapad" bed supplement?
While RZD did raise the prices of Vostok-Zapad and also multipliers for MPT many times, this was not the case with МТЗ, ЗЧ, КЖД. Hence, using CITY-STAR combined with cheap MPT sleeper supplement of МТЗ, ЗЧ, КЖД, УЗ (УЗ did not change the multiplier either!) you still can get the best of both worlds. It is just more tricky.
