Pimsleur, all the way! I've already been through volume 1 and it was very helpful. Yeah, there is probably odd phrases and stuff that sounds funny to a native speaker, but I think that is always the case with beginner language materials. It starts with vocab and a verb or two and then builds simple phrases and then more phrases on top of that. It gives you just enough grammar to get by so you should have a good grammar book in hand if you really want to learn that stuff. I really found the number drills to help. If you are going to use Russian in any real situation, especially travel, then numbers are so important.