June 3 - "Either pay or don't board the plane"

15 hours of sleep! Not entirerly restful due to our noisy bunk dwellers, but still amazing to be horizontal. Made repeat visit to our favourite little grass patch outside the Kremlin and had a siesta in the shade. Excited to leave Moscow and get to Irkutsk, but there will be one major snafu in our plans before we get there. I knew there would be roadblocks along the way, but being charged per kg for our bikes on s7airlines was over the top! I had tried to be very diligent about researching our bike box passage on all the airlines and had even been in email correspondence with s7 regarding our bikes. I was told that as long as they were less than 203 cms in lwh that they would go under free baggage allowance along with our checked bags. However the airport staff had a different idea and thus ensued an hour scene at the checkin counter where we refused to pay for 40kg of extra luggage - at 250rubles (10 dollars) this was extreme. I even had the email to show them that stated our bikes would go for free! The manager who only spoke Russian refused to deal with us and found the only employee who spoke English to tell us that we could either pay the 10,000 rubles or not fly. He then admitted that it was their mistake that I was given the wrong info, but there was nothing they could do about it! Welcome to Russia I thought as our flight was 5mins from closing and I forked over my visa card to pay. Needless to say this has put a very sour taste in my mouth. Another sleepless night on our night flight and with the 5 hour time change we will land at 8:00 in Irkutsk.