ohb

And I thought I could leave with my principles intact....

They finally got me. A full year and I had avoided the seedy world of bribes, they don't even bother with the paper bags here, its all pretty up front. But, as I was about to leave Russian soil, they forced me to succumb. My bags were overweight, I knew this before the woman decided to point it out to me, she told me that it would cost $108 for the extra, after asking her to repeat it a few times, I stepped backwards stunned and considered throwing all my books in the bin. That is until the gleam appeared in her eye. How much've you got? Put it your passport and slide it over. She's obviously very experienced. Though, having said that, I don't know if I would've had the gall to take the chance, were I in her position. I'd been standing there for about five minutes, it was obvious there was a problem with my bags and there were a few employees behind, seemingly keeping watch. As she tagged the bags and let them through I was desperately trying to ignore the sound of my heart pumping wildly, one of the observers approached. I think he asked her what was going on, and as far as I could discern (it was in Russian and my pulse was deafening at this stage) she said something like, 'look for yourself there's nothing here' which I took to be about the money. I don't know where she put it, neither do I want to, but I didn't breathe easy until I collected it at the other side and struggled to put it on yet another trolley.
A guy just cycled into the lift there. There is wireless here, but the cheapest is £7 for an hour, I'm tempted to post these, but I don't think I could justify the expense seeing as Aer Lingus are going to charge me through the nose for my bags, I did do a bit of rearranging and am going to have to do my best to try not to buckle under the weight of my hand luggage and smile serenely as I lie through my teeth-just the one, yeah. Do you think I could pack my books in condoms and swallow them?

posted by orlagh @ 9:47 pm