Memphis, Amsterdam, Kiev.....  A Hop, skip and a jump.

No problemo, man.

Once my bag (only one of the two, go figure) got "lost" during transfer in Moscow. Luckily I had used the VIP service and they had an Aeroflot person, who spoke English, there in fifteen minutes to take a report. Of course that fifteen minutes seemed like hours because my beloved was only meters away behind a door that I could not go through until I had gone through Customs. Aeroflot delivered my bags to my flat the next day.

Another time I was not so fortunate. My flight into SVO was 4 1/2 hours late so I missed my connection to Kyiv. The next day I missed my flight because the idiots at Aeroflot insisted that my transit visa would still be good and therefore refused to go get it extended. Thus my bags arrived the day before I did and were locked up in Customs. By the time I cleared passport control it was after five and Customs (at least the department where they had my bags) was closed. I'm sure if I had used the VIP service that I would have gotten my bags as soon as I arrived at Terminal 3, no problem. As it was I had to get someone to drive me back to KBP the next day only to be told that they were closed for lunch and to come back in an hour and a half (nice lunch break, eh?). A $10 bribe got that lunch break shortened to ten minutes. Even then it was a major hassle and required that my bags be searched and another $20 import duties be paid. I sure didn't save any time or money on that deal.

Being the law abiding guy that I am, I untaped my luggage and stuffed all that into my already overstuffed suitcase.

I walk down to the departure gate only to notice people (mostly Russian) waiting there with some not just big, but monsterous, carry on bags.

Being the seasoned FSU/Aeroflop traveller, I just shrug my sholders and grin. It turns out that later I would look back on that grin and want to punch a hole in the wall of the hotel that I was staying in. You see that each and every on of those bags had to be searched, item by item delaying us about thirty minutes. The same thing in Seattle.

My flight was four and a half hours late getting into Moscow. The layover to catch my flight to Kyiv was also four and a half hours. Maybe the extra hour would still not have been enough for me to catch my flight to where my Love was waiting for me but that night I could not think of anything but those inconsiderate SOBs.

Maybe if I had known that I would be spending the next night in that same hotel also because Aeroflop screwwed up my transit visa I would not have been so angry with those people. NOT! Some cultural differences are a little hard to swallow.

It seems that people from the FSU, because of the communistic stranglehold that they endured, will deliberately disobey any minor law or rule that they feel they can get away with. Americans, IMHO, tend to obey these in an effort to maintain a civil and harmonious atmosphere.

My wife will see someone running through a stop sign, driving across the double yellow line on a twisty road, or cut in line and ask why I don't drive like that because there are no "road police" around. (She has only seen one car pulled over in the four months she has been here.) I explain that if everyone disobeyed the laws just because they were not going to get caught we would likely have (corrupt) police on every corner just like in her beloved homeland.

I doubt if they could have gotten my bags from Customs in Kyiv, but then again, I didn't try either. The Customs lady was quite adamant that they were closed and that I would have to come back the next day to get my bags.

After getting screwwed over in Moscow and losing two precious days with my fiancee I had other things more pressing than to waste my time in an airport dealing with Aeroflop.

What does your wife think about these little nasty burger!
Meatloaf on a roll.

Down here in the South we have "Krystals", same concept.
Equally nasty.

Inbound, I've had no problems with clearing customs with the majority of the passengers.