Andy Potts

It should have been a fantastic honeymoon - but thanks to a travel agent's blunder, an American fantasy writer found her fairytale trip to Russia turning grim.

Catherynne M. Valente's latest novel, "Palimpsest", describes a mysterious city accessible only by complex means - and ironically her trip to St. Petersburg acquired a similarly surreal complexity.

The problems started for Valente  - real name Bethany Thomas - and her Ukrainian-born husband Dmitri Zagidulin when they tried to board their flight from Frankfurt to St. Petersburg - only then realising they needed visas for the trip.

More stupid foreigners? Well, not quite. When booking their trip, via online travel agents Expedia.com, the couple was told they didn't need visas to come to Russia.

"Tourists we are, but we travel extensively and we are not dumb," Valente said in an e-mail after finally reaching St. Petersburg. "We just believed the travel specialist knew what he was talking about."

In Germany, things went from bad to worse: "We were halted and spent six hours trying to contact the consulate," Valente said. "Expedia refused to help us, or to get us a hotel for the night and told us a $100 voucher was all we'd get. The airport hotel was $337 a night."

A delay caused by the Nov. 4 public holiday in Russia didn't help, but blog postings and a pressure group set up on Facebook at least prompted a change of heart from the travel firm - who offered a full refund for the trip and the German hotel, plus a "generous" travel credit for a future trip.

Valente believes that without the internet she would have got little help from Expedia, despite losing half her honeymoon, and claims the power of the internet played a vital role in securing her an onward visa and compenstation from the company.

A spokesman from the agency e-mailed a statement to The Moscow News this week saying that an individual employee found the story online and alerted customer services. "They reviewed the recording of the call and confirmed that the agent acted inappropriately," the message continued. "We then contacted Ms Valente and offered to fix the situation."

To avoid repeats, Expedia advises customers to refer to the US State Department website for official information. Other options would include contacting the Russian consulate of your home country and confirming the current rules and regulations with them.

And Valente, mindful of the difficulties of tracking down organisations back home from a payphone in a foreign airport, added further advice. "We've learned to take direct dial numbers for your travel agency, bank and any other corporation you might need to contract abroad," she said.