Marimenxu

Murphy's law has it's own airline

I booked a very, very cheap round trip to Belgium with Ryanair. First I got a departure ticket for 6 am. That was dumb. There's no public transport to Madrid-Barajas airport at 5 am that I know of. My cab ride to the airport was almost as expensive as my ticket.

I travel as cheap as I can, so I'm used to rough rides. But being bombarded with loud booze adverts over the aircraft speakers at 6 a.m. was a whole new kind of torture. The bright yellow interior of the plane and advertisements for international calling cards made the flight truly excruciating. I can say I've had more pleasant 8 hour bus rides.

I knew flying Ryanair was a gamble, but for the price of the ticket I thought I was willing to risk a complication or two. BIG MISTAKE.

When I was about to board my retun flight to Madrid I was informed that my flight had been canceled. So there I am, stuck in a small Belgian town wondering "Now what?".

The staff politely offered little help: exchange your ticket or get a refund. My 20€ refund wasn't going to get me on a 200 € flight to Madrid departing from another city in Belgium... So I spent 20€ in phone calls figuring out how to get home and 10 € sightseeing (ugh) and eating fritjes in a very gray and dull town called Charleroi. Ten hours later I was able to catch another unpleasant Ryanair flight to Valladolid and barely make the last train to Madrid.

So my 70€ round trip ticket to Brussels ended up costing about 200€ and 14 hours of kicking around airports, train stations and gloomy Wallonian townships.