Air Bus

One of the great advantages of living in a European country is of course the possibility of cheap traveling. The low-cost airlines, to be precise. One of the biggest dreams of the average Israeli.
So guess what, after being in London last month I'm going to be in Oslo the coming weekend. We are going to be 13 friends from work, and probably we'll spend most of the weekend trying to work it out so that everybody will be content. But who cares? In that case its the company that counts.

Besides, I'm sure I'll be in Norway again one day, hopefully on February, to see Northern Lights. That has been one of my dreams ever since I was a child. One of my favourite book I liked to read over and over was a children's science book, and when I was reading about the northern light for the first time, and looking at the attached pictures, I decided that one of my goals in life is to witness this amazing phenomena.

But that's not what I want to talk about. Lets go back to the subject, this weekend in Oslo.

The flights are cheap indeed, cheaper than flying from Tel Aviv to Eilat.
But there is a catch. Probably there always is... It's possible to find and book a flight for 0.01 Euros (yes, 1 Euro cent), depends on when you travel and how much time in advance.

The reason we go to Oslo is the cheap flight (and lets ignore the fact that Norway is a very expensive country, even more expensive than Ireland). But in our case, we discovered we have to take a bus from the airport to Oslo, around 2 hours journey, and will cost us 35 Euros each, one way. so that's the money we were trying to save by booking cheap flights. Damn!

Oh, yes, 3 more things. Fees, to be precise:
Luggage fee- 6-10 Euros for each bag you check in, depends on the airline and whether you pay in advance or at the airport. Luckily, passengers can (still) take carry on luggage for no extra fees. 1 for each passenger, and depends on the size of the bag.
Check in fee- only the online check in is free. otherwise pay extra 7 euros.
Credit card fee- 6 Euros for each passenger. One can avoid that fee incase s/he pays with Visa electron. Otherwise, no one can get away with this.

So eventually the amount of money we spend in order to arrive to our destination is reasonable enough, definitely not cheap.

So the lesson for today is that there's no such thing as free meals (except from Google). Unless, of course, you get your flights to London Gatwick for as little as 10.02 Euros (0.02 Euros for the flights and 10 more for the Credit Card fee) or Edinburgh for 20 Euros.