Nearly stranded in Bergen

Well, that turned into a very expensive 27 hours in Norway. Got up at 5 on Saturday morning in London and trekked to Heathrow, where I took a plane to Oslo. From there I took another plane to Bergen, where the Raptus Comics Festival was held over the weekend. The organisers had booked me on flights from and back to Edinburgh, but circumstances sent me to London, so I couldn't use the first half of my ticket. Instead I paid my own way to Bergen, shelling out £200.

Yesterday I went back to Bergen airport to get my flights home, connecting via Amsterdam. But because I didn't use the first two flights on my original tickets, the return flights had been cancelled - and my seats resold. The flight from Bergen to Amsterdam was full, the flight from Amsterdam to Edinburgh was full.

Oh, shit. Alternatives? A business seat on a flight from Bergen to Newcastle costing somewhere around £1000, and the problem of how to get home from Newcastle. Or a cheaper flight to London Stansted and the problem of getting home from there. So I handed over £300 to get back to the UK, and managed to get an Easyjet flight home booked online, costing another £100. That's a grand total of £600 to spend 27 hours in Bergen, talk at three festival sessions and eat lots of Norwegian hot dogs. Yikes.

Was it worth it? Financially, no. But the festival is a lovely event, the people of Bergen delightful and friendly. Shockingly, I even walked outside without getting soaked to the skin several times. Still, there's an expensive lesson to be learned from all of this. If somebody else books discount flights for you, don't feck around with those flights. Always take the first flight of a trip, in case some FUCKING ARSEHOLE decides to cancel all the others on you.

Moving on: Ireland and Wales both got knocked out of the Rugby World Cup, Argentina are on track for the semi-finals [sorry Scotland, but you're cruising from a bruising from the South Americans], and New Zealand's All Blacks will be playing their quarter-final against France, a match many had predicted would be the final. I can only hope the All Blacks show up with their A game, and this doesn't turn into 1999 again when France were at their mercurial best.

Tomorrow I'll write about what happened last Friday.