Firstly I’m going to apologise for using ‘Kosice’ henceforth, digging out the special characters keyboards on the phone and iPad is just not a game I want to play constantly! For a place almost nobody has ever heard of, Kosice has had a few mentions here and there in the trip report forum recently, mostly with people passing through.

This weekend I’m off on a four day trip booked due to what was an irresistibly cheap fare to use as a weekend filler. Of course being a cheap fare comes with certain ‘challenges’. This itinerary is three flights out and three flights back the first and last flights are on Eurowings and the middle four are on Austrian airlines, all in economy. I’ve never flown on either airline so that’s going to be interesting. The total fare was a a fraction over Ł200, working out at Ł35 a flight.

Hopefully my Lufthansa Senator status is going to come into play and get me into a couple of lounges and also a bit of group one boarding along the way. From what I can see online Eurowings doesn’t offer lounge access in Newcastle but it does offer lounge access in a number of its destinations. Priority pass to the rescue in Newcastle. I think I’m covered by the SEN status for Düsseldorf. The connecting times in Vienna are pretty short so I’m not sure I’ll even have time to think about going into a lounge there.

As far as seating goes, the Lufthansa status allowed me to book exit row seats on all four Austrian flights but there was no chance of booking on the Eurowings site until check-in opened at which point it cost me the princely sum of Ł4.62 to book an exit row seat,

Another first for me, I’ve never been to Slovakia either so it’s all new this weekend.

I have to say, having looked up how to pronounce Kosice properly, to my rather childish mind It sounded like I was questioning whether the bovine had defecated, Eh?

Yeah, yeah, I know, too much waffle, so what’s the plan?

• Tomorrow, noon-ish it’ll be off to the airport and then a 3 pm departure to kickoff the. NCL-DUS-VIE-KSC trio, arriving KSC at around 11:30 pm,

• The hotel for the weekend is Hilton Doubletree which, quite scary, is the #1 Hotel in Kosice According to TripAdvisor! All on points so it really is a bargain basement weekend.

• Saturday is a guided walking tour in the morning and then a fill in the gaps wander in the afternoon. The temperature is going to be brutal so there will be plenty of stops for hydration along the way!

• Completely by lucky happenstance there is a rather unusual event taking place on the Sunday so most of the day is carved out to attending that - you’ll just have to wait to see what it is.

• And then on the Monday back to sunny Newcastle having checked out of the hotel around 3 am with the first fight being 6 am. The same itinerary on the way back with enough time in DUS to play hunt the Lieberkase.

I think that sums it all up nicely, Only one thing left to add…..

Next stop: Newcastle airport in about 20 hours time.