I’m sure you have all seen various types of airports in your lifetime. There are tiny grass or dirt based landing strips that function as airports on remote locations, small huts with paved runways in rural areas, airports that serve as regional hubs and then there are the big and bigger international airports like London Heathrow, JFK and the likes. But there is a new set of airports out there: converted military airfields transformed to regional hubs for low(est) cost airlines. The Lower Rhineland airport Weeze (IATA: NRN) fits into that description.
50 kilometres northwest of Dusseldorf and 30 km southeast of the Dutch town of Nijmegen, Weeze airport used to be the military airbase RAF Laarbruch. According to Wikipedia, the airport serves 6 airlines but its main customer clearly is the Irish run Ryanair with a fairly good selection of flights to various destinations in Europe.
My flight back to London Stansted (IATA: STN) that day was slightly delayed, but other than that operations at the airport were efficient and I passed through the security checks fairly quickly only to discover there was absolutely nothing on the other side. Well, okay, nothing is a strong word. There was a bar and a small kiosk but that was about it (it did find my price checking items though, see below). So, what can you do in such a situation? Here are 3 suggestions:
- Find your next destination through the selection of available Lonely Planet guidebooks at the small kiosk (the selection actually was pretty decent!)
- Look through the magazine offerings and find the one magazine with the weirdest freebie (in my case it was an inflatable sword added to a children’s magazine called “Benjamin Blümchen”)
- Flick through your iPod and find the song of the day (I went for “Hellsongs – Symphony of Destruction” although not because of the lyrics or the title, simply because I like the tunes and it’s funny)
| Airport Name | Airport Weeze |
| Website | http://www.airport-weeze.de |
| IATA Code | NRN |
| Design |  |
| Shopping | |
| Toilets | |
| Overall | |
 |
€87.00 (£68.80) |
 |
€34.90 (£27.60) |
[Picture from Flickr]