For those seeking to travel Europe cheap, be warned that the Irish low cost Airline 'Ryanair' is only about making money, and care absolutely nothing about their passengers. Complaints to Ryanair fall on deaf ears, and even the owner of the airline, Mr. O'Leary, could care less. As long as he is making the bucks - he doesn't want to hear from you. We were scheduled to depart Girona,Spain back to Germany and arrived at the airport 2 hours prior to departure, which is listed on Ryanairs web site as a recommendation. The check-in closes 40 minutes prior to departure - regardless if you are in line waiting to check in or not. We were in line for check-in two hours prior, and were quite far back in the line, but you would figure a small 727 would be quickly processed by a staff of 3 working the check-in counters. BIG mistake to think that. Apparently, they had someone new at the counter who had problems checking in multiple families with children, language difficulties etc, and spent about 10-15 minutes with each family. When we got to the front counter as the next in line for check-in, the lights were turned off and the staff literally ran away from the check-in counters. I stopped one of them to ask what was going on, and was told to get in line, they would be back to check us in. This was a blatant lie. They never returned to check us in. There were 6 other families behind us that missed te flight as well. We went to the customer dis-service counter to ask them to check us in, and they told us we missed the flight and should have come earlier, and then the staff became very nasty and verbally abusive. Since Ryanair's domination of the small airports have given them nearly monopoly status, their arrogance and unfriendly customer service just makes you want to go to the competition...if only there were any. The end of the story wound up being a 12 hour wait for the next flight, to a different airport (3 hours from the original destionation by car), and EURO 120.-. Ryanair is by far a cheap airline, unless cheap is in retrospect to their service on all ends. If your planning on flying Ryainair, make sure you bring enough money to pay additional fees for overweight baggage (they charge by the kilo - if even a gram over), for baggage in general, for missed flights and heaven forbid you need a wheelchair. A couple in line ahead of us missed their flight AFTER having the baggage checked because Ryanair refused to give the elderly woman one of the three available wheelchairs to take her to the gate. You would think in this day and age of terror, airlines should not be flying with baggage of people not on the plane. I hope that decent competition will arrive on the market and provide those of us travelers with decent service and teach Ryanair that they can be replaced. Oh yeah...and before I forget, Ryanair as also added more seats in their aircraft...for the first time ever, I found out how my knees taste. Thanks Ryanair - for a great concept with severe dissappointment.