European Journal 2

I'm supposed to be in Amsterdam right now, enjoying a nice cup of Dutch coffee. Instead, I am spending my night in the London City Airport with two Dutch guys and a girl from Germany, all of us hoping to God that flights will resume tomorrow.

But first, let me explain how my travels got me here...

It all started several days ago when myself and my friend Torsten flew from Galway Ireland, where we are currently studying, to Girona in Spain. While there we saw the Salvador Dali surrealist museum. And let me tell you, judging by his artwork he did more drugs than George W. Bush did in while in college. After visiting Girona, and sampling some of the local and cheap Spanish wine, Torsten and I went our separate ways. He went to visit an old friend in France, and I went to visit a friend of mine in Sheffield, England. Yet the way I met this friend was rather...unusual.

Last summer I was doing some traveling in Italy for a few days, and went on a day trip to Florence. After walking the city of Florence in a day, and getting a sunburn worse than a Twilight vampire sparkling in the sun, I was tired and ready to go back to Rome to sleep. So I got in line to change my train ticket to an earlier time. Shortly thereafter they stopped selling tickets. An English girl who was in front of me in line turned around and asked me if I knew if there was any other place to buy tickets. Without really glancing at her I pointed to a ticket machine where she could procure a new ticket. I then decided to continue the conversation by asking her "Aren't you a little young to be traveling alone?"

Her response:

"I'm twenty."

Considering that I was also twenty at the time, I felt like the CEO of Budweiser if he walked into an alcoholics anonymous meeting...really awkward. Apparently just because someone is short does not mean they are younger than you, go figure.

After apologizing for my assumption, we grabbed a bite and talked for about 45 minutes. We then became friends the only you can in today's digital age, through facebook. This is the friend I was visiting in Sheffield. It was quite fun hanging out in Sheffield, and I even became fast friends with both a French and an Indian dude at the hostel I was staying at. So after having a few drinks with a few of the guys at the hostel I got up early the next morning to take a train down to London, so I could catch my flight to Amsterdam. Everything went fine except for one tiny problem when I got to London - ALL FLIGHTS ACROSS NORTHERN EUROPE WERE CANCELED!

Apparently, a volcano erupted in Iceland, covering most of Europe in a blanket of ash. I'm not exactly sure, but I think it looks something like this:





Or that could just be a scene from the 1997 movie "Volcano" with Tommy Lee Jones, with audio added from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." Here's a link to the actual story about it on the BBC news page:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8623806.stm


Either way, it's pretty shitty. So I decided to spend my time running around London trying to find a way to Amsterdam so that I could meet up with Torsten. I tried every single available transportation imaginable:

-trains, check
-buses, check
-boats, check
-car, check

All of them were booked up by the roughly 600,000 people whose flights were affected by the volcano. So here I am, forced to sleep on the floor of an airport.

The only good thing to happen while in London was the food I received for dinner. Out of the kindness of their heart, two staff at the airport gave me a bunch of leftover food that they were taking to donate to charity. If not for those two very kind people, I would have gone hungry.

Even a volcanic cloud of ash can have a silver lining.



Also, props to Erin for figuring out the meaning of "WWBMD."

What would Batman do? He would get the hell out of the UK. Let's see if I can pull a Batman.