08/05/2010

What's Your Volcanic Cloud Story?

Here's what happened to Yours Truly.

The 1st English/Spanish joint conference on cognition had barely begun in fair Granada when ...


...moronic volcano Eyjasomething starts coughing !
(check this out by the way,  a moron but with style)


Next thing we knew the European airspace was essentially down.

250 english people suddenly all thinking the same:

"huh .. I guess I'll just fly to Madrid, that still works, then it shouldn't be too difficult to get to the south of France, and from then take a train all the way up where I'll catch a ferry to mother UK"

miiiippp (buzzer sound): 

General railway strike in france -train traffic paralized (now isn't that special!). 250 english people suddenly looking...a bit embarassed.

Well to make a long story short, these 250 people eventually rented several coaches and got back home after a 48h trip... I think "memorable" was the term most commonly used to describe the event.

Me? Well I tried to play it cool. I thought I'd litteraly let the dust settle in Granada (nice city by the way).
I said I tried. But Iberia just wouldn't let me win (ever tried to call Iberia to change a reservation? Don't. They have a nice recorded tape sending you to their website. Go to their website and they give you..their phone number)

==> I had to go to Madrid.
Now I must confess I only knew Madrid from its airport so I had very low expectations. Please don't throw stones. I was so wrong - Madrid rules. I loved it. Great food, very alive, surprisingly walkable.

Still, I had to reach France, so ... dashed to Barcelona by high-speed train -funnily looks a bit like japanese shinkansen inside..).

Barcelona..so much to say. Just try the morning croissants at café Ra to get a bit closer to paradise.
Then find someone with a car who goes to Marseille the next morning at 11am, get to the checkpoint and 
VOILA!
..

..

..

..

Except, the car got broke into during the night -2 days to fix.

I'm not making this up.
I looked up to the sky.
It was just 11 am.

Although I couldn't see it, I knew the day would be suffused in moronic ash.

-----------> what's your story?

Update: oh come OOn, it's doing it again!

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