So clearly everyone would love the opportunity to have an extra week's holiday at the end of their booked break, wouldn't they? Well, actually it's not all that it's cracked up to be.
Firstly, you know everything back home resents you and imagines you sat by your hotel pool, Pina Colada to hand, languidly rubbing in more tanning lotion. The reality is that you spend hours of each day obsessively checking Twitter (@eurocontrol) and www.nats.co.uk to see what airspace has closed now. Between times you check the news websites and Facebook to speak to other stranded people.
Secondly, being abroad stops being agreeably romantic and exciting and becomes foreign to you in the most upsetting sense of the word. You've eaten all the local specialities by now and frankly you want to make your own dinner in your own house. Your hotel bed just isn't your own bed. You've visited all the major attractions and you're ready to pop home, have a cup of tea and upload the thinnest and most tanned pics to Facebook. It was lovely a week ago but now? Home is where the heart is.
Thirdly, and this is the killer, you want to go to work. Yes, I know it sounds nonsensical but you feel guilty for letting your colleagues down. I'm pretty convinced I won't be paid for the days that I'm absent but it's my reputation I fear for most. Am I hereafter always going to be the employee who can't be trusted to turn up for work after Easter?I moan about my job sometimes and I certainly get that Sunday night feeling but deep down I'd like to be at work on Monday, joking that I should have missed my flight home, rather than having missed my flight home.
It's an odd feeling being a hostage to fortune. I'm really lucky to be in a nice apartment and able to afford food etc until I can transit home: and I'm aware of people kipping at airports and I know how lucky I am. I also know people whose dream holidays have been cancelled and who are devastated. I'm in as fortunate a position as it is possible to be. But secretly, I just want to go home. I've come to understand Dunkirk spirit: it's not about the heroic rescue, it's about getting home and popping the kettle on. Whenever that might be.
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Look at the Pilot's rumour website:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/412103-ash-clouds-threaten-air-traffic-39.html
Could be Wednesday before it all blows over....
I don't think you missed your flight....surely that requires the actual option of a flight to miss?
ReplyDeleteLufthansa and KLM have conducted test flights - It's pragmatism vs. scientists in white socks and sandles.
ReplyDeleteTo quote:
ReplyDelete"KLM said its aircraft had been able to fly at its normal operating altitude of 13km (8 miles) over Dutch skies and no problems had been reported. The plane's engines were being inspected for possible damage, with a view to getting permission from the aviation authorities to start up operations again.
Lufthansa said it flew 10 planes from Frankfurt to Munich at heights of up to 8km (5 miles)."
Take a day trip to Santorini and visit another volcano that might blow up... (joke - sorry)
Ironically I wanted to go to Santorini. And last year we visited Pompeii at this time of year.
ReplyDeleteI think it's beyond question that volcanoes are able to devastate civilisations...