London-Stansted: Canceled. Oslo: Canceled. Dublin: Canceled. Barcelona: Canceled.
Fantastic. After a two-hour bus-ride through the progressively smokier German countryside, I discover my flight was definitely canceled. Before I climbed aboard the bus last Friday morning, I had a distinct feeling of foreboding that my flight wasn't going to be on, but the lack of confirmation of cancellation sent me careening through western Germany towards Frankfurt-Hahn airport.
To be honest, I wasn't surprised when I arrived to discover a no-mans-land at security check-in and a rabid crowd at customer service but that didn't make me any less annoyed.
"Stupid volcanoes and stupid Iceland," I thought to myself as I climbed right back on the stupid bus back to Luxembourg.
I should be sunning and drinking sangria in Spain this weekend, not illegally watching episodes of "True Blood" in my room because there's nothing to do in Lux on the weekend. My story, while not in the slightest way tragic, was not an original one.
I was simply one amongst many millions currently unable to travel by flight this week due to the volcanic activity in Iceland. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano (and I'll send 10 euro to the first person who can pronounce that bad boy correctly on the first try) has been spewing sulfuric hate into the atmosphere since April 14 and the problems are spreading right along with that gigantic plume of black ash.
As I'm sure everyone back home is aware, all air traffic has been grounded in Europe since Friday April 16. While this situation is an inconvenience for me (hey, I've got a flight to Sweden this weekend) at least I'm "home" in Lux; those who are stranded overseas are in quite the worse predicament than my whining self. Wednesday morning, BBC and others were reporting a resumption of limited flight service. And then about two hours ago the volcano decided it hadn't received nearly enough attention yet and belched up another cloud of smoke as a minor eruption resumed. Right now some flights are finally taking off, but who knows what will happen over the next few hours or days.
Naturally, I've been crawling all over my favorite news sites for updates, hoping against hope that the skies will magically clear for my trip this weekend. And a small paranoid part of me is terrified I'll have to charter a life raft home when my flight back to the United States in early May is canceled but I'll cross that bridge of crazy when I come to it.
The news media has little encouragement for me. Aside from pessimistic reports of the expanding cloud and coverage of the minimal number of flights allowed to take off, there are much more depressing and mildly frightening stories to report. German airline Lufthansa is losing about 200 million euros for every day their flights are grounded. British Airways is losing about 130 million pounds per day as well. There are stockpiles of produce from Kenya just sitting and rotting because there's no way to get it to Europe.
We don't realize just how much we rely on simple conveniences until they are unceremoniously snatched away. Our world is one that becomes more interconnected by the day, and it's rather terrifying to realize just how stuck we are when something goes wrong. The funeral of the recently deceased Polish president will be attended by maybe a third of the dignitaries that were supposed to come because no one can make it to Poland.
The economy is certainly being affected but that's not all. Sporting events and musical performances also had to be put on hold because international travel isn't possible right now. I'm only writing this essay because I think it's important for Miami University students, who don't regularly rely on flights, to take note of this current crisis. Tucked away in Oxford, we are more than a little out of touch with reality, but for those who care enough, it will be interesting to see how the world, and in particular, Europe, continues to handle this crisis. Whether new precedents for situations like this will be set, or whether the weather will clear up before more serious measures need to be taken remains to be seen. But this volcano has given a nice little trial run for world leaders and businesses who haven't prepared for such an event, and who certainly need to start planning, because globalization isn't going anywhere.
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