What Eyjafjallajökullv teaches us about travel.

Returning from a weekend in Milan, I shared the train with a lot of people who were returning from far flung corners of the earth and being forced to complete their long-haul trip over land. It was announced repeatedly over the tannoy in Milano Centrale that all trains to Northern Europe where full until Friday 23rd March. I don’t see this as an entirely bad thing (although admittedly I don’t have a flight booked until two weeks time, when hopefully high winds will have blown the culprit volcanic dust away, and the eruption will have stopped); the volcanic cloud is creating many adventures, it is reinventing (temporarily) travel. People are not just going to a place and returning. They are going to a place and have to get creative about their return journey. Living in the centre of Europe it is quite common to go by train to another country, but I imagine for many of the Brits stranded, they will be taking their first trip across European borders on trains.

People are travelling, as opposed to going from A to B and back. Strangers are exchanging stories in full train carriages, they are discovering the humanity of train travel, and its contrast to the sterility of identical airport lounges and cramped planes. I am guilty of treating air travel like shuttle buses; it is all too easy to hop on a plane to visit some friends. You go with a purpose and rarely see anything outside what you intend to. Train travel has an eventual purpose, but it is so much more about the journey, and the people, and the places you pass through. There was a triumphant cheer of the group at the neighbouring table as we drew into Zurich HB last night. Doubtlessly, a city few had visited before had transformed into a milestone, and they were going to have the chance to scratch its surface with a group of fellow travellers, before continuing their journey north.

Perhaps I am romanticising, but I wonder how many new friendships, new discoveries, new projects this Eyjafjallajökull cloud is inspiring across Europe.

As an afterthought, how the hell do you pronounce Eyjafjallajökull?