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Source: Reuters -
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Abby Scott is a former ONE News Reporter who has recently headed off on her big OE - on her first day tripping around the world, she's found herself in the middle of the chaos hitting European skies.
A few days ago I flew into one of the most sophisticated continents in the world, all set for a hassle free adventure but it's become an adventure filled with hassles. It seems even Europe is no match for Mother Nature.
When a bit of dust grounded Europe's aircraft I found myself in Frankfurt, Germany (following a 10 hour flight from Seattle) with an onward ticket to Heathrow, London but little hope of getting there.
The airport was filled with desperate travellers who still believed the ash from a volcano in a faraway place called Iceland was going to "blow over". After six hours my Mum and I were forced to face reality and we found ourselves a hotel for the night.
As they say "when in Rome..." and when in Germany you find yourselves a bier garden to enjoy a stein or two while you ponder how the heck you're going to get yourselves out of there.
Trains and buses to London were booked solid for the next three days and even if we'd managed to get to Paris or Brussels the Eurostar train across the Chanel was heavily booked and tickets started at NZ$500! But number eight wire mentality is alive and well and it seems our trip to the bier garden didn't only solve our thirst problem.
During the ride there our taxi driver told us how one of his colleagues had been employed to drive a bunch of businessmen all the way to London. Now just to put that in context that's like getting in a taxi in Kaikoura and heading to Auckland, ferry ride and all. Sounds outrageous right?!
But the following morning despite numerous warnings from fellow travellers of how we were going to be taken into the woods and robbed we found ourselves in a minivan with three micro-chip engineers and a British couple hurtling down the German Autobahn at 170 km/h. Needless to say the trip was fast, and four countries and five hours later we found ourselves at the ferry terminal in France.
We were warned of the inevitable rush hour traffic we'd hit when we neared London but it never eventuated. On a Friday evening the major highway into town was practically as deserted as the skies and Heathrow Airport was a ghost town. But we'd made it.
We hadn't been robbed (in fact the taxi only cost us NZ$300 each), we'd "visited" an extra four countries and despite our luggage still being in Frankfurt 72 hours later, we're not. We managed to do what few others had...get to London. Getting out again for my trip to Turkey will be another issue altogether...
