Eyjafjallajokull!

Can you say Eyjafjallajokull? You better because now it has become part of history. The Icelandic volcano grounded thousands of airplanes and shut down airports across Europe. But I survived the volcanic eruption, eventhough I was in Manchester. One of the world´s capital of music, better known as Madchester, the cradle of sounds like Joy Division, Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, Stone Roses, Oasis, among others. The volcano spat ash and glass harmful for the planes, it can get inside and kill the engine plummeting the passangers to a certain death. That deadly scenario almost happened one time over South Asia. So 600,000 flights were cancelled, more than one million of people were stranded and millions of Euros, Pounds and Dollars were lost so you better learn to pronounce it. His sister Katla is easier to pronounce but far more dangerous, bigger and menancing. It hasn´t exploded yet but there is always a possibility.

So I was stuck in Manchester staying at Enrique´s place which was good for my finances, because otherwise it would have been devastated. In Manchester I saw a couple of local acts and a very good Polish band called Warsaw Village Band, I interview the band who have played in Vancouver a couple of times before. So I had a blast in Manchester while I watched flight after flight get cancelled until mine was. So I was supposed to be in Hungary one Monday and I was stuck in Manchester. Well, to make a bad situation good, I went to visit Liverpool and the home of the Beatles.

So I had to travel across Europe in a bus because the airports were a total chaos. In Britain, there were 300,000 britons stranded around the world. I heard many horror stories from the guy that was stuck in an airport for a week like that movie The Terminal eating airport food and shitting in the public washroom to the couple that planned their wedding for three years in a paradisiac Caribbean island only to see their dreams shattered. Then there were the sad stories, people waiting to have bone marrow transplants and couldn´t make it, people that lost their jobs or thier exams because they could not get back home on time. The airport here was eire lonely, like a Ballard short story, the skies were clear, sunny and we finally know with certainty that airplanes are major polluters. Maybe we are reaching at the end of an era. The already bankrupt airlines lost massive amounts of money.

All this in the midst of an electoral campaign in Great Britain to renew the parliament and the Prime Minister. The incumbent Gordon Brown is in hot water after he called a grandma bigot when he thought he was away from the microphones, but he forgot to turn it off. Its the latest blow to the Labour Party that has been trailing the Conservative Party and the Democrat Liberals who has the newest start in the British politics in the persona of Nick Clegg who has dominated the debates and seems likely to stop the conservative David Cameron. Which is good because the British conservatives are as bad as their Canadian counterparts and they have all the vices of the right wing. Generally there has always been two traditional parties in the UK, the conservatives like Margaret Thatcher that punished the workers and the Argentineans and the Labour Party who had Tony Blair who left his post to Gordon Brown, but nevertheless, the Labour ended up liking war as much as then previous governement. Now for the British a light shines in the figure of Nick Clegg. Immigration and economy are the key points in the May 6^th elections and a war in Afghanistan that 60% of Britons dislike.

So I embarked in a three day journey across Europe leaving this country in the middle of a political and economical mess. I am still waiting for my air ticket refund.