Sunday afternoon
When an erupting volcano closes European airspace and strands you 9,000 miles away from home you find that the bond of trust you have placed in ‘travel’ to simply happen is somewhat diminished.
So, every component of a journey becomes a minor miracle of logistics and engineering.
I have never marvelled at a train journey so much as I did the journey from central Sydney to the Airport. A mode of transport arriving when it was supposed to and delivering me on time to my destination? Unparallelled in this new 'through the looking glass' world.
As I arrived at Kingsford Smith the departure board was a sea of BA and QANTAS ‘cancelled’ notices. Plucky Malaysian Airlines stood out as still operating. Wonderful!
As I queued there were actual, real, live Malaysian Airlines employees there to answer questions. BA, take note. The staff were there to inform people flying with Malaysian through to Amsterdam that they could not fly. But they were taken aside and spoken to individually and provided with information about accommodation and their rights with regards to living expenses and refunds. Revelatory stuff indeed.
My flight to Istanbul was confirmed as running and I was checked onto my flight. Oh marvel of marvels.
And then I killed time in a deserted Sydney Airport by browsing through the Aussiebum shop before boarding an aeroplane which then took off. Miraculous!
Reader, I was on my way to Kuala Lumpur.
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