At the time of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption in April 2010, I was near Helsinki, Finland, at a physics conference. The day that the conference ended, European air travel shut down due to the ash cloud from the volcano. It was a week before I could return home.
During the first few days of that week, I stayed put in Helsinki, visiting spots in the city, spending time with my physics colleague Sandy Fetter from Stanford and other physicists at the university in Helsinki. We were hoping that the cloud would dissipate and that we could catch a flight out of Helsinki on Tuesday, April 20. When that flight was canceled, it became clear that it would be another week before we could fly out of Helsinki (in the best case), so Sandy and I decided to make our way home via a different route so that we could (hopefully) get back to the US sooner. Factors in our chosen route: (1) Helsinki is not connected to mainland Europe by train, so a ferry is the only realistic non-air option; (2) Stockholm, Sweden seemed to be allowing flights sooner than other airports due to a finger of good air that penetrated the ash cloud. (3) Reykjavik, Iceland, while near the volcano, was free of troubles due to winds that blew the ash away form the airport.
Briefly, here is how we managed to get home: On Wednesday (April 21), we took an overnight ferry (the Silja Serenade) from Helsinki to Stockholm. On Thursday, we caught a flight from Stockholm to Reykjavik, Iceland on Icelandair. Up until that point, the Reykjavik airport had been open during the entire volcano eruption, although it was admittedly a gamble to take this route (actually, anything, even waiting in Helsinki, was just as much of a gamble). On Friday, the winds shifted, and the Reykjavik airport shut down as the rest of Europe's airports opened, so we were bussed up to Akureyri, a small town in northern Iceland for a flight to Glasgow, Scotland. From there we flew to New York, and on Saturday, we finally made it to our homes.
The 4-day trip was exhausting and surreal, but interesting nonetheless. Thanks Sandy for being such a fantastic travel companion on what would have otherwise been a miserable and lonely journey without you!
Here are a few photos from that week, first from Helsinki, then some taken along our route home. Amazingly, we flew right by the volcano causing all of the air traffic problems, and I took a few pictures of the ash plume from the airplane.
If you're interested, these photos from an earlier trip to Iceland were taken in the area right around the volcano:
http://bpanderson.zenfolio.com/p882040396/h2fa2e336#h2fa2e336http://bpanderson.zenfolio.com/p950721447/h257a716f#h257a716fAnd this photo was taken on the pass between Eyjafjallajokull and the neighboring icecap/volcano (which is still calm as I write this):
http://bpanderson.zenfolio.com/p983766890/h1dde5400#h1dde5400
