Now if you live on some Pacific Rim island, I understand that volcanoes may be a threat to your land and your way of life. But if you are a Food Scientist living in Belgrade, you just never think that a volcano will impact your everyday life! I was supposed to go to the UK this week for work. I have some US colleagues that have been on an extended international business trip and were supposed to go home on Saturday. They still don't have definitive flight plans, and will likely be here until at least tomorrow (Tuesday). And one of my friends here is in Australia visiting her sister. She was supposed to fly out Sunday, and is now delayed for 11 days. Yes, 11 days!
Of course, for me, it isn't such a big deal for now. I was looking forward to the UK trip, but I have a lot of work that I need to take care of here in BG too. However, I think it is truly amazing to see the economic impact and personal impact that something like this can have. There have been no flights over northern Europe for 4 days. The airport is open in Belgrade, but since most flights connect to the hubs in northern Europe, most flights are cancelled. They say the airlines are losing $200M/day. And the volcano may be erupting for up to a year. This natural incident may have long term impact on our way of life. Crazy!
Luckily, I'm only "stranded" at home. The weather here in Belgrade was beautiful over the weekend. I went out with friends on Friday and Saturday nights. Sunday was the Belgrade Marathon and I did the 5k with some of the Hashers. It was great! We ended (like always) with the circle. However, this circle was on one of the main streets that was closed to traffic because of the marathon. There is nothing like singing dirty songs and drinking beer out of plastic cups in the middle of a crowd at 11am! People were just staring at us; it was very funny! Two of the Hashers did the 1/2 marathon, so we cheered them on in the end. We then had drinks at Knez Mihaila, which is the pedestrian street in City Center. After relaxing in the sun, we went to one of the Hasher's sailing club on Sava River. It was very basic, as they are just re-building their club house. But they had picnic tables set up and were grilling out. They invited us to lunch, and we ate Serbian sausage, steak, and chicken. I'm constantly amazed at the generosity of the Serbs. One of our new friends invited us to his boat. We just sat out for a while relaxing on the river. I got to meet some cool new people, and spend time outside in the beautiful weather. All in all, it was one of the best days I have had in Belgrade.
Now it's Monday morning, raining, and the traffic was quite bad. But since I had such a great weekend, I'm feelin' fine (volcano or not).
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