Going Home 2011 p2

As if getting to Estonia isn't hard enough. If you can jag a good Internet deal on flights, you might be lucky to get a trip lasting around the 22-24 hours mark - that's Sydney to Tallinn. Of course you can stretch it out with longer stop-overs if your so inclined and make it 40+ hours whilst taking in some annoying detour airports like Heathrow or Frankfurt, probably on the same flight.
No, for me, it's Sydney -> Singapore (or Bangkok or Hong Kong) -> Helsinki -> Tallinn, an that's it. The sooner it's done, the better.
Although I'm used to the challenge, the void in terms of mentally dealing with travelling between Estonians and Australians (or probably anyone) is laughable. Whilst Aussies are used to travelling a minimum of 6 hours just to leave Australian territory for something not resembling Western culture, Estonians find the thought of this like having a year knocked off their life span. Travelling Tallinn to New York in the U.S. is a doddle at 9hrs, but to an Estonian, that's a life commitment right up there with marriage. A once in a life-time prospect. But what do you expect from people who live in a country that takes 4 hours to drive across...
So here we are; my wife, child and I about to embark on our (what is normally) one and a half yearly sojourn back to the fatherland when a frigging volcano in Chile, on the other side of the planet, decides to pop and involve Australia - a country with no volcanic activity. This Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano comes on top of the other pain-in-the-butt volcano in Iceland, Grimsvötn, which took a shot at disrupting our travel plans at the other end of the journey a few weeks ago. Whilst that later of the volcanoes put a lid on itself, this newer threat in Chile comes completely out of the blue.
The fact that these things happen before a journey and not while on the journey remains a mystery. The thought of calling work and expressing ones obvious dismay at not being able to return to work has been playing on my mind. "Sorry boss.......no. 'Fraid I can't get a cab................I'm in Estonia..................ES..TON..I..A. Where is.......it's in Northern Europe........yes near America".
Hhhhhha. Let's see what happens.