Mother earth sneezes and I get stranded in Frankfurt for a week!

One more Volcano Tale to add to the pile. Compared to other epic return trips though, mine is positively uneventful:

I just decided to hop on the first available train and take a “forced” weekend holiday in Berlin - which proved quite a good move as soon as it was clear that planes were not going anywhere anytime soon.

My mate, set to fly Saturday to Greece to meet his family for his own holiday had to settle with a weekend’s “relax therapy” as well, so we found ourselves without partners or - most importantly - babies and brilliant weather.

There was no way out, no other choice really. Slept late, woke up late, spend most of our time in the parks enjoying the sunshine and ate as much food as possible in the sure knowledge that by the time our spouses see us the bulge would not be so pronounced (we’re still that young).

What we did not do was hit the bars and clubs - there is a limit to how much you can take on if you have to go back to work on Monday and we’re not that young anymore.

But the cafe-walk-in-the-park-restaurant-walk-in-the-park-ice-cream-and-coffee-in-the-sunshine routine is a perfect revitalizer. Throw in a tour around the river channel with a rented water-bike, good black beer and unlimited playing time for two evenings straight and this volcano incident is creeping up in the list of “fun things we did” for that we didn’t want to do it.

To all of you out there, stranded by Gaia’s hay fever: Try to take a step back, relax and enjoy the adventure, these things don’t happen every day.