Lahore, Pakistan - No one who has ever driven in Karachi will doubt when one of it’s residents claims to have been stuck in traffic. When gridlock clamps the city in it’s sweaty, seething, steely grip it’s as if the key has been thrown away.

So we weren’t just relieved when H.M. Naqvi our guest arrived, we were also secretly thankful he’d spared us the painful commute to his place.

He is instantly a refreshing breath of what makes Pakistan so tantalizingly exotic. Pale blue suit, white shirt unbuttoned fashionably low and a smoky voice that revels in every intellectual syllable he speaks.

Naqvi had come to talk to us about his debut novel, "Home Boy," a coming of age of a young Pakistani growing up in post 9/11 New York. A few days earlier he’d been shocked to receive an e-mail from an unknown reader who told him to turn on the news and pay attention.

As he watched he learned what millions of Pakistani around the world were just grappling with. The man accused of trying to blow up his SUV in Times Square was a Pakistani.

For Naqvi the shock didn’t stop there, the alleged bomber had much in common with his protagonist.

When I explain this is what I want to discuss, not just his fictional characters but the real life drama his country is caught up in I see a tiny hint of discomfort. It’s not what he’s expecting.

Six months on the talk circuit launching his widely acclaimed book is not the perfect preparation for a more wide-ranging discourse and he admits it. He is very cool about it but warns me I’ll be taking him out of his comfort zone.

He needn’t have worried, he ranges effortlessly over a landscape topics often taboo in polite circles here. He is frank and honest, but it is in the depth of his discourse he is most revealing.

His thoughts have a clarity that can only have been achieved through the intense distillation a first novel demands. Each facet of his own, and his protagonists lives, held up for close scrutiny and understanding.

Throughout our conversation Naqvi is both optimistic and realistic in equal measure. He is the voice of the silent majority. As much as his novel is compelling his take on the real world away from fiction is a fascinating insight in to his deeply troubled country.

Posted by: CNN Senior International Correspondent, Nic Robertson
Filed under: BackStory •Pakistan •Terrorism

Protesters clash with riot police in Athens on Wednesday.

Athens, Greece - Angry protest turned to tragedy on Athens' streets today.

Demonstrators threw a petrol bomb into the Marfin Egnantia Bank in Central Athens. Three employees were killed in the blaze, two women and a man. The civil protection ministry just told us that one of the women was pregnant.

Outside crowds watched the firemen work, as riot police guarded the water-drenched remains of the building's ground floor. Protesters threw bottles at them. "Liars, torturers," they shouted.

"I don't believe anyone was killed," one demonstrator told me. "I'll believe it when I see it."

The Prime Minister George Papandreou issued a statement. "Protest is one thing, murder another," he said. He vowed to bring those responsible to justice. Outside the parliament building, graffiti sprayed on the ground read "George get out."

We spent the early part of the morning with Alexandra Lekka, a secondary school teacher who stands to lose 150 euros a month from the new austerity measures.

I just called her, to find out her reaction to the killings. "I cannot breathe. We are all frozen now," she said. "Everybody is very sad and very angry. I don't know what is going to happen."

I am often asked on air how this mess will resolve itself. It is a question the Greek people, the Greek government, EU leaders and the financial markets don't have an answer to. Now Greek society is not just angry but traumatized. It is a terrible combination.

Posted by: CNN Correspondent, Diana Magnay
Filed under: General

People queue up to enter the France Pavilion on May 2 at the World Expo in Shanghai.

Shanghai, China - On the opening day of the World Expo, we set up our live shot on the corner of gate 5, in the shadow of the towering China Pavilion. Two hours before the park officially opened, Chinese visitors had already lined up in at least ten wide lines, spilling out onto the street.

It was packed but relatively orderly, with families showing us their tickets. People were excited to step into what many Chinese, including Premier Wen Jiabao, are calling the realization of a "100-year-old dream." Many had packed their lunches and snacks for the day after hearing it might take hours to snag a table in an Expo restaurant.

The majority of Chinese people never leave China. For those willing to brave the crowds on opening day, this was their chance to see the world. Many weren't even from Shanghai, but had traveled by plane or train from the provinces. This was a big day.

Take a tour of the Shanghai World Expo

"I'll stay as long as I need to to see everything," said 10-year-old Zhang Hao, with a streak of delight in his eyes as he waited in line.

He did not get to see everything – far from it. When the gates opened, people literally ran in. The initial amazement at the diverse, colorful, looming pavilions quickly turned into exasperation.

Visitors were told they couldn't see the China pavilion unless they had a reservation. But, reservations were already gone for the day. Guests from across the country were confused by the ticket reservation machines and the directives of volunteers, who themselves admitted they were confounded by how access on the first day was so difficult.

Lines at other pavilions quickly piled up, especially those that had gotten heavy media attention. By 10 a.m., the line for Japan was four hours long. Visitors had been promised they would see a band of robots playing violins and witness a massive eco-friendly heating and cooling system inside.

Take a tour of past world"s fairs

Same story at Saudi Arabia. The most expensive pavilion, which reportedly cost $164 million, boasts one of the biggest movie screens in the world and date palm trees imported from the Middle East.

This is when I saw people start to get visibly angry.

"Four hours!" one man screamed at the back of line. "And they're all like this. We flew here from Guangdong!"

"This is ridiculous," another yelled. "You regret it if you come, you regret it if you don't come."

As the clock struck noon, temperatures turned sweltering and some people just gave up. Children pouted with ice cream while their parents scanned maps to figure out how to get from Nepal to the Netherlands. Grown-ups slouched on benches, holding their jackets and free maps over their heads for shade.

Note: Shade at the Expo is scarce. There are standing umbrellas scattered throughout the park, but other than that people tend to crowd under the narrow awnings of restaurants or in the shadows of the pavilions themselves. The Dutch pavilion proved to be a popular spot for its ample shade. My photographer, Brad Olson, faced the heat bravely with his heavy camera. We had the great fortune of stumbling on a rare Minute Maid orange juice stand in the middle of our odyssey from Spain to Brazil.

Also, the park is a massive navigational nightmare. There are five giant districts, with just a few transportation routes. Lucky VIPs (and no, that does not include the media) whiz around in golf carts while the masses traipse across the park slowly in the heat. Japan and the USA, for example, are on opposite ends, about an hour's walking distance. To get from one end to the other you have to find an out-of-the-way bus stop where Expo shuttles pick up and drop off.

Is Shanghai ready for the world?

Understandably, nobody wants to walk the long distance in the heat, so the shuttles are over-packed. I literally almost got squished when a shuttle door opened. My producer Jo Kent was nearly trampled by tourists.

The time it takes to get from one place to another, on top of the lines, means some people may have gotten inside only three or four pavilions at most in a single day. Many we spoke with said they were too exhausted to come back another time. Others strategized to only visit pavilions with short wait times. One tourist told Jo on the shuttle bus, "I don't mind going to the smaller pavilions if that's what it means to beat the lines. Plus maybe I'll learn more than in the big ones. I've never even heard of the Seychelles; they could be interesting."

However, despite the many complaints, there were plenty of people willing to wait it out, standing patiently in the line for Denmark to see Copenhagen's famous little mermaid or the popular "seed cathedral" at the UK pavilion, for example. Others enjoyed performances at an outdoor stage on the Square of the Americas, where festive dancers and violinists donning sombreros delighted the crowds.

For some, the wait was worth it.

Little Zhang Hao's trip started with disappointment when it was clear he wouldn't be seeing Japan or China. But his family rallied and waited it out at South Korea, to be delighted by futuristic video games, a Korean drum concert and endless multimedia focusing on the environment and technology.

"It's really cool here," his mother, Wu Jun, said on their way out. "Even if we can't get inside every pavilion, seeing it from the outside is pretty amazing."

Not surprisingly, the Zhang family has never left China before. They didn't get to see the whole world at the Shanghai Expo, but they certainly felt like they caught a glimpse.

Posted by: CNN Correspondent, Emily Chang
Filed under: China •General •World Expo

Kathmandu, Nepal - I am standing in the middle of a mass of red flags held up by an ocean of people in the capitol of Nepal, Kathmandu.

An estimated 100,000 protesters amassed in Kathmandu, among them villagers who wanted to see the capital for the first time. CNN/Sumnima Udas

Printed in white on the flags is the sickle, the sign of the United Communist Party of Nepal Maoists. Some of the protestors are chanting as loud as they can, but as I look around many simply have a look of wonder on their faces. It seems a bit odd considering the massive rally was planned by the Maoist party and attended by its supporters.

"Why are you here?" I asked a woman happily squatting and chatting with her lady friends by the side of the road.

"I don't know. Uh, we just came for the program," she said.

It turns out some of the 100,000 estimated protesters had just come to the city because they had never seen the city before. They live in villages hours or even days away, and for some the trip was free, courtesy of their favorite political party.

It was the village folks’ chance to see something interesting and, oh yeah, support their political party. They were mixed in with dire hardline Maoists. Some of the marchers were former rebels; others simple citizens angry with the government in power because they say everyday citizens haven't benefited from it.

The whole scene is eye-catching. Hard-core supporters with strong views chant, while others smile, sing, play music and dance as if at a street party. It is not the scene of violence many feared.

The Maoists and Nepal's government forces have a bloody history. But today the Maoist leader clearly said he was showing everyone the Maoists are capable of a peaceful protest and solution. Bottom line: the party is demanding the government move over and let the Maoists lead the coalition government. After all, they say, they won the majority vote in the landmark 2008 elections.

Nepal is going through the growing pains of moving from a monarchy to a democracy, and simply put, that is hard to do. It is taking much longer than planned. Yet the head of the U.N. mission in Nepal said in many ways the country has managed a great deal since deposing the king. An election was held, parties accepted the results, and the two groups of armed forces - the Army and the former Maoist rebels - are not at each others’ throats, even though they have been enemies for a decade.

It is interesting to watch a fledgling democracy try and find its feet, but the longer the government is unstable, I fear the more the people will suffer. Despite its worldwide reputation for a great place for tourists to visit, Nepal's people still live in one of the poorest countries in the world.

Posted by: CNN Correspondent, Sara Sidner
Filed under: General •Nepal

London, England – The UK election leads our coverage this month, not because of its significance for Britain and beyond but for the manner in which this election is being conducted. Some say this is Britain's first social media election; others couldn't disagree more.

To that end we're talking to Professor Roy Greenslade who writes for the Guardian and the London Evening Standard and Andrew Walker co-founder of Tweetminster – a site that tracks British Members of Parliament on Twitter.

The Icelandic volcano failed to escape anyone's notice this month, be it a journalist, traveller or newswatcher. For international news organisations, it was an unprecedented event in terms of news planning, not least because getting reporters, camera persons, producers, satellite engineers to the various locations at which they were needed was a task of Herculean proportions, given there were no flights.

As soon as European airspace began to open and backlogged flights began to take off, the story began as one might expect, to slip down the news agenda. To talk about the experience and the lessons learned we speak to CNN's supervising editor, Sarah Sultoon, Sky's head of Foreign News, Adrian Wells and Ben Rayner, executive editor at Al Jazeera English.

Finally, globalisation has affected us all directly or indirectly. A book by TIME Magazine journalist, Alex Perry looks into the impact its had on the developed and developing world. How far has globalisation gone to creating wars? Alex Perry would argue, a good deal. Recently, he came into the studio to discuss what he's gleaned from his years of experience as a foreign correspondent with TIME, in various hotspots around the world.

Posted by: CNNAnchor and Correspondent Fionnuala Sweeney
Filed under: General •International Correspondents

Seven in the morning. my phone rings: a text message from the International Solidarity Movement, which describes itself as a "Palestinian-led organization committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles."

The text message reads: "Israeli bulldozers leveling and uprooting land in al-Walaja village south of Jerusalem for the planned route construction of the separation wall."

Grabbing my cameras and tripod I got in the car and headed to the Palestinian village of al-Walaja.

After reaching the village I walked for five minutes until I came upon the site of construction of what Israel calls its security barrier and what Palestinians and many international activists call an apartheid wall.

Here I saw two dozen activists trying to force their way past Israeli soldiers and border police in an effort to prevent earth moving equipment from laying foundations for the construction of the wall.

Activists say that they are protesting at this site because the path the wall is on is Palestinian-owned farm land and will separate the village from the fields and isolate al-Walaja from the rest of the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Israel says it is constructing the separation wall to protect its citizens from suicide bombers and other attacks. Palestinians consider the construction of an Israeli separation wall a land grab

At first the Israeli soldiers and border police formed a security barrier preventing some journalists and activists from getting close to the construction site.

But the activists managed to elude the soldiers and border police and reach the construction site where large bulldozers where leveling and uprooting the hill top of the village farm land to make way for the wall.

As I was following the activists I heard loud shouting and saw three soldiers subduing a Palestinian teenager who was trying to prevent the movement of the bulldozers.

Three soldiers wrestled the teenager to the ground and used pepper spray before cuffing him and placing him under arrest

During this time a handful of activists managed to form a human chain in front of a large bulldozer. With their arms locked together the activists shouted slogans and refused to follow orders of an Israeli military commander to voluntarily leave the area.

The activist refused to move and demanded to see paperwork denying them access to the area. No such document was handed over by the Israeli commander and minutes later Israeli soldiers and border police started dragging the activists one-by-one from in front of the bulldozers.

Undeterred, the activists tried to get in front of the bulldozer again, but met more Israeli police and soldiers who had formed their own human chain blocking accessing to the site.

This is the third time protests have been staged with the aim of stopping construction of the wall in the Palestinian village of al-Walaja. The activists have pledged to keep coming back despite the poor odds of stopping construction of the wall.

Posted by: CNN, Kareem Khadder
Filed under: Israel

Jackson Kaujeua, one of Namibia’s best-known musicians.

The voice that once gave melody to a movement is now, at times, no louder than a whisper.

Ill heath has taken its toll one of Namibia’s best-known musicians, Jackson Kaujeua. But on the 20th anniversary of his country’s independence the 57-year-old singer’s message is as clear as ever.

“I lived it, I ate it, I felt it,” Kaujeua says of his country’s liberation struggle.

“Music was very important. Way back it was undeveloped, but it was a very good tool for mobilization. It made people, especially the international community, realize what was happening in Namibia.”

Kaujeua may be best known for his struggle song “Winds of Change.” It helped to define not only Namibia’s struggle, but also similar liberation movements across Africa.

“It was sweet, it was simple and close to the hearts of people,” said Kaujeua of his song. “Hearing about other African colonies; Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, South Africa, gave me the feeling that, if there were others that were free, we would also be free one day.”

For Kaujeua, most of the independence struggle was spent performing in exile. He lived 15 years in Botswana, Zambia, Angola, the United Kingdom and Sweden before finally returning to Namibia in 1989 on the eve of independence.

“I don’t think there’s anybody who wants to be living in exile your whole life,” Kaujeua says. “I always longed of coming back home - the question was when and how. But we were always talking of when Namibia is free, when Namibia is free. We knew that we would be free. It kept us living and kept us strong. It kept us striving.”

Kidney failure now keeps Kaujeua in and out of the hospital and away from performing, but he still was able to attend the country’s recent independence celebrations. As to the next 20 years of independence, the singer carries a simple message.

“I hope for a peaceful country because we went through war and it should be enough. We should know better.”

Posted by: Brent Swails, CNN Producer
Filed under: Africa •Entertainment

It was 3 a.m. in Los Angeles when I got the call from the office: The Polish President had been killed in a plane crash in Russia. That is all we knew at that point. When I put the phone down I thought it was a dream, but I checked the phone again and realized it wasn't. Needless to say, I couldn't sleep. There were so many unanswered questions.

I was on my way to Warsaw on the first flight out of L.A. By the morning I had learned that the president had been on his way with 95 others onboard to Katyn to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. Some of Poland's most influential politicians and intellectual elite were killed in the crash in this same place where 20,000 officers and members of the Polish intelligentia had perished in 1940.

When I arrived in Warsaw Sunday I was hit by a sea of candles and flowers and thousands of Poles paying homage to their President Lech Kaczynski and the others who had been on board. My family is from Warsaw. I have been going there my whole life. This time, however, it was not the city that I remember. The somber mood of a country in grieving was overwhelming. We spent the next six days in Warsaw, and when the bodies of the president and his wife came back to Poland and were placed in the presidential palace for the public to pay their last respects; the doors stayed open until his body was taken away.

Thousands of Poles from all over the country came to pay their respects and waited in line for hours, some of them overnight. It seemed that that no matter what their political stance, they had found a common voice and had united in sorrow and mourning.

The week of mourning for the victims of the crash ended with an emotional state funeral in Krakow Sunday. Not everyone in Poland was in agreement over the place of burial.

The crypt at the Wawel Castle is a resting place reserved for kings and national heroes. Not everyone here is in agreement over the decision to bury the president and first lady there. They made their thoughts known on Thursday in a demonstration protesting this choice, chanting “To Powaski (a cemetery in Warsaw), not to the Wawel” and “Don’t make a martyr out of the president.”

Protests are not unusual in Poland. My personal experience is that a Pole will most likely let you know what they think, and this wasn't an exception despite a week of mourning.

Despite the fact many international dignitaries couldn't make the funeral because of the volcanic ash fallout - another unlucky blow for the country/ I mean what are the chances? – Poles still came en masse.

We broadcast live from the heart of the 50,000-strong main square, the only foreign network in the crowd. One man told me, “I feel pain, an enormous emptiness because our beloved president died, and we are so sad. We can’t seem to find ourselves.”

People cried openly as the coffins were taken away, and there was an air of silent disbelief.

Katyn, where my grandmother's brother was killed and a subject I have heard about my whole life, was largely unknown to the world before this tragic accident and a contentious subject for the Poles.

I have heard many say that however tragic this accident is, it did do one thing: It did bring Katyn to the world.

Posted by: Antonia Mortensen
Filed under: BackStory •Europe •Poland •Russia

Across Europe - Like hundreds of thousands if not millions of others I found myself a considerable distance from home when the volcanic ash from Iceland grounded my flight. As it turns out, I was almost a thousand miles away from my family, friends and my building site of a kitchen.

It was Thursday and I was in Warsaw, Poland and I was hoping to fly to London, England. I had been there since the previous weekend, organizing CNN’s coverage of the plane crash which claimed the lives of the Polish president, his wife and 94 other government and army officials.

When I first heard about the volcanic ash I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to the disruption that was going to severely impact the rest of my week because I was rather preoccupied with the next stage of our coverage in Poland.

We were planning for the arrival of several world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, Britain’s Prince Charles, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, among others.

We thought it best for Phil Black and his team to head to Krakow to make arrangements for Sunday – coverage of a state funeral with hundreds of thousands of mourners descending on a small city takes some planning. I stayed in Warsaw with our Germany correspondent Fred Pleitgen and helped with arrangements for the memorial service in the capital on Saturday.

I was rather naively hoping the ash cloud problems would literally blow over and I’d be clear to fly home on Friday morning. I spoke with our travel department and tried to book the flight home, but I was told UK airspace would be closed until at least Friday morning. By this time I wouldn’t have got very far from Warsaw so I decided to stay on for another night.

The next morning it was fairly obvious that I wasn’t going to fly anywhere on Friday or even Saturday – closures were announced in Poland and at airport after airport in several countries across Europe. This was not going away – quite the opposite, it was developing into an incredible story which would affect hundreds of thousands of people.

I called the news desk and the plan was for me to try and get home “any way I possibly could” and of course to film my experiences en route. Fred’s brief was to find personal stories about people’s problems and we didn’t have to try too hard. He and his cameraman Paul Devitt overheard a group of travelers chatting at a nearby table. They were trying to make their way across the continent and were closely studying a map over coffee. Fortunately for us they agreed to do an interview.

As I later discovered this was a common response; it’s not a disaster and to my knowledge nobody has died as a result. It’s an act of nature that has affected the vast majority of people – even those not directly caught up in the chaos will know someone who has been – and it’s an event which has brought out the best in people. Certainly that was my impression.

Next stop Berlin

After consulting the map I thought I would start the long journey home by taking the train in the direction of Berlin.

I checked out of the hotel and hailed a cab to the station. Bad move in hindsight. There were massive queues, and some people I spoke to had been waiting for six hours to buy a ticket without any guarantees of boarding a train that day.

Plan B was required (I think I’m now on about plan G or H) so I tried to rent a car. I was told by the only rental company willing to let me take a car out of the country that I would have to wait for at least seven hours to get my hands on a vehicle.

This was not an option as CNN were expecting me to have reached at least Berlin that evening. So I cleared it with the boss and went in search of a cab. To be honest I was a bit relieved – I didn’t really fancy the prospect of such a long drive on my own.

So I called the hotel and was told the driver wanted 2,500 Polish zloty (about US$900) to take me to the German capital. I thought I could do better that that, and asked a local taxi driver sitting in the rank outside Warsaw station. He was pretty happy about the request and asked for 2,200 zloty, about a hundred bucks cheaper. The deal was done but more importantly I was on the move.

As we crawled through the suburbs of Warsaw it occurred to me that across Europe millions of people were all experiencing an unprecedented feeling of paralysis; we’re used to being able to travel by land, sea or air and when one of those options is cut off the other two simply can’t cope, such is the level of demand from society.

However, this was not a subject I was able to discuss with my taxi driver Rafa, because he spoke very little English and I had only picked up two words in Polish – both of which mean ‘OK’.

He did manage to establish early on that I wasn’t a massive fan of heavy metal music after he stuck ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on full blast on the radio when we got out of Warsaw. We resorted to the international language of pointing, he put his sunglasses on and pretty much ignored me for the rest of the way.

Those of you who’ve driven across Poland will know it’s not the greatest visual experience – I soon got pretty used to the relentless landscape of farms and tractors. There’s not a lot to see between Warsaw and Berlin.

And those of you who take cabs will complain that often the driver talks too much. In my case, as you can imagine, I wished Rafa and I could just talk about something! I didn’t even have a book with me.

I was told the 375-mile drive would take about seven hours, but with a couple of stops and a few traffic jams we didn’t roll in to Berlin until 11 p.m. – nine hours after leaving Warsaw. Rafa and I got a few smiles from the locals who could see by the signs on his cab that he, like so many others, was now a very long way from home. I was utterly exhausted and didn’t even think about the next part of the trip.

We’re in it together

I was given permission by the boss to spend the day in Berlin and get moving first thing in the morning. This was probably just as well as the trains were booked, flights again grounded and the only car I could hire had a tiny engine and wasn’t available until the afternoon.

Time to consider my options for the morning. Do I drive to Brussels and try and get the Eurostar? Failing that should I press on and get a ferry from Calais? Or what about a Dutch port – certainly closer to Berlin than Belgium or France.

Everywhere I turned I heard similar conversations – it’s difficult to convey exactly how far and wide the behavior of an Icelandic volcano has impacted European life. Practically everyone has a story to tell. In fact I haven’t yet found anyone who hasn’t.

I spent the night in Berlin and went out for a drink with our correspondent Diana Magnay. Predictably a man standing next to us at the bar was stuck in town too. He was a New York-based businessman who owned a stainless steel company. He’d been told he may have to wait a week to get a flight back to the States after coming over for a short conference.

On Sunday morning I decided to try the train first. Claudia Otto, the Berlin-based camera operator for CNN, suggested a train to Rotterdam, Holland and then a ferry to the UK would be the best option. We had both been trying without success to buy a Eurostar ticket from Brussels, Belgium so that wasn’t an immediate option.

The queue for tickets at Berlin looked pretty long but incredibly I was able to buy one from the machine for the next train to Rotterdam. The station was much calmer than Warsaw had been two days earlier; many travelers had clearly managed to escape or were prepared to sit and wait for their revised departure. Or perhaps it’s another notch on the belt for German efficiency!

I was moving again but more bad news: word had reached me that I had no chance of getting a ferry to the UK today and very little chance tomorrow.

There is a cruel irony here, one which I fully deserve to be on the receiving end. The ferries from Rotterdam go to Hull and Harwich in the UK. Being a proud Londoner I have often teased our Atlanta-based director of coverage Roger Clark about his home town – Hull. And being the proudest of all Yorkshiremen he’s always game for a robust conversation. Today, which will surely be the only time in my life I am actually desperate to go to Hull, I can’t physically get there.

As we approached the Germany-Holland border there was yet more evidence of the far-reaching consequences of Volcanogate. I got chatting to my fellow train passengers and discovered that practically everyone sitting near me has had their lives turned upside down over the past few days by the ash.

First was sports journalist John Dillon. He had been enjoying a short break in Berlin with his two sons, Gregory, 13, and nine-year-old Nicholas. The best he could arrange was a ferry from Amsterdam to Newcastle in the UK, which is more than four hours on a train from their home town, London. But he was delighted to have booked the last berth.

John, who writes for the Daily Express, says there are worse places to be stuck, but the children seemed a bit bored by their marathon return journey. And Nicholas was going to miss out on a school trip. His classmates from Oakdale Junior School in London were off to Wales. Their head teacher won’t be joining them either – John said she was “stuck” on holiday in Madeira.

Either side of me was two Dutch businessmen – Luc De Haan and Ramses Van Hovell. Luc is a fabric salesman and he was on business in Minsk. He was coming to the end of a 24-hour train trip and was nearly at his final destination of Borne in Holland.

Ramses runs his own online marketing company. He had been to Kiev in the Ukraine and is nearing the end of his 33-hour train trip. He was very relaxed about the whole thing – I guess that much time on a train has that effect on people.

One passenger told me there’s never a good time for this to happen. It’s true for me too – my fiancée has been left with our wedding plans for next month, and my colleagues are concerned about our coverage of the UK elections. But there could be a silver lining on this volcanic ash cloud adventure for me at least – my kitchen will probably be built by the time I get home.

It’s nearly time to get off the train at Amersfoort and change for Rotterdam but I’ve just had a call from Hull’s finest and been asked to change the plan and head to Amsterdam. We’re hearing there is the slightest possibility that Dutch airline KLM may start flying planes tomorrow after some successful test flights today. Clearly, I’m needed on that. Let’s see what happens next.

Posted by: CNN Producer, Geoff Hill
Filed under: Environment •Europe •Travel

London, England - As I sit in the car park of a hotel just outside Heathrow's perimeter fence, I can actually hear the conversations emanating from the dozen or so other TV crews camped here.

The world's busiest airport remains shut.

Earlier a dozen or so maintenance workers walked the length of the northern runway, presumably a normal procedure but done in the early hours, looking for debris or whatever.

When I arrived at hotel, a group of children from the Middle East were happily kicking a football around the lobby. That lobby is usually full of flight attendants checking in our out.

The hotel also is offering a flat £10 lunch for those without food vouchers from an airline. That's about half what we would spend just on a sandwich and coke at this place.

A flew airplanes are being moved around the tarmac and there is the faint sound of an engine firing up. But inside and outside the airport, people are just sitting and waiting and hoping.

Posted by: CNN Correspondent, Jim Boulden
Filed under: General