Salmon and Strawberry Pierogi, the last meal before returing.
We are back in Nebraska, just in time for the annual village parade, lawn tractor pull, turtle race, and burger feed at the fire hall. Dancing tonight at the community centre.
My wife is already planning our next trip. . . .
That identity theft thing in the title? More below the orange jet exhaust. The official photologue of our trip is at Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/... (click on a thumbnail to see a larger version of the picture, and its description below)
As many pierogi dishes we ate at Pierogarnia u Dzika and posted photos of to Daily Kos, it seems only fair that I post a picture of their restaurant as well. (The link goes to the restaurant's Website, in Polish.)
We arrived at the airport before it even opened. (We'd rather be early than miss the plane by five minutes.)
It was my wife's first trip on a propeller-driven aircraft. Unfortunately, when we arrived in Copenhagen, the person waiting for her with a wheelchair (she uses a cane and long walks through airports are trying for her), abandoned the chair and left just as we got off.
After arrival in Regina, we attempted the next day to see the Smart dealer about our car, but they were so booked that day the dealership could not work us in. (Making an appointment from Poland was a bit difficult.)
They did kindly inspect our car though, and deemed it roadworthy for a trip back to Nebraska.
We stopped at a small town, Ceylon, Saskatchewan for a coffee break. Ceylon is only a little smaller than our own town of Broadwater. There was a kindly lady running the community centre there, and we wound up drinking coffee and chatting for a couple hours.
Returning through customs at the border, I had to suppress the snarky comment generator (something about not wanting to be hassled or detained by border patrol) over the questions.
Border patrol first asked how long we'd stayed in Canada. I pointed out the lion's share of our trip was to Germany and Poland, with only a brief stay to and from in Canada. He inspected our passports with our German entry visas, then asked the same question Canadian customs asked going the other way: "Why would you drive to Canada for a plane trip?" (Answer: $$$$, a lot less of them.)
Then the usual questions:
"Do you have any fruits, vegetables, meats, or insect products?"
(It took a great deal to suppress an answer of, Yeah, I have a thousand miles of bugs squished to the front of my car.)
"Do you have any firearms?"
(Come on, I am comming into Montana. You really care about one more firearm if I had one with me?)
After converting the rest of our Canadian money at a bank near the border, we drove through the oil and gas country in western North Dakota, and down the east side of the Black Hills of South Dakota (avoiding the tourist attractions we went through going north to Regina).
If you have ever seen the place in the past, with Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the area has changed quite a bit.
The park is fine for the moment (if we can keep everyone out that wants to prospect for shale oil), but the area around it is radically different.
Fracking, oil, and wastewater injection wells cover the landscape for scores of miles in every direction.
Gas flares (because it is cheaper to simply burn than it is to build infrastructure to capture it and sell it) are everywhere. Of all the ways to raise CO2 in the atmoshpere, gas flares are the most wasteful: they create exactly nothing but pollution. Unfortunately, free market solutions don't work for petroleum wells in isolated areas: the gas must either be captured (expensive) or burned off. It is too explosive and high of pressure when petroleum comes up from the ground. (Consider this also when folk go on about drilling in the Arctic. Gas flares will be required there as well.)
Western North Dakota was a very sad looking place to drive through. I was very glad to leave. The people are friendly enough, but I felt as though I was driving through Mordor.
Eventually, we got home - half a block from our house some fool shot out of an alley and just missed hitting our car. (I don't know when the last traffic accident in this village was but it was a long time ago.) That would have really stunk, travelling all that way and getting killed 150 feet from my front door.
There were three answering machine messages on the machine when we got home. One of them was from my bank at which I have a debit card.
I called the bank, and it seems while we were in Poland, someone had attempted to book a room at the Radisson Hotel in Madison, Wisc., order a bunch of stuff from overseas, and opened a Gamefly account. The bank rejected everything except the Gamefly account as suspicious activity.
I told them it was fraudulent, as I was out of the country at the time. They immediately cancelled my debit card, and gave me the telephone number to Gamefly.
Gamefly was very nice about the whole thing and immediately reversed the charge and closed the account opened in my name.
Now however I have to watch my account at that bank, and probably my other bank accounts, to see if anything untoward comes up.
There was a bill from the credit card company waiting when we walked in the door: all the things we'd charged in the USA, Canada, and Germany were already on it. They sure didn't waste any time.
So we're home again, and I am in the public library helping my wife today as the town party continues through the night. The library board kindly straigtened up the library for my wife while she was away. The turtle race is underway in front of the library; I suppose I should check it out.
Life returns to slow speed for Village Vet and FredFredZ. . . .