Hard to believe that we’ve reached the end of our second tour of global volunteering and activated adventuring, and the time has come for us to return to the U.S. briefly before heading out for our third tour. Reluctantly, we say goodbye to Copenhagen, to Denmark, to Europe, to the Eastern Hemisphere, and make our way to the Copenhagen airport.

And there we receive an unpleasant surprise, which really should not have been a surprise. When we go through security, a polite young man confiscates almost all of the grub we’ve brought along — including a jar of gourmet strawberry preserves, and a can of dolmas that we were going to have for lunch. The list of potential deadly weapons is ever expanding these days, and eventually may include shoehorns, if it doesn’t already. We wish him bon appetit, and then go forage for some more provisions that we can eat on the plane.

And then we get a very pleasant surprise. In desperation we settle on a pair of vegetarian burritos we find in, of all places, a 7-11 in the airport. And they turn out to be rather unconventional and amazingly tasty. And to add to the pleasant surprise, they’re not very expensive.

The airline we’re taking for the first leg to Iceland is called Play, which we’d never heard of before booking the flight, but it sounds right up our runway. [Note: As of September 2025, Play Airlines became extinct. Such a pity; it’s going to be a difficult brand name to top.] Across the aisle from us on this Play plane is, appropriately, a musician. How do we know he’s a musician? Because sitting in the seat next to him is his cello — buckled in with its head pointing downward. Apparently this instrument is prone to nausea when it flies.

We ask him if he had to buy a ticket for the cello too, and he replies, “Yes, and there was no discount.”

“Well”, we tell him, “we hope that wherever you’re playing, they pay you well.”

“Actually”, he says, “I’m going back home from playing. In Brussels.”

Call us new-fashioned, but we think airlines should comp professional musicians, or at least their instruments. Or if nothing else, give them first class seats for coach fare. It’s the least they can do to support the arts. And having been artists ourselves, we are all too aware that the arts and the artists sorely need supporting.

When the plane lands in Iceland, we get our passports stamped for the first time since we entered Europe, thanks to the Shingen arrangement, under which European nations are just one big happy family when it comes to immigration. It’s more convenient than the old way, we must admit; but it also would be cool to collect more stamps in our passports.

Then we have a couple of hours to wait at Keflavik International Airport, which is THE hub of international travel between Europe and North America. Pretty much any airborne itinerary that is not a direct flight seems to make a stop here.

But you’d never guess that by looking at it, either outside or inside. It’s really a tiny airport as major airports go, in a small town about 30 miles outside Reykjavík. It’s a David among the world’s Goliath airports — small, quiet and unassuming, but packing a powerful punch. Rather than the overcrowding and breakneck rushing about that characterize O’Hare or Heathrow, it’s comfy and cozy, the kind of place you’d expect to have Mr. Rogers greet you with a cup of tea. The vintage automobile on display, a turquoise 1956 Dodge Custom Royal Lancer Convertible, seems to set the tone perfectly.

The flight back gives us a chance to nap, though it’s rather bumpy passing over Greenland. When we start approaching Boston, the plane circles around a couple of times, seems to do a figure eight, and practically waltzes as it’s waiting for the right time to touch down. When it does, it doesn’t take us long to go through the line to get our passports stamped, and suddenly we’re back in a land where everyone around is, strangely to our ears, speaking English.

Ah, America. Where a top official in the federal government claims he once teleported into a Waffle House. Where millions of people believe that vaccines contain microchips, that chemtrails control the weather, that windmills cause cancer, that wildfires are caused by Jewish space lasers, that gravity will soon cease functioning, that the world itself will soon come to an end, that the world is being controlled by a race of interplanetary lizard people, that Fox is News, that immigrants are stealing their jobs and eating their cats, that schools perform transgender surgery on students and provide litterboxes for those who want to use them, that narcissistic billionaires are tireless champions of the working class, and that certain prominent individuals operated a child exploitation ring in the basement of a pizza parlor with no basement. Among many other things. At least we’re starting out in New England, which is still an island of relative sanity braving the tsunami of lunacy.

And one of the sane denizens of the East Coast is our son Zephyr, who lives in Providence, just a few miles south of Boston. So now we need to catch a train to Providence, where he’ll pick us up at the station — he prefers not to drive in Boston unless it’s late at night, and anyone who’s ever driven in Boston (as we have, with an RV no less) can hardly blame him.

Once back at his house, we spend a few hours catching up, then we dig our sleeping bags out of boxes they’ve been stored in, and bed down on the couch. It’s 10:30, not too much past our usual bedtime, even though we’re in a radically different time zone. After a solid night’s sleep, the first we’ve had in the States in a couple of years, we’ll get out and enjoy Providence (which, we notice, is chillier than either Denmark or Iceland at the moment), one of our favorite American cities.

Inevitably, this will include an outing to Trader Joe’s which is one of the things we’ve missed the most while being abroad. No matter what trying times you may live in, if you can walk down the aisles of a Trader Joe’s, you can’t help but feel that things are looking up.

Events occurred 04/08-09/20225