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Taking blackberries on the plane

I have to share a story from the previous weekend my family and I spent visiting relatives in Victoria, BC. One of the very relaxing things we did every day while there was picking blackberries. I do miss them around here like so many of the fruit from my childhood. On the last day I wanted to pick a few more and take them back to Calgary. I would have preferred to carry them onto the plane rather than checking them in and having them all squished. To be on the safe side I phoned Air Canada to check if it would be allowed to bring along about 2 lbs of blackberries. "Oh yes, 100% no problems with that" was the reply I got. Really? I repeated my question as I was surprised that there was no issue at all. "Yes, any electronic items like these can be carried onto the plane" .... I was laughing so hard I had a tough time to continue talking. And even after I mentioned that "no, I mean the blackberries you can eat" the friendly customer service rep was clueless. "What are you talking about?" was his response.

Interesting world we live in today. Who knows if that customer rep is sitting somewhere in a call centre in India where he's never seen blackberries of the edible kind or if he's just a young kid that loves his electronics ...

In the end I placed the blackberries into a ziploc and the ziploc into a box and the box into the checked suitcase. We had some wonderful vanilla pudding with it the next day ;-)

Posted by
368 posts

That is a funny story.

Bringing them in Canada is fine, but taking them to the States or elsewhere would probably be frowned upon. We had beef tacos confiscated once by the US Customs agent. Apparently chicken tacos would have been fine to import... :D

Posted by
448 posts

It is always tricky, especially bringing food items into the states...i long ago learned to not attempt to bring any unpasteurized cheese from France..even if the customs said "okay" family didn't like it anyhow..Last year i carried these cute bird seed ""eggs" packed in egg cartons..my mother is an devoted Audubon member..I didn't think of them as "food"..but customs said the birds would eat them and then "bad seeds from europe" would land in NewEngland.
....anyhow, i did enjoy your blackberry story, though i prefer blueberries..no seeds

Posted by
448 posts

....PS...having a french husband who speaks "creative english" i do understand...and myself, wheni check in once a year in NH, USA..i often think YIKES, what are they talking about..??..I still speak English don't i??..Kind of a shock when the coffee counter girl doesn't understand me...Guess i've been out of town too long..??