I shifted around as much as my narrow seat would allow, giddy with anticipation of watching Greenland come creeping over the horizon. The woman next to me was slapping her hands on her armrests, clearing her throat, wheezing like a cat choking on its own furball – an obvious and vaguely nauseating attempt at telling me to stop hogging the window. I shifted again and pressed my forehead against the glass. For nothing as it turned out, as a fat blanket of cloud cover had already taken care of any chance at a view of the land. I looked at the woman and shrugged. ‘Not much to see.’ She shot me an ornery glance and leaned over my lap, stretching her neck like one of those Paduang women and peering out at the expanse of gray below us. ‘So I see,’ she muttered, and settled back in her seat, eyeing me like it was my fault.
We (meaning I) did catch a glimpse of fabled Erik the Red country as we descended toward Narsarsuaq, the 'Great Plain'. The blue-black sea below appeared both calm and voracious – like a pair of scaly nostrils swimming a slow line in the general direction of your rowboat. Our plane pitched and dipped, in no unusual manner but a bit too much for my liking. I held my breath. The hungry water closed in - then in the blink of an eye disappeared, replaced with the gray-brown blur of the land. A jolt and a rumble and the roar of a plane pushing the limits of luck and physics. I pushed back against my seat. I hate this part. We bounced and lurched and finally slowed. I let my breath out and smiled at my neighbor, tossing a thumb at the window. She frowned and looked away.
Only later would I notice the knuckled mountains of rock, snow and ice rising up from the far end of the runway, waiting to chew up any aircraft that strayed past the end of the short strip of more or less ice-free macadam. In retrospect I figured that old woman should be thanking me for sparing her the visual terror.
I stepped off the plane and sucked in my first lungful of the clean, cold Greenland air. I felt like I was being cleansed, body and soul. Then I walked through the glass doors of the terminal and into swirls of cigarette smoke so thick I could barely make out the oversized 'No Smoking' sign on the wall. Only the high ceilings kept us all from slowly succumbing to this unusual Inuit welcome – and a not-so-subtle hint about the attitude of the natives. That sign was for the Danes and anyone else who invaded this land; the Inuit were free to do however they damn well pleased.
In the slightly fresher arrival hall a woman materialized in front of me. 'I am Judu,' she said, offering her hand. 'From the Danish travel agency in Narsarsuaq.' She tossed me a demure smile. 'Would you like me to walk you to the hostel?'
I adjusted my pack. I liked Greenland already. 'No, that's all right. Just point me in the right direction.'
Ten minutes later I exited the airport and headed off in the wrong direction.
After a suspiciously long stretch of gravel and crumbling pavement I walked into the only building around resembling a youth hostel. Next thing I knew I was in a hotel bar, standing next to a carved polar bear, talking to a guy named Jörg.
'Where you going with that big pack?' he asked between mouthfuls of beer. I pulled out a map and traced the route I had laid out for myself, sliding my finger past ferry jumps and fjords to my ultimate destination: Aappilattoq, population 160. 'Oh, that's where my fiancée lives,' he said, grabbing my shoulder. 'You'll have to come visit us while you're in town.'
As if it meant going out of my way.
The weather wasn't extending a very cheerful welcome, but I was quickly feeling part of the local community. Jörg gave Judu a quick call (I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised they knew each other) and barely had time to throw the rest of his beer down his throat before she was pulling up in front of the hotel to whisk us half a mile down the street, past the airport and to the hostel. Judu's travel agency owned the place so she was there quite often, assisting guests in whatever capacity. Jörg seemed a sort of drifter who hung out at the hostel for lack of any better place to be. I paused for a moment, taking in my perfectly disorganized introduction to Greenland.
