Suppose I should explain the lack of an
update. So here goes—the misadventure week that is now
(thankfully) over, and can be laughed at in retrospect and added to
my travel corkboard.
This tale of insanity starts last
Tuesday, when Sarah was traveling to Ilulissat from Nuuk for
surveying and Taste of Greenland filming. I reserved the company car
to drive her to the airport, half to be nice and half as an excuse to
drive and be out for a bit. Excited and nervous to be driving in a
foreign country the first time, I pulled out of the parking lot with
the words of assurance from Anne Mette and the others at work that
the police in Nuuk didn’t pull anyone over and were rarely even
out, and that if they did they would just stare at your license and
wave you on.
I’ll bet you can see exactly where
this is headed.
I took the single road that runs from
one end of the city (work) to the other (Qinngorput)where Sarah
lives. As I crossed into Qinngorput from Nuussuaq, my heart
stopped—the police had the road blocked off, and were checking
every car that went by for paperwork and to ensure the winter chains
were off the tires. As I pulled off the road and waited I reassured
myself that the police station in Nuuk wasn’t too bad, nor was the
prison.
A younger male policeman came up and I
sheepishly lowered my window and cut off his Danish, stating I only
spoke English. He grinned and said he spoke a little, and to provide
to him my license and paperwork. After a second’s hesitation, I
handed him my US license—which he stared at, as Anne Mette had
predicted, quite blankly. I then figured it was best to get the
awkward comments out of the way, so I quickly followed up with the
fact that the car was not mine and belonged to the company, and I did
not off the top of my head know the phone number to verify this. He
slowly took the information and walked around the car, checking it
and writing information down on his pad of paper—while I debated
whether or not to call Sarah and tell her I would not be able to get
her as I would be detained in Greenlandic prison, and to call a cab
so she would not miss her flight.
He walked back up to the window and
very sternly reported to me that it was illegal to drive on a US
license in Greenland. I told him quietly I’d just moved to the
country a few weeks ago and had not had time to have it switched over
yet, and it would be high on my priority list. He stared at me for a
few seconds while my heart beat a bit quicker, then—he shrugged,
said to go to the station when I had a chance to get my license
switched over, and to have a great day. Before he could change his
mind I sped off to Sarah’s house, trying to map in my head how the
back road from the airport got to the city center so I wouldn’t be
pressing my luck.
Although my coworkers had a great laugh
over this when I got back, they did not laugh as much on Friday when
I accidentally had security show up at work because I’d managed to
set off the alarm in the morning by not turning it off correctly.
Anders LC called me downstairs where security was waiting some ten
minutes later, where security happily informed me they’d be billing
us for coming out, and Anders LC made sure to reiterate to call them
if the alarm went off, no matter for how long (it had gone off once
before when I input my code incorrectly and security hadn’t come
out, so I figured it would be fine this time as well).
Similarly, Sarah was not too happy with
me when on Saturday while I had put my Greenlandic phone (which is
about as basic a brick phone as you can get) in my bag while walking
from town, and it decided to call her for 45 minutes straight,
killing her battery while she was up north for work.
To finish the misadventures of the
week, I decided I needed to replace my shoes as the bottoms had
literally fallen out from walking through the mountain pass daily to
and from work. While in Brugseni, I managed not only to lose my
balance, but spectacularly pull down an entire shelf of shoes and
boots with me, while a mother and her little girl laughed
hysterically and a shop keeper tried to help me hang it back up.
All in all, I look back now and
laugh—but last week was not one in which I felt any iota of an
interest to write, and now you know why. Even if now it's just amusing as hell.
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