6/26/2012- National Day (Nuuk, Greenland)

Thursday, June 21 was Greenland’s 4^th National Day (essentially an independence day, like our July 4)—meaning although we had no work, I was awake an hour before normal to make it to town and experience the celebrations firsthand.

At 7am Roar and I raced down the hill and caught a cab to take us to City Hall, where about a thousand people were waiting for 7:30 to hit. A band began to play and a number of people in Greenland’s national costumes (see the picture below) held flags proudly, and started a parade down the main street of town. As they proceeded to play and march, people flooded from the Bloks and their homes to join in the parade of people, with no distinction between those who were joining in and those who had initially been there other than the band itself. Cheering and laughing, the mob made its way down to the Colonial Harbor right near my office, where more people were waiting and standing on all available surfaces to hear the speeches and music. For the next hour or so a chorus sang traditional music and the mayor spoke to the people about... well I’m not quite sure, because she spoke in Greenlandic mainly, with tiny bits in Danish that I could pick up on. During the speeches I looked around the waiting crowd in interest—for a day which celebrates Greenland’s independence from Denmark, there were a lot of Danish people cheering and smiling, holding Danish and Greenlandic flags. The entire concept of the day still a lot of the people I have spoken with, as often do the social dynamics of the two cultures within the country.

Here is an explaination I found online which details exactly what happened four years ago:

'On 21 June 2009, Greenland assumed self-determination with responsibility for self-government of judicial affairs, policing, and natural resources. Also, Greenlanders were recognized as a separate people under international law. Denmark maintains control of foreign affairs and defence matters. Denmark upholds the annual block grant of 3.2 billion Danish kroner, but as Greenland begins to collect revenues of its natural resources the grant will gradually be diminished. It is a step toward full independence from Danish rule. Greenlandic became the sole official language of Greenland at the historic ceremony.'

After a while the canons were fired, scaring the wits out of everyone waiting in the crowd (and the few kayakers who had decided they would get a better view from the water looked as though they were about to leap in themselves), and the crowd of a few thousand started winding back up the road towards town. Although a chunk split off at the church, the majority walked back up to City Hall, where the municipality had set up thousands of tables and chairs and had people manning tables with coffee, tea, bread, cheese, and butter for everyone. People walked all about eating breakfast and shaking strangers’ hands with a sturdy ‘Congratulations’, from the heart. I spent a while watching everyone interacting before wandering back down to port to see if I could catch a few of the visitors from the cruise ship which was due to come in that day (a German Hapag-Lloyd Kreuzfahrten ship, the Bremen) and see how the logistics of a ship being in the Atlantic Harbor would work.

The first visitors I passed seemed a bit shellshocked over everything that was happening, as they were being offered free food and access to free entertainment with music and cultural as well as sporting events which were planned throughout the day by the municipality. As they wandered towards City Hall, I noticed the jewelry vendor (Anne) who was normally outside my work had opened and was looking quite bored, so I engaged her in conversation about the National Day as well as cruise visitors.

We spoke for a few hours as cruise visitors passed by from the shuttles to the tour operators and barely gave her a glance. She explained how her operations existed—she would spend the winter months having stones shipped from the northernmost world settlement that her mother had been from to Nuuk, where her friend would polish them, and then she and her husband would carve and create pieces from those stones. I listened as she told me the stories of each piece—the stone it was from, the settlement she had collected it in, how she had designed it, where the proceeds would go and to whom, and how long it took to create. All the while, she made only two sales—to a local Danish woman, and to a local couple who had recently moved to Nuuk from Burundi and Denmark, and told stories about adapting from African life to European, to now Greenlandic.

After discussing how I could best talk to visitors and how she could better sell her product, I purchased two pieces she had created—agate stone from the north settlement, with four stones fashioned into a necklace and three into a matching bracelet. She refused to take the full amount she had originally quoted as it was ‘National Day’ and I had spent time chatting, which isn’t a common thing in Greenland—unlike a lot of ports, the price here is the price, and that doesn’t really change. Later it was commented that I had to have spent at least 800 kroner ($160) on the pieces, whereas she only charged me 100.- total ($20). I look forward to picking out more of her pieces later in the summer.

As I wandered back towards home, I noticed a giant crowd surrounding the field outside the Bloks. As I got closer I realized it was a football (soccer) match between two older teams who didn’t seem to adept at sport. Curiously, I joined in the crowd standing along the perimeter and smiled at the people who had climbed on top of almost all the surrounding buildings and structures to watch—and were getting very into the game, cheering as a pass was completed or a person ran ahead. I later found out it was the Alzheimer’s Society against the local sports club—and the Alzheimer’s Society won the game, much to everyone’s excitement.

After spending a while at a cross street where a local artist played on his guitar and people danced uninhibited, I headed back towards the house, stopping for a long while to sit in the grass at the top of the mountain pass and look out over the harbor. Around me were thousands of dandelions on the steep hill leading down to the port, and I laughed that this was perhaps the last image that anyone would have had of Greenland, this close to the arctic circle—laying on a hill, yellow dandelions all around, in 60 degree weather...

...with hundreds of mosquitoes deciding to attack me.

Guess you can’t have it all.

6/26/2012- Weak Excuses & Travel Corkboard (Nuuk, Greenland)

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.

6/10/2012- Nightlife (Nuuk, Greenland)

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to go out and experience the nightlife of Greenland firsthand.

…boy, that was NOT what I was expecting.

I’d been told before arriving in Nuuk that Greenland has an alcohol issue, stemming from fairly recent cultural shifts which changed family and power dynamics. I’d assumed this would mean that I would experience something along the lines of Adams Morgan in DC on a Thursday night—lots of laughing, drunk youths stumbling around from bar to bar.

My first week here, I was warned again against going into the bars. I was told that if I were to go in I wouldn’t be in danger necessarily, but would be harassed by many drunk older men. As I had been asked to go out with a Greenlandic girl from Ilulissat, Ivalu, I felt relatively safe—she was from Nuuk originally, and we were meeting up with her friends, so it was worth seeing what the nightlife was all about. After getting back from the pool (yup, did not think I would be swimming twice in two and a half weeks in Iceland and Greenland after once in two years living in the US) and having some coffee, we took off for the strip of bars in downtown Nuuk at 12:30am (which apparently is early to start the night—despite the bars closing at 3—and the sun just having ‘gone down’ for its three hour below-the-horizon dip, leaving essential daylight behind still).

The first bar, a long yellow building next to the grocery stores and hotel on the main street, had three or four rooms in it which were packed to the brim. We checked our coats there for the evening as it was more than warm enough even during the ‘night’ to walk around without a jacket. The first room was similar to an American bar, with lots of booths and tables and chairs, and a large bar lining the back wall. It was fairly crowded already, and the majority of people were already fairly sloshed. We sat in a corner near the bar with Ivalu’s old boss and three of his friends—all older gentlemen who spoke little English, argued about who was the most perverted, and made lewd comments about the girls around. Despite this they were nice guys, buying me a drink (which I promptly chugged down to feel more comfortable) and trying to ask about my work. After a bit we wandered into the next room, which had a dance floor and very American music playing, with the floor crowded full with drunk people of all ages, both Greenlandic and Danish. At this point I looked around, intrigued by the mix—not only was the crowd spread equally in age from about 16 to 80 and from both ethnicities, but the dress of the people was astounding. I saw everything from a t-shirt and jeans to miniskirts and tube tops to prom dresses (and I’m not kidding or exaggerating on this last one—I saw two girls in sorter prom gowns and one in a long version).

At this point I’d been groped by passerbys about ten or so times, and had a drunk boy grab my arm trying to drag me to the dance floor as his girlfriend yelled at him, before handing me his beer. As we made our way across the street to another set of bars (a karaoke in one, again with terrible American music; a concert in another which you had to pay to get into; and band in the last which sang an extremely odd mix of old American music including what I think was supposed to be Mambo #5 with only knowing the chorus and mumbling during the rest while everyone formed a sort of mosh pit), I decided that there was no way I was remotely prepared to drink in a scene like this without getting killed or ending up sleeping in a gutter, so stuck to following Ivalu around while watching everyone.

Every few feet she’d let out a ‘what the fuckkkk’ and hug another person, who she knew from growing up in Nuuk—and we’d chat with them for a bit.

Trying to avoid the need to have people speak in English for my benefit I would try and give space to the friends, which worked well when I heard New Zealand accented English come from a man standing next to one of the guys she was talking to. Quickly I started a conversation with the man, who actually was German but had lived in New Zealand for a few years before moving to Nuuk while working for Air Greenland. Excited to find another foreigner, though admittedly not from my country (there are only two Americans living in Nuuk that anyone can remember—an older gentleman and a ‘pianist named Jim’ who everyone seems to know but can identify nothing about besides the fact that he is, in fact, American. And a pianist. From America. Named Jim. So I doubted very much I’d run into anyone outside the Danes), I spoke to him for a while before he headed out with some friends. I found Ivalu and we met up with some more of her friends, and luck with me, there was a man there from the UK who worked for the European Union looking into Arctic policies, and was extremely excited to find a place which was ‘very much like a pub at home!’ (which he repeated quite a bit). As we spoke a Greenlander plopped down next to me with beers, hit the top of one, and demanded I drink it down. After a few pathetic sips and much laughter, he showed us his tattoos—which were representative of Greenland, and the folklore that he believed in, including the Maiden in the Sea and an outline of the country.

It wasn’t until a drunk (and that’s putting it lightly) younger man literally fell on top of the table and spilled beer everywhere that I got up and wandered outside, where it seemed there were hundreds of Greenlanders smoking and throwing bottles at the street. I’d spent the past few hours literally needing to push people to move, so it was nice when I was able to get off the patio and into the street, though glass crunched unhappily beneath my feet with each step. Drenched in beer and exhausted, I called Ivalu and she came out so we could go back to the first bar and get our coats (it was now about 3am, so the music was shut off and bouncers stood outside with plastic cups to force people to put their drinks into when they went to the streets, as you can drink anywhere in Nuuk aside from a block or two in the city center and they didn’t want more broken glass everywhere). She was able to get in the first door as three boys followed her and grabbed her, but the bouncer told me I wasn’t allowed in, and that I’d need to find another entrance to the bar to get my coat. Intimidated by the sight outside of hundreds if not thousands of drunken Greenlanders throwing bottles around, I made my way to another door, where I was able to retrieve my coat—and then we were stuck as the bouncer at the door had to go break up a fight, so you couldn’t exit the building without his key (talk about a fire hazard).

Eventually I said goodnight to Ivalu and made my way out at about 330am, weaving through taxis and bottles up to the mountain split that separates town from the residential areas that I live in. There, I came across the most beautiful sight I have seen in years, if ever.

Through the mountain split I saw the sun rising on a crimson sky, the colorful houses at the base partially clouded in a low mist, with the cloud cover low itself, framing the snowy mountain behind the houses and the ground with the sunrise and its colors between. Behind me a few drunk teens laughed and fell over as taxis rushed by through the split, unaware of the sight before them.   

6/1/2012- Work Life (Nuuk, Greenland)

Since a lot of people have asked and I’ve confused the living daylights out of most, I figured I should attempt to put down in writing what exactly it is I’m doing in Greenland, working for the national tourism board.

First, an anecdote to set the scene.

*

One of the most amusing memories I have of my time at GWU while working on my masters was at orientation, when one of the other four students accepted into the Sustainable Destination Management concentration asked the panel of professors what, exactly, sustainable destination management meant. Dr. Donald Hawkins, the founder of our program and head of our concentration (as well as one of the leading destination management experts worldwide) took the question, smiled, and said it was the hardest question we would have to answer for our entire lives carrying that title—because there was no solid answer.

This proved true time and time again as over the past three years I have attempted to explain what exactly it is I study and practice to family, friends, acquaintances, and the occasional curious person on the street. Usually it started with me stating that I was working on my Masters in Tourism Administration with a concentration in Sustainable Destination Management—though inevitably somewhere around ‘sustainable’ their eyes would glaze over, they would think a second, and their eyes would brighten as they went back to ‘tourism’ and ask if I knew of a cheap way to get to Australia or how many tours I booked this year. Depending on how I felt I would explain that my life goal was not in fact to own a tour company, and that what I studied was more based around the concept of managing a destination’s tourism—how to gauge if a destination is in fact ready for tourists (you’d be shocked at how many think they are when in fact, tourism is a horrible idea for the community), how to plan the infrastructure needed, financing and managing the economics of tourism, planning policies for each level in the destination, marketing and managing every aspect of business that relates on any tier to tourism, etc.

At this point I’ve usually lost them for good, as their eyes have once again glazed over and they are staring out at a floating plastic bag which has caught their attention over me. And I cannot blame them; outside of those of us who are in the industry, tourism may sound intriguing, but when it comes to the details, it isn’t nearly as golden as it sounds. The conversation ends with a ‘that sounds amazing, you’re so lucky’ and a change in conversation to the most exotic destination they have been to, trying to relate.

*

This pattern has proven the same as the pattern when I attempt to explain to people what it is I do with Visit Greenland. Everyone asks out of politeness (or in the case of when I’m in DC, the immediate and automatic networking assessment out whether a person is of value to your career) what it is I do, and the vast majorities give the same glassy-eyed stare detailed above. At this point I’ve gotten used to it and have a simplified answer for my degree (I work with destinations to ensure the development of tourism is sustainable to the environment and culture), for work, it comes down to what day someone asks me as to which answer I give.

Best answer? I work for the national tourism board for the country of Greenland as an intern, on a variety of projects. Technically I’m the cruise and coastal sailings intern, meaning that the majority of my work is based around preparations for, management of, and marketing towards cruises coming into the country (cruises in Greenland being anything from a 50 person sailing ship wandering up the coast to the 3,000 person ships making a transatlantic repositioning voyage and stopping over for a day). Being that the industry is relatively young in Greenland and there are very few people who are involved in the process, we are shaping how operations occur each day and attempting to find better ways of managing cruise tourism for the country.

So far between my month in Denmark and few days here in Greenland, some of what I have done includes the following:

*Updated our calling list for 2012, and created word and excel files with all pertinent information so we have backups and up-to-date information on each port of call and the ships arriving this year,

*Benchmarked our new site for cruise professionals, cruisegreenland.gl, with other B2B (business to business) sites from our competition and market baskets to gain insight on what more should be added,

*Helped campaign in the closing hours for greenland.com to win the Webby Award for best tourism website worldwide,

*Conducted an assessment on our Webby Award-winning website greenland.com in relation to cruises and coastal sailings; mapped changes to be made and where to improve,

*Completed a keyword analysis which details how each client (cruise company) brands Greenland, and mapped which could benefit from additional information. Later I will attempt to create materials or send them information which could be useful which is tailored to their specific needs or brand of the country,

*Edited and changed a legal safety document necessary to have in order for ports to provide shore excursions, and

*Written an edited press releases for Visit Greenland.

Of course there has been and will be much more than this, but it gives a good example of the projects I work on here and what it is I do in tangible concepts. Hopefully that helps =)