Yesterday I ate…

Oatmeal for breakfast; for lunch: smoked trout, reindeer liver patè, brie, white wine, French-pressed coffee; and dinner was plain pasta with onions, that we found leftover in the hostel fridge. A relatively accurate depiction of the surprises that greet me every day here. Yesterday, my biggest and most victorious surprise was finding a room to rent for the next 2.5 months in Ilulissat, a ‘large’ town in the middle of Greenland’s west coast that is famous for its very productive glacier.
Ilulissat is unbelievably beautiful. I’m posting some pictures with the understanding that neither the images nor my words could come close to doing it justice. But if you attach some imagination to the images, and try to dream about the incarnation of sublime and blue mixed together … well, maybe you’ll get close J. I have already hiked out to the fjord twice in the 2 days that I’ve been here. I even hiked on the same trail both times and was equally awed each time. Also, I saw three whales. Whoot whoot!
Before I arrived in Ilulissat, I stayed 5 days in Sisimiut, a town/city (it’s hard to make the distinction, because the largest city here is only 15,000 people) between Nuuk and Ilulissat. It was FANTASTIC. I stayed with Mads and Trine, a young Danish couple who moved to Greenland about a year ago. They have a small apartment that is full of books, which was one of the best parts of Sisimiut J We spent multiple evenings talking about American culture and politics, Greenlandic politics, books and bread-making. Needless to say, I could have gotten very comfortable there. During the day, I wandered around town and spoke with various people about climate change, sustainability, oil, culture and independence for Greenland. Sometimes, my head got so full of ideas that I had to hum a little to calm them down. I won’t bore you with all of them, except to say that I’m thinking a lot about how it is not climatic changes that are rupturing life ways and culture here, but rather economic changes. A lot of those changes are attached to Greenland’s economic development and bid for independence from Denmark, but also to global forces and a desire for general ‘modernization’. There’s an impossible tension between preserving ‘traditional culture’ and achieving economic and political independence (which is another way of preserving culture, but it has to be done by modern means …). I don’t know if I’m making any sense, so I’ll move on …
After a few days of reading (An Afruican in Greenland, by Tete-Michel Kpomassie about the first African man to travel to Greenland – it’s really good!), walking and boating in Sisimiut, I left for Ilulissat. I arrived at the youth hostel in the afternoon and, after discovering that the man who was supposed to rent me an apartment was home sick, decided to take the rest of the day off and go for a hike with Jean, the French professor of political science whom I met in Nuuk and ran into here. He is as poor as I am, so after our hike, we scrounged in the ‘leftovers’ box in the hostel kitchen and made pasta with one onion for dinner. It was delicious.
The following morning, I discovered that the alleged apartment for rent was not, in fact, available and I had one day to find another place to live at the height of tourist season in a town that is always crunched for housing. By the end of the day, I had 3 offers – partly because I was lucky, but mostly because I have met the kindest and most wonderful people who were so willing to help me out. I ended up agreeing to move in with the Italian/Greenlandic family that runs an adventure travel service in town. Unreal. Perhaps I will end up practicing my Italian while in Greenland …