South Greenland - Day 26 : Return journey part II

I slept maybe 1 or 2 hours. It was nice to see the sun rise and watch everyone walk by. It felt really odd to be around so many people, especially because no-one knew what I had experienced the past 26 days. There was supposed to be a supermarket and McDonalds near the airport, so I went searching for breakfast.

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There was a residential area, as well as a huge highway and an industrial park. Perhaps it was because of the contrast with Greenland but, besides Bart's socks during cycling vacation, I had never smelled such a horrible smell. I could just feel it in my throat. There was music playing in the McDonalds which was great to hear again. I also passed a display with freshly baked breads. After all those days of granola I would have seriously paid 20 euros just to smell it. Everything was also 4-5 times cheaper compared to Greenland. After sitting outside for 3 hours I went back to the supermarket to buy more food.

 

Back at the airport another hiker started talking to me. He was from the USA and had wandered through Europe for 5 months. He seemed very odd. He didn't have any degree or money, but was planning to return to the USA to get a job as a mountain guide. With the money he would make he then wanted to return to Copenhagen to get a job as truck driver. He said he expected getting a job as mountain guide would be easy, because he had been backpacking a lot. A few minutes later he told me that during his trip all his gear had been washed away because he had camped too close to a river. Out of  frustration he had then smashed his lighter, making it impossible to cook his food. Therefore he had eaten nothing but bramples from the road side for two days. Such a person really seemed a good mountain guide.

 

He was also patriotic like only people from the USA can be. He said he had been hitchhiking a lot and then not only held a sign indicating where he wanted to go, but also a second one saying 'from America' because he thought people would take him in sooner that way. Because of that sign a car filled with Afghans had offered him a ride. As a joke they had pretended to be extremists and had tried to scare him. Now he was going for a nap because at night the airport security had forced him out because they thought he was homeless.

 

Back inside the airport I couldn't stop enjoying the views, I hadn't seen any like that in Greenland. A girl sat down next to me and started accentuating things in a book. I got a bit confused when I saw it was Harry Potter. I said that she could just let me know if my backpack was bothering her, to which she replied that it was nice and cosy. Who knew it was such a chick magnet. She turned out to be from Reykjavik and we talked about my hikes in Greenland and Iceland. After a while she unfortunately had to leave because her flight was departing soon. During my next trip I probably shouldn't talk to nice women after seeing only moss for four weeks.

 

I discovered my flight was delayed but nobody could tell me why. Only at the gate someone informed me that it was because the remains of the victims of the MH17 attack where flown back to the Netherlands. After a delayed but quick flight I made it back home. I could finally buy the mountain of fries I had been looking forward to for weeks. From my balcony I sent the final GPS signal, I was officially home.