Pusher Street, Christiania

Christiania, which is set across from the inner city on the man-made island of Christianshavn, was founded in the 1970’s as a “social experiment.”

So basically it’s home to 900 weed-smoking hippies.  

Today our Danish class was given a tour by a local – the most wonderfully blunt guy, dressed in a cowboy hat, moto-jacket, and with long hair and crazy side-burns. And if the clothes didn't give away his free spirit, the moment he mentioned her starting to smoke hash when he was 12, I think we all got the picture this guys has pretty much done every drug out there.

Apparently the town started with a bunch of homeless Copenhagen students moving into these empty old army barracks, and from that sprang this whole lawless society (which included an alcoholic bear who became very violent if he was too sober). Nowadays its still pretty much lawless, though hard drugs have been banned, (of course only after some clever people realized their children where dying from overdoses). 

Hash on the other hand, is everywhere. While it’s not technically legal, next to Amsterdam, this is the place to go to buy and sell, though it's now confined to one street (aptly named Pusher Ave.) And it's literally everywhere – there are even booths set up selling it, and every single person walking around is smoking a joint.

Outdoor Toilet..So you can grin at passerby's as you take a piss

And there are only 3 rules in the "Greenlight District"

• Have fun
• No running (it causes panic) 
• Absolutely NO photography

With all the smoking and drinking they do, and its all day everyday, I seriously wonder what the brain function is of this town, but it seems their social experiment is working.

Example A:

            Parents were getting concerned that their children were becoming little helpers to the weed sellers (not of course for the fact that they are selling weed at 12 years old but because they would make too much money and then drop out of school cause they were rich). But because they couldn’t tell their kids not to do something (against the hippie philosophy I guess) they built them a skate-ramp park. Which apparently worked – skateboarding was apparently more important for the kids’ street rep than selling drugs.  I think this is actually pretty brilliant, but I get concerned when our guide tells us  he knows his son won’t ask before his first smoke but he hopes he will be responsible before he takes that second bottle of vodka or snorts that second line of coke…..

But they have something really cool going on over there – and it kind of proves that society can function without insanely complex systems of government and even laws.  My favorite is how no one owns the house they live in, so you can’t buy or sell a house over there.  When one guy was trying to sell his house the town took it away from him (and the buyer’s money that had been put down for it) and said too bad for you! 

 After the tour we killed some time and then met up for our Danish Café Night, (in which of course we spoke no Danish). But it was a free hot (and quite delicious) meal, which is every kid who lives in a Kollegium’s dream over here. Oh how jealous we are of the kids with host families who set down a hot meal for them every night, as we eat yet another dinner of granola or nutella on rye bread.



Our teacher tells us the next day that when our guide's wife called in the middle of the tour, the conversation (in danish) was about how he had left her a joint on the table.

I Actually Live Here

My very messy room - bathroom is behind me to the left

Shower, Sink, Me standing kinda in the Toilet

Despite the fact that I have to squat awkwardly behind my door to use the Internet because my Ethernet plug is much too short to reach anywhere useful (a problem now finally solved), and the fact that my shower head is just chilling in the corner of my bathroom (shower curtain and rod not included apparently – problem still not solved) and I have to hide my toilet paper and close the toilet lid to shower every morning (as the bathroom gets entirely drenched) my Kollegium, Raebeck Søpark , is pretty sweet. And some of the Danish students actually talk to me! The shared kitchen is a good place to meet them, and most of them are like “oh so are you the American student?” Yes, clearly as I didn’t understand the Danish you first said to me, I am.


There is of course a giant poster of Time Square above my desk, and a print of San Francisco above my bed. But then I find some sign containing an O with a slash through it or an A attached to an E and I remember that I am, in fact, quite far from home.


And don’t worry, in case SADS starts to get to me, there’s a sketchy tanning bed right next to the laundry room in the basement. At least this is one of the first things we were told on our tour of the building. So it’s okay guys. I’ll just penetrate my skin with powerful UV rays and then I’ll be all better…


Well sort of, I am severely allergic to my room, and, well, to Copenhagen. I’ve been downing Benadryl, my regular allergy pills and nasal spray and still no bloody relief. http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2011/05/09/copenhagen-worst-place-in-denmark-for-allergy-sufferers/


On a positive note, the trains here are soundless, from the inside anyway, and makes the trip from Rødouvre (my town – basically it sounds like someone drunkenly slurring “roll over,” while bypassing all the constantans) into the city, quite peaceful. It’s quite a miracle actually, after the hell of a summer with the SEPTA underground trolley, that a transportation system can make you not want to throw yourself onto the tracks.


And of course I do actually go to class too.

Besides being that kid constantly blowing their nose in the silence of the classroom on the first day, all my classes seem really hands on and interesting. They are:

• Gardens of the Gods: The history of paradise and religion
• Ancient Art and Archaeology: The Copenhagen Collections
• Danish Language and Culture
• European Culture and History: Memory and Identity in France
• Copenhagen: History and Contemporary Urban Issues

My two favorites are probably the Garden of the Gods, and the Urban History of Copenhagen. The Garden of the Gods looks at the history of religion and paradise through the gardens of basically every major civilization. From Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Mesopotamian to Native American, Islamic, Christian and Buddhism and everything in between. We learn about theology, the symbolism of each plant and the gods to which they were sacred, how to read a garden and what that says about a society's religion and culture.

In the Urban Studies class we basically use Copenhagen as our classroom. Our first assignment is literally a 15 stop tour of Copenhagen, in which we are armed with a giant packet of information, medieval maps and questions we have to answer at each stop... Of course we also have to memorize and be able to draw out on a blind map the different districts of Copenhagen (down to the exact streets!) and where all these monuments and old, (no longer standing) medieval ramparts and gates are. But our teacher promised us by the end of the class we would know Copenhagen better than the Danes, and I am so excited to explore every nook and cranny of the city!

And the Ancient Art and Archaeology class is great because basically all of our classes are held in the National Gallery, looking at Copenhagen’s collection of artifacts from Antiquity.

And then each class has a few field study trips on various Wednesdays (when we actually don’t have class!)


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In hindsight posting this, I guess I should add that my classes are not, in fact, all really great. The readings for some are so horrendously pointless that I, Anne Silk, hearby do declare that I haven’t done all of them! Skipped them on purpose even! And yeah, no consequences.

I mean here’s an example:

“Okay class, now can you guess what the word Neoclassical means? What do you think this style of architecture looks back to?”

dead silence. I pray quietly that the silence comes from our astonishment that we are actually going over this, but you never know…

“I’ll give you a hint, Neo is Greek for New.”

Silence.

Brave soul ventures: “The classical era.”

Exuberant praise from the teacher.

So besides a bit of a dumbed down curriculum and an extreme repetition in going over information (hey, I guess I’m not complaining) the classes can be stimulating, and definitely do give a lot of work, lots of papers and tests and readings.

But they are, on the whole, quite interesting, and I am learning a lot about Copenhagen and Scandinavia because apparently AP Euro never thought anything worthwhile ever happened up here.

But now that I actually live here I'd like to learn. Plus Vikings are cool.

First of All

Here are some of my firsts in Denmark:

First purchase in Denmark: 
 Toilet paper and one of the Dane's famous beers, a poor choice though as I was left carrying the toilet paper the rest of the night (since they don’t give you plastic grocery bags for free)

First dinner in Denmark: 
(sketchy) “China” food...a bit of a let down for the first meal

 

First actual Danish food experience: 
a DANISH!! Except they’re not actually called that here, and they'll probably laugh at you if you call it that. Of course they'll also laugh at me trying to call it it's danish name, so I'll stick to pointing.  But it was seriously to die for, chocolate and cinnamon, and it was free, thank you DIS!

First (and only) Herring:  
the famous Smoked Herring on Bornholm island. It wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be, its very fishy tasting, but they serve you the whole fish with head and eyes and everything! You have to rip off the head and tail and pull out the spine, and you end up eating a ton of the hair-like bones...but at least I can say I had herring

First of many culture shocks:

20 dollars for a cup of tea?!?

           --> roughly 5 DKK = 1 dollar

But then of course there is the “My peanut butter cost 50 dollars?? Oh no wait that’s just 10...Wait WTF? 10 dollars for a half size jar of creamy skippy?!?”

(Apparently many of the Danes find PB a tad repulsive. PB&J is so not a thing over here)

            Lesson Learned = everything costs about 3 times as much over here.

But at least I am finally getting very good at dividing by 5, thanks for prepping me on the math skills Vassar.

Culture Shock #2: 
 Sadly this doesn’t concern Danish culture. It comes from the DIS Bros. Muscles? Football and frats? Fist-pumping? What?? Where is the flannel and the skin-tight jeans! Where are the hipster glasses and the talk of esoteric indie bands?! How do I communicate with guys I can’t obsess over the latest fleet foxes CD with? (seriously though it's amazing).  It's really funny how many kids are actually overwhelmed by the bro culture though, if you meet anyone from a school like Oberlin, Skidmore or Wesleyan, the first thing you start talking about is your hipster withdrawl.

But now about the Danes:

I was worried there wasn't going to be a really definable 'culture' here, but the Danes are really amazing, and both very similar and different from us. They are a much more private people, so they won't usually approach you and start up a conversation, but once you get to know them they can be really friendly. They are also all blond, blue eyed skinny and gorgeous. I don't understand how they stay so skinny with all those pastries (their diet is literally mostly carbs) but I guess all that biking pays off. And the biking is intense, the Danes bike everywhere, there are bike lanes on every street (which I always forget about when I step off the curb, as I've nearly gotten hit a few times) and they bring them on the metros and trains.

Also yogurt comes in a milk carton.

And of course they are very socialist. 

And they don't jay walk. ever. They don't even anticipate the light! 

Oh and they don't have a word for "I'm sorry," as in I'm sorry I just whacked you in the face, they just keep walking.

Oh god and the vowel sounds. They have about 13 identical sounding vowels that no one but the Danes can seem to pronounce; my mouth just literally can't move that way. Basically a good rule when attempting to read any word is to ignore every single one of the constants, speak fast and mumble.

okay a real post about what I'm actually up to next time!