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.