19th
A Visit from a Friend
Last weekend I had the pleasure of having one of my best friends from Brandeis visit. Ben has been studying at Oxford in England for the year, so I hadn’t seen him for quite some time. First I took him to Elsinore, that castle in the picture of me a couple of posts back, and to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. The museum is located in my town here and I get free admission because I live at the folk high school. It’s one of the best museums in the world and right now features a surrealist exhibit on the works of Max Ernst. He was inspired by the tragedy of fascism and war in Europe to create non-sensical, non-conforming works of art. It was very interesting.
For the next day, my Copenhagen Urban History class came in handy—I had a few guides on all the historic sites from the walking tours my professor had me do. I had a class to go to in the morning, so I sent Ben off with a guide to Vesterbro, one of the traditionally working-class districts in Copenhagen. It’s a very diverse area, much more so than American cities in my opinion. The people living in American cities are almost exclusively poor and non-white. Vesterbro has people of all ages and a great number of ethnicities. Around 6% of Denmark’s population is Muslim, and many of them live there. Vesterbro is home to the red light district, classy cafés and art studios, young professionals, immigrants, and more. He really enjoyed walking around there.
After my class, Ben and I walked around the inner city of Copenhagen. We visited City Hall, Strøget (longest pedestrian shopping street in the world), the Round Tower (great view!), Danish Parliament, the Royal Library, and some historic churches. We then crossed the bridge to Christianshavn and visited Christiania, a “freetown” within Copenhagen. It was an abandoned military site taken over by squatters in 1971. Until 2004, marijuana trade was tolerated by the government. It’s a home to hippie-like people, drop outs, and other social deviants. It may sound scary from that description, but most of it is actually quite peaceful. There are many cute houses, murals, and trails along the water.
Later I took Ben for a ride on the new Metro, which is an attraction in itself. There’s no driver, so you can sit in the front and look out the big window to imagine you’re on an amusement park ride. We went to the end of the line on the island of Amager, which feels like the end of the world. I took him on a tour of a new district called the Ørestad, where famous architects have designed very large, modern buildings. You get the feeling that you landed on the moon and someone who really liked to play with Lego decided to make some buildings.
Finally, we visited Nørrebro, the sort of “Little Arabia” of Copenhagen. It’s been in the news a lot for clashes between immigrant gangs and the Hell’s Angels, but in comparison with most American cities it feels quite safe. Basically since the cannabis trade was made illegal in Christiania the gangs have been fighting over the drug trade. I did a project about a square there for urban design and I’d been there several times for field studies with a couple of classes, so I knew the area pretty well. We had an amazing African-Asian fusion-style dinner at this place called Kate’s Joint and called it a night.
It’s wonderful to experience the city with someone else… you get to see things a little differently. Adding a friend’s perspective definitely enriched my view of Copenhagen.
