Wonderful Copenhagen!

The three of us had a full day available for exploring the city before Hannah would be required to spend her days in a trade show booth at the conference that provided the impetus for us to come here.

We started off with breakfast at the hotel, which was the typical northern European spread of cold cuts, bread, cereal, yogurt, etc. but was surprisingly devoid of herring. On our 1999 visit to Copenhagen, we stayed in a hotel that offered, if I recall correctly, at least half a dozen varieties, and the Hotel Selandia, where we stayed earlier on this trip also had a dish of the little guys available for sampling. Not here, but I can't really say they were missed.

Fortified, we set out to walk around the city and get to know it a little bit. We took in the sights, like the old stock exchange building below, and enjoyed the relatively cool air.

Eventually we made it to Christiania, which I had been intrigued to see. Christiania is a so-called "freetown" operating, it would have you believe, as its own jurisdiction beyond the rule of Danish (or any) law. It was established in the early 1970s by squatters who moved into an abandoned military base and set up shop doing all the things hippies like to do: selling macrame and other, more dubious, "crafts" for drug money, selling stolen goods for drug money, and selling drugs. There is even a Pusher Street in the compound, notorious for the deals it saw before the Danish police cracked down (no pun intended) a few years ago.

Having lost their preferred mode of livelihood, or at least the ability to pursue it out in the open, Christiania seeks to portray itself as a tourist destination and general counter-cultural bazaar. Bizarre would be more like it, though. The decrepit buildings are graffiti-covered; the only surfaces free of such embellishment are the menacing NO PHOTOGRAPHY signs. The signs are supposedly there to protect the privacy of residents who may not wish to be photographed, but one gets the distinct impression that they are really there to a) enable shakedowns of tourists who do not heed the warnings and b) protect those resident who may not wish to be confronted with photographic evidence of their activities in the shadowy corners of their "utopia."

The message painted on the bicycle cart this photograph reads "We seek a lower standard of living for a higher quality of life." Well, mission accomplished on the first part of that goal, but I see no evidence whatsoever that any progress has been made toward the second.

Christiania is possibly the best argument against anarchy imaginable. Down to the fires burning in old oil drums, the place exudes a Mad Max vibe of post-apocalyptic societal breakdown. It's not as scary as, say, Detroit after dark, but one feels acutely aware of the potential for things to go wrong in a hurry, and there's no one to call for help. Getting out was a delicate balance between being eager to leave and wanting to remain calm and composed as we headed for the exit without attracting any attention. The archway over the exit reads "You are now re-entering the EU." These people take their illusion of sovereignty seriously.

Immediately upon exiting we sought to exorcise the demons of Christiania by participating in the capitalist bourgeois economy. We bought ice cream. Yummy, yummy capitalism!

We then caught the train to the conference center where Hannah's meeting was to be held so she could check in and do all the preliminary booth set-up stuff that needed to be done. While the conference center was out-of-the-way, the public transit system made the journey quite pleasant. We got her chores done, and headed back into the city for more fun.

We had promised Tessie a boat ride, and did not want to disappoint her, so we headed to a canalside dock for a Netto-Bådene canal tour. The open-topped boat ride took us past most of Copenhagen's waterfront sights, including The Little Mermaid (who was almost hidden among the tourists), Nyhavn, and the new Opera House (below), but the most intriguing parts of the ride, for me, were where the city and the waterfront overlapped. Working harbors fascinate me; their functions and existence depend on open water, which is inherently unpredictable. Kind of like toddlers, in a way...

After our boat ride, we had to hustle over to the Copenhagen University campus for a dinner event Hannah needed to attend as part of her conference. That left Tessie and I on our own to find dinner. You'd think that the blocks around a university would offer a few reasonably-priced eateries; well, in Copenhagen, you'd be wrong. We bypassed a pizza joint that had a 45-minute wait and kept walking, hoping to find something. The search continued until we came to another pølser cart. Good thing Tessie likes hot dogs.

Tessie and I finished our dinner and returned to the hotel to rest up for our upcoming three days of Danish sightseeing.