Where's...

Holger?

There's a bear in there. And it's an alcoholic as well.

Credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/pvanderclock/6172082685/
This is the flag of Christiania. The three dots represent the three "i"s in the commune's name. 

"The objective of Christiania is to create a self-governing society whereby each and every individual holds themselves responsible over the wellbeing of the entire community. Our society is to be economically self-sustaining and, as such, our aspiration is to be steadfast in our conviction that psychological and physical destitution can be averted" 

- Mission Statement for Christiania, drafted in 1971

Christiana essentially Denmark's Nimbim, if Nimbin was located in Roma Street Parklands.

Credit:  http://www.taintedthoughts.com/archive/christiania/christiania_map.jpg
Seriously, it is less than 3km from the palace. 

It occupies two "islands" which used to form part of the fortification around the old town centre of Copenhagen and now is home to about 900 hippies free thinkers. In 1971, the military barracks on the islands had been abandoned for 3 years, so one man decided to move into a house just inside the barrier and wait for the police. The police never came. Soon, word had spread all over Europe that there was a place in Copenhagen that was "free", and so Christiania was born.

My first visit to Christiania was a couple of days after my arrival, and as I wandered through the ramshackle housing, dodging dogs, averting my gaze from near-naked people and acquainting myself to a whole new range of marijuana smells I had never even imagined existed, I was pretty underwhelmed by the whole situation. It quite literally seemed to be a bunch of misfits who were incapable of assimilating into modern society and so instead chose to live in quasi-poverty with only a drug-induced haze to distract them from their broader failings in life. I left Christiania fairly convinced that I would never return.

But alas, I am a sucker for guided tours, so when I heard that there was a guided tour of the "Freetown", taken by one of the locals, I couldn't resist the opportunity to get a little bit more insight into the eclectic commune.

Graffiti covers every visible surface. 

Our guide, I'm afraid I can't remember her name, was a very interesting lady. She was originally from the south of France (in a village in the Pyrenees), and moved to Christiania in 1975(ish) after hearing about it while at school in Paris. She also wasn't a spaced-out pothead which was what I was expecting. She is actually a "Psychotherapist" who works at the Health Room (the doctor's surgery, but it also has things like a psychotherapist, naturopath, acupuncturist and yoga instructors), but over the years has worked in the commune bakery, as well as in Copenhagen itself.

She says she was attracted to the "freedom" of Christiania, a point which I don't completely understand to be honest. The example she used was how easy it is to change jobs "in Christiania", whereas in France it is quite difficult. What I'm not sure she understood was that changing jobs isn't just a Christiania thing, it's a Denmark thing. I went to a lecture on the Danish economy on Monday and found out that the majority of people here change jobs every year due to the flexicurity system that operates throughout the entirety of the country. Hard drugs are banned in Christiania (following a "request" [attached to an eviction notice] from the Danish government in 1979, so the only illegal drug which you can use in Christiania is pot. You aren't allowed to carry a gun (or wear bulletproof clothing), which is also you know, illegal in broader Denmark. You aren't allowed private cars. You can't wear bikie gang emblems on clothing (following gang violence in the late 70s/early 80s). "Violence" is forbidden. So realistically, the big difference between Christiania and Copenhagen is that you're "allowed" to buy/use pot (but actually not really since pot is illegal to buy/sell/use in Denmark). I think that mostly what the people like about Christiania is not the absence of rules, but more being able to make your own rules. Even if those rules are pretty much exactly the same as the ones across the river, the people who are drawn to the Christiania lifestyle feel better about them because they "chose" to live with them. Personally, I'd just run for parliament and feel better about rules that way, but you know, if squatting in a military barracks is what floats your boat, go nuts.

The system of "government" in the commune is very interesting though. The area is separated into 14 districts, and each district has a representative who is a member of the community council. Once a month, all the districts have a meeting where they discuss local issues (including stuff like noisy neighbours and other domestic gripes), life and projects within the community (they have quite a lot of really interesting public projects for children and youths) and broader political issues. Attendance at meetings isn't compulsory, but if you aren't at the meetings, you don't have a say in how the issues are resolved. And on the note of resolving conflicts - they don't vote to decide how to act/react to things. Instead, they "discuss" the issue until a consensus is reached.

One of the original military buildings that has been taken over 

They also rely quite a lot on women in the community to handle dispute resolution. For example, in the early years of Christiania the drug dealers would camp out right at the gates to the community and harass tourists as they came into the area. The community decided to close that particular gate to prevent any further incidents, but simultaneously the women would go and sit with the drug pushers at the gates and tell them about the Christianite Ideals and what the community was about. After a few months/years of this conversation, they then marked out a particular region of the commune that the drug dealers were allowed to operate in. And the drug dealers complied.

Similarly, when bikie gang violence was an issue (leading to the "no bikie gang colours" rule), it was the women who went to the gangs and again, told them about the community ideals and expectations, and then asked the bikies to leave. Which the bikies did.

Our guide said that this is the norm in Christiania - women are in charge of much of the "important" discussions and conflict resolution, in her words "because we like to talk so much".

Although women have a powerful role, there is still a strong sense of community action when the rules are broken. If a fight breaks out in Christiania, community members automatically assemble on the scene (and apparently to have at least 100 community members attending isn't unusual) and justice is administered "on the spot". Unless the crime is serious (meaning someone's pretty much died), the community decides on guilt and penalty. For outsiders, the penalty is often expulsion from Christiania for a set period (it can be days, weeks, months or even forever). For insiders, the process is a bit more complicated and involves the entire community coming together to discuss what the appropriate penalty should be, the worst possible penalty is expulsion from the community.

Yes, you can be kicked out of your home in Christiania for breaking the rules.

That's because further development of the Christiania area is forbidden by the Copenhagen council, and there is a waiting list to get in. People in the community do not own their houses, and all rent is paid to the central town council. When someone dies or moves out, their house is left vacant for a period, and then a notice is circulated in the local paper calling for new tenants to apply. The prospective tenants must then attend an "interview" in front of the entire community who will then decide who gets to move in. There are about 70-90 applications for each vacant house.

A house in Christiania. 

The taxation situation is also quite interesting (a sentence that I never thought would come out of my mouth/keyboard). I could be wrong, but I think that each person in Christiania pays rent + a fee to the central council, who then pays the taxes for the community. Businesses that operate within the community pay taxes to both the community and to the Danish authorities, or alternatively, there are several subsidised businesses within the town (such as a recycling business) that are funded by the town council, and thus don't pay taxes at all (I think that's how it works). There are quite a few businesses operating within Christiania, including restaurants, a cinema, several bike shops (in fact, a "Christiania Bike" - a bike with a crate on front that can fit any number of small children in it, is very popular among young families), lots of artist's galleries and an antique oven restoration business (that sells their ovens all over Europe).

Credit:  http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2197/1566479253_59bd54c8e8.jpg
A Christiania bike.
Carrying 4 children. Seriously, the things are like clown cars! Kids just keep piling out of them. 

More recently, the Christianites have bought the land their community is built on at a cost of approximately 76 million kronor (for those playing at home $12,668,364 AUD). The funds have come from the community council and the fees paid by the residents, but mostly it has come from a hefty bank loan, and folkeaktie (social shares which are bought by people all over the world - kind of like buying a Lordship from Sealand, or 1m2 of the British Isles). While this means that the community will get some more rights in relation to the land (particularly, they are hoping to build more houses) it also means that they will be paying a lot more taxes to the government, so the rent of all the houses will be increased. It'll be interesting to see how the area develops in the next few years, and whether the expense of living within the commune will see the original residents being forced out. If you're interested, this is a great article about the sale of Christianian, and also the normalisation policies of the Danish government - http://world.time.com/2012/06/28/christiania-the-free-town-that-is-about-to-be-sold/

Vines on a building. 

While living in a world that looks like The Wind and the Willows and the Drug Addicts isn't exactly my cup of tea and I can't say that I'll be frequenting Christiania, I doubt that it will be far from my thoughts for the next couple of days. Maybe it's the second-hand marijuana smoke, or there were some special herbs in my falafel, but wandering around the commune has gotten me thinking about whether legalising drugs really is a better tactic (both from a public health and law enforcement perspective - certainly Christiania is far from free from the hands of the bikie gangs [albeit plain-clothed bikers] that control the drugs trade within its walls) and the nature of rules, freedoms and responsibilities within society.

Seriously, it's like something out of Wind and the Willows!
Just with more drugs. 

This reinforces how the Christianites see themselves - as an autonomous collective, completely separate from the rest of Europe. 

*for those wondering about the title. Our guide old us that the people of Christiania, being "free", don't really believe in like, customs, and so tend to have exotic pets. One of these pets was a bear. The bear had a Danish girls name with a double "ee" (our guide couldn't quite remember what it was), and for the most part just walked around next to her owner wearing a tutu and being un-bear-ably adorable. Then the bear acquired a taste for alcohol and started to swipe beer from people as she went walking. And then she started breaking into people's houses to get to the beer. And then she mauled a man.

The bear was evicted from Christiania.

Where does an exiled alcoholic bear go? Good question. The Copenhagen Zoo apparently wasn't interested. Our guide said that she thinks the bear and her owner now live in an apartment not too far away. Fun fact, apparently you can force a man-mauling bear into the boot of an ordinary-sized family car. Good to know, good to know.

All those who had no idea that Denmark had anything to do with WW2 please raise your hand.

*raises hand*

But it did, and as it turns out, there were some pretty cool stories that come out of the Danish WW2 experience.

The inside of the Museum

 The Danish originally planned to stay neutral during WW2 (effectively preventing the English from invading the Germans from the north) , and even signed a non-aggression treaty with the Germans in 1939, a treaty which was effectively shredded at 4:15am, 9th April 1940 when the Germans launched a sneak attack on Copenhagen and Southern Jutland. Outnumbered and overwhelmed, Denmark surrendered after 2 hours. Quite literally, the Danes just woke up expecting another ordinary day and were told they were under Nazi occupation.

Because of the surrender, however, the Danes were able to negotiate very favourable terms with the Nazis, leaving the country controlled by the parliament and monarchy. The Nazis allowed this because (1) Denmark wasn't a particularly important territory, (2) they wanted to provide a model of what a Nazi-controlled Europe would look like, and (3) practically every Dane was blonde-haired and blue-eyed and therefore was totally trustworthy (I might have made that one up).

These favourable terms meant that the Danes by and large weren't too adversely affected by the war. According to the National Museum, while food shortages were rampant across Europe, the Danes' calorie consumption only dropped by 10% on average at the worst point in the occupation. It also meant that the government was able to mediate against the worst of the Nazi policies. So while the government passed legislation forbidding newspapers from criticising the Nazi regime and arresting all the communists, because of these concessions they were able to resist the raft of anti-Jew laws, implementing the death penalty and allowing German military courts jurisdiction over civilian matters (which later became very important in light of the civilian resistance movement).

Like I said, many Danes just woke up one day and were under Nazi Rule, which they found difficult to accept. To add salt to the wound, much employment in Denmark was shifted towards assisting the Germans with their war effort.

An armband worn by Danish workers in a shipyard in Hamburg.

As often happens in these kinds of situations, an underground resistance movement started to spread throughout Danish society. Attempting to silence the press rarely, if ever, works, and the Danish situation was no different. Once censorship legislation was passed, effectively forbidding criticism of the Nazis, underground press groups emerged and started circulating "alternative" news to the mainstream outlets. The ingenuity of the journalists was incredible - printing presses were knocked up using bicycle parts and other household items, and one of the largest copying machines was hidden in plain sight in a nail-making factory.

This is the printing machine used in Frie Danmark, the largest rebel paper with a circulation of 30,000 papers a month. This is the machine that was made to appear as a nail-manufacture machine. 

"Dear British Friend" - a letter that was published and disseminated during the war.
If you read the entire document, it is strongly pro-German, but if you only read every second line, the meaning completely changes. Sneaky Danes.

Sabotage also became a common hobby for the Danish population, and it was on for young and old. One of the earliest resistance groups was known as the Churchill Club which was made up on a group of teenage boys. They conducted numerous acts of sabotage between late 1941 and mid 1942, when they were captured and imprisoned. However, the boys of the Churchill Club were not going to let imprisonment stop them from menacing the Germans, so at night they broke out of the jail, continued their missions, and then broke back in every morning.

Two commonly used sabotage devices - a pocketwatch which has been hot-wired to work as a detonator and (I think) some kind of Molotov cocktail. 

This guy sounds like a legend.
Also, I would *love* to see how you can convincingly change your appearance using only toothpaste and chewing gum. 

A detonator built by Danish resistance groups.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a home made torpedo.
Moral of this story, the Danes are both sneaky and oddly good at making heavy weaponry using household items. 

By far, my favourite Danish resistance story is that of Tommy Sneum.

This guy was a total legend. He was pretty unimpressed by the Nazi occupation of Denmark, and decided that he wanted to do something about it. More particularly, he decided that he wanted to assassinate Heinrich Himmler, who was scheduled to pass through Copenhagen in February 1941.

Being something of a womaniser, Sneum struck up a relationship with a woman who had a penthouse apartment conveniently located next door to the main Nazi headquarters in Copenhagen (incidentally he was also sleeping with this woman's mother). Here, after somehow getting both the mother and daughter to vacate the apartment, he lay in wait, with his weapon of choice - a bow and arrow (because it was sneakier than a gun), for the Nazi leader to cross into his line of fire.

And he waited.

And waited.

Unfortunately, Himmler had gotten a wee bit sick and decided to continue straight on to Berlin, rather than to visit the Nazi Headquarters in Copenhagen, so Sneum was never able to implement his plan.

Not one to take defeat lying down, however, Sneum decided that he wanted to assist the allies to fight, particularly by joining the RAF (he was a trained pilot). But getting a flight to England was pretty difficult, so Sneum had to take matters into his own hands.

He had a friend who had an old plane in his barn, so Sneum called him up and politely asked if he could use the plane to avoid the Germans and fly to England.

His friend said no.

So Sneum called again.

And his friend said no.

And so Sneum pretty much stalked this poor guy until he said "Well, you can't have my plane, but I'm going on holiday for a couple of weeks, and I might not notice if it was stolen".

So with that, Tommy set his plan into motion.

He went to the farm and found the plane inside the barn, but there was a problem. The wings weren't attached. So Tommy put the wings back on. Then, all ready to fly to England and freedom, he slowly crept towards the barn doors and promptly discovered why the wings had been taken off the plane.

Luckily, there was a train line nearby, so when the next train went past, Tommy somehow blew up/in some other noisy way managed to get the plane out of the barn. He then proceeded to fly to England (refuelling by walking out onto the wing). When he landed, he reported to the English military. He told them who he was, and that he wanted to help them. He even handed them documents showing locations and information about various German radar detectors around Denmark.

The English locked him up, because they didn't believe that he could possibly have escaped from Denmark, especially by reassembling a old plane.

I'm not sure how long he was locked up for, but eventually the English decided to utilise Tommy and smuggled him back into Denmark to carry out further surveillance.

When his cover was blown, Tommy knew he needed to get out, but unfortunately he was flat out of friends with planes lying around, so he needed to get creative. Clearly, England was too far away, so his best hope was the neutral, next-door-neighbour Sweden.

Luckily, it was a particularly nasty winter that year. So nasty, that the Oresund (the strait between Sweden and Denmark) was frozen over. Tommy capitalised on this, and decided to walk.

Upon reaching Sweden, a pretty impressive feat, when you consider the Oresund is 4km wide at its narrowest point and, being salt water, there was no guarantee that it would be frozen solid, Tommy once again found himself on the wrong side of the authorities. The Swedes thought that Sneum was a double agent and imprisoned him for 67 days, and luckily were able to avoid being sent back to the Nazi authorities in Denmark. He was eventually returned to England, where he remained (I think) until the Germans surrendered.

But I digress, the resistance movement grew and grew as the war progressed and eventually became too powerful for the Germans to ignore.

A map showing the locations of major resistance and sabotage movements in August, 1943. 

On the 29th August 1943, the Germans declared Denmark to be under martial law, and for the first time since the war began, the Danish parliament lost control of the nation. Of course, this meant that the Nazis were able to start prosecuting the Jewish population of Denmark. However someone within the German ranks leaked the intended starting dates for the main operations, and as a result over 7000 Danish Jews were able to escape to safety in Sweden. Ultimately, only 481 Jews, a small fraction of the population, were detained and sent to concentration camps.

With the Gestapo controlling law enforcement in Denmark, torture and terror tactics became the norm as the Germans attempted to regain control of the Danish population, and to avoid falling victim to the regime, some Danes turned informant for the Nazis. Something I found interesting on this point is how the museum placards refer to how the Resistance dealt with these informants. They were "liquidated". Not "murdered" or "assassinated", although these terms were thrown around quite liberally when referring to deaths attributable to the Nazis. "Liquidated". Just an interesting observation on how the Danes view their involvement in the war, and the "collateral damage" that they accrued.

A picture of a bombing site in Copenhagen.
Note that in the background is one of the rides at Tivoli which is still standing today!

When the Nazis surrendered on the 5th May 1945, Denmark returned to the rule of the King and elected parliament.

It took until 2003 for a Danish official to speak out against the Danish cooperation with the Nazi regime. The then Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, stated that "if everyone in Europe...had thought the same as the Danish lawmakers, then Hitler would have won the war". He called the then-government's cooperation with the Nazis "morally unjustifiable".

A soldiers uniform. Part of the collection of the Museum of Danish Resistance. 

Propaganda poster. 

A letter from Himmler to a member of the Brondum Gang, a counter-sabotage arm of the German forces.
The members of the Gang were executed following the war. 

An SS tattoo.
The man this tattoo belonged to requested doctors remove it following the war.
It has been preserved in plastic. 

This brooch was made from chewed rye bread, and was given to a Dane in the Ravensbruck camp. 

This became a symbol of the Danish resistance.
9 ore, made up from 4 coins is a reference to the date of the German attack on Denmark. 09/04/40.

Not really relevant to anything above, but these were the boots worn by German soldiers to prevent them getting frostbite! They are absolutely massive!

A letter written in one of the Danish labour camps. The writing is absolutely tiny 

An illegal newspaper. 

Stained Glass Saturday

As much as I love heights, sometimes it's fun to delve underneath a city to get a different perspective. 

It was with this in mind that I  rode out to the Cisternerne Modern Glass Art museum, hidden beneath Søndermarken. 

Søndermarken, translation "the southern field", is a large park on the edge of Frederiksberg, and is a typically Danish green space - dense forest, alternating with perfectly manicured lawns and gravel pathways lined with hulking trees. 

On the main lawn, there are two glass protrusions which form the entrance to the museum. 

As the name suggests, Cisternerne has been set up on the old cisterns of Copenhagen. Following a cholera outbreak in the 1850s, it was decided that Copenhagen needed an independent and clean water supply, and the only place in the city high enough to allow the water to be distributed to the city was up on Fredricksberg hill. The cisterns were originally built as an open-air reservoir, but at some point were enclosed, and separated into 3 separate spaces, each measuring approximately 40m x 40m, and about 4m high. 

You aren't allowed to take photos inside, so the rest of the images are from people who are either better connected or less rule-governed than me. 

This is what the inside is like, only this photo has been taken with a massively long exposure, so it is nowhere near this bright.
Credit:  http://www.photo-gallery.dk/oversigt/kunst_kultur_&_musik/cisternerne/_cisternerne-042.html

The cisterns were drained in 1981, and reincarnated as the museum in 1996. 

The atmosphere of the museum alone was worth the entrance fee. Presumably paying homage to the venues history, there was a thin film of water covering the floor (I really hope they were paying homage, because otherwise I was probably in a fairly decent amount of danger of being buried 4m beneath Copenhagen). Stalactites droop from the ceilings and the only light is that which illuminates the artworks. Every sloshing footstep echos through the cavernous halls and the tiniest noises bounce off the walls magnified. All in all it was pretty creepy.

On the topic of artwork, I am definitely no art afficionado, but I do enjoy the craftsmanship involved in glasswork. I thought/was certain that that maybe I wouldn't be able to appreciate the hidden meaning behind the art, but would be able to enjoy it nonetheless in the same way that I enjoy looking at vases at wanky homeware shops. 

Oooooh, pretty vase.
Credit:  http://www.merchplus1.com/assets/product_images/product_lib/10000-19999/12117.jpg

Oooooh, pretty art.
Credit:  http://www.visitcopenhagen.com/see-and-do/cisternerne-museum-of-modern-glass-art/382

As it turns out, modern glass art isn't too different to modern normal art. Incomprehensible. I actually wonder whether modern art is some kind of universal language that no one understands. 

There weren't very many 3D sculptures or stained glass windows, rather mostly it seemed to be pictures painted directly onto the glass and then laminated with more glass. Kind of like the cellophane paintings that kids do in kindy, only without the benefit of lines to colour in-between.

This piece was actually really cool and kind of mesmerising.
Credit:  http://www.danishcrafts.dk/visKalenderArrangement.asp?artikelID=2475

Credit:  http://www.weareprivate.net/blog/?p=16665

Credit:  http://www.kulturklik.dk/steder/cisternerne-museet-for-moderne-glaskunst

Nb. This may not actually have been part of the museum.
Credit:  http://educatingapril.blogspot.dk/2011/02/art-workshop-1.html

One piece was a glass tabletop, with circular mirrors stuck onto it with ping pong balls stuck onto the mirrors. And other had what was clearly a woman nursing what was not-so-clearly her child - I maintain she was holding some kind of duck-frog mutant. 

The last cistern however was really interesting - in the vein of the clay soldiers, they had a collection of life-sized rock carvings of nordic villagers in traditional costumes. From what I was able to glean from the description, they were from the 1700s, but considering that the description was in Danish, it could just as easily have said that they were made from 1700 tonnes of rock, or 1700 monkeys were involve in carving the statues. Regardless, they were easily my favourite artworks. 

Credit:  http://thecurioussoul.tumblr.com/

Credit:  http://politiken.dk/turengaartil/guide/europa/danmark/koebenhavn/ECE1335491/loerdag-og-soendag-i-koebenhavn/