Ah Copenhagen, one of my final stops in five months of continuous traveling and my last stop in Scandinavia. Although visiting in July, the weather felt more like March – mostly rainy and cold. But, with layers and a rain jacket, one must carry on!
I had an Airbnb in the Østerbro area near a wonderful waterfront dock that housed the Carlsberg Boating Club. That said, I was shocked by how quiet the area was. I walked down the waterfront and nobody else was around. Restaurants with prime waterfront locations had their outdoor tables locked up, not prepared for any visitors. It felt like Christmas Day, where everything is closed, a ghost town. I wanted to yell, “Marco!” but I was confident I wasn’t going to get a “Polo” in response. I saw a little (I mean a smidgen) more life further north at the local pizzeria, but it still felt like people were hiding.
I hopped the bus to the Old Town and found life! I crisscrossed town from Tivoli Gardens, all the way to Christiania, taking in everything in between. One of the most heavily trafficked and touristy areas of the city is Strøget, a long pedestrian street overflowing with retail stores to lighten your wallet. As someone who hates shopping, I speed-walked from one end to the other, feeling suffocated. Oppositely, I lackadaisically strolled down the Havnegade promenade from Chistiansborg Palace to Nyhavn. Right on the waterfront, you can walk down the promenade or, if you have a bit more energy, bounce your way down the promenade using the trampolines built into the pavement. I must say, from my standpoint, those trampolines are a brilliant idea for parents to extract as much energy out of their kids as possible. Jump! Jump! I secretly really wanted to try one myself, but I thought I’d get some dirty looks pushing little children out of the way to make room for me, I’m not much the sharing type - next time. And maybe I’ll tee up Kris Kross as my soundtrack (if you aren’t sure who that is, consider this some musical education and look them up).
There are also a handful of cafes along the promenade, including The Standard, which was a good place to duck into and warm up when the heavy rains came through. After a large cup of steaming Earl Gray, I headed back outside and found myself where the promenade intersected with Nyhavn. This historic waterfront area is what I most recognized in Copenhagen. Long since the days of sailors and brothels, it’s now more like an Old Town square lined with restaurant patios and tourists snapping pictures of the tall, slim, colorful buildings reflecting off the canal. Using the new pedestrian bridge, dubbed the “kissing bridge” for the way the two sides of the bridge interlock, I crossed over to Christiania.
I met up with a local friend I had met in Bucharest, and he gave me the tour of this most intriguing area. Established in the ’70s with the undertones of a hippie commune, Christiania’s counterculture is surprisingly independent of Danish government rules. Now that said, it’s not exactly lawless – the community has its own rules and actually posts “Do and Don’t” signs outside of the entrances. Although street graffiti photographers may be drooling at the creative snapshot opportunities inside, photography is frowned upon. Considering its drug culture is alive and well in between its cafes, bars and music venues, the community does not want any undue attention. An upside to this restriction is that it makes the community a selfie-stick-free zone! That may require a little selfie-stick-free celebratory dance - envision Elaine from “Seinfeld” … oh yeah.
Outside of Christiana, less than 10 minutes’ walking distance, were also the Papirøen (Paper Island) Copenhagen Street Food market and the former Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center. Copenhagen Street Food includes a variety of fun items such as Pulled Duck Duck, Discow Bar, Tacos Chucho, Pancake Cottage and something called Monkeybutt … yeah, I should have paid closer attention to that last one. But after weaving in and out of stalls with hungry impatience, I zeroed in specifically on the mouthwatering food and scoring a place to sit outside. With one hand holding my pulled pork sandwich and the other trying to keep the little checked sandwich holder from flying away in the wind, I noticed trees with white paper strands fluttering and dancing in the wind. Appetite addressed, I walked over to the neighboring Copenhagen Art Center and saw that these trees were a temporary exhibition housing a Yoko Ono wish tree garden filled with hundreds of wishes. I saw wishes for money, travel, love … but, heartwarmingly, many more about peace. These exhibitions have been scattered globally and, eventually, these wishes will be compiled in Yoko Ono’s appropriately named “Imagine Peace Tower” in Iceland. I tied my own wish to the tree but wondered how it would survive the continual rains as I looked at other soppy paper slips with ink running down – it looked like the words were crying.
If you’re interested in checking these places out, frustratingly both the food hall and art center closed at the end of the year BUT, luckily, are slated to reopen at the new location of Refshaleøen. So give it a look if you are heading over soon.
On my way back through Nyhavn toward the center of town, another temporary exhibition struck me. Along the facade of Kunsthal Charlottenborg, was an Ai Weiwei exhibit called “Soleil Levant.” Looking up, more than 3,500 multi-colored life jackets were stuffed into the window frames of the building. These weren’t just life jackets as a reflection of the canal or waterfront in Copenhagen – no, these were life jackets collected from refugees who had made the crossing to Lesbos. It was a very strong and stark reminder of the critical and political situation. Looking at the different colors of the life jackets, I couldn’t help but think how each one of those was a reflection of someone … two years old, 20 years old, 80 years old ... fleeing their homeland to escape crisis - just wanting to survive. This refugee crisis was the largest since WWII and was so incredibly politicized. I couldn’t help but wonder what had become of all those people. What had happened to the child in this blue vest? Had the person in this red vest survived? Did families in the orange vests find asylum together somewhere safe, away from war? There aren't enough paper leaves to convey … how much I wish for just the safety of humanity.
