A spontaneous trip to Copenhagen and another little town inside of it

For a danish girl it had been embarrassingly long since I’d been to København (Copenhagen). Somehow other places I hadn’t seen yet (usually much warmer and less rainy) attracted me more. But at the cause of missing a very dear friend and my home country terribly, I packed my favourite little weekend bag, finished my last exam and headed to Copenhagen. First by train, then by train on a ferry and then back to just the train. Despite the typical weather of the north, every second was fully enjoyed! My friend took me sight seeing and I remained shocked about how many things I hadn’t yet seen in the capital of my own country. Or maybe I’d just forgotten about them and replaced those memories with others. Lesson learned: You don’t always have to travel far to (re-)discover beautiful things. The royal library (also called the black diamond), Folketinget (the danish national parliament) and the queen’s castle were very nice to see. But what really caught my interest was something else: Christiania. A free town in Denmark where hash is sold openly and walls are creatively blazoned with graffiti. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures, as people are kindly asked not to take pictures in there. Also you shouldn’t make any fast movements, the inhabitants, sellers and buyers could get nervous, maybe think it’s the police. We walked through at daylight, quietly, interested. So did lots of other tourists – among them an elderly couple and a family with a little child. Aside from us and them it was also full of young people. A gymnasium right next to the free town is the cause of that. For them it’s just a place to chill out, relax, meet. Only their slightly red eyes give away their present and very possibly their future.

It’s inspiring and scary at once to walk through an independent town inside a different (for danish standards quite big) town and very clearly see and feel how this piece of land goes by different rules, different laws. People are kind, friendly, most of them seem lost. The atmosphere is creative and smells of grass. You try not to look anyone directly in the eye but you fail and get a smile in return. Then you walk out of a big gate that says: “You are now entering the EU”.