Hopscotch to Christiania
Christiania made me feel brave because I came there cowed and disillusioned and the experience of it brought me to a more courageous state.
I hadn’t even wanted to be in Copenhagen. My boss had announced he had tickets for a “weekend trip” and couldn’t go so I said I’d take them off his hands. Before I had even thought about what a weekend trip to a country halfway across Europe entails, my name was on the bus tickets. That’s right. Bus. From Scotland to Copenhagen.
The reason I had the kind of boss who booked weekend trips by bus to Copenhagen was that we worked in a sustainability office and Copenhagen is a Mecca of eco-sustainability. Bikes, mainly. But I didn’t need sustainability – that cold, unyielding goal, to warm my struggling and weary sense of purpose that winter time. Some bright spark of hope, rather.
Copenhagen itself struck me as dull and classic. It used to thrill me to be in a new European city; the old town, the civic buildings, the history. Entering another door into the great hall of European history. Now the truth seemed all too clear to me: they’re all the same. So I left the cobbled main square (does it have cobbles? Probably, they normally do) and went wandering.
I sort of knew of Christiania before but I had not intended to find it. In my memory the bridge I crossed to get there was miniscule, more like a half jump, a hopscotch, into a better world. And I stayed in that better world for the rest of my trip
Christiania seemed constructed from sheer magic within the real, brickstock city of Copenhagen. It was winter but there was a political discussion event that weekend. Speakers and questions on home-made stages. Open smoky fires and bright tents and people sat out talking, planning, debating. I met a man named Erik who had lived there for the last few decades, claiming not to have left the tiny island. He had met a beautiful woman and „made three babies there“. He grinned, nodding at one of them, dirty blond haired like himself, fast asleep in the wheelbarrow which Erik pushed him round his hometown on.
Far from slick, professional Copenhagen people handed out soup on a donation basis, shared along with political banter and discussion on all themes but with a strength of common sense behind them: nobody here was theorising from their townhouse bedroom. Every issue they discussed was real – dealing with the hard drifters – drunks, aggressives and those poor souls with serious mental problems which are always drawn to alternative sites. Dealing with the police and the impossibility of a town which makes its own rules, based on its own values. And dealing with toilet waste.
Christiania’s bars made me feel brave in that they were dirty and scummy but real chat happened there. I didn’t mind the feeling that a lot of the people were stoned off their heads because it wasn’t the same as at home where you had to ignore them, shut off their presence to continue your good time. Here, as ever, it was awkward to be interrupted by slurry speech and mad chat. But because it was allowed I had the feeling that I could use my words and questions to talk softly, inquisitively with people who would normally scare me. If something went wrong the consequences wouldn’t be police and shame on me for mixing with the wrong types and putting myself in danger, irresponsibly. The community here has been struggling with the treatment of society’s outsiders for all its existence, indeed has in large part defined itself in this struggle.
Walking through Christiania made me feel brave because the buildings were oddly real, crafted by inspiration and inventiveness, not a planning manual. The houses and constructions were functional and humorous, the working of their compost toilets and recycled glass facades open for all to see. The residents, also open and humorous, would eye you eyeing their ramshackle masterpieces amusedly, not from smugness or pride but betraying the big secret that that’s all there is to it: build it, love it, live in it. Their ease and rootedness seemed a gently mocking prod at us gaping wanderers, asking why we made it all so difficult where we were from.
I was lucky to spend only three days in Christiania and I didn’t have time to let the bad sides arise and become wearying, saddening, like anywhere. But returning home to a very abstract fight for ”sustainability, I was given courage, for many months after by people who fight for what is already all around them, a place they return to each night, and to their kids sleeping peacefully in wheelbarrows in it.
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