Day 9 - January 9

We decided to go to Christiania in the afternoon. Tory described as looking like a festival. I felt like I’d stepped into a time warp and landed in the U.S. in the 60s. It was an…experience. No photos are allowed inside, but I think I might go back to the outside and take a photo of the outer limit. So what is Christiana if you’re unfamiliar with it? It used to be a military barracks, which became the locale for squatters in the 1970s. Eventually it was “taken over” and declared a free and open commune. I don’t know too many details, but it now has a unique status within Copenhagen…it’s not exactly part of the city, though it’s at the heart of the city. At one exit of Christiana, they have written “You are now entering the EU”. It has its own set of rules and charter, in which it says something about how it is a place meant to be free for all to express themselves fully to the benefit of the community (and so they forbid weapons and hard drugs). The main reason they allow no photographs is because of Pusher Street, a street where marijuana is literally being sold in the open at little street booths. Copenhagen used to allow this, but now they’re in a struggle with the government over it and so, they want no photographic evidence that can be used against them.

It is a very...interesting place. There are fires in trashcans, very colorful buildings decorated with artistic spray paint. An extremely colorful area. We went into a café, which we were recommended by a Dane. Many of the group enjoyed it, but it’s one of the few places you can smoke inside (only cigarettes, they had a sign that marijuana must be smoked outside or they could be shut down) and the haze was overpowering. You could visually see it, and even if the hot chocolate was cheap, it was not the same quality or the same size as the last café we went to, and I don’t think I’ll be coming back. The fresh air after was such a relief.

Three Polish guys in my class were cooking us dinner, so from Christiana we went to catch the S-train to their place. None of us had ever ridden the S-train, though having navigated the T, the London Underground, and the New York subway (which I still do not understand) it’s actually a very simple system. However, the one thing we did not see was where each train stopped at. We could have taken four or five trains to get to the stop we wanted, but we managed to pick the one that skipped our stop. Now we know better and understand how to tell on the map if a train stops or not…but we ended up who knows where and had to find a train back. Two or three lines should have taken us back, but for some reason, only one was running and it was late. We waited for over 20 minutes in the cold for the train, but we did manage to get where we needed to go, and even found a bus that took us right up to the house (well, monastery – they are renting rooms in an old monastery, and it is a very nice place! The elevator can fit three people maximum and can only go up if a key is inserted and turned. To me, this was highly entertaining, even if to others the elevator seemed a bit sketch). I don’t think my exchange experience would have been complete without getting off at the wrong stop at least once, so check that off my list! And despite that, the train itself is very nice!

Before realizing we had passed our stop.

Dinner was absolutely delicious. I’m tempted to move to Poland just for the food. We thought as a class, after the boys invited us to this dinner, that we should do a weekly dinner, each of the nationalities making some traditional foods, but I don’t think anyone will be able to compare to the Polish dinner.

Our lovely Polish cooks - Marcin, Andrzej, and Marcin.

They had brought a lot of things from home, and they made such a variety. There were these meat pancakes, bigos – a type of meat stew is I guess how to describe it with so many different types of meat, perogis (dumplings),
this chicken which Claudia said was basically wienerschnitzel, salad,
potatos, and tea the “Polish way” (it was earl gray with dark honey, lemon, and a bit of vodka). I cannot tell you how wonderful the food was, after our arduous journey to the place in the cold and a week of whatever-I-can-scrape-together dinners (I have yet to make sense of the grocery store and can only find the ingredients to pasta, sandwiches, and perhaps tacos oddly enough).

Excited for the food.

Also that evening: I tried a sip of Carlsberg, because it is apparently the best beer in the world and people who don’t like beer claim to like it. To me, it was still beer, though I can admit that it was, if not good, at least less disgusting than what I’d had in Edinburgh. Still, you won’t be seeing me abandoning my Coke at parties for a Carlsberg anytime soon.