"Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark"

Life’s tough—I’ll say. I’m so tired! “Why is that, Paloma? Have you been spending too much time in coffee shops?” No, no, I’m tired because I just spent four days in Denmark, with a brief stint in Sweden (besides, you cannot spend “too much time” in coffee shops!...kidding mamma ☺). Anyway, back to this business about my weekend…so Sharon, Katie (“the australian”) and I ventured north this weekend to see all Scandinavia had to offer, well at least Copenhagen anyway. The title of my post is actually very misleading because KÖBENHAVEN was a really beautiful city, although a lot more cosmopolitan than I expected. After dropping off our stuff at our hostel, we made our way to this church that has a very high spire you can hike up for the most amazing view of the city and the harbour. I have to say I really love the idea of these wind turbines in the middle of the water…functional without being a scar on the landscape. We pretty well spent the rest of first day just wandering through the streets, taking in the view, you know the usual the old and new architecture and the people, or more specifically the men. They were very attractive, nay, GORGEOUS, BEAUTIFUL, BREATHTAKING. I have never seen so many beautiful specimens—they were everywhere, I think I may strained my neck trying to take them in all at once, it was almost ridiculous how attractive everyone was. But, who am I to complain?

The next day we visited “Christiana” a hippy commune literally in the middle of the city. Apparently a group of our peace lovin’-pot smoking-long haired-stickin’ it to the man-friends started squatting on this piece of land about 35 years ago and the government decided to let them stay as a “social experiment.” Initially, the police weren’t allowed into the area and it was all “free love man” but eventually that stopped and according to the habitants have been a thorn in their side ever since. They even have a billboard with a running tally of the police visits for that day and the cumulative total since 2003 when they started counting. It was a really strange and wonderful place to visit, although I wasn’t allowed to really take pictures of the main area, affectionately called “Pusher Street.”
It’s a self-contained unit, you don’t even feel like you’re in a city, you enter and there are shanty houses everywhere, people partying, smoking, drinking, random animals running around. Then you stroll around a bit and come to these huge river and its so gorgeous…reminded me a bit of Thunder Bay actually. One of the locals we spoke to said that “the right wing government” was trying to shut them down even though they pay taxes now…taxes equivalent to 200 Euros for each inhabitant of the area per year. I’d say that’s a pretty good deal for prime real estate in one of the most expensive cities in the world, but hey man, leave the hippies alone! Besides, this “social experiment” is quite a cultural anomaly in the west and maybe we can learn something about community values from our long-haired friends…did I just write that?!...living in liberal Amsterdam must be getting to me…

Anyway, that night, we met up with David, a friend of Katie’s who lives nearby and we went out for dinner and to a café/club…cool music, chill atmosphere. The next day we set off for Sweden, I mean we were half an hour away, why not? We spent the day visiting Lund, a cute university town, and Malmo, albeit most of the time there was spent on the beach just snoozing.
You can see Copenhagen in the distance in this photo. We also searched everywhere for meatballs and came to the realization that this is an IKEA myth…we endured more than one strange look from locals when we asked where you can get “meatballs” so we finally gave up. Our last day we headed to Elsinore to visit the setting of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (ironically we did catch a glimpse of the famous brooder roaming the fields near the castle). Here are the secret passage ways under the castle.



So I have to say, despite being so pleased with the opportunities I have to travel over here, I love coming home to Amsterdam. I’m also a little weary of leaving the city every weekend, there is so much to see and do here, I’m worried that if I spend too much time abroad I won’t really appreciate what it is to “live” in this city. We are staying in Amsterdam this weekend and next weekend we’ll head to Texel Island, north of Holland for a few days. Other than that, things are good. I can’t believe I’ll be home in less than three months…Hope everyone is doing well. Keep the emails coming, I really love hearing from everyone.