Ida and the Freetown of Christiania

This story begins with a girl called Ida.

I can’t remember exactly how during our year studying the media and its many wars we met, but all of a sudden I just knew her. That’s the thing about your closest friends – somehow you just end up being, and you never really question how or when it happened.

Ida is from a place called Aarhus in Denmark, but for the last couple of years she’s been living, studying, working and loving in Copenhagen. Amongst our long and sometimes perplexing debates on politics, journalism and the concepts behind LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem, she has told me in warm detail about Copenhagen, and one of its beating sea-salt chambers: the self-governing autonomous neighborhood of Christiania.

Before the desire was ever hesitantly vocalised, I knew I would be visiting her, and that she would be the one to show me the Freetown of Christiania, a place full of magic that flowed in pictures from her tongue and excited hand descriptions.

This is often how my pilgrimages begin – a wispy thought threads through my mind and suddenly clunks solidly in my brain – a piece of pipe-worked synapse that will never fade away. It has happened so with New York, with Sarajevo and with the Scottish Highlands – but those are stories for another chapter.

In my imagination, Christiania was a permaculture haven – a small space in an incredibly organized land where children lived off the plants their parents grew, and clothes were hand loomed burgundy wool, worked by someone who hummed anarchistic folk tunes while they laboured.

I found a pocket of this dream there. The spirit of Christiania is infectious – it burns through its soft but persistent hum of counter-culture. Even when people are relaxing, they’re contributing to it.

I’ve made two trips to Christiania, and to Copenhagen. One was in autumn, on the cusp of the summer ending, and the other in deep face-shocking winter, when I cycled surrounded by darkness and snowflakes instead of evening sunshine. 

And while the coldness of winter didn’t detract from the charm and excitement of being in Christiania, it reminded me of the uneasy feeling I had had on my first excursion there – only because of how it felt compared to the rest of Copenhagen.

Which was full pulsing and throttling with life. I wanted to go to Christiania, I realized, because I wanted to see the sort of people that live the Freetown life.

I saw glimpses of what Christiania was on quiet stretches: chopped wood waiting to be collected, a man on a Christiania bike, smiling with a beer in one hand, a bearded man lugging a hand trailer, a small child mucking out a horse, a kind face who sold me acid-green watercolour postcards.

But the more time I spent there, the more I began to have a strange feeling. Its almost like the people living there are out being busy, or passing through, or hiding talking about something you wouldn’t quite understand, somewhere in an underground soapbox club. Which isn’t how I imagine most people who are politically minded want to feel visiting somewhere like Christiania. Unless they’re inclined towards fascism. But we’ll leave that one there.

I love Christiania, but I was so much more enveloped in the love I received back from the rest of Copenhagen and the open invitations for people to meet in the middle of the chill: the steaming cafes contrasting against the river ice plates merging like a chunk of the Arctic, the bars with volunteer staff stocking their laughter up to the rafters, the industrial towers, the boiled eggs and yellow bell peppers for breakfast, the pea and garlic soup for lunch, the reggae nights in the butcher shop tiles of the meat packing district, botanical gardens with butterfly rooms, shot glasses of espresso, and the sea, canals, river, lakes – all together in one city.

One of the reasons that Christiania is so appealing to visit is because it’s safe. The luxuries that tourism to the Freetown brings in (apparently the second largest injection of tourism for the country), the fact that no new tenants are welcomed to live there unless under a large amount of rigorous testing and supervision, and the presence of signs telling tourists when they can and can’t take pictures, create the safety net that makes it seem so close to the life the rest of us in the EU apparently are given.

I think it’s important to question why we choose to go to such places. Is it just to have a glance to fill time in a day during a holiday?

Is it to learn a lesson about why we live the way we live, and think about ways to better ourselves?

I often think it’s to discover the people who inhabited that space, or had influence on it.

That’s what I’m pretty sure I’m after – but at least now I’ve learnt that its less about the noted landmarks and fabled towns, and more about the details, that you can truly enjoy through the meticulously observant eyes of a friend.