Copenhagen

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I was strolling through the commotion of downtown Copenhagen, past chain restaurants dressed up to look old and under towering hotels that seem to be part of a different international chain each year. Then, as if from another age, a man pedaled his wife in a “Christiania Bike” — two wheels pushing a big, utilitarian rounded bucket. You’d call the couple “granola” in the USA. They look as out of place here in Copenhagen as an Amish couple in Manhattan.

Later I paused to watch a parade of ragtag soldiers-against-conformity dressed in black venture through the modern bustle of downtown Copenhagen. They walked sadly behind a WWII-vintage truck blasting Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in The Wall.” I never listened to the words until now. They’re fighting a rising tide of conformity. They want to raise their children to be not cogs but to be free spirits. On their banner — painted onto an old sheet — was a slogan you see in their squatter community: “Lev livet kunstnerisk! Kun dode fisk flyder med strommen.”(“Live life artistically! Only dead fish follow the current.”) They flew the Christiania flag — three yellow dots on an orange background. They say the dots are from the o’s in “Love Love Love.”

In 1971, 700 hippies took over an abandoned naval camp in Copenhagen and turned it into a free city. It’s been run as a commune ever since — with routine run-ins with the city. But it has survived. Those original hippies are pushing 60, and their community has become the second- or third-biggest tourist attraction in town — famous for geodesic domes on its back streets, swap shops, vegetarian cafés, and shacks selling pot on its main street (nicknamed “Pusher Street”).

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Biking through the community myself later that day, it occurred to me that, except for the bottled beer being sold, there was not a hint of any corporate entity in the entire free city. Everything was handmade. Nothing was packaged. And, of course, that will not stand.

The current conservative government is feeling the pressure from developers to “normalize” Christiania. There is a “take it or leave it” “final solution” on the table for leaders of the commune to deal with. The verdict is that the land (which no one wanted 35 years ago) needs more density. Much of it will be opened to market forces, and 1,600 people who aren’t in the community will be allowed to move in. Injecting outsiders and market forces into the last attempt at a socialist utopia surviving in Europe from its flower-power days will bring great change.

Marijuana has been the national plant of the free city. (Hard drugs have always been strictly forbidden.) The police have really cracked down. Pot is no longer sold from little kiosks on Pusher Street. The police drop in 10 times a day. Cafés now post signs warning no pot smoking.

It’s a classic case study in the regrettable consequences of a war on pot. For the first time in years, the Copenhagen street price is up, gangs are moving into the marijuana business, and crime is associated with pot. There was actually a murder recently, as pushers fought to establish their turf — unthinkable in Copenhagen in previous years.

I recently got an email from some traveling readers. They said, “We’re not prudes, but Christiania was creepy. Don’t take kids here or go after dark.”

A free city is not pretty, I agree. But “Pusher Street” and pot is not what the free city is about. Watching parents raise their children with Christiania values as I biked the free city’s back streets, I came to believe more strongly than ever that allowing this social experiment and giving alternative-type people a place to be alternative is a kind of alternative beauty that deserves a place.

Returning to Europe, I worried that Denmark would pale after my recent Croatian experience. My first day here dispelled that concern. While Denmark has its castles and cute towns, the real experience here is the Danish modern spirit and how it copes with today’s challenges.

Wandering into an empty, sleek train car, each seat was marked “kan reserveres.” I figured that meant “not reserved,” and sat down. Then I was bumped by a friendly guy with a reservation. He said, “The sign means ‘could be’ reserved…we don’t promise too much.” Noticing several young men with shaved heads and the finest headphones listening to MP3 players on their train commute to work, I thought Denmark seemed so minimal and efficient…and so together.

Every time I politely ask, “Do you speak English” (still thinking it’s bad style to assume Europeans will speak my language), I feel silly. “Of course” is the standard answer. Thriving Copenhagen has a thin veil of tourism. Behind that, locals really do eat open-face sandwiches. Even though the country’s eateries must be smoke-free by next August, people smoke with attitude in traditional cafés. (By law, smaller places can be exempt — so many local pubs are cutting down their “usable floor space” by adding pool tables and big furniture in order to get around the law and keep the smokers.)

I find having a bike parked in the garden of my hotel is a great way to fit in and literally “go local.” Copenhagen has as many bike lanes as car lanes, and I can literally get anywhere in town faster on my two wheels than by taxi.

Today’s big-city Denmark — which is far from blonde — has me thinking about immigration. I’m a grandchild of immigrants. Three of my grandparents sailed away from the old country speaking only Norwegian. My family assimilated.

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With modern communication allowing “diasporas,” where communities of foreigners settle in more comfortable places with no interest in assimilating, “melting pots” have become cafeteria plates with separate bins. I know Algerians who’ve been three generations in the Netherlands and are still enthusiastically Algerian, raising their children with barely a hint of Dutch culture. I am three generations in the USA. While I have kept my grandparents’ religion and eat fish balls and goat cheese, I can barely say hello in Norwegian. While proud of my heritage, I am American.

At Copenhagen’s City Museum, I met a Pakistani Dane. He talked earnestly of the exhibit like it was his city…as if his ancestors pioneered the place. Thinking of assimilation, I got emotional. Surprised at being choked up, I was struck by the beauty of a Pakistani Dane.

Am I wrong to wish that a Muslim living in Denmark would become a Dane? Am I wrong to wish the USA would speak English rather than Norwegian or Spanish? Am I wrong to lament districts of London that have a disdain for being British? Immigrants energize a land — and they do it best when their vision is a healthy melting pot. Melt, immigrants…treasure your heritage while embracing your adopted homelands.

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I just landed in Copenhagen and got a rousing welcome. This week Denmark’s streets are filled with graduating university seniors filling WWII-vintage trucks, waving beers, and hollering above the traffic. (Don’t they know they’re about to leave the wonderland of childhood and enter the work force?)

It’s a progressive beer party — the trucks take them from the graduation ceremony to each house, where the parents serve them beer…and things just get sloppier and sloppier. (Danes statistically finish university later than other Europeans, typically taking several years’ break — the government is pushing them to get through the education system faster.)

My friend, Richard, dresses up like Hans Christian Andersen to lead walking tours. He saved a day just for me. Walking through the city with HCA in a long coat and top hat is a bit strange. (Richard becomes Richard again each winter and flees “cold, dark, rainy, and expensive” Denmark with his Icelandic partner to dance the tango in Argentina.)

Kelly Clarkson is coming to town — she’s on posters everywhere. Richard explains that the Danes have their own “Danish Idol”-type TV pop craze, and the created Danish icons are local stars — but Kelly Clarkson is big league.

We climb the highest church spire in town and look across the strait to Sweden. Through the modern windmills on the Danish horizon, Richard points out a Swedish nuclear power plant in the hazy distance. He explains, “They put it 600 kilometers from Stockholm but only 20 kilometers from Copenhagen. Danes threatened to bomb it. Swedes threatened to retaliate by setting up catapults and lobbing in their national dish — a lutefisk-style fermented herring.” The stand-off was defused. Today the plant is closed.

Signs of progressive Denmark are everywhere. The basement of the Danish Design Center is now the Flow Market (www.theflowmarket.com), a supermarket of sustainability with squeeze tubes of empathy, tins of commercial-free space, syringes of tolerance, and buckets of inner calmness. The slogan: Be not “best in the world” but “best for the world.”