A note about owning a car in Denmark: when you buy a car, you are charged a 200% tax. So if you buy a $15,000 car, you pay another $30,000 in taxes, making your car $45,000. That being sad, Copenhagen has a really nice public transportation system, with several rail lines and what seemed to be a pretty good bus system. They also have really nice bike lanes. Instead of being some puny little afterthought of a lane like in the US, they actually have their own lane, with a curb seperating it from the road, and another curb seperating the bikes from the sidewalk. Besides the obvious, another great benefit is that cars do not drive through the bike lane to park on the side of the road, so there is no danger to bicyclists! I was really impressed.
A has a regular bike, but E has this awesome contraption called a Christiana.
Theirs looks a little different than this one, but the same general idea is applied. The back looks like a bike, but the front has a big box and two big wheels. The box is big enough that two kids could sit side by side. These are so great for a place where one mostly has to rely on public transportation. While looking for this picture, I saw pictures of people moving and even set up for the wheelchair!
We stopped for some quick drinks at a cafe by the canal, then headed out to Christiana, the place A and E most wanted to show us. Christiana (the cool bikes started here, hence the shared names) declared itself free from the state in 1971. Naturally, it became a haven for drugs of all kinds. Recently, they've cleaned up, and all I saw (and smelled) was pot. I wish I had pictures, because it was really cool. Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed (drugs, remember?) and if they catch you taking pictures, they'll destroy your camera.
Christiana was pretty much what one would expect from a lot of pot heads living in a commune. The neighborhood didn't seem that big. The funny part (I thought) was that it is in the city. When E and A told us about this, I was expecting it to be far out of the city in the middle of a field or something. Nope! The houses were really cute and interesting, and there were people selling the types of things one might expect along Pusher Street. In addition to all the stoners and hippies were a bunch of people who just looked out of places- people in Abercrombie sweatshirts, and a huge group of old businessmen in suits lazily meandering around the paths. Strange place.
After this, it was getting late, so we made a quick stop at the Little Mermaid staute before heading off. Apparently, this statue is what inspired Hans Christian Andersen to write the story of the Little Mermaid. It was okay- kind of small and nondescript. It is a little strange that it is such a big landmark in such an interesting city.
To get to the school to get the bikes, Samuel and I had gone on the bus, and met E and A, who rode their bikes. Going home, E was tired from peddling the Christiana (I don't blame her whatsoever!) and we needed to start dinner, so E, Baby, and I rode the bus back while Samuel and A rode the bikes back to the house. On the way home, we stopped at the grocery.
I feel like grocery stores in foreign countries are a great way to get a sense of the culture, or at least the food culture. IN Denmark, grocery stores are small. In this neighborhood, there is a wine shop, a cheese shop, and a vegetable stand all seperate from the grocery store. I think it is nice that a company just pays attention to one thing and does it very well. E says every single time she goes to the grocery, there is at least one thing that she just can't find or they don't carry. That's the downfall of the cute little stores, I guess- no selection. The produce section was a small corner- a far cry from the sprawl of produce in the US. One really cool thing- herbs are sold in plant form. I love this idea! There is no sense in chopping off a huge amount of a plant to have half of it go to waste anyway. This way, it just stays alive until you can use it again!
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