My First Few Days

  Copenhagen, Denmark
Monday, September 3, 2007

Alright. Herein lies pivotal information, general stories (not all lies) and important facts concerning my first few days in Copenhagen.

Firstly I would like to mention Jegtvej 69 and the Ungdomshustet. Remember how I brilliantly coined Copenhagen "Revolutionary City"? Well it is because of the events surrounding Jegtvej 69 that I did so. The controversial happenings of Jegtvej 69 have piqued my usually lax curiosity as a strong, active culture of rebellious youth is something I did not expect to find here. Anyway, Jegtvej is a large street in Norrebro, Copenhagen. In fact it is right around the corner (approx. 100m) from where I sleep and occassionally eat. Anyway for 25 years an abondoned house was utilised by left-wing youths to hang out and organise demonstrations. I'm not an expert on the situation (neither are you so shutup) but I have done a wee (Scottish for "small") bit of research and my mentor Maj and my landlord Tom have filled me in on the deets (cool word for "details"). The stories of Jegtvej are numerous in quantity, prolonged in length but superior in quality such that I cannot list all relevant facts here.

View from (and through) my window

Extensive tale vertically challenged: the local government decided they wanted to sell Jegtvej 69, the number of the building the youths frequented, and this resulted in some protests mid last year. Eventually these protests escalated and by mid this year around a thousand youths had been arrested. And by escalated I mean, well, escalated...but very much so. Police were accused of firing lethal amounts of teargas into crowds and other stuff happened to seriously exacerbate the situation. Violently expressed anger between the police and protesters led to (this is what Tom told me) masked activists from Holland and Sweden turning up and attacking police with batons. One particular riot ended up in the street I now live in as the police cornered activists. CRAZY!!!! Eventually Jegtvej 69 was demolished in March this year but the protests rage on with the Copenhagen mayor refusing to establish another youth house. Anyway I mention all this because last night there was another riot and when I walked outside this morning and turned the corner there were bonfire remnants in the street, dislodged and scattered cobblestones, burnt and twisted shopping trolleys, smashed shop windows and buildings decorated with paint balloons. If you are keen to brush up on your Danish news re: all this stuff check out www.ungeren.dk P.S. Do not fear for my limbs and life concerned readers as the activists are only violent towards police and vice versa and vandalism is (fairly) limited to Banks, Supermarkets and McDonalds's (or so it would seem). Both Tom and Maj talk about the situation fairly lightheartedly and don't seem too worried about a full scale civil war.

My bedroom

Anyway, way too much time spent on that. Check out the website. Let's discuss my place. It is in Norrebro, an area to the north of the city centre, on Kronborggade. Gade means street and it is actually pronounced Kronbowgal (the 'w' is very soft). Norrebro is an old area (according to Tom most buildings are at least 150 years past construction date) and used to be the worker's quarters. Now it is considered a somewhat hip location, especially by young rapscallions and ragamuffins. It is slightly dirty looking, with graffiti and such, and delapidated but in an appealing way. Kind of like Brunswick or Fitzroy or your mum.

The kitchen

Just about every business in the area is either a Bike shop, a bar, a delicatessen/grocery or a Schawarma outlet. Schawarmas are quite tasty and are essentially the arabian answer to kebabs. Despite Denmark's conservative government's tough stance on immigration Norrebro is a suprisingly multi-cultural neighborhood comprising many middle-eastern folk and Somalians.

My place has EVERYTHING

Speaking of cool places to live, my mentor, Maj, lives in a 400 year old student housing building with an awesome courtyard and a massive hall for parties. Also she has a madnut view of Rundetarn, or the Round Tower; a huge, old astrological observatory built by some important guy (not me though, however let's not understate my importance, I wrote this spectactular piece of SOMETHING didn't I?). N.B: Something is in capitals because whoever can replace it with a funny word will recieve my laughter delivered straight to his, or her (I'm not prejudiced), door via Wood Post (Ha! Posts can be made of wood, I've seen them).

One last thing I'd like to mention about my first few days is the uniqueness of Danish pronunciation. I thought that knowing German would help me ease into the language but this was not to be. German, as explained to me by my mentor is far more precise and clear in its pronunciation and apparently so is just about every other language. It may be mean of me to say but spoken Danish sounds a bit mumbled when compared to how it is written. I'm not passing judgement here and it is in no way a bad thing, I'm just trying to explain the distinct sound of a language gone wrong (once again joking here). Seriously, I am very intrigued by Danish and am trying to speak it every chance I get.

Oh yeah, random as occurence I should definitely mention lest you endure the entirety of your lives unaware of this mid-boggling coincidence. Walking back from the market two days ago I began to enter my street and absentmindedly noticed a couple of guys standing on the corner. After a few more steps I hear a (COARSE LANGUAGE ALERT) "No fuckin way!?". I look up and it's the two guys from Deakin I knew to also be studying at Copenhagen. Bare in mind they, as I now know, live half an hour away. Turns out they were buying a bike and for some reason the dealer had decided to make the deal on my little inconspicuous corner. So after the deal had been sealed with a deal-confirming handshake we discussed meals and wheels and meals delivered by wheels and our particualar fondness for veal however we disagreed over the morality of stealing but not reeling, a fishing line that is.

That ought to about do it. I'll tell you about Tom, the logistics of my bedroom and also my cool stroll to Kirkegaard in my next entry as I am now weary and longing for repose. Sleep sound my children.

Weiner cake again (coz it's funny)

Interesting tidbit, the exchange rate over here is heaps better than Crapstralia.

P.S. I'm going to take some photos of the Jegtvej activist's work tomorrow so watch out!