Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
international chain each year. Then, as if from another age, a man pedaled by me with his
wife sitting in the utilitarian bucket-like wagon of his three-wheeled “Christiania Bike.”
You'd call the couple “granola” in the US.
Looking as out of place here in Copenhagen as an Amish couple wandering the
canyons of Manhattan, they were residents of Christiania.
The Denmark I've described seems to be a model of conformity, where everyone
obeys the laws so that all can be safe, affluent, and comfortable. And yet, Denmark also
hosts Europe's most inspirational and thriving nonconformist hippie commune. Perhaps
being content and conformist is easier for a society when its nonconformist segment, re-
belling against all that buttoned-down conformity, has a refuge.
In 1971, the original 700 Christianians established squatters' rights in an abandoned
military barracks just a 10-minute walk from the Danish parliament building. Two gener-
ations later, this “free city” still stands—an ultra-human communal mishmash of idealists,
hippies, potheads, non-materialists, and happy children (600 adults, 200 kids, 200 cats,
200 dogs, 17 horses, and a couple of parrots). Seeing seniors with gray ponytails wood-
working, tending their gardens, and serving as guardians of the community's ideals, I'm
reminded that 180 of the original gang that took over the barracks four decades ago still
call Christiania home. The Christianians are fighting a rising tide of materialism and con-
formity. They want to raise their children to be not cogs, but free spirits.
Everyone knows utopias are utopian—they can't work. But Christiania, which has
evolved with the challenges of making a utopia a viable reality, acts like it didn't get the
message. It's broken into 14 administrative neighborhoods on land still owned by Den-
mark's Ministry of Defense. Locals build their homes but don't own the land; there's no
buying or selling of property. When someone moves out, the community decides who will
be invited in to replace that person. A third of the adult population works on the outside,
a third works on the inside, and a third doesn't work much at all.
For the first few years, hard drugs and junkies were tolerated. But that led to violence
and polluted the mellow ambience residents envisioned. In 1979, the junkies were ex-
pelled—an epic confrontation now embedded in the community's folk history. Since then,
the symbol of a fist breaking a syringe is as prevalent as the leafy marijuana icon. Hard
drugs are emphatically forbidden in Christiania.
