About Christiania

A little of history

As it’s known, the area of Christiania was established in 1617 by king Christian IV. It’s said, that he liked the city of Amsterdam, and he wanted to have something like that in his country, too, so that he made those places resemble Amsterdam with its canals and canoes there and when you go to Christiania, you will see that area with many canoes and boats there nearby. I must say, that this place is pretty wonderful and though I was there in that place with the boat trip and I just saw it from the water, however, everything there was really beautiful and as they said, once that place was a swamp, when king Christian decided to have it settled with some people, and he had to offer lands and money to those people, who would go there and live there and build houses and build a civilization, we could say that.

After that, there were some military barracks in Christiania and most of the buildings in Christiania are from that time.

It was not until the 20-th century, and, in particular, in 1971, that Christiania declared its autonomy and now it is called a self-proclaimed anarchistic autonomous district with anarchist community as government. It’s about 34 hectares and has about 800 to 1000 residents. It has this red flag with three yellow circles or dots, which represent the “i-s” in Christiania, and the and the anthem “I kan ikke slå os ihjel (You cannot beat us to death)” is pretty much anarchistic, if you ask me.

Life in Christiania

Well, going inside Christiania, you won’t find many cars there. For your information, the residents didn’t allow to have their own cars, however, there are about 100 cars owned by the residents of Christiania, however, there are only 14 parking placesthere or something like that and other cars are supposed to be parked outside the Christiania. What you will find there in the freetown are many bikes, and they are all of different sizes and shapes and definitions. It’s like the cars, only they are smaller, and they don’t really have something to cover the driver or its passengers, and, you know, it’s mostly raining in Denmark and I don’t know, how they find those bicycles very useful there without the covering. Of course, there are fancier bicycles, but they don’t have it in Christiania, or, at least, I haven’t seen them there.

They told us, that the residents of Christiania even developed their own bicycle and when you see a bicycle with a kind of large carrying thing on its back, you can say, that it’s their bicycle. And you will find them painted in different colours, and they have some writings on them, too, and it’s like everyone has their own bike there, because you either walk or use the bicycle.

The residents of Christiania love meditation and yoga and they have their own theater group Solvognen. It’s like the meditation is a thing of living a free life.

Christianians even have their set of rules and it’s a 9 rule thing: no weapons, no violence, no stealing, no bulletproof vests, no hard drugs, no knives and no bikers’ colors. And the residents pay the taxes normally, such as the fees for electricity and water, trash disposal, and others.

Nowadays Christiania is the fourth largest tourist attraction in Copenhagen and approximately half a million tourists visit Christiania every year. It’s like a place of freedom and it’s something, that is Dane, as they say. Some people like, that they have Christiania in Copenhagen and it’s a Danish thing, they say, and they are proud, that there is nothing like that in other places on earth. If you visit Copenhagen, you should definitely go and see Christiania.

When I first heard about Christiania it was this Ukrainian TV show “Orel I reshka” (which is heads or tails in English) about different cities of the world and the people travelled to different cities, and they told us about different things to see there and one of the cities was Copenhagen. This lady went to Christiania and though it is forbidden to take photos or videos there, she still showed us some sites of Christiania and she kind of made that place look like a pretty dangerous one. That’s why I thought, that going there all alone wouldn’t be a good idea, but still, I wanted to go there and see the place myself. And it was really different and strange, however, it was not someplace, that you should be scared about. Though, going there alone is not the very best idea, I guess.

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