Wonderful Copenhagen

Just got back from a little trip to Copenhagen, where I had a meeting with some folks at Bonnier's Danish magazine publishing company, and strolled around the city a bit. I gotta say, Copenhagen is pretty fantastic. It feels a little more urban than Stockholm, even though I think Stockholm is bigger. I can't really put my finger on what it is, but the city feeks more like New York (albeit cleaner, friendlier and older) than other places I've been in Europe. It's pretty diverse, with a sizable Muslim population and a good deal of racial diversity. You don't see as much diversity in Stockholm, and I'm not sure what the difference is, because both cities are into equality and tolerance. Maybe Denmark has easier immigration laws?

Anyway, there's just a higher energy in Copenhagen than in Stockholm, where the vibe is overwhelmingly calm, reserved and family-oriented. There's good music playing in all the shops and cafes, and art and fashion (slightly edgier than Stockholm) and cool design everywhere. Swedes joke about the Danes being kind of coarse, but to me they seemed more normal, because I guess Americans are pretty coarse, too. For instance I was in a bar, and the group of Danish guys sitting next to me bought me drinks and told each other rude jokes and were generally boisterous, which I thought was good fun. Honestly, it was sort of refreshing to be flirted with instead of ignored. Swedes are trained from birth that the sexes are equal, and this causes the men to be really worried about seeming condescending or lascivious if they should so much as look at you. The effect—which I've discussed at length with my Swedish girlfriends—is that no matter how beautiful a woman is, she feels sort of invisible in Sweden. Hello, fellas—it's okay to show appreciation of the opposite sex! Women do it all the time. Just make eye contact and smile. Maybe do something crazy and say hello. No one could be offended by that.

I wish I had some photos of Copenhagen to share, but my iPhone, which doubles as my camera, mysteriously crapped out and refused to work in Denmark (but was fine again as soon as I landed in Stockholm). I would have liked to show you the insane number of bicycles on the streets in Copenhagen, as well as the modern architecture and the adorable pastel buildings lining the canals in the old part of the city. The bike thing is really interesting, actually, because there's a 200% sales tax on all new cars in Denmark. How's that for a way to cut greenhouse emissions? So, if people have cars, they mostly have cheap, small ones. Or they just forego the car altogether and use bikes and the excellent public transportation system. Before going to Copenhagen, I saw more bikes on the streets in Stockholm than I'd ever seen before. But in Copenhagen, you're more likely to have a bicycle accident than a car accident. There's so much bike traffic that there are bike traffic jams. For instance, on Friday night after work, I saw cyclists lined up ten-deep waiting for a light to change.

Oh, and did I mention the neighborhood of Copenhagen where it's legal (well, sort of—read on) to smoke weed? I didn't have a chance to go there, but there's a place called Christiania, where a bunch of hippies squatted in a former military post and took it over in the 1970s, declaring themselves a "freetown" with independent laws and a whole lot of hippie art murals (like the one pictured above). The Danish government considered it a social experiment, and they allowed them to set their own rules, which allowed the trade and consumption of "natural" drugs like cannibis and mushrooms, but forbade hard drugs. In 2004, the government decided the drugs were causing problems and made an effort to clean things up. So, Christiania is currently the subject of ongoing negotiations. I'm not sure what the exact legal status is, but apparently it's a colorful and interesting place to visit, and there are no criminal charges for consuming pot there, according to a few of my American friends who urged me to check it out in case it gets shut down sometime soon.