Denmark
“The Copenhagen Chameleon”
I wasn’t surprised to like Copenhagen. Its long history, beautiful architecture, buzzing streetlife and hospitable, elegant citizens make for an interesting and all-round entertaining city break. What I was surprised to discover was the way that the city, within such a concentrated space, also has an ability to bring out diverse and sometimes entirely contradictory characteristics of its visitors — to create, as it were, a subtle breed of Copenhagen Chameleon.
Or at least that is how I felt. From serious history buff (trying intently to absorb all I was reading in the National Museum) to affluent young Dane (enjoying a relaxed dinner in a cool downtown restaurant), from middle-aged tourist (following around an overly-zealous guide with a luminous green umbrella) to Christmas-time shopaholic (recovering from a stint on the world’s longest pedestrian shopping street with a glass of glüwein clasped firmly between frosty palms), I lurched between characters in order to ensure I did the city in the brief time I had there.
Nowhere was this more the case than in two of the city’s main tourist attractions: the bohemian freetown of Christiania and Disney-like wonderland of Tivoli Gardens. Within the space of a few hours, I yo-yoed between embracing my (admittedly fairly faint) inner hippy and trying to contain a seven-year old version of Alice, invoked by the fairylights and playground rides of Tivoli.
Christiania is like nowhere I’ve been before. A semi-autonomous area of an otherwise conservative and ordered Copenhagen, it was founded to offer an escape from the binds of a capitalist Europe. Creativity and freedom lie at its heart: a community of artisans, anything goes so long as it does not contravene certain key rules and an ethos of collective responsibility.
Visiting in the dark, however, almost reminded me of a scene from a New York thriller — an undercurrent of chilly anticipation creeping beneath a veneer of relaxed normality. Through the darkness I could just make out the shadowy figures which lurked before the former barrack brick walls and hung around fires burning in steel drums. Half faces peered through tiny hatches in wooden drug stores draped with military cam net. The smell of cannabis hung in the air, floating from between fingers and lingering in the red glow of patio heaters. My friend and I walked closely, sharing intermittent glances that betrayed a heady blend of intrigue and misgiving.
Yet it won me over, Christiania — its uniqueness, perhaps, or simply the idea of the place. I soon found myself shrugging off that edgy feeling and settling into the cool atmosphere of one of the area’s many substance-free establishments. I watched long-haired men play pool and scrutinised the abstract artwork that plastered the simple whitewashed walls. I enjoyed the way our voices rose up and melted into the din of other conversations around us. Time seemed to melt with it too; looking at my watch, I suddenly we realised we had been there for hours, sinking lower and lower into our seats as we put the world to rights. There seemed no better place to do it.
Twenty minutes later and we are standing outside the gates of the Tivoli Gardens. Again uncertain of what to expect, I walk inside and gasp a breath which instantaneously transposes me into a seven year old version of myself. I stop in my tracks — my scarf wrapped high and snug against a grateful neck, mittened hands clasping my coat tight around me, wide and smiling eyes gazing about — and am awestruck at the magical scene into which I have just stepped. The relaxed hippy of Christiania steps aside, takes one sneering look at me and fades away as she walks briskly back out the gate.
It was the closest thing to a Winter Wonderland I’ve ever seen. Fairylights lit every feature — wound their way along handrails, hovered on the tips of sprightly little Christmas trees, illuminated the displays of tasty home-made goods, breathed life into the wings of sculpted swans, dripped from the leaves of weeping willows to merge with their reflections in the lake beneath.
For a couple of hours, I joined the Danes in their wholehearted love of fairgrounds. I explored the many corners of the park, left my stomach some way along one of Europe’s oldest rollercoasters, filled myself with sickly hot chocolate, lost myself in the magic. It could have been awful: cheap and crass. But somehow it wasn’t, and I couldn’t have wanted it in other way, at any other time of year or any other moment of the day. By the time we left, my cheeks ached from the grin that had fixed itself to my face.
The chameleon had found another form to inhabit — shapeshifted again, and in the most marvellous of ways.
