Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Christiania

Just visited Christiania in Copenhagen one weekend ago. Basically Christiania is also known as Freetown Christiania and it is a partially self-governing neighbourhood of about 1100 residents. It has established semi-legal status as an independent community and has been a source of controversey since its creation in a squatted military area in 1971.

We can see the drug addicts openly selling and consuming drugs (hash and cannabis) and here, open drug trade is tolerated by authorities. However, we were not allowed to take pictures of the main street where they are dealing with drugs openly. However, it was an eye-opener as the streets really looked like those run-down areas in the movies, with metal bins with fires, masked men who are selling drugs, addicts with bloodshot eyes and yellow skin walking around, etc .. something that we can never see in Singapore.

However, we could take pictures before and after the main drug peddling street. The buildings are all decorated with graffiti and some of the graffiti was really very artistic and beautiful.







And below is something interesting that we found at the entrance/exit of Christiania.


Entrance to Christiania


Exit from Christiania

Yup that's all for now. I will be going to Kiruna, which is in Sweden from Wednesday to Sunday to see the Northern Lights and Ice Hotel and I am skipping school from Wednesday to Friday for this trip =). Will then stopover in Stockholm for one and a half days to explore the place before heading back to DTU. I am already looking forward to this trip and I can't wait for Tuesday to end!

More updates when I come back =)

1 comment:

melon said...

Haha, I like the exit sign!

Oh the graffiti looks cool, so unlike the Spore gahmen-commissioned one. In fact I think they delibrately made those Spore ones real ugly to make our dear citizens condemn graffiti.