{"id":29042,"date":"2018-09-27T08:06:44","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T12:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/?p=29042"},"modified":"2018-09-27T08:06:44","modified_gmt":"2018-09-27T12:06:44","slug":"september-27-2018-the-pineapple-express-tour-to-christiania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=29042","title":{"rendered":"September 27, 2018 – The Pineapple Express Tour To Christiania"},"content":{"rendered":"

September 27, 2018 \u2013 The Royal Tour of Copenhagen, Or Maybe Christiania Tour, From Two Days Ago<\/em><\/p>\n

I just got off the bus in Odense, a place I\u2019d describe as a city suburb.\u00a0 The FlixBus let us off in a commuter parking lot and I wandered past various fast food chains and an Ikea before settling on a mall.\u00a0 I can\u2019t check in for a few hours to my AirBNB so I figured I\u2019d avail myself of free WiFi and a food court.\u00a0 This place is under construction and while there\u2019s WiFi, the food options are bafflingly spread out and I haven\u2019t seen anything in my walkabout that struck my fancy.\u00a0 So I\u2019m slurping down a Coke Zero and sitting, reconstructing my notes on the Royal Tour of Copenhagen\u2026 which may actually be called The Christianshavn Tour.<\/p>\n

Luis was out guide, an ex-pat from Peru who\u2019s been in Denmark for close to five years.\u00a0 While he was informative and funny, he\u2019s less of a tour guide and more of a\u2026 game show host?\u00a0 Entertaining to be sure.\u00a0 But also… I was never sure if he was laughing with us or at us.<\/p>\n

In any case, the majority of this tour included works, efforts, and provisions undertaken by that most famous of Danish King, Christian IV (who reigned from 1588 \u2013 1648).\u00a0 We\u2019ve heard a lot about him in the last few tours and there\u2019s more to come here.\u00a0 Though known as \u201cThe Builder\u201d he wasn\u2019t above wreaking havoc either \u2013 he bankrupted the country a few times warring with the Swedish.\u00a0 Lousy, stinkin\u2019 Swedish.<\/p>\n

We walked toward the funky neighborhood of Christianshavn, home to the Christiania \u201cgreen light district\u201d of open-air marijuana and a purported \u201cindependent\u201d nation within Denmark.\u00a0 We\u2019ll get to more on that before we\u2019re through, albeit without any photos because they don\u2019t allow it.<\/p>\n

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In any case, our first stop along the way was past a statue for Frederick VII who reigned from 1848 to 1863.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t do a lot as a king, trying very hard to emulate Christian IV and not really succeeding.\u00a0 His greatest claim to fame is that he lost the monarchy.\u00a0 It was under his tenure that the people rose up and were able to get democracy and while apparently he originally was on the fence, when the masses started marching on his palace, he quickly became very pro-democracy.\u00a0 As a result, he gets his statue outside Parliament.<\/p>\n

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***<\/p>\n

The Church of the Holy (Holmes Kirken in Danish\u2026 and we already learned Kirken is church, so Holmes, well, smell ya later).\u00a0 The greatest named warrior in Danish history is buried here \u2013 Luis would tell us his tale later \u2013 but his name is Peter Tordenskjold, or literally \u201cPeter Thundershield.\u201d\u00a0 Oh, and Queen Margaret was married here.\u00a0 But who cares when there\u2019s a guy named PETER THUNDERSHIELD to look forward to hearing about.<\/p>\n

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So here\u2019s the deal with PT \u2013 he came from Norway in 1690\u2026 but don\u2019t hold that against him.\u00a0 He was a bit of a firebug and hellraiser and his parents thought Denmark would do him some good.\u00a0 His daredevil personality made him an ideal warrior in that he was always the first to volunteer for any assignment that was a suicide mission\u2026 the more \u201cthey were expendable\u201d the better for Peter Thundershield.\u00a0 But he kept winning the day and coming back alive.\u00a0 He rose through the ranks faster than anybody in Danish history.\u00a0 When he was 26, he was dispatched as a spy.\u00a0 There was an armada massing on the Danish seas readying to attack.\u00a0 The king knew a frontal assault would only leave to failure, so he dispatched Peter on an impossible mission \u2013 as a solo agent, he could infiltrate and take out the whole fleet.\u00a0 Peter\u2019s plan?\u00a0 He always loved fire\u2026 so he single-handedly burned the entire enemy fleet (single handedly, I ask?\u00a0 There are only two people I can think who might have done such a thing single handedly \u2013 Douglas Fairbanks in \u201cThe Black Pirate\u201d and Gil Gerard as Buck Rogers in the eponymous pilot movie).\u00a0 Anyway, Peter THUNDERSHIELD is made a noble lord at 26, the youngest naval officer ever.<\/p>\n

Sadly, he was a victim on his own success in that now he was famous and so his spying days were done.\u00a0 Peace had broken out so there wasn\u2019t a lot of fighting to be done.\u00a0 And as a lord he wasn\u2019t allowed to duel\u2026 although there was a minor loophole in that for honor\u2019s sake he couldn\u2019t allow an insult to stand.\u00a0 So Peter became very, very annoying.\u00a0 He\u2019d play cards and get bored and randomly accuse someone of cheating just so they\u2019d challenge him to a duel.\u00a0 And he was so reknowned as THUNDERSHIELD that often times the accuser wouldn\u2019t even show up to the duel., confident they\u2019d lose anyway, so Peter would win by forfeit and gain ever more glory (how this satisfies his bloodlust\/deathwish, I\u2019m not entirely clear on but who can know the workings of a Thundershield\u2019s heart?).\u00a0 He got cocky and didn\u2019t even bother brining weapons to the duel assuming he didn\u2019t need them\u2026 until one day he did.\u00a0 In 1720, at the ripe old age of 30, Peter annoyed the wrong guy.\u00a0 A Colonel who shows up at the appointed hour has his sword and Peter has\u2026 he pats his clothes\u2026 a ceremonial dagger.\u00a0 Rather than forfeit, Peter says he\u2019ll fight the guy with his dagger \u2013 only to be run through almost immediately by the Colonel\u2019s blade.\u00a0 Peter Thundershield dies a fool, hosited by his out petard\u2026 or should I say PETER-tard!<\/p>\n

The story doesn\u2019t end there though.\u00a0 Because the punishment for a noble killed in duel was to be thrown into a pauper\u2019s grave, the government covered all this up.\u00a0 They told everyone he was off on a spy mission.\u00a0 It was only 50 years later that the crown revealed he had been buried privately by friends and family in a small service at the Church of the Holy.\u00a0 So one last time Peter Thundershield cheats life in death.<\/p>\n

THUNDERSHIELD, HO!<\/p>\n

Oh, and Luis claims because of his penchant for burning and his success taking out that enemy armada singlehandedly, PT\u2019s image is on a lot of Danish matchbooks and thus is still setting things on fire!\u00a0 I will say Luis said I could walk into any souvenir shop and find one of these matchbooks.\u00a0 I walked into 7.\u00a0 None of them had them.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In 1610, Christian IV built the Copenhagen stock exchange.\u00a0 He wanted the spire at the top to be visible to everyone in Copenhagen (which it was at that time, and still is to everyone in Old Copenhagen).\u00a0 He told the architect his vision was one of three crocodiles in a death spiral roll.\u00a0 Why he wanted that I never found out from Luis, but the point is the architect had never seen a crocodile so gave it his best shot.\u00a0 The people thought it looked like a dragon, a sort of adopted mascot for the town that burns so frequently.\u00a0 I think it looks like a unicorn or narwhal.<\/p>\n

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***<\/p>\n

In the 1950s there was a bohemian arts boom in this part of town but with success comes money and with money there comes a stylistic conflict and eventually so goes affordable housing and the stuff that made the place more unique can get rounded off and homogenized.\u00a0 As it stands therefore, there\u2019s a mishmash of cool and funky style with monolithic incongruous buildings\u2026 but that\u2019s something I\u2019ve seen a lot of in cities all over the world.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to preserve the past, though necessary when we can.\u00a0 But it\u2019s also VERY expensive to preserve the past \u2013 the stock exchange building in fact is available for \u201clease\u201d but you can only restore it, not change anything on the outside or inside \u2013 remember, this place was built in 1610.\u00a0 It could use maybe a few modern touches.\u00a0 But it\u2019s been on the market for a long time as no one wants to deal with the planning permission hassles.<\/p>\n

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***<\/p>\n

The Black Diamond, where I would spend some time the other day tapping out a blog post or two, was built to secure the Danish Library. In the older building, there was a copy of every book ever written and published in Danish\u2026 that is until 1978-1986 the director smuggled out and stole close to 1600 first editions.\u00a0 He sold 100 of them before people realized\u2026 and while authorities were able to recover the unsold lots, those 100 books are still missing.<\/p>\n

It was decided therefore to build something more secure as well.\u00a0 Hence the Black Diamond.\u00a0 It sits on the waterfront and somebody decided the basement was the best place to store the priceless archives\u2026 except the basement was under water and was built out of granite, one of the more porous rocks they could\u2019ve chosen and the library sprung a leak.\u00a0 They\u2019ve now spent a small fortune re-sealing the basement to preserve and protect their literary heritage.\u00a0 Luis asked why they didn\u2019t just move the collection to the top floor.<\/p>\n

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***<\/p>\n

Quick note on this Church we wandered by.\u00a0 It\u2019s the first Danish church to hold services in a different language.\u00a0 It was built in the 1750s by Frederick V because German residents wanted a local option for their church.\u00a0 The king agreed but on one strict condition \u2013 the church would only be for Lutheran services.\u00a0 The puzzled Germans readily agreed because, well, they WERE Lutheran and this is kinda what they wanted anyway\u2026<\/p>\n

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***<\/p>\n

The Church of Our Savior was built in 1619 with a unique counter-clockwise spiral tower.\u00a0 The legend says the architect did it so when swordfighting and defending the place, the Danish could duel while holding the railing and thus gain an advantage.\u00a0 But once completed he realized there wasn\u2019t room to swing the sword then from those angles and in disgrace the architect threw himself from the top of the spire and died.<\/p>\n

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Total BS.\u00a0 Most cities have a story about a wacky architectural element and how once it happened the architect throws himself off the structure in disgrace.\u00a0 Budapest has one about lions on a bridge that I heard last year.\u00a0 But to this day, Luis says, EVERY Copenhagen will tell you the \u201ctrue\u201d story about how this architect killed himself on that spire.\u00a0 It\u2019s the most popular urban legend\u2026 and the most oft believed.<\/p>\n

The reality is the architect died of old age, quite content that his counterclockwise spiral was done that way because that\u2019s how you\u2019re supposed to climb the stairway to heaven.<\/p>\n

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***<\/p>\n

So the tour ended at the gates of Christiania.\u00a0 This enclave came into being in 1971 when a group of hippies found an abandoned WWII military base that still had all kinds of buildings and services \u2013 including running water and electricity.\u00a0 So they moved in as a social experiment.\u00a0 And the government signed off on it mainly because they were 100% positive the thing would collapse spectacularly and they could prove once and for all that the hippie revolution was a roadmap to failure. \u00a0They were dead wrong as the next day the place was going to celebrate its 47th<\/sup> anniversary.\u00a0 There\u2019s even signs up at the entrance reminiscent of Checkpoint Charlie \u2013 \u201cYou are now entering Christiania\u201d on the way in, and \u201cYou are now entering the EU\u201d on the way out.<\/p>\n

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The Green Light District inside has stalls and kiosks and full blown restaurants offering marijuana and hemp in a variety of products and strains.\u00a0 There are three rules for Christiania, Fight Club style.<\/p>\n