Copenhagen & Christiania / Blog

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irma clausen zu The Shift:

Jørgen Hedegaard zu Never Ask for Help: Hi It's true, and even danes who move from one part of the contry to another have the problem ! Danes live and stay in one place, there "hometown", only exception is Copenhagen (people come to this town, if they have money :-( ). I have lived in different places in Denmark (and Germany), and I feel like a foreigner here myself. All Best Jørgen Hedegaard

Jørgen Hedegaard zu Never Ask for Help: The Url :

Jørgen Hedegaard zu Never Ask for Help: The Url again ... . www.FlatTV.dk

Gerd Gerhard Loeffler zu Winter Depression / Part II: If you think you look worse you probably really do? ;) That's time and gravity!

Gerd Gerhard Loeffler zu Coffee Flowers 2008: @gowing down of europe: If we consider the Hippie-idea as the strongest in the western world I do not woder why europe is going down!

Gerd Gerhard Loeffler zu Coffee Flowers 2008: @downfall of europe (again): Maybe the fact that capitalism bought the hippie-idea was the biggest mistake the hippies could ever make. They sold out their ideals, didn't they? @production: I'm not sure if production is the actual key to a society. In my opinion the eastern countries produced quite well. The stuff just worked. Try that with China's stuff...

Gerd Gerhard Loeffler zu Coffee Flowers 2008: @ ALL* the rest of what you said: Gimme some stickers!

Gerd Gerhard Loeffler zu Humour: Humor in Austria? What did u expect???

Glyptothek

Wanted to have a coffee in the Glyptothek, had heard a lot about it. So I went through the book store into the gorgeous cafe, ordered instead and inspired a white wine instead of coffee and opened my laptop to type some stuff. After 5 minutes this guard came and said I am not allowed to sit here but have to pay entrance fee 50,- kronen. Mmhh. I apologized and said I would pay later and she disappeard. But I could see she watched me through the palm trees and came back 5 minutes later saying I have to pay now and that she had been very friendly (guess I don’t want to see her unfriendly). So I payed my 50 kronen and ended up staying a few hours in this building that turned out to be one of the finest collections of art I have ever seen.

Rodin – are his figures coming out of ‚matter’ or dissolving back into ‚matter’? Corot – that light! Van Gogh’s obsessiveness. The Roman and Egyptian sculptures blew me away. I know it but .. it amazes me again and again that they could depict realistic figure 1000s years ago and the following cultures forgot it. Thinking about collective forgetting, about cultures rising, cultures falling.. A few hours later in te sauna one guy mentioned he had heard that some aboriginal Australian tribes on purpose decided to not reproduce any more.

18.01.2008, 18:14, Comment here hier kommentieren

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Talking Stick, Listening Stick

S. sent an email that he wanted to discuss with me some of my opinions. Thought S. was a girls name and arranged to meet in the sauna expecting a girls night out. There I found out that it was a man. Guess from now on I will ‚verify’ the gender because meeting in the sauna with men I don’t know is maybe not exactly my stye. I was almost a bit embarassed. But we ended up having a nice evening. He told me a lot about alternative culture and the expanding culture of Ting meetings. More >>

18.01.2008, 09:57, Comment here hier kommentieren

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Spiral

Spoke with N. about the riots last spring in Copenhagen. There were lot of fires. Some a few storys high. Even books from a school got burned, in Christianshavn, just in front of Christiania. Come on! Hard to imagine. S. told me that when there was that Ungdomshuset crisis many people, who before and for a long time had ‚kept quiet’ now thought: Enough is enough. And they went on the streets. N. said that also a lot of people joined in the riots to get rid of their frustrations. The riots were a valve (german: ‚ventil’) for something that had been cooking up... He was part of an anti-violence-group that tried to convince people that violence is not the propper reaction and will only cause more violence.

When I asked who those frustrated people were N. said a lot of 2nd generation foreigners who do not feel accepted in this country. Someone had told me earlier that if I would have a kid now and here in Denmark chances were hight that it would not be accepted by the Danish society. I was shocked to hear that.

Ok. But when is this spiral gonna end? If the Danes do not learn to integrate foreign ideas, people, creativity, energy etc. the spiral will not end. So again these extremes: white-black, right-left, foreign-local. Come on, get a bit softer Denmark.

Talking about this another person said he does not see it so negative, instead he thinks that the riots kind of shook a lot of people up and made the community around Ungdomshuset much stronger. That’s also an aspect that should be kept in mind.

image: Christians Church in Christinshavn, Copenhagen

17.01.2008, 17:59, Comment here hier kommentieren

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Leave Denmark on your Birthday

N. told me that he will celebrate his birthday outside the country, this year maybe in Cologne. That it is a custom to celebrate his birthday not in Denmark. It turns out that it has become a custom since he found out that Pia Kjærsgaard, the leader of the Dansk Folkeparti has her birthday on the same day. He simply cannot stand it.

16.01.2008, 17:55, Comment here hier kommentieren

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Never Ask for Help

Went to an opening at the Factory of Art and Design and finally met M. again with who I tried to get in touch since November. He brought along M., this young Russianjewish politologist and artist who is an intense and beautiful person. She just came out of a desastrous living situation. When she came home from Switzerland in December it had been broken into her appartment and her belongings utterly destroyed. So I said she could live at my flat for at least until after her exams. Don’t know why but I seem to always get along great with Russianjewish people, love their kind of sensitive musical-exuberant sarcasm. Maybe... it has to do with that I play the violin and they say the violin expresses the soul of the Ashkenazy Jews best?

Meanwhile we make dinner parties and spent time showing each other our favourite music. Turns out – surprise - that M. is a big Chopin and Rachmaninoff connaisseuse. She laughed at me when I danced baroque style to my favourite Rameau piece. After one dinner party I. suggested we should talk in our mother tongue for 5 minutes. So we talked: Flamish, Russian, Rumanian, Hebrew, German. It was quite beautiful.

I asked M. how she survives in Denmark with her temper and she said she is going insane. More >>

14.01.2008, 17:34, 3 Comments hier kommentieren

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The Thing or the End of Winter Depression

God must have heard my screams or read my blog entrys about depression because since a week my suffering came to an end: I discovered the thing.

First I have to make a little detour: Last summer I took care of a friends appartment in Vienna. There was an abandoned tennis court in the back of the house and I was the only person who had the key to it. It was striking: you entered the house from a very busy street, went straight through several hallways of houses and courtyards and behind the last house (where I was living at the time) there were very old stairs and when you took them up you were suddenly on a plateau, with wild blossoming flowers growing through the original old red tennis court ground. I invited people there at night, made picknicks and sat there sometimes with a glas of wine and looked into the stars before I went to bed. I remember one night or early morning I came there with 2 friends after a party and we slept there on blankets all bundled up. I think it was so amazing because More >>

08.01.2008, 17:45, Comment here hier kommentieren

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The Shift

My biggest question right now is: How is it possible that a liberal country like Denmark can within just one generation shift to appearing (being?) so closed? The other day M. had the theory that after being very spoiled with many social benefits in the 70s and 80s Denmark now has to work through a phase of not getting as much as they want.. The system tries to find and close ‚the last holes’. Is it possible that it is in a kind of ‚spoiled child-phase’ now? T. mentioned that Demark always had been the role model country concerning directions in Europe. Extreme left and social 20 years ago, with Christiania as a kind of playground. And now that Europe is shifting to the right these extremes show here first again, and how they show. But what happens then to Christiania?

02.01.2008, 11:34, One Comment hier kommentieren

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Compliments

Beautiful L. said: Your head will fall off before you get a compliment of a Danish man. I don’t think it is that bad but I did realize that almost every time I made a compliment to a Danish man I think it confused or embarassed them. Guess it is my social conditioning to enjoy communicating with compliments, that’s also a more Southern style. Seems like here compliments are too much? One woman told me men think a woman is cheap when she makes compliments - ?! Allright, guess that’s it now with compliments guys, too bad. Think think think... but don’t compliments make life more rich.. and don’t people get more beautiful instentaneously the moment they receive a compliment?

02.01.2008, 10:30, Comment here hier kommentieren

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WoMen

I have observed that women here appear very strong and self assured in a somewhow natural way and I like that. Where I come from it is more the case that women have to hide or disguise their strength so that men do not feel intimidated. Feeling a loss of power towards the women might make them feel less strong...macho.... arrgh. So my question here is: what effects does on the long run feminism have on the relation of the sexes here? Do men actually feel a loss of power towards the feminine? And if so in what sense/how/why etc.? Someone told me that a quite common pattern in Danish couples is: The woman is kind of in control but the same time it gets on her nerves that the man is not as strong anymore but she cannot get out of that macha-role. C’est vrai? Well, I sometimes envy that women here get treated more equal than what I am used to ... actually a bit more the guy-club-culture... Talking about all this someone mentioned the other day that Denmark is apparently the country with the most impotence problems among men – rumour or thuth?

02.01.2008, 10:30, Comment here hier kommentieren

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Danish Beauty

Surprised myself but meanwhile I have been here long enough to say: I actually think that Danish people often are stunningly beautiful. Men tell me that about Danish women and I really would say this about men. For example: sometimes when I sit and tipp my way along at Cafe Moonfishers this guy sits at another table and I think this is ridiculously unreal, what moovie did he jump out of? He is way more goodlooking than Daniel Day-Lewis! For men: Kind of as if Julia Roberts suddenly stood in front of you.
Sharing my observations with T. and M. (non-Danes) they completely agree and say that still today friends in Latin America talk about the legendary beauty of Danes that had visited them many years ago. T. says in his eyes Copenhagen is the world capital of beautiful people. Hey, that’s quite something!
C. who is originally from Copenhagen and lives in Vienna since a few years aggrees on my observation. He says that from a western point of view Danes are beautiful/perfect and when he first mooved to Vienna a lot of people seemed quite ugly to him. But now he prefers the Viennese looks because he thinks it is more interesting and not so homogenuous. Mmhh.
I do not know what kind of beauty the Danish beauty is. I see a lot of freshness and strength. Sometimes a bit raw. Sometimes maybe facets of British elegance. Maybe this in combination with the natural freshness is the secret?

02.01.2008, 10:12, Comment here hier kommentieren

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