Democratic Party

I've been told by expat friends and weather.com that Spring has arrived in Copenhagen. I kicked around a few ideas for posts based on this knowledge - sidewalk cafe culture, organic and bio-dynamic farming, and finally settled on a celebration of Danes at their social best. Nothing brings people out of the word work like warmer weather. We're happier, saner, friendlier people when the sun is pumping us full of vitamin D. Last year, I warmly welcomed the false-summer that was April in Denmark. (Summer came and went a little later in June. By August, still wondering when it was going to come for real, I finally realized I'd missed it.)

Islands Brygge, April, 2011

Warm weather brings everyone out. Which led me to the thought that social life in general in Denmark brings everyone out. One of the great mystifying elements of life in Copenhagen was the blurring of age demarcations. The idea that things must be age-appropriate, that family-friendly means a watered-down event realistically targeted at safety-conscious couples with kids age 4-12, that grandparents' and grandchildrens' interests are two circles who shall never join in any Venn diagram known to man.

Here are some of the more  interesting festivals and events that I had the great sociological fortune to be a part of during my stay in Denmark and some of the observations I took away.

1) Distortion: The Open Source Party
Imagine a city that likes to drink. Really likes to drink. But instead of getting all Spring-Break-Girls-Gone-Wild-trashy, it gets all warm and fuzzy and fun. Imagine for four (it's up to five this year) days, that city sponsors a big street party that moves from neighborhood to neighborhood, spanning indoor and outdoor venues, closing down whole blocks and sections of a major metropolitan area. And then cleans up the mess!

From its own website:
"Distortion is a carnival-type event with an anything-goes attitude. Most events are free and open-sourced to over a hundred 'street hosts' - that's over one hundred distinct street parties in 5 days."



If you want to skip the video, or have impressionable American children or coworkers looking over your shoulder, here are some of the highlights:

0:38 The 'old' people
0:57 The 'really old' guy
1:15 The retro roller skates, most likely worn by someone not 'old'
1:19 The tango couple
2:09 Bananas in Pajamas (not kidding)

You'll have to go the website and watch some of the other videos to catch the kids on bikes, riding parents' shoulders, and break-dancing in backpacks. I'm pretty sure there's not a demographic that isn't covered which lends a kind of what-would-happen-if-your-parents-showed-up-at-Spring-Break feel. Apparently the answer in Copenhagen might be hang out and party with you...

2) Kulturhavn (Culture Harbor): The Pirate Party
Spanning three days and three of the city's biggest public harbor areas, Islands Brygge, Sydhavnen, and Refshaleøen, this festival brings together the 'diversity of Copenhagen's clubs and civic organizations' to showcase music, theater, dance, sports and arts. Or, said another way, it allows a participant to walk along the harbor front and through a mash-up of anything you could imagine anyone being into. Ever.

Amazingly, these photographs were all taken on the same day, at the same festival.

A member of the Scottish bagpipe band.

A demonstration of parkour - French street acrobatics.

A flash mob of dancers.

Drowned bicycles recycled as art.

And finally, because, what's a harbor festival without pirates?

3) Copenhagen Cooking: Let Them Eat Cake

A ten-day festival celebrating the cuisine being fawned over by the international foodie scene, the promotional ad could not have been more blunt in trying to get across the idea: New Nordic is sexy.



That's New Nordic food we're talking about here, people. Food. I can assure you, any fixation on that image in the weeks leading up to the event were strictly trying to determine, 'Is that lovage or chervil she is draped in?"

All joking aside, events were held across the city, for all ages, and at varying price points, to allow the general public to peek inside the movement that in some ways has been limited to those with extremely large expense accounts or who just happen to have 'verjus' kicking around in their pantry.

At the signature Nordic Taste event, restaurants from all over Scandinavia set up in the Meatpacking district and small samples of cooking as high art were doled out to the masses.

4) Stella Polaris: Chill to the People

This kicking back while listening to electronic music festival spent two days traveling to other cities before culminating in a giant lawn party outside the Statens Museet for Kunst (National Art Museum) with Moby as the headline act. Did I neglect to mention that all these events were also free? This one is supported through a foundation that solicits donations (as well as corporate sponsorship) but there was no entry fee to get in, just some good-natured jostling for a prime spot on the grass.



The early crowd

The 'target audience,' as described by the festival's own website:

"The crowd is a great mix of discerning electronic feinschmeckers, happy families with playing children, intoxicated after-parties, smooching couples sharing kisses and cool white wine, and the odd surprised group who just happened to walk by and decided to stay."



Balancing out all the excess wth some fruit,
organic of course

A children's art area and un-supervised kids running around with their parents' cell phone numbers written in marker on their arms completed the un-American family-friendly vibe.

So here's to Spring, with its promise of warmer things to come. May we all come out of hibernation and live a little.

Class Notes: Germany

A toddler who rejects sleep, a husband with a double ear infection and a tempermental internet connection are all horrible blogging assistants... I know it's been a while. These are my excuses. I have been meaning to write about so much - the transition into a new season, the adorable shaggy dog-sized ponies we saw at the Vestamager Naturecenter this past weekend, an amazingly beautiful stumbled-upon cemetary in the middle of Østerbro. All these things seem to go out the window when it's 10 o'clock at night and my spawn, I mean son, is still screaming bloody murder at the injustice of being put into his bed. So instead of writing about things that take real mental power, I will take this opportunity to begin a new segment of my blog - Class Notes.

I grew up on Long Island, about an hour and a half east of New York City. It is what's considered "downstate" New York, although we hardly ever refer to ourselves as that. In fact, we often forget there's a whole lot more of New York north of Westchester County. It's all lumped together as "upstate" which might as well be another state as far as we're concerned. We hardly bother to learn much about the rest of the state, don't follow what goes on very closesly or seem to understand the concerns of our fellow New Yorkers. [Author's note: I've since tried to make amends by attending college in Ithaca and marrying a guy from Buffalo.]

A similar sentiment could be applied to my understanding and attentiveness, as an American, to the rest of the world. (To be fair, there's a whole lot of America to slog through before you even attempt to broaden your worldly horizons.) A big chunk of what I know about the rest of the world comes from grade school assignments. The Ghats are mountains in India. Building a scale model of Machu Pichu out of sugar cubes takes a heck of a lot of sugar. The rest comes mainly from current events like the earthquake, tsunami and resulting nuclear crisis in Japan.

But when it comes to the actual cultures, the people, the stuff that makes a Dane a Dane or a Nicaraguan a Nicaraguan, well, they might as well all be "upstaters". So I'm trying to make amends by querying my classmates from my Danish for Foreigners class and sharing with you the amusing, fascinating, and funny anecdotes I've picked up from this goldmine of intercultural exchange.

Germany, you're up first.

Germans love their zoo animals and a number of them have become über-celebrities of sorts. The one I had heard of was Knut, the polar bear who was raised by human keepers after his mother rejected him. What I hadn't heard though was that he recently passed away - whether Knut will be stuffed and put on display in a musem in Berlin remains to be seen. Then there's Heidi, the cross-eyed opossum who has her own website, a Facebook page with a couple hundred thousand fans as well as her own YouTube channel. And perhaps the funniest, but also coolest, German animal star has to be Paul the Octopus, who correctly predicted all of Germany's matches in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, as well as the final match, by selecting food from one of two boxes marked with the flags of the competing teams. Poor Paul has also passed away but you can visit his shrine and cremated remains at Sea Life in Oberhausen.