Christianna
Copenhagen, Denmark
Spring 2013
We visit Christianna, a tourist drug community in
Copenhagen. I heard about this place in
a Rich Stevens video. I had the
impression that it is a hippie community of tolerance with a focus on
sustainability and consensus of governmental decisions. What I found instead is a potheads’ farmers’
market. Pot is the only attraction.
Formally a military base, the place was taken over by vagabonds and vagrants in
the early 1970s. It has grown into a
haven for anyone and everyone who desires 100 varieties of marijuana, hash,
pips, brownies and cookies and assorted drug paraphernalia. The sunshine bakery
offers all sorts of delights, laced with all of your favorite hallucinogens.
As I enter the village, I see signs about a green zone. All photography is forbidden in the green
zone. This is where all of the pot is
sold, in the middle of the town, in broad daylight. Because marijuana is still illegal in
Denmark, great effort is made to minimize any information that could make it to
the local police. But the abundance of
sellers clearly indicates that the police have surrendered in trying to stop
all of this illegal activity.
The village serves as a tourist hot spot, a curiosity into
the glimpse of the drug world. Busloads of white haired tourist roll in, take a
look, eat lunch and then roll out each and every day. Maybe the police don’t
want to mix tourism with drug raids.
But the merchants are always ready at a moment’s notice for
a raid. As one merchant told me, “We
pack everything in a ready-to-go bag.” He demonstrates that his display is
really a cloth bag with long straps that allow him to quickly grab his entire
inventory and run like hell.
We meet a woman who knits hats, lots of hats, in all colors,
all sizes, and all shapes. She is
probably 70 and one of the few older people in this village. She knits all year long but spends 3 months
each winter in India where she volunteers in an orphanage. This orphanage houses children who most
likely are not adoptable. She tears up
as she talks about this work that she has been doing for 15 years. She is not a
rich woman but she talks humbly about the richness of her life.
We don’t stay much longer because after 15 minutes of
looking at different types of marijuana, there isn’t much more to see. So we wander back to the mainstream for a
wonderful tradition launch of smorboard: 3 open face sandwiches. As I am eating
in this pleasant café, I wonder what will become of Christianna in a few years,
as marijuana becomes legalized in more parts of the world. Will it still be so shocking, so naughty, so
interesting? Or will it become nothing
more than a sad community of pathetic old potheads?
