Email #8 - Copenhagen in Denmark

In Copenhagen we are staying at Nyhavn, a touristy waterside suburb with nice apartments and restaurants in converted warehouses. Yesterday and today we experienced the other end of town, the bottom end of society.

Just a short walk from the railway station, we came to a block of Chinese and Thai shops, something like a miniature Chinatown. Then, turning the corner, we came to a couple of men huddling around a lit cigarette lighter flame preparing for a heroin hit in the shelter of the entrance to a store that was closed for Sunday. Further on a few prostitutes paraded in as bare a clothing as they could bare in the wintry weather outside sex shops and rundown stores. This morning we took a walk around Christiana, a so called "freetown" community set up as an alternate society. The community was surprisingly large, about 1000 odd people living in untidy quarters covered with bold graffiti-like decorations. A range of drugs was openly on sale. This is the extreme end of free living I suppose, but it is hard to admire this so called freedom, and not surprising perhaps, they do not allow photographs and depend on tourists and welfare for survival.

It must be the end of the trip for us for we are getting a little tired of the monoculture cuisine wise. Where is the Chao Hor Fun and Yum Cha ? Around somewhere I am sure but one has to look hard for them.

Tomorrow we fly back to Singapore to catch up with more exotic foods and thaw out. It will be good not to have to pull on and peel off as we enter or leave a building.

cheers, Kin Mun
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Waterfront houses
Obligatory photo of "The Little Mermaid"

Waterfront houses.

State Museum for Kunst and leftovers from a party.

Interesting modern pieces among more traditional ones at Kunst.