Taking a Bunch of Lawyers to Christiania...and a Dinner Cruise

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Friday morning dawned EARLY. Despite being back in my room at a very reasonable time, I have trouble settling my brain when I’m out with a group of people until late at night. So I puttered around for a while, uploaded the photos I had taken of the group and posted them to various places, and played a computer game. I was well and truly exhausted, and finally fell asleep, but it felt like my alarm went off far too early the next morning.

We had a very productive morning session, with my favorite part being the “speed-dating.” Since we have a networking group, we like to encourage different ways for them to get to know each other. So we set up the room like a speed dating session, and had the delegates sit in pairs to learn more about each other. It was a smashing success, with the level of chatter being so high in the room, it was almost impossible to hear anything! I think it was a great way to start out the business part of the conference.
After a very short break (we always have very short breaks!), we were off to lunch as a group. We took a very short coach ride down to Kanalen, a restaurant recommended by our hosts that sits right on the canal. Unfortunately they hadn’t alerted us that we’d be sitting in a totally different building - the annex – but the décor was still very nice.

The service at lunch was excellent, and they were extremely helpful to me in sorting out the dietary requirements within the group (including my own “no fish/seafood” pickiness). And the food was amazing.

The rest of the group started out with small shrimps, while I had a salad. Our second course was effectively corned beef, but with a much better cut of meat, and it was just wonderful. We had a very skeptical delegate at our table initially, but he ate everything on his plate, so I'm guessing he enjoyed it! This was paired with vegetables, and new potatoes again, which were equally as delicious as the ones from the night before. Everyone loved the food.

For dessert, we had late summer berries with cream – it was a light and delicious dessert that was just perfect for our group. We also managed to make it a very fast lunch, and we were out of there and walking along to our next destination after about an hour. There wasn’t even much complaining that we didn’t offer any after lunch coffee.

The afternoon’s activity was a walking tour that would take us first to Christiania. Our hosts had recommended a visit there, and without looking it up first, I went right to the events planners with the suggestion. That’s when I first learned what Christiania is all about – it’s a former barracks that hippies took over forty years ago, and basically just started squatting in. They never left, despite government attempts to kick them out, and they recently bought the land. They have their own set of laws (more on that later), and it’s what they call a “free town.”

And free it is. Our events planner mentioned to us during our meeting that we shouldn’t let our delegates buy any marijuana. Or if they did, at least not admit that we were a client of their company! Fortunately, this wasn’t an issue!

We walked along the cobbled sidewalks of Copenhagen to Christiania, where the whole landscape seemed to change. People were dressed super casually, often in dirty clothes, and everything seemed to be covered in graffiti. We were led up the dark stairs of a building, and into a common room with benches and maps of the town. The group sat down, and Peter, our guide, gave a short presentation.

We had to get guides from within Christiania, since they don’t like you to have outside guides. They’re very particular.

Here, we learned the history of Christiania, and that our guide had been living there for 40 years – he’d moved in six months after the first group of squatters did. Christiania was to celebrate its birthday the coming Monday, and the main concern was that the police would raid it and take all their pot.

We also learned the rules of Christiania – no guns, no violence, no hard drugs, no biker gang insignias, no cars, no bulletproof clothing, and no stolen goods. We learned that some of these rules had come into effect because of troubles they’d had in town – early on, with drug dealers dealing hard drugs that really increased the violence, so they were chucked out. Next with a biker gang that was also committing a great deal of violence and making the people in Christiania very uncomfortable.
He painted a fairly peaceful picture of the community, but we later learned from our host that there are still many problems there. And I believed it – if it was truly a free, peace loving society, they wouldn’t all have locks on their doors.

After our presentation, we took a long walk around the town – the whole thing is 2km long, and sits on both sides of a river. There are houses and schools and restaurants and shops, and an entire street dedicated to selling and smoking pot. There are no photos allowed along that street because although it’s legal in Christiania, not everyone who comes there to buy it lives there, and they don’t necessarily want people taking photos of them doing something that is illegal just outside the gates.

We saw a metalworking shop, where women and men are creating crafts to sell; we saw where they can purchase anything they might need to repair something at home, a couple of the restaurants, and many houses. My dad asked how easy it was to move in there, and Peter said that it wasn’t easy at all – there was no more housing currently (just under 1000 people live there, mostly adults), so people would have to wait for someone to die, and then they would convene a general counsel. People would show up, often 20 at a time for one spot, to try to get approved to move in, and they approve one of them.

We also learned that although there is no one “in charge” at Christiania, so to speak, they do have a bureaucracy, with 14 areas that are managed locally and monthly meetings of the people on the committees of those areas to discuss any issues.
It was really a fascinating place, but I think we were all glad to be back out in the regular streets of Copenhagen afterwards!

After Christiania, we walked back a ways so that we could get on a canal boat to return to the hotel. We had to pick the boat up at a different location than we initially thought, because the water was so high, it was difficult to go underneath any bridges.
It was a gorgeous sunny day (though it had rained for a few moments as we were leaving lunch), so all of us sat outside to soak up the sun. Those of us at the very back of the boat (me), even got a bit wet when sprayed by some water coming up from behind!

They gave us a bit of information as we puttered around, but not a constant stream of dialogue, which was good. We had the chance to see the new opera house from up close, sailed right by the huge Danish warship (it blocked out the sun) and finally made landfall right next to the new Playhouse, which was next door to the hotel.

We had arranged a 30 minute tour there, but everyone was tired, so we nixed the tour and instead returned to the hotel. We had learned earlier in the day from one of our hosts, that it was tradition to meet in Nyhavn at 5pm on Friday for a beer. So some of our group planned to do that, while I planned to eat a Mars bar and put my feet up. I even fell asleep for a little while!

But I was very much looking forward to that evening’s dinner – we would be having a dinner cruise on a canal boat, catered by the same restaurant where we had had lunch. Normally, we wouldn’t repeat something like that, but since the menus were different, and the food had been excellent, I wasn’t worried.

Everyone teases me because I check our group off on a list I carry with me, so that I know who is there and not there when we’re heading off to an event. I sent the majority off with my dad to start boarding the boat, and managed to find a few stragglers before we headed off ourselves.

Unfortunately, the boat had had to move away because a smaller craft was coming in to pick up a gentleman who didn’t look as though he should be walking alone, let alone trying to board a boat. It was a tense few minutes for everyone as we waited to see whether he’d fall into the water or not (he didn’t). They didn’t seem inclined to move their boat, so we ended up having to do a little leap into the boat from another area, and finally we were underway.

Or were we?

We’d been scheduled to depart at 7:30. Because of the delay of the other boat, we’d actually departed at 7:40 (I recommended the delegates gather in the lobby at 7:15). But one delegate was missing. Since many of them will often skip events without letting me know, we don’t wait around for long – it’s unfair to those who do get there on time to keep them waiting.

But at 7:42, this delegate started calling another delegate on the boat and asked us to come back. I told him that we couldn’t, that we were already underway, but we did manage to stop along the way to pick him up.

We were squeezed into these small booths closely together as we sailed off into the evening. The food was delicious, and there was a lot of laughter, and even some singing, as the night wore on. Initially, we just circled around a bit, since the water in the canals was still too high. But they did eventually manage to thread the needle and squeeze us under a few bridges so that we could experience the canals at night too.

Although some people said they would have preferred to do the cruise for lunch, to get a better view, I love a night cruise – there’s just something about seeing the city all lit up at night, and I think Copenhagen at night gave us a really unique view of the architecture. We saw buildings with huge atriums in the center, and built in very geometric and modern designs. We were able to see into people’s living rooms to get a sense of how they live. We even passed by a stationary boat restaurant, where many of the diners waved to us, and we even raised our glasses in a toast to each other.

It really was a lovely evening. But soon, I was feeling exhausted again, and we had another early morning, so I snuck back to my room when we docked – of course, I was again too jazzed to sleep, so I puttered around a bit before finally drifting off!

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