Climate, Christiania, and Christmas

Random Photo: I bike CPH, even in the winter

My last full weekend in Copenhagen was an amazing one! Of course, every now and then I'd be standing somewhere, and think, wow, the odds that this is the last time I will ever be in this place (or at least for a very long time) are increasing at an alarming rate with every passing day. And that makes me extremely sad. But I've been trying to enjoy my last week here as much as I can.
Friday was my last day of classes. Honestly, I'm not all that sad about no more classes until January. Sitting in class on Friday was so hard with all the climate excitement going on outside. I could hear people marching down the street with drums and chanting and I really wanted to see what the excitement was about, but it was my last class of the semester, so I stayed put. But we did have some good tasting cookies in one of my classes, that kind of looked like dog kibble, but tasted much much better.

Much better than dog kibble

I then spent a good chunk of the rest of Friday wandering around the city looking at all the climate stuff. You may have heard, but Copenhagen is hosting a really major conference on climate change with like every world leader in the world in attendance. This means that there are also all sorts of protests, climate exibits and general coolness (no pun intended) going on. Among these exhibits are a trailer saying "Brad Pitt is saving planet earth in Copenhagen." Brad Pitt has no actual affiliation with this trailer. Instead they are taking random people off the street and filming them imitating Brad Pitt talking about saving the earth. I got some nice photos of a DIS student imitating Brad Pitt. (Check out www.bradpitt.dk for more info about this interesting exhibit.)

Not Brad Pitt

Another favorite exhibit of mine is the ice sculpture of the polar bear that the WWF put out right near my school. It started out as a complete polar bear. But then obviously it slowly started melting away and underneath was a metal polar bear skeleton. This symbolized how global warming is killing the polar bears. It earned creativity points for presentation in my book.

Global warming killing the polar bear

I also happened upon a small but cool demonstration, with people wanting to save the Himalayas. There were tons of Nepalese flags and a large group of mountain climbers. There were also a few Nepalese politicians. It was cool though, cause on stage they had a group of ten or so climbers who had all summitted Mt. Everest (and one who had climbed the tallest mountain on every continent.) So that was neat. Here's a photo from that and a few other random ones from climate exhibitions around the city:

Himalayas Demonstration

That giant plant and that giant ball aren't normally on the streets of Copenhagen

One of many painted globes in Kongens Nytorv

The next day was perhaps even more exciting! Two friends and I decided we wanted to see what the Christiania Christmas market was like. On my way biking down I saw a man biking with no pants on, just underwear and knee socks. That was kind of strange, especially since it was quite cold. Then I met Katherine and Kyle down on Christianshavn where we happened to be when the most massive climate demonstration EVER came through. It was so big! Estimates place somewhere between 60 and 100,000 people at the demonstration! Really, they just kept coming and coming and coming. Most of the people had various climate signs . There were people who were just against global warming, vegans, people telling us to save the polar bears, people telling us to save the panda bears. And then there were people who really were just using it as a platform for their own non-climate issues. This included people wanting out of Iraq, union workers, marijuana smokers, communists, socialists, and more that I probably am forgetting or simply didn't notice. Ultimately the protest resulted in 900 arrests

After watching the climate demonstration for about an hour we headed over to the Christmas market. It was packed, but it was still pretty cool. Inside a giant barn, there were all sorts of vendors selling all sorts of weird things. I was hungry so Kyle and I tried something called risengrød cause it looked like rice pudding and I like rice pudding. And it was really delicious and warm. We weren't really sure what went good on it, but they had bowls with sugar and cherries so we added both and both were really good. Also, as we were leaving Christiania, about ten police vans SPED onto the street, sirens and lights blazing. And piled out of the van and ran off sprinting. We weren't completely sure what that was about, but I read in the paper the next day that a bunch of cars were set on fire outside Christiania and that a policeman had a brick thrown at his face. So maybe we saw something to do with that.

Christiania Christmas Market

Risengrød

After visiting Christiania I walked back to the center and saw some cool stuff. There were christmas carollers in the middle of Strøget, and they were really good. There was also all sorts of litter, leftover from the environmental protest. A little ironic in my opinion. And finally, I ended my walk at the city hall, which is really awesomely decorated for the climate conferences, with a giant globe, stationary bicycles to contribute power to the event (which I of course rode) and all sorts of interesting exhibits.

Giant Globe

A final point of success: I have figured out what I am doing for Christmas presents for my family. But it would be silly of me to post it here, considering my parents make up more than fifty percent of this blog's readership, so that would really defeat the point :)