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 :)

Returning to Prison

I should be writing my 12 page 1.5 spaced paper that is due Friday about how Nestle kills babies.
But instead I am going to write about my second visit to a Danish prison, with the same class that I went with before. Once again, this was one of my favorite Danish experiences of the semester. It's really just so fascinating to see how completely different it was than in the US.

The last prison I went to was shocking because it was an open prison and we have absolutely nothing like that in the US for drug users and robbers. However, this closed prison, Vridsløselille, was almost as surprising in its own way. With the open prison, I did have some idea of what to expect. I had seen photos in my class lectures and had heard from my teacher about how different it was from an American prison. But in regards to the closed prisons, she had always told us that it would be a lot more like what we pictured when we pictured a prison.

Well, at least this prison had gates that lock. But other than that, it still was not very close to what I imagined to see in a closed prison. The prisoners still dressed in normal clothes. They still wandered around within their unlocked wards at will. The knives in the kitchen (although this time attached to the wall), the tanning bed, the soccer fields, the friendly conversations between guards and prisoners that I had seen in the open prison still existed in the closed prison. And these are not prisoners in for minor drug offenses or pickpocketing. The prison we visited had murderers, serious drug offenders, gang members, the worst criminals in Denmark. Prisoners can go to the gym, school, work (well, work's a requirement), and even the prison grocery store! They aren't allowed to leave the grounds obviously, or to go outside their ward past a certain time, and they are locked into their rooms at night, but as far as prisons go, this didn't seem all that uncomfortable. There were even pool tables and ping pong tables on all the wards!

They also place a large emphasis on education in the prison, which seems like a good thing to me. Instead of going to work, prisoners can go to school to receive an education in the prison. They will still be paid as if they were going to work! While I know Americans would have a problem paying prisoners to go to school and not even to work, it probably helps with giving prisoners something to do when they get out of prison other than go right back to crime.

At the end of our visit, we talked to a prisoner for a little while, which was a little disconcerting. He committed a double homicide of two Finnish police men, which is like... a really horrible crime. But he seemed extremely nice and seemed genuinely sorry, which was the disconcerting part. I had to keep reminding myself that he was a serious criminal and that in all likelihood isn't as friendly as he seems. Or maybe he is, who knows?

Also, when we were leaving, I saw a cool sculpture at the train station:

Going to Danish Prison

Well, you may have read about my run-in with the Danish police for not have lights on my bike at night, so it was really only a matter of time before I ended up at a prison. Kidding. Kind of. I did go to a prison, it just wasn't because of any laws I broke, rather it was just for my Criminal Justice in Scandinavia class.
The Scandinavians take a very very different approach to criminal punishment than the Americans and this prison was proof of that. While Americans basically just seem to shove as many people into prison for as long as they can, without really caring about giving them any sort of humane living conditions, the Danes are much more lenient with their prison sentences. A murderer may receive a ten year sentence. In fact, few people receive more than five years. And for most prisoners, the default place to serve out a term is an open prison, meaning there is an open gate, and the prisoners are not in any locked facilities during the day. At night they are locked into rooms, but that is all. The only thing that stops the prisoners from walking out is there willpower. And somehow it seems to work. After all the conditions in the prison are extremely humane. The prison is neat, clean, and comfortable. There is green grass all around. The prisoners have access to TVs, when their children come and visit, there are toys and playgrounds. There is a gym, a kitchen where prisoners cook for themselves, with full access to very large cooking knives. Basically, the guard who showed us around, an unarmed female in an all-men's prison, said that the philosophy is that if it doesn't make them more criminal, there is no reason they should not have access to it. Indeed, perhaps the most mind-blowing thing to me was the tanning bed. Prisoners had access to a tanning bed! It's not free for them to use, they pay for it out of their wages, but still! Wow!
And the thing about all this is that it seems to have the desired effects. The prisoners, as a result of being treated like human beings, act like human beings. They were friendly, polite, even joking with the guards. And the recidivism rate in Denmark is significantly lower than the US, which I think says a lot.
A lot of Americans would have a problem with this, I think. I heard one fellow student say, they're criminals! They shouldn't be treated nicely. But I really do think people will act how you treat them, in a lot of cases, and the results of Danish prisons speak for themselves.
All in all, this was one of the most eye-opening experiences I have had since being in Denmark. It is certainly my favorite field-trip I have ever been on and I had moments of genuine shock (seeing the knives and the tanning bed in the prison, to name a few!)

My run-in with the Danish police

So, I got pulled over today. How, you might be wondering? I don't have a car over here and I certainly haven't been driving. Well, let's just say, the "politi" here will pull you over for biking without a light past dark. In my defense, I used to have a light, but it mysteriously disappeared off my bike a few weeks ago and I just haven't gotten around to replacing it, despite the fact that they cost less than 20 kr at Tiger (the Danish equivalent of the dollar store, everything is $2-$4).

My bike. Do you see a light on it?
That's because there isn't one.

Luckily, as my friend put it, some combination of being blonde, female, and American got me off with only a verbal warning.
But basically it went like this. It was dark and rainy and I was biking home from the center. And I saw these people in shiny vests with a few lightless bikers next to them. And before I knew it, the shiny vest man stepped in front of me, said something in Danish, and gestured for me to stop. So stop I did. That's when I noticed the bold letters "POLITI" on the vest and started rambling something about not speaking Danish. The cop started asking me questions, why am I in Denmark, how long, when did I arrive, am I American? Further, he kept telling me that it is illegal in Denmark to bike at night without proper lights. He seemed to think I was an ignorant American, unaware of the law, and I felt no need to disillusion him with the fact that I knew full well what the law was, and that I had just been too lazy to go to the store that is literally a quarter-mile from DIS to buy a light. Well, for one reason or another, the policeman decided to take sympathy on me and let me off with a verbal warning. I felt very fortunate as I left the policeman (on foot) because it seemed like the four or five other bikers pulled over by other cops had not been so lucky to escape with a warning. And that's a 500 kr ($100) fine. Ouch.
Another point of luck, I was right next to the bus station when I got pulled over, and my bus home was arriving literally as I walked by. This is quite lucky, because I really didn't want to walk the three or so miles home, and I just would have been tempting fate by continuing by lightless ride.

P.S. Sorry mom and dad, if the title scared you.