DAY 17 – FRIDAY 21st DECEMBER, 2019.

By Friday I well and truly had cabin fever and was keen to get out and do a little exploring.  Steve was still reluctant to let me go outdoors, but as Maria had woken with a shocking migraine this morning, Steve and I offered to take Theodore out for a walk so that she could have a little extra sleep…

We managed to get a coat on me and zip it up, and as we were taking Theodore out in his pram, Steve finally relented and let me help push the pram with gave me a little more stability.  I was well and truly ready to let go of my sling, but still had 3 more sleeps before I could actually take the sling and bandage off….

Heading out with Theo to go shopping

We still needed to buy a few Christmas presents and some presents for Pakkeleg, so decided to head to Norrebro shopping district.  This district that Pete and Maria live in is home to residents from dozens of nationalities and was once a gloomy and gritty part of Copenhagen. It is being transformed as lots of younger folk buy into apartments here and it is now becoming known as the city’s hipster area.   This is also an area where Pete and Maria do a lot of their everyday shopping.  

It was several blocks from home, but it was a nice walk.  Just before we got there, we came across Superkilen Park (which means “big wedge.”). This was a very different sort of park…

It is a colourful exercise in community building born from a collaboration between residents and some of Europe's most experimental architects.

Superkilen is super-sized: 30,000 square metres (320,000 sq ft) in total of urban open space in Nørrebro wedging through one of the most ethnically diverse and socially challenged neighbourhoods in Denmark.  From a bird’s eye view, it’s a splash of colour and lines that feels integrated into the neighbourhood.  T

he park is divided into three main areas: The Red Square, The Black Market and The Green Park.

While The Red Square designates the modern, urban life with café, music and sports, and with its multi-functional rubber surface can be used for all types of activities… ball games, parades, even skating rinks in winter…

 The Black Market is the classic square with fountain and benches.   Locals meet up around the elegant Moroccan fountain.  

The fountain on the Black Square works incredibly because it's star-shaped. When parents are watching their kids play in the water or sliding down the octopus, the parents are seated across from each other, so they end up talking together rather than just sitting in a circle looking away. 

The tables here are from Bulgaria and are made for backgammon and chess players. The entire striped space is tailored to hanging out with friends and family.

One part of the surface curves up into a big mound. we watched a heap of Japanese tourist taking selfies up on the hill.  Mind you we took our fair share of photos also.  We were also intrigued to find that the palm trees in this park had covers over all their leaves to protect them from the cold… There was a patch of Japanese cherry blossom trees, although at this time of the year they were bare as they had lost all their leaves. 

We were pretty impressed with the way Superkilen incorporates unconventional objects from all around the world into the design. The dentist and moon neon sign came all the way from Doha, Qatar.

Darth Vader, is that you? This black sculpture is actually an octopus shaped slide and playground, very popular with children is from Japan. Benches from Brazil, litter bins from the UK, random signs advertising Chinese beauty salons and Russian hotels… Superkilen succeeds in illustrating the wonderful diversity of this Copenhagen neighbourhood. 

 The Green Park is a zone for nature and fitness, a park for picnics, sports and walking the dog.

 At the top of this zone stands a 14-meter-tall pole with a giant "Donut" and a neon sign.  It hails from a restaurant in Pennsylvania and looks like something conjured in a dream by a salivating Homer Simpson. Viewed from a distance, the doughnut sign and shiny logos from the car dealerships across the road create the perfect tableau for an American highway setting.

Basketball courts

Heading south into the park, you are greeted by a large cast iron bull, a tribute to the famous Spanish Osborne sherry trademark.  Next up is a basketball court that sits in a bowl-shaped concrete structure.  The court is modelled on Mogadishu's Lujino Stadium, a venue once used by the militant Al-Shabaab group to launch assaults on Somalia's presidential palace, and which now serves as the training facility for the country's national basketball teams.

 

 Then there are all the smaller objects… There are trash cans from the British seaside resort of Blackpool, drains from Switzerland, a manhole cover from Israel and seven different types of bike racks from across Europe.  It's a multicultural onslaught.  Some of the objects in Superkilen are originals while others are replicas designed so that they comply with Danish regulations for playground materials and public spaces.   The items were chosen after canvassing local ideas online and at community meetings.   Residents weren't required to pick objects from their place of birth -- some were inspired by treasured vacation spots -- but the idiosyncratic output reflects the diversity of a neighbourhood made up of people from 60 nationalities.

Then there are all the smaller objects… There are trash cans from the British seaside resort of Blackpool, drains from Switzerland, a manhole cover from Israel and seven different types of bike racks from across Europe.  It's a multicultural onslaught.  Some of the objects in Superkilen are originals while others are replicas designed so that they comply with Danish regulations for playground materials and public spaces.   The items were chosen after canvassing local ideas online and at community meetings.   Residents weren't required to pick objects from their place of birth -- some were inspired by treasured vacation spots -- but the idiosyncratic output reflects the diversity of a neighbourhood made up of people from 60 nationalities.

Anyway, we were in no hurry so decided to explore this park and spent a couple of hours there wandering around taking plenty of photos…. When we got home and told Pete where we had gone for our walk, he informed us that it is gangland territory and during the summer months there were a hundred or more shootings in this parkland (mostly these happened at night)…. Pleased we didn’t know that before we went otherwise, we probably would have avoided it like the plague… Still, we enjoyed our wander through this park and although cold, it was nice to be out in the fresh air.  Theodore slept through the whole walk.  He had fallen asleep before we got to the end of their street, and in the end we were gone just over three hours and he slept the whole time…

 We enjoyed wandering around the shops in Nørrebro, and bought a few presents for our Pakkeleg game as well as a couple of Christmas presents for Theodore.  We also bought some socks for the girls, nice fleecy lined Christmas socks, and then wandered around and looked at all the Christmas trees for sale…  They don’t do fake Christmas trees in Denmark, they are all real, and you get to choose which one you want before they enclose it in a netting for you to carry home….  We didn’t need to buy one as Pete and Steve had already got one the previous week, but I was fascinated by seeing them all and the process people go through when selecting one….

Nørrebro Shopping at Nørrebro

 Maria had woken and as we were still out and Theodore was still asleep, she  decided to duck out and collect a couple of parcels that she had ordered and that had been delivered to the shop around the corner from her.  I had also ordered a Christmas present for Steve on line and it had also arrived so she collected that for me also…

We had a pretty quiet restful afternoon as Steve had to head off at 4pm to go and meet Pete at his work, so that they could then head off to the airport to collect our hire car as we were heading to Jutland the following morning to spend Christmas with Maria’s family.

Our Hire car for the week..

Our evening was spent packing our suitcases so that we could get away by 9am the following morning….