6000 armed police raids in less than 3.5 years!

This is the substance behind the claim that the Moonfisher Cafe in Christiania, Copenhagen is the safest in the World. Over the past few days I have been squatting in Christiania, it is a ex-military barrack which was abandoned in 1971 only to be taken over by squatters who promtly declared it the free-town of Christiania with its own flag and laws. However the past few years have seen the Danish officials crack down on the open drugs trade of Pusher Street and the like. Fortunately the good spirit of the locals still reigns supreme, and there is an area beside one 'lake' which accepts campers pitching tents, a good method of saving money in the currency vacuum known as Denmark.

Well tomorrow I leave my little pot smoking oasis and embark on what could be a hell of a time dealing with broken bikes and shit weather or a wicked adventure through Sweden and Denmark. I was counting on getting a bike which belongs to Perry (the American guy from the Vineyard in Hungary) which was sitting at a friends house in Copenhagen, but due to my own lack of planning (more accurately, unwillingness to plan) i rang the friend of Perry to organise the redevous that night when he advised me that the bike was locked up and he a long way away, not to return for over a month. Well, this left me at an interesting conundrum, i didnt have the money to travel the area by public or organised transport, word of mouth indicates that hitching is difficult and I dont want to head south yet as i have a course starting at a Danish university in Arhus (Denmark) at the start of August... To use the words of Grant Dalton after a recent America's Cup loss, "it's the kind of situation when you just kick the cat".

Walking back to my tent after that conversation I think I could have been hit by a car and not even noticed, my mind was so far detached from my being, concentrating on the question, what the f#%k am I going to do now? The solution came within half an hour as I was dragging my feet through a disused park, in one corner i spotted a heap of broken and mangled bikes resembling a recently crushed car. Well, I thought "I'm an engineer, if I cant do something with this pile of shit then no one can", so i got out my pocket calculator, determined a few angles using sohcahtoa and pythagoras thereom, following this a couple of well placed kicks and we were underway. Within the next day having spent only NZ$30 (about the cost of a toothpick in Copenhagen) I had a lock and owned something resembling a bike!

One thing i can guarantee you, i'll be treating this bike much nicer than the ones in Cambodia. And if I'm getting any turning heads it wont be because i am different (like on the motorbike in Vietnam) but only due to the high pitched screeching coming from every moving part!