Christiania, You Have My Heart!

Freetown Christiana started as a "social experiment," with Danish idealists trying to take the liberation talk that was circulating around the counterculture in Copenhagen and make it real. An abandoned Navy barracks five minutes from the center of the city was initially broken into by locals upset with the lack of playgrounds in their neighborhood. They were quickly followed by hippies looking to carve out a section of the city for themselves.

This video dating from 1991 is the primary documentary document of Freetown Christiania, and as beautiful as it is, a lot has changed in the intervening 17 years, including the closure by the government of the open hash trade.

We're planning a mission on it, but for now watch Christiania, You Have My Heart!, to see how one group of hippies created a permanent space for social change with all of the problems, negotiations, victories, and defeats that came out of this one effervescent moment.

Here's a link to a rather thorough wikipedia entry on Freetown Christiania.