As it turned out, there was an international festival going on inside the town hall. They had booths from all over the world with artwork and trays of food, dance performances, free henna, and outside, a camel ride for the kids. (The Frederiksberg Zoo is right around the corner from the town hall, attached to the park with the yellow palace. It's pretty cool because you can actually see several of the exhibits from the park side. Huzzah, saving money!)
The discovery of the international festival was particularly delightful given Denmark's racial tensions / harsh immigration policies. The overwhelming majority of the Denmark is ethnically Danish with only 5% of population being foreign nationals, one of the lowest rates in Europe. Of that 5%, 12% are from other Nordic countries, 43% from other parts of Europe, 12% from Asia, and 5% from Africa and the Americas.
And, based on my informal walking-around study, I suspect that a large proportion of foreign population is living in Copenhagen. Legit, there are black /Asian / Middle Eastern people everywhere--and not tourists either, I hear them speaking Danish. I've stumbled upon three different black hair salon/shops and I'm always spoken to in Danish, which is really nice, until I have to tell them that I have no idea what they just said. (Actually, I was on a crowded bus once and a woman with a cane and walking-boot got on, so I got up to give her my seat. She said "Tak" [thank you] so I smiled and nodded. And then, in very non-Danish fashion, she started speaking to me out of the blue. I thought she was just going to say something short, but she launched into this whole story, and I just kept smiling and nodding, and then I recognized she'd asked me a question which I obviously didn't understand. So she's like [in English], "You don't speak Danish, do you." I confirmed her suspicion, and then she told me the whole story over again in English--she broke her leg getting hit by a car making an illegal U-turn). But, I digress.
But despite the diversity present in the city (especially in Nørrebro, the neighborhood next to ours) there's a good amount of hostility toward non-Danes, from the population and from the conservative government as well (it's so difficult to become a citizen that a number of Danes who marry foreigners just move to Sweden where citizenship is granted after 5 years residence. To be considered for citizenship, Denmark requires a number of years of residence in the country, three years of Danish language classes, and a proficiency in Danish history in culture--and after that, you can still be rejected).
During our first week here, we were on a bus back to our apartment when a black passenger got into an altercation with our Middle Eastern bus driver. The passenger accused the driver of passing him by (not by much I believe, but enough so that the man had to walk to get on) because he was black. The fight got pretty ugly: the passenger calling the driver a racist, the driver calling the passenger a piece of shit (under his breath, thank God) as the man was walking to his seat. The passenger later apologized, but it was of a tense ride home. We were sitting right behind the driver, and after the skirmish, he told us that he gets a lot of flack from the Danes because he's darker skinned as well. (There's actually a great article in the Yale Globalist about gangs and racial tensions in Copenhagen --Nørrebro specifically--here.)
Since being here, I've only run into two situations that could be possibly described as race-related scenarios (they could also be explained by the persons in questions being a) absent minded, or b) just plain rude, respectively). The first occurred when I had a bus pass me when I was the only one at the stop. It was broad daylight, I was standing right next the the bus stop sign looking at the bus, and holding my bus pass. I thought I had made eye contact with the driver (when several buses run through the same stop, and one comes that's not the one you want, you can just shake your head and if no one on the bus needs to get off, the driver will just coast on through) but he just passed on by staring very fixedly ahead.
The second incident occurred when I was in line at the grocery store and the man behind me kept bumping me in the back with his grocery basket. It was close to dinner time and the store was a little crowded, but not so crowded that I needed to give up my hoola-hoop of personal space. I turned around to look at him, but he was looking off somewhere, so I thought it might have been an accident. So, I was only in line to cash in by bottle-returns (You get money back here for returning your plastic soda and water bottles. There's a machine in most grocery stores where you insert your bottles, it prints a receipt, and then you just bring the receipt to the cashier to collect your money) and so I didn't have anything on the conveyor belt. So, I'm next in line, receipt in hand, when the cashier begins scanning his items (thinking they were mine), and he makes absolutely no attempt to stop her. He just walks in front of me, asks for two bags, and starts bagging his groceries; no apology, no nothing. Hateful.
But on the whole, I've got nothing to complain about. It's a wonderful city and most everyone I've encountered has been exceptionally kind and helpful to my non-Danish-speaking self.
Spectators at the international festival.
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