Colin Marshall sits down in Copenhagen’s Frederiksberg with Melanie Haynes, author of the blog Dejlige Days. They discuss the Danish national virtue of hygge (and the also important quality of dejlige); how she came to leave her native England for Denmark; the Copenhagen system of smiley-face food sanitation ratings; the Danish habit of both asking “Why […]
Colin Marshall sits down in Copenhagen’s Vesterbro with Per Šmidl, author of the bestseller Chop Suey, the essay Victim of Welfare, and the new novel Wagon 537 Christiania. They discuss the surprise foreigners, and especially Americans, feel upon discovering that a self-governing commune like Christiana has existed for over forty years in the middle of Copenhagen; […]
Colin Marshall sits down in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro with Louise Sand (and her baby daughter Alice), who teaches the Danish language on the Copenhagencast. They discuss why the Danes speak English so well, yet still feel shy about speaking it; her experience teaching Danish to classrooms of foreigners; her original studies to become a Spanish teacher; her […]
Colin Marshall sits down in one of Copenhagen’s many storied serving houses with Thomas E. Kennedy, author of the “Copenhagen Quartet” of novels In the Company of Angels, Kerrigan in Copenhagen: A Love Story, Falling Sideways, and the forthcoming Beneath the Neon Egg. They discuss whether one can truly know Copenhagen without knowing its serving […]
Colin Marshall sits down at Copenhagen’s Husets Biograf with Jack Stevenson, programmer of the theater and author of books on both Scandinavian and American film. They discuss Lars von Trier as the world’s representative of Danish cinema; the difficulty of creating scandal within unshockable Denmark; revival theaters across the world as a nation of their […]
Colin Marshall sits down in Vesterbro with Mikael Colville-Andersen, urban mobility expert and CEO of Copenhagenize. They discuss where Los Angeles, with its “pockets of goodness,” ranks on the global scale of Copenhagenization; what it takes for a city’s population to become “intermodal”; his experience growing up in an English-Danish-Canadian household, biking all the time […]
Colin Marshall sits down in the Copenhagen offices of Gehl Architects with founding partner Jan Gehl, architect, Professor Emeritus of Urban Design at the School of Architecture in Copenhagen, and author of books including Life Between Buildings, Cities for People, and How to Study Public Life. They discuss what important change occurred in Copenhagen in 1962, […]
Colin Marshall sits down in Nørrebro with Classic Copenhagen blogger and photographer Sandra Høj. They discuss the city’s current enthusiasm for tree-cutting; the small things in Copenhagen that draw her eye, from pieces of street art to weird details on houses; how she started blogging in the wake of the Muhammad caricature crisis with an interest in […]
Colin Marshall sits down in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro with Lars AP, author of the book Fucking Flink and founder of the movement of the same name, which aims to make the Danish not just the “happiest” people, but the friendliest as well. They discuss just what it feels like to bear the label of “happiest” and whether “most […]
Sometimes you run across books that happen to ring a whole row of your intellectual cherries. I’ve actually had Bicycle Diaries on my shelf for a couple years, slowly fueling the fire of my readerly anticipation all the while. When my interests came into unprecedentedly close alignment with the book’s own, I couldn’t resist de-prioritizing […]