Playground Tour

 To recap the last several days I have three main takeaways from Copenhagen: One, everyone is beautiful. I have not seen a single person who could not be a model as their fallback career if something went arigh for them. Two, biking is king but you have to know what you're doing or a (beautiful) local will yell at you. Three, it does not matter where you are going, what street you go down, anywhere you pass through will feel safe and be absolutely stunning. I will continue to rant about the perfection of this place in a future post (or two), but for this one I want to talk specifically about the playground touring activity that we did yesterday (6/23).

Copenhagen is all about freedom of movement for both adults and kids.The bike is the most useful tool to promote this idea as it is extremely versatile and easy to use and in Copenhagen biking is usually the fastest mode of transportation for getting anywhere in the city. So because it is so easy and safe to move in the city here, kids are often able to move freely without their parents and go to parks and other venues. There are over 100 playgrounds in Copenhagen, and of these, around a quarter are "managed" meaning that there is an adult on hand as a safety net for the kids and parents. 

Yesterday we met at one of these managed parks as a group to kick off our tour of the cities many remarkable playgrounds. The park that we met at was one of the most unique I've been to. It is called a traffic playground and the premise is that it is set up as a miniature simulation of the streets around the city with bike lanes, traffic lights, sidewalks, and even hedges to represent the buildings. The original purpose of this was to teach really young kids how to navigate streets and use street signs as part of their play. As we know, kids don't always like structured play or intentional learning while they are having free time, so these days, it is used mainly to get kids on bikes from a young age and get them out and riding in a controlled environment. This park has a garage full of kids bikes which any kid can come and grab at pretty much any time. I'll include a picture of this traffic playground but it is hard to see that the street is scaled down since it is so detailed. it looks just like a regular street!

After our exploration of this park, we broke off to explore a few of the other playgrounds. It is safe to say that I was not disappointed by what we saw in other parks. On had play structures made to look like different landmarks and buildings, one had trampolines embedded in the ground (which I tried and yes, they are really bouncy and fun), but my favorite one was called skateparken (skate park). Although I can't skate, it was easily the nicest skatepark[en] that I have ever laid eyes on. It was so clean and felt safe and there were people of all ages around (plus some guys doing crazy stunts). 

Overall this experience made me really jealous to be a kid growing up in Copenhagen. Whenever I hear a baby crying I have to assume that they just don't know that they are in fact in Copenhagen and are living a devine life. 

I have never seen such amazing public works anywhere in the US, but as we discussed as a group during our park tour, a lot of that has to do with the fact that the culture in the US just is not as trusting as it is here. In America it is extremely rare to find parents who will let their kids roam free without adult supervision, especially in the city. This has some to do with the fact that our crime rates are higher, but also with our culture and the way our cities are set up. A city that is centered around cars and not people will always be more dangerous, less walkable, and less pleasant for everyone, but especially for kids. 

On that happy note I will end this post. If any of my many readers have questions, please feel free to comment on this post!