Our Neighborhood Riot !

Well, on Sunday we had some unexpected excitement outside of our apartment.

My apartment is located in Nørrebro, which is the historical working class and immigrant section of Copenhagen. It is also, as we were told, a hot spot for political unrest and riots on occasion. Before Sunday, however, we thought we would never have to experience any of the action that was said to frequent this neighborhood. We were wrong.

At about 4:00 pm on Sunday afternoon some loud noises started to fill the streets outside of our apartment building. From what we have been able to gather, there was a building down the street from us that had a number of unauthorized people living in it. The police decided that Sunday was the day they would physically remove them, but these people and a many others were waiting.

When the police arrived, in full riot gear, the group of 200-300 people began hurling large bricks and bottles. The action lasted about 45 minutes and ended in over 200 arrests. Most of my building watched from outside their bedroom windows, and a few of us ventured out the front door after the police got control over the situation.

It was an interesting event to have occur right outside our bedroom windows and will be something that I don't think we will forget. From the pictures you can see it got pretty rough at one point, but in the end no one was severely injured.

Take a look at all of the pictures here