Last year while walking from the train station to a hostel in Copenhagen I came upon a burning car in the middle of an intersection. No one else was around, just me and the burning vw. During the next week there were street riots but because I dont speak Danish I didn't ever figure out why people were so upset. Today I finally got around to looking up some news articles and this is basically what i found out:
On March 1 the Danish government evicted all tenants/squatters from an abandoned building using Danish Special Forces. The building was completely torn down four days later.
During the next week, the largest riots since WWII took place in downtown Copenhagen. Angry mobs constructed street barricades and built bonfires in the middle of intersections. The riot police had to retake the suburb of Norrebro street by street.
After my initial shock of the burning car, the daily riots became pretty routine and I had assumed that was just what Denmark was like all the time.
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