Around noon today, a large part of Denmark and southern Sweden had a total blackout, though not as huge as the incident in USA & Canada some weeks ago. Approx. 3-4 million people in both countries were affected. Right now (17:55), 40% of Copenhagen is up again, but parts of Denmark are not expected to be up & running until later tonight. Here are some pictures I took during the day:

⇢ Some mild traffic chaos started to emerge right after the blackout started. People were quite good at keeping order in the situation though. Quite surprising since the Danes usually aren’t very polite in traffic in general.

⇢ Quite some shops were forced to close down. These nice people told me not to tell on them (^_^) Looked like most people enjoyed the short break.

⇢ A kiosk closing. Notice the TV-guy. I saw several of them running around interviewing people.

⇢ A big shopping mall without light - I thought. Look at the back. They had an emergency generator running and people flocked outside the bakery that enjoyed this luxury (see image below).

⇢ I found out that they (among other boutiques) were giving away free ice cream since it was beginning to melt.

⇢ Trains that suddenly stopped were evacuated and the subway was of course also closed.

⇢ And the busses became over-populated…

All in all most people were smiling, chatting and there was calmness throughout the city. A spokesperson from the Copenhagen Police Department said that he could give close to top grades to the population for being able to handle the situation so well. No major accidents or hazardous situations have yet occurred.

This incident made me think about the time where I took a whole week off, not giving myself any unnecessary inputs at all (i.e. TV, radio, newspapers, Internet, books, various entertainment etc.). This in fact boosted my creativity quite a lot and I might want to try it again, actually…

On this day...

... in 2005: Mirrormask update