Schnitzel Wednesday, Protests, & Fat Quarters

Wednesdays are generally pretty calm around here, but yesterday proved to be interesting.

Near John's office is a small canteen that offers a limited daily menu, but once a week it's Schnitzel Wednesday! Woo hoo. Oh, mercy it's so yummy. His office is only about 18km from home, but an hour by streetcar or 20 minutes by BMW. Yesterday, Marie and I took the streetcar out to his office, enjoyed a wonderful lunch together, stopped at the bookstore on base, and made our way home afterwards. Thing is - yesterday, that roundtrip took 4.5 hours.

We opted to ride our bikes from home to Bismarkplatz (1.1km) away and the nearest stop for the streetcar out to Mannheim. However, we literally landed ourselves in the middle of a massive student protest as we attempted to ride through Universitätsplatz. I love an awesome student rally complete with makeshift drums, bullhorns, whistles, cowbells, chanting, a couple news crews, banners, plackards, handbills, and dressed up clowns (literally, complete w/red noses) directing the bus and bike traffic. The Polizei were milling about the fringes, but otherwise seemed to be in a 'watch and wait' posture. It took us 10 minutes to navigate maybe 80 yards - good times in Heidelberg!

Later in the day, Marie went on line to figure out what the students were striking against. It was a perrineal favorite - tuition. The twist is ... German university students don't pay tuition (it's covered with sky-high taxes). The government wants to charge 500€ per semester. From our perspective, if all of college cost approx $700 - it would be time to party not time to protest. A favorite slogan we learned - "Money for education, not banks!"

But hey, I'm not going to be the one to rain on that parade .... Power to the People.

Finally on the way back home, I had to stop at the fabric store in town. After finding the fabric corner in a base hobby shop, I've been shopping only there - the price is about half of the price of cotton in town and it's good quality stuff.

As I posted a couple days ago, this outta-control representation of Barcelona has taken over the dining room table, 4 chairs, and part of the laundry room. Anyway, I couldn't wait for Fat-Quarter Friday at the hobby shop (a fat quarter is approx 1/4 of a yard, but more of a square shape, and FQF at the hobby shop is... buy 4, get 1 free). I needed more terra cotta! I bought retail, not on sale!

Anyway, all things turned out. Flower made the spaghetti sauce for dinner, Marie got the 100% whole wheat noodles done, and Joe weighed in at clean-up time.

Student protests, quilting, or dinner clean up with the people is where it's at.