The party of Nein.

The S.O. and I went into Stuttgart tonight to visit the Weinachts Markt. It had only opened on the 23rd-so every thing was new and fresh-and with it being a Saturday night, it was more than a little crowded. It was made even more so because of the fact that 9000 people showed up in the Schlossplatz earlier in the afternoon to hold one final rally against Stuttgart 21. ( You can see the general sentiment in the blurry I-phone picture on the left, a light spelling out the word “Nein” on the tower of the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof.) What better way to spend the day than to protest a multi-million Euro project and then eat curry wurst and drink Gluwein?

I’m not sure who is going to win the referendum ( the thinking is the state of Baden Wurtenburg will out number the citizens of Stuttgart who are opposed to the project-so S-21 will win). But it was fun to be out among the crowds.

There were people all around-the Greens had a big tent up on Konigsstrasse and then when you turned the corner by the big bookstore ( whose name I cannot remember right now)-you hit the Christmas market.  Located right next to the Landesmuseum they had the usual assortment of Wurst stands and booths selling things. Rotewurst and Bratwurst became our dinner. Sadly-no beer, since I had to park the car at the S-bahn station due to the cold. ( And it is getting cold now).

In one sense, we are pretty lucky. The “locals” say that last year it snowed the day after Thanksgiving and you didn’t see ground again till after the new year. So far no snow-but perhaps it is just waiting till the day we move into our house this coming week.

But there are worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon/evening.

In a further note-on the lines of how we are spending money like water-we bought the final 220V appliances we need.  Transformers are of course an option-but I think for high power items that draw a lot of current-its probably better to bite the bullet. So we have been making the circuit of electronics stores. Today was “pick a microwave day”.  We got a good one-but its not near as big inside as the one we had back in shopping mall. But its big enough.

The other challenge is to ensure the internet and satellite TV work before I leave on my trip. We have eschewed anything to do with AFN-rather in a particularly abhorrent thing for  me, spending money on a Sky Network dish. ( I still hate Rupert Murdoch)-and our place will come with access to German TV via the dish the other tenant uses. I think that is just as well-save for the fact that it will preclude watching the NFL. I am hoping to work around that nag by having our big TV work and I can stream NFL games to the tube.

Except-thanks to the fact that Kabel BW is not out to our place in the country side ( The S.O. got the vote here-I wanted to be in the city), our internet will not be as fast as I would like. ( only about 17 mb/s-I wanted at least 50-100). The down side is that it may take three weeks to get set up. This being because they have to coordinate with Deutsche Telecom. I thought by giving them almost 10 days notice things would time out just right-but alas not so fast. Kudos to Torgas at the Media Markt, who helped me through all of the options and made a lot of phone calls to find out what was and what was not available.

Now its home and time to watch Mario Barth. Don’t ask me why-but the S.O. has taken a liking to watching German TV-even though she has little idea what is being said. She likes Mario Barth because he does a lot of joke with animals-at least on this show they did, including herding sheep on stage. On the plus side for me-his female assistant is pretty sweet.

Just another Saturday night.