Ausländerbeiratswahl

This is my voting slip for the Foreigners Advisory Committee.  I can cast up to 31 votes.  Unfortunately I don't know what any of these people stand for.

Those elected get to advise the actual council about what is important to the Guest Workers that live in Wiesbaden.  Or at least that's what I understand.

We'll skip over what else happened today, mainly because it wasn't interesting.

I did however get told the story of Perkeo, keeper of the wines at Schloss Heidelberg in the 1730s.  He was the Hofzwerg, or Court Dwarf, to Karl III. Philipp von der Pfalz. He was renowned for his ready wit and his enormous capcity for alcohol (he was supposed to drink 15 magnums of wine a day or be whipped).

The story goes that he lived into his 80s and then fell ill.  A doctor told him to drink water instad of wine and Perkeo died the next day.

I'm sure there's a lesson to learned there.

You can still see his statue in Schloss Heidelberg, it's next to the biggest wine barrel in the world (202,000Liters at the time, 219,000 now).

He got his name apparently when Karl III. Philipp asked him if he fancied drinking all the wine in the barrel and he replied „Perché no?“ (Italian for "why not?").

And there's still a restaurant in Heidelberg named after him.  Oh, and a drinking song (you'll need your German for that though).