Clay class at the Fabrik

Knowing pretty much nothing about the layout of Freiburg before we committed to renting our apartment sight-unseen, we somehow managed to end up living within walking distance to most of the things that are important to us. Thus this evening I was able to trot over to the cooperative collective, Die Fabrik fuer Handwerk, Kultur, und Oekologie (The Factory for Handicraft, Culture, and Ecology), for the first of a five-week long session of pottery classes. As far as I can tell, the Fabrik is the only place in town to offer wheel-throwing classes, and they offer a grand total of...one. I'm taking "Drehen ohne durchzudrehen" ("Turning without blowing a gasket," i.e. beginning and continuing wheel) in the hopes of acquiring some pottery vocabulary and keeping my hands in contact with mud.

Located in the back of the Fabrik on the third floor, the cheerful Keramik Werkstatt (pottery studio) has all of the basic wheel-throwing necessities, such as mostly functioning wheels, relatively uncontaminated recycled clay, and a sink. For better or for worse, it also obeys the German pack-maximum-stuff-into-minimum-space principle.* All you potters at home: know that you've got it good!

*I've written a lot about this principle already, but have failed to point out that of course it applies only to us plebes. Royalty traditionally has had no shortage of square footage or high ceilings (not that the Habsburgs or Bavarian nobility would have had kick wheels in their Schloesser).