Men’s creche

Berlin, Oct. 7 (Reuters): German women fed up with their partners’ grumbling on weekend shopping trips can now dump them at a special kindergarten for men offering beer and entertainment.

“The women are issued a receipt for their partners when they hand them in and can pick them up again when they return it to us later,” Alexander Stein, manager of the Nox Bar in the northern city of Hamburg said today.

The men are given a name badge on arrival and for 10 euros ($11.80) they get two beers, a hot meal, televised football and games. Stein said the idea for the Saturday afternoon men’s creche, or “Maennergarten”, came from a female customer who thought it would be a good way of getting shot of her husband so she could shop in peace.

“Last week the men had a remote control car to play with. Next week there’s going to be a mini racetrack,” said Stein. “It beats sitting around in shoe shops, that’s for sure,” one man told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

Old rage

Berlin (Reuters): A German pensioner became so enraged on finding the bus seat he wanted taken that he battered its disabled occupant until she bled, police said on Tuesday. Police in the western city of Bochum said the bad-tempered 76-year-old sat down on the 33-year-old woman after boarding and pointed out she was in the seat reserved for the disabled. When the woman said she also had a right to sit there, the man began bludgeoning the woman with his walking stick, striking her on an ear which had recently undergone surgery. The driver called the police who detained the old man. Police said the woman’s ear might now require another operation and that the man would probably face assault charges. “The man said he slipped,” said a spokesman for police in Bochum. “But the bus was full of witnesses who say otherwise.”

Anger class

Rabat (Reuters): Two Moroccan schoolboys were injured on Monday when their teacher threw them out of a first-floor classroom window for being too noisy, an education ministry official said. One of the pupils, aged nine, ended up in hospital with a fractured shoulder and serious injuries to his face and head while the other, 10, suffered only slight injuries, the official from the ministry’s delegation in Casablanca said. He said the teacher had warned the pair she would throw them out if they were not quiet. “They did not listen. They should have listened,” he said by telephone. “She (the teacher) suffers depression.” The official had no comment on whether the teacher would be disciplined.