Back from Marketing in Stuttgart

Had to wait for 1.5 hour in Frankfurt on the way back home, so I decided to have a look at the city. I've never seen the area around central station (hauptbahnhof for bloody germans). Right in front of central station there is plenty of entertainment, of an interesting variety. Bars which don't focus on beer - seems un-german to me, but I guess that other need has to be serviced even in Germany.

I recently saw the Red Light district in Amsterdam for the first time when I had Hölger over for a visit. I must say the Frankfurter integration of the sex related services in their city center is far more elaborate. The Red Light district sports a few bars & one or two evening shops, but that's about it - it's pretty disconnected from the rest of Amsterdam. Not here, in the center of Stuttgart. Above a "girls girls bar" there was a youth hostel, and a nice but expensive looking indian restaurant was sitting just next to another "nice girls" bar. Interesting. The area was filled with suits walking from (presumably) work to the main station. Combined with the more shady types hanging there it created a weird atmosphere.

At Hauptbahnhof I found a german würst shop (well it said "schnell restaurant" but was more sausage-oriented than any butchery I've seen in my home country). Bought some to bring home. Didn't have the bratwürst I've been asking Eckhart for all weekend - the German style lunch (big Pizza) was still heavy on my stomach. Will have to wait until next time I'm in Germany.



On to KDE-ish stuff: if you want to help the world domination plans Stu mentioned, join KDE promo or mail me. Skills? If you can read it'll do, we have plenty of big marketing geniusses already - you'll be one of those in a couple of months, believe me.

Frankly marketing in the FOSS world suffers from having more ideas than people willing to actually DO something... The KDE promo team is blessed with a rather healthy number of worker bees but it is still hard to keep things happening. I must admit the planning is cool, and we do have big plans - after world domination, the next five year plan involves the Milky Way - but at some point, sites have to be build, text has to be written, people have to be talked to. And that's fun too, just takes a bit more of an pro-active attitude...