Stuttgart
Stuttgart Flickr Meetup
On Friday 26th October there is going to be a Flickr meetup here in Stuttgart. We'll be meeting at 6pm in the Calwer Eck pub in downtown Stuttgart. All are welcome to come along, just leave a comment or add yourself to the event on upcoming.org if you're interested.
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Am Freitag 26. Oktober kommt ein Flickr treffen in Stuttgart. Treffen wir uns um 18h in Calwer Eck. Jeder ist wilkommen! Kommst du auch? Bitte hier Kommentar einlegen oder unter upcoming.org anmelden.
Maps of Stuttgart
Taken at Buechsenstrasse 54, Stuttgart, Baden-Wuerttemberg, 48°46' 45" N, 9°10' 15" E
The state surveying office (Landesvermessungsamt Baden-Wuerttemberg) here in Stuttgart has a display on the outside of their building showing satellite imagery covering the length of the Rhein with a number of examples of maps from the places across the region over time. This old map shows some of the area around the Black Forest, or Schwarzwald, just south of here.
Winter Wunderland
In the past day or so Stuttgart has seen its first proper snow of the year, and it caused chaos. Schneechaos read the headlines. People weren't prepared (presumably they, like I, thought we'd skipped winter completely and gone straight into spring), roads hadn't been swept of overnight snow and buses basically stopped running as far as I can tell.
Luckily I take the train to work. Whilst a little delayed, they were running without too many problems.
Mapping Stuttgart on OpenStreetMap
Since the Munich mapping weekend a few weeks ago I've been putting some more work in to try and improve the mapping of the centre of Stuttgart in OpenStreetMap.
The image above shows the current state of the map for Stuttgart. It's still missing a lot of information including many of the major roads, mostly because I don't drive here. There were also very few streets in the centre of town until this weekend when I made a conscious effort to go in and collect data for some of the pedestrian areas of the city.
If you're in Stuttgart and interested in helping out with mapping, get in touch. There is GPS data appearing in the area from someone driving around, which acts as a good base for some of the major roads, so if that's you, get in touch and maybe we can work together to make sure they're tagged with street names and the like.
Piccadilly English Shop in Stuttgart
I had known for quite some time that there is an 'English Shop' here in Stuttgart, and have recently been craving some British goods - mostly fish and chips, which just aren't the same outside of the British Isles - and so went into town today to see what they had to offer. In particular, I was looking for some Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate, and maybe New Scientist magazine if they had it, as I hadn't seen it in my normal supplier of international magazines for a long time.
Once my feet had all but given up from walking around the town (trying to map the pedestrian areas of the city for the OpenStreetMap project) I decided to go looking for the English Shop. I knew the area it was in so it didn't take me too long to find it.
Walking in, I was greeted by a fridge of British drinks such as Irn Bru, Ribena, Tango and Vimto. Walking in a little further you come to all the typical 'I've been to London' merchandise, like Mind the Gap signs, mugs and things, as well as all sorts of other things with the Union Jack (and other British flags) on them. I wasn't particularly interested in these, so passed on by to see what DVDs they had to rent. (Note to self: must go back and register to get DVDs for 1 Euro a night). Then, on to the section filled with Walkers crisps, biscuits, other things, and of course, the chocolate. When I walked in, I spotted a small selection of chocolate under the counter but didn't see any Cadbury's products, and was a little worried. But the main selection included Dairy Milk along with a good selection of other stuff. Picking up a few things on my way through that aisle, I went to explore the rest of the store, passing the 'fresh' foods (cheese, sausages, etc) and selection of alcohol. I grabbed a can of Ribena and then went to pay.
It all added up quite quickly (the Terry's Chocolate Orange helped in that, at over five Euro) but frankly I think it was worth it. I suspect I'll be back there once in a while.
Still no luck with New Scientist though. If anyone knows of a supplier here in Stuttgart, please do let me know. Or if anyone wants to send me a copy, that'd be welcome too *grin*
