It has almost been two weeks now and I have been postponing this blog entry. I guess it’s better to blog about travel, when traveling.
My primary reason for coming to Frankfurt was to attend first ever OpenNMS user conference. I had already paid my 199 Euro conference fee and 37.81 Euro VAT to Nethinks (who were arranging teh conference). I did get a (considerable) discount from Taurus for me being part of GSoC last year but since it was unpublished discount so let’s just leave it at that 
‘The conference was in three hotel “ballrooms”. The first hosted the coffee while the other two were used for presentations.’. The kick off was done by Uwe Bergmann from Nethinks in Lyon hall. Then we had the keynote session from Taurus Balog . There were many things which I learned about OpenNMS in this talk(aside from back stories and jokes). After the keynote session we had lunch which was really good (so buffet in Le Maredian is definelty recommended). I decided to sit in Lyon for the rest of the conference and didn’t attend some really interesting parallel tracks, but since all the sessions were recorded so I still have a chance of looking at them.
I attended talks on OpenNMS reporting by Ronny Trommer aka _indigo,Integrating Syslog Events into OpenNMS by Alexander Finger aka gvainfo and Extending OpenNMS by Jason Aras aka fjay. All of the talks were really informative but in my books they didn’t top Tarus’s talk (perhaps because he was talking too much about future and these guys were talking about present
After the conference was over we decided to go for some drinks to Orielly’s an Irsih pub just in front of the central train station. There was a Scotland vs Ireland rugby game on and it’s good that we left that place before Ireland eventually won (otherwise we would have been caught in celebrations). By the way it’s hard to get any thing in an Irish pub, you have to squeeze your way through people. Lesson here is that Swedish pubs may be boring and expensive, but people respect other people’s turn.
Later along with some of the gang we went to dinner. We walked along the promenade where all the major museums of Frankfurt are centered. After a long walk we found the place which apparently Taurus got recommended by some one. Since it was Saturday night finding a free place was not easy. We settled for the next best restaurant. I had some traditional German dish recommended by Alexander Finger, and it was in fact really good (chicken and mushrooms, so the point being that if you don’t know what you want to eat, just ask the locals).
I learned a lot of things in the casual conversations over the dinner. I think not sitting for lunch or dinner in almost a year now with peers(since I left my full time job) has now taught me the value of casual knowledge transfer. In the end I believe Taurus footed the bill (I had my share of Euros out in my hand to pay like a "well mannered Swedish resident", but it never came to that) so thanks to Taurus, again.
After calling it a day we all went our septate ways, and I came back to my youth hostel to crash. Sunday I went to the Senkeberg Natural History museum (pictures here) and did some sight seeing around the city. I was tired and didn’t go much around the city. I wanted to take the bus tour and see the city skyline from teh famous Frankfurt tower. In the youth hostel’s lounge I met quite a few people from UK, Canada and US. Apparently frankfurt has cheap connecting flights from all over EU so many people come for a weekend getaway.
Monday afternoon I took the RyanAir flight back to Gothenburg. It was interesting to see that almost all of the flight passengers were the ones which I saw on Thursday and Friday (perhaps most of them were in Frankfurt for the weekend as this was the only cheap flight)
I have already planned my next trip to Frankfurt in summers, this time I would prefer to take Rhine Cruise and see the other German cities like Bonn, Cologne, Dusseldrof. Munich I plan to see when I go to Switzerland and Berlin would come with my trip to Warsaw.
Overall the trip was not what I expected it to be, but the conference was every bit better. There is already talk of this conference being held next year and I would definetly like to attend it.
