28.11.02024

Post photo: City Hall Heilbronn | © Shutterstock

appointments

No matter what kind of appointment you try to stick to it, especially if you plan to meet in person and have to travel a long distance. Being punctual is a very good idea, because who likes to wait? But the end of an appointment should also be set, or at least have an "open end" note.

If others prepare such meetings, whereby all participants should always be prepared in terms of content, it is appropriate not only to take their preparations into account, but also to cover their expenses in the event of your own absence.

Yesterday, contrary to my expectations, I was reimbursed for one such expense, along with a small donation - there are still people with decency out there.

title purchases

The last title purchase didn't really work out, nothing but expenses. It doesn't matter, it's just taxpayers' money, and one or two representatives were able to travel the world again - which is what representatives do when they aren't invited to local celebrations.

By now our city has probably been given one or two titles - whether deserved or not is up for debate - most of which are not suitable as traffic signs on the outskirts of town. Our town hall has bought a real curiosity in recent years. From the bicycle city to the western city with the most East German traffic light men. Some of them have already been mentioned here in the blog.

It's a real shame that there is no public list of these municipal achievements. So here's my idea: the mayor presents his successes very prominently in the town hall, ideally right where his predecessors are currently hanging out in office. In doing so, you could not only clear the town hall of moths a little, but also denazify it a little.

“An atrium richly decorated with smoke-blackened ancestral images does not ennoble; no one has lived for our glory, and what was before us does not belong to us: it is the spirit that ennobles.” (Seneca, 2023: 277ff)

I am firmly convinced that the successes already achieved will not only attract Heilbronn citizens to the town hall, but will also become a crowd puller, a completely new “tourist attraction”. Similar to the former piggy museum in Bad Wimpfen, which is now a Pig Museum in Stuttgart resides.

The 3-K

The three Cs have long stood for traditional and old-fashioned things, and anyone who continued to cling to them was completely out of date even in my own youth. For the younger readers of mine, I would like to repeat these three Cs: children, kitchen and church.

Probably because this has been completely outdated for so long but the three Cs still seem to have their own appeal, a number of other 3-C models or methods have been developed in the meantime, e.g. art, culture and communication.

In Heilbronn there has been the K3, where these 3-K stand for shopping, cinema and culture. For the official Heilbronn, however, a hybrid solution has been chosen, namely an attempt to give it a modern look without having to give up completely antiquated ideas. And so in Heilbronn we have our very own 3-K model: Kaiserstelen, Kings and Käthchen.

In order to do justice to a future AI city, local decision-makers have now decided to at least check whether there might not be a wine king after all - we all know that if things are to turn out well, the matter has to be taken into the hands of a man. But the mayor and the local council are hesitant about a "Kätherich", because "trans" probably doesn't really fit in our city yet.

But we are not skimping on the third K, the Kaiserstele. Anyone who wants to and contributes to the costs can fill the entire public space of our city with them and celebrate themselves. Some of these citizens have their own names engraved very prominently there, while others - almost in a Protestant vein - regularly report in the local newspaper that they are the noble donors of this anonymous "Kaiserstele".

Although I am not entirely sure whether one or two local council members have recognized that this is a very modern bourgeois “middle finger” — which could well explain the current increase in such steles.

"The right attitude of mind is accessible to all. We are all noble in this respect."

Seneca, 5th book, 44th letter (2023: 277)

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