first of all, thanks for all replies.
within one week i managed to map two suburbs of Cologne from previously completly white to (i hope) nearly complete.
I am quite curious how this will look rendered with Mapnik.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:at=50.9672&lon=6.9082&zoom=14

Some words about technical stuff, as mobile equipment i am usigng a bike, a Royaltec RGM-3800 data logger, a clipboard, a pencil and some white sheets of paper, sometimes printed OSM Map-fragments.

There are some problems with this equipment:
- paper gets wet and unusable if it is raining.
- printed OSM-Maps are limited to 1200x1600 (my max. screen resolution, i am doing screenshots). Is there any way to render crisp b/w postscript maps?
- the GPS-Logger-Readout-Software is M$-Windows only, attempts to readout the new GPS-Tracks running this software on my linux-box with wine produced some badly corrupted data, e.g. colonia_20080114_3.gpx (will be deleted). I am working on a linux-client to read the data from the GPS-tracker. For the meantime my tracks will be uploaded with some delay because i have to ask someone else with a M$-Windows box to download the data.

One more question: Police vs. Police/SOS-Telephone. Is there an amenity like "SOS-Telephone" / "Notruf". This telephones have one button only, if you press it, you get connected with the police. How do i put those in the map?