Mikkov,

thanks for your reply! By coincidence I found out that the status menu bar does indeed provide a sliding functionality. That is, if there are too many applets, one can scroll but there are no slider bars visible so that you won't realize there are additional applets (at least I did not until after two years of using my n900 ...). Since the OpenVPN applet seems to be added towards the bottom of the menu bar area it seems to be susceptible for being hidden down below.

Hope this helps others.

Cheers!
St. Mueller, Switzerland