Announcements for Tramprennen2014 #1

We will start Tramprennen this year all together at one place: the city of Würzburg. We thought Würzburg would be a suitable place to start, since it is located in the middle of Germany and it would allow for four to six routes to start on the same day in different directions towards the Balkans. We will all gather there (the exact location will be announced soon!) on Friday the 15th. There will be a little event in the evening before the race starts the following day.

In previous years every team could choose a predefined route to get to the final destination by the time of registration. This year we decided to randomly allocate the routes to the different teams one day before the race starts in Würzburg. We decided to let chance play an even bigger role in the race this year. After all, this is what hitchhiking is about: having a great time and experiencing a load of crazy coincidences on the road- no matter which road exactly.

There are only 4 or 5 organizing members who know the exact routes leading to Lake Ohrid, but some things can be assured: all routes will meet another route at some point during the race, all routes go through both little villages and big cities; and there will be one route that goes only through EU-countries (for people who would otherwise need a visa)!
For those who are eager to know where the routes will be passing through, there will be a blog on the Tramprennen homepage with information about the different regions the teams might visit this year!

For the past six years, the rule concerning team composition was “every team has to have at least one man”. Because of safety reasons, this rule will prevail for this year as well. But since Tramprennen condemns sexism and this rule was unfair to women, we decided to change the rule to “every team has to have at least one man and one woman”. The result of the voting for the new rule was 23 to 1.

We hope this rule will create equal opportunities for everyone, encourage more women to participate in Tramprennen and provide fairer conditions for all teams during the race!