News and announcements by the Tramprennen-crew

Tramprennen 2017 goes to Baltic region

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2017 brought up something new! After years of the same discussions about: “Where to go this time?” this year we made a voting with all the people who joined Tramprennen during the last 9 years. According to the comments you entered in the poll, we chose six regions, that could be the destination we are hitchhiking to on Tramprennen 2017 from August, 18th to September, 2nd.

And here are the results:

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Whoop,Whoop!

And: If you’re up for joining the orga-team in 2017: We will have a big meeting in February (24th to 26th) in Leipzig! If you want to join us, just send a mail to gro.nennerpmartnull@ofni.

Tramprennen 2016 is over

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The Tramprennen 2016 is over and still after three weeks and a lot of hitchhiking after our arrival in Tsigov Chark we can hardly find words to describe what happened during the past weeks, which felt more like months, between Halle, Freising, Leutkirch, Innsbruck and Tsigov Chark.

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Thousands of encouters, exchange in all its forms: with an Albatross, Raki or Palinka, cursing at the spot or through the discussion about European immigration policies in the car; emotions, joy, frustration, joy, desperation, even more joy, memories, challenges, disturbances, motivation, touching stories- the usual craziness, you experience when you dare to trust to chance and travel across Europe for two weeks just with your thumb and a group of freaks.

The pictures of the arrival at the destination have already etched themselves so deep in our memory that they will probably stay there forever. The moment when really everybody arrived, when the last team drove the car across the finish line by themselves, the endless amount of backpacks on the side of the road, a huge make-out zone, a cop, who couldn’t believe what he was seeing, the guy from the food-truck, who sold over 200 pizzas and took even more videos of the joyfully smiling hippies, freaks, doctors, students, engineers, musicians, people out-of-work…. Moments that were incredible, just good and amazing, moments when hospitality and helpfulness met openness and thankfulness and suddenly the world seemed to be a place where you actually want to live.

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The next day at the lake was filled with 30 new haircuts, babys (maybe), tattoos, stories, thougths, weird stuff, the final ceremony which was just wonderful, a facebook-livestream that showed more of the sky than of Tue but it managed to transport a small portion of the hippie-shit into the world. The hippie-shit that we celebrated until early in the morning around the fire and everywhere else in Tsigov Chark.

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The next morning, when the owner and other people around the campsite are amazed by our group and the whole event, when basically no trash gets left behind, when even without any control everybody paid for the campsite, when slowly everybody hits the road again to continue hitchhiking in different directions but still around 30 hitchhikers stay to have a barbecue together and peacefully enjoy the last Albatross, while a 70-years-old really nice cyclist from Switzerland, who is currently travelling from the Northern Cape to South Africa the only person is that throws up everywhere (don’t worry, he was fine the next morning), everything is just f*cking amazing.

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This year again the Tramprennen was a unique platform for great and random stuff, for things that are too crazy to be shown in movies, for new friendships, for hippieshit and thousands of other things, at least that’s the way we think about it. It was not the perfect planning of some event manager that made all of this possible, but all of you. So all the people that participated in some way in the Tramprennen 2016! Over 150 hitchhikers on six different routes, that all created a unique and special Tramprennen themselves, at least 2000 drivers, who didn’t drive past the few freaks that were standing on the roadside, but stopped and opened their doors, placed their trust in us and helped us in difficult situations and enriched our experience significantly, all the hosts from the family of the mayor to a group of squatters or normal people, that offered a place to stay for 25 or even 50 people and overwhelmed us with their hospitality. Among all the joy, the exchange and the amazing experience an unbelievable large amount of money was collected. This would not have been possible without the 460 wonderful sponsors, the money can now be used for extremely important projects.

And there we are with an unbelievable record of donations: never in almost ten years of Tramprennen have we ever collected more money than this year… 18,500 Euros (!!!), which will benefit the two organizations Viva con Agua and PRO ASYL. All of this and all of you is amazing we are overwhelmed by your support and still struggle to find the right words. The money is needed by both associations the specific purpose will be, at least that’s the plan, published on our blog in the next weeks.

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We will not forget the moments when drivers were upset about refugees and immigrants and perpetuated all the stereotypes and we told them about our intentions to open borders to fight for a dignified life for all asylum seekers and that those drivers supported us and our intentions through their act of helpfulness. This was, despite the lousy situation, somehow satisfying.

But still we were shocked by all the prejudices we were confronted with. Prejudices against Gypsies, Refugees, Muslims, and so on. The justification of these prejudices, even though it was dull and hollow, was not easy to straighten out, but, when critical questioned, uncovered as simple scaremongering. We won’t give up hope that all our encounters and all the exchanges, the discussions and the meeting of new people and cultures will someday help to carry open-minded and tolerant views into the world.

Next to all these negative and among all the positive experiences there were also this year concrete racist and sexist actions, that participants of the Tramprennen had to experience. It is important to talk about this, even though these lousy actions did not occur frequently, but already once is too many! The variety of these disgusting incidents start with teams that didn’t get taken as soon as they saw a male team-member. Really bad were situations in which hitchhikers were physically molested by drivers! Other participants were not taken hence to their appearance and had to go through rigorous checks at the borders. All these actions and negative experiences did not occur often but anywhere and anytime. This shows were society stands and how important our daily struggle against any form of discrimination is. We don’t want to underestimate these experiences or let them be covered up by all the positive that happened along our journey. We don’t want to raise doubts on our project but use these experiences to fight daily discrimination side by side with the organizations we support even stronger and more focused than before.

We draw our motivation from the countless situations in which we were met with tolerance, hospitality and helpfulness regardless of gender ethnicity or skin-color. Drivers that told us how they take matters into their own hands, help refugees and stand up against discrimination in their own countries. Again and again we met people who are open-minded, helpful and tolerant, people who actively want to change something, people who cannot understand how prejudices drive peoples apart from each other. All these people we met along the way and the amazing experiences we shared are the reason we are yet again excited to start with the preparations for Tramprennen 2017.

What is the “we” that is behind the project Tramprennen? Well, “we” is basically just a group of freaks, who learned to love the Tramprennen and decided to shape and organize it. We still lack some professionalism but be sure we put our hearts and souls into the work for Tramprennen. So please excuse, when we don’t keep a deadline, when chaos takes over, wrong shirt sizes are ordered and also excuse quite a few mistakes in our English translations. When you feel like you can and also want to support the project Tramprennen in any way, write a mail to gro.nennerpmartnull@ofni, come to the first planning-meeting the beginning of 2017 or try to contribute in other ways. If you have great ideas but no time, please tell us! We would be really happy if you Support us!

We can’t wait to stand with 20-25 crazy people on the street again and to have no idea what’s going to happen!

Your Tramprennen- 2016 Crew

 

Links about Tramprennen 2016:

NDR-Reports:

https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/schleswig-holstein/Um-die-Wette-trampen-bis-nach-Bulgarien,tramprennen102.html

https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/schleswig-holstein/Daumen-raus-und-hoffen-Per-Anhalter-nach-Serbien,tramprennen142.html

https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/schleswig-holstein/2000-Kilometer-per-Autostop-und-wieder-zurueck,tramprennen190.html

 

Leo’s Videoblog:

https://www.youtube.com/user/Unknown952

 

Antje’s Blog:

https://sternstunderacingteam.wordpress.com/

 

Funkhaus Europa:

https://www1.wdr.de/radio/funkhauseuropa/magazin/specials/weltweit-tramprennen-100.html

 

Newsletter#last_one

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Hey everybody!

This is the (totally) last newsletter before we meet up tomorrow
evening!

First of all: Insane what happened with the donation counter. We
can’t stop wondering and are unbelievably happy about every single
donation. Just amazing!

And: Please don’t forget your ID or passport. A EU ID should work for
all routes, no warranty though!
Important for the route starting from Innsbruck: You do need a “new”
ID (credit card size, issued after November 2010) or a passport.

And: the legendary live ticker is running! The first teams are already
using it! Go to https://tramprennen.org/send-ticker-message/ to start
using it and to inform your friends/family/sponsors about the race and
keep them up to date. Oh well, Jonas and Ingo also finished
programming the SMS ticker function. Text +49177 – 9199062 to update
the ticker. Please share the link in all your networks!

That’s it, got to bed a last time before you hit the road!
Your Tramprennen Crew

Newsletter#2

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Beloved participants of the most awesome race in 2016,

with this email we send you the second newsletter of this year’s
Tramprennen, regarding the following topics:

1.Allocation of the routes / starting points
2.Pimp Your Profile
3.Support of our friends from EDDING
4.Media

Before starting a small note for all starters from Halle: We mixed up
Romans e-mail address in Newsletter #1! The correct one is
gro.nennerpmartnull@namor. Sorry for that!

1. routes / starting points

For the first time we planned a Tramprennen with the maximum of eight
routes to make sure that everyone can join and no one is excluded.
With a view to the current participants and teams in registration
process we can limit it to six different routes. Due to a problem of
finding enough sleeping places for up to 50 people in Innsbruck we
have to modify our plan from the last Newsletter a bit and limit
Innsbruck to one route.

So the actual plan in a nutshell:

Two routes starting from Halle (both already fully occupied), one or
two from the beautiful city of Freising (here are some free places
left!), two routes from no less beautiful Leutkirch (also places
left!) and one from Innsbruck (like Halle fully occupied).
So if you didn’t choose your route yet: You have the choice between
Leutkirch and Freising. Honestly: it would be a choice for one of the
four most beautiful routes of this year! ;-)

We gather next weekend to pack the Hitchpackages, so please be sure to
choose your starting location latest till thursday evening (August
11th)!!

2. Donations

Donations started and the counter rattles like a good old casino slot.
Great! But of course there is room for more! Ask your relatives,
buddies, work colleagues,… and/or start funny actions – it’s up
to you.
By the way: we offer the possibility to update a video to your
teamprofile. How cool is that?! Just upload your video on youtube or
some alternative platform, search and copy the link for sharing/embed
and put the code into your team profile.
Besides that: The famous Online-Liveticker is opened! Means: You can
already test the ticker and share your way till the race with all of
us! Check https://tramprennen.org/send-ticker-message/ to get there.

3. EDDING

For the eighth time in a row Edding supports us and all teams with the
famous Edding-markers. We are super happy about that!

Especially the people who already joined the race the last years have
a lot of used and almost empty Edding-markers at home. Due to that we
asked the company to send us some refill ink – all for the purpose
of sustainability. So – everyone who wants to refill their
Edding-markers: send an e-mail till thursday noon with the amount and
colors of the markers to gro.nennerpmartnull@ofni. We will pack the refill
bottles in your hitchpackage.
All your thumbs for the nature! :)

4. Media

„Do good and speak about it“ – an old and often annoying phrase.
But nevertheless very important for our project:

First to gather the ultimative maximum of donations. Besides that for
finally positive coverage on the most beautiful way of travelling:
hitchhiking!

Most of the press right now is negative, hitchhiking is considered
dangerous and you cannot change a driver’s opinion if he is not
stopping to pick you up. Our race is a wonderful possibility to change
that. And the best multipliers are YOU! Get in touch with your local
newspaper or with friends working in media and tell them about your
upcoming adventure! Especially the local newspapers are always looking
for new topics and let’s be honest: did you ever read something about
hitchhiking in there?
If you need support in any way feel free to contact us via
gro.nennerpmartnull@aidem. An overview and infos for journalists can be
found on https://tramprennen.org/media-infos/

And that’s it! For now… ;-) The exact locations for the premeetings
are coming next week. They will start on Friday, August 19th around
6pm. Be there! It is definitely cool if at least one of your teammates
can make it – but from the experience of the last years it is
absolutely worth it!

So long, we will start packing your and our Hitchpackages then ;-)

All the best and happy hippiekacke!

Tramprennen-2016-Crew

Tramprennen 2016 – Newsletter#1

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Hi everyone,

 not at all three weeks until it finally starts. And here is the first Newsletter for all participating teams, finally.. Whoop, whoop!

Here you find the important points:

  1. Registrations/Teams/ official stuff
  2. Infos about the Start
  3. Infos about the final destination
  4. Collect donations: Now it´s really going on!
  5. Film project

 

First: Great to have you on this years tramprennen! We cannot say how much we are looking forward to meet all of you. Also this year are much more than 100 people who wants to spend two awesome weeks with us on the roads of South-Western Europe and even to collect casually or especially some donations for the immensely important work of Viva Con Agua and Pro Asyl. It´s time that it finally starts: being on the streets in the morning and have no idea what to expect, before we could sit together with a drink in our hands and tell each other the best stories of the day…

  1. Registrations

The registration period is actually completed. Because we want to meet each other in Kiel next week to tackle the Hitchpackages (Shirts and bags printing, etc.). We have already submitted the orders for it, that´s the reason for registration stop. But there are still some free places on different routes, so on top of that it´s possible to registrate a team for the race.

For those, we cannot guarantee, that they get complete hitchpackages. But we try our best.
Important for you: Please, don´t change your team name! Otherwise we´ll get confuse with the packages.

If anyone wants to help us in Kiel: That would be wonderful! Just let us know by sending a message to gro.nennerpmartnull@ofni.

 

  1. Starting Points

You can still select or change your starting point. From Sunday it will be no longer possible.

There are four starting places and we will start with nine to ten teams per route. Should the actual number of participating teams not grow we just have one route from Freising and one route from Leutkirch. These two routes would probably meet each other once. It means: we´ll limit these two routes first of all. We can increase the limit if there are more teams at the end. Or if more teams prefer to start from Leutkirch or Freising instead of Innsbruck, we cn change, let us know with a mail. If you haven’t choose your starting point so far, please do it soon.

There is host for you at each starting location. These are:
Halle: Roman and Luki (Contact: gro.nennerpmartnull@namor)

Freising: Gero (gro.nennerpmartnull@oreg)

Leutkirch: Jakob (gro.nennerpmartnull@bokaj)

Innsbruck: Franzi (gro.nennerpmartnull@iznarf)

 

They organize the Premeetings and will ensure that all of you have a place to sleep in the first night and possibly a bit of drinks and food will be available for a donation or something like that. Big applause for that!

The Premeetings at every start location are at Friday!! night, August 19th!! Hitchhiking itself starts on Saturday morning August 20th with the first stage. During the Premeetings the routes will be drawn. You´ll get informations about your stages and get your Hitchpackages.

Important: Have recourse to the coordinators at the starting points only in emergencies. For general questions please write us a mail at gro.nennerpmartnull@ofni!

Specific informations (meeting point, schedule, etc.) will follow with the next newsletters!

 

  1. Final Destination in Tsigov Chark

 

All of you certainly know our goal this year. Anyway, from the name ;)
We´ll drive into the Bulgarian Mountains to the beautiful Lake Batak to the village Tsigov Chark.

For the first time in the long Hitchhiking Race history and after struggling for a while, we booked a campsite for all. Why, if there is actually nothing has to be planned?

Over the last years we became to an increasingly group. Now we have reached a size that for example we need fixed toilets to stay sustainably. That works somehow on routes with 20-25 people, but at the final destination we are more than 100 people and that is a bit more difficult. The last few years we have always found a cool place for all of us spontaneously. But we had more luck than anything else. This year we don’t want to get this risk, mainly because there is only one campsite in Tsigov Chark. So we have registered a large group. The locals are cool and they look forward to us. So a part of the costs we will collect at the final destination (the other part we have already paid out of the hitchpackages.) So please keep just 5 Euros for our payment hat.

 

  1. Collecting donations – Now it´s really going on!

 

Two weeks hitchhiking though the world, become acquainted with boundless hospitality and helpfulness, Hippiekacke etc. is one thing, but there is another very important thing: donations! We are collecting them for the projects of Viva con Agua and the work of Pro Asyl. “Water for all” and “No borders” are two goals or even utopias that we share. We want to collect the largest possible sum to support our partner organizations, to not accept, that there are so much people around the world who have no access to clean water and don´t have the free opportunity to travel to almost any country of the world. We don´t accept that they must take superman´s greatest danger to themselves to overcome limits that we don´t have.

It´s not about getting the biggest fishes. Every amount is important and can help. With suppot of our donation-partner Betterplace one can even donate just 1 Euro. For larger amounts there is of course a donation receipt.

Where do we get the sponsors? This is where you come into the game. Everyone can spend donations for your team. Or even became the team owner by sponsor a sum over 100 Euros. Then they can leave a message for you on your team profile. The past has shown, that these are mainly friends or acquaintances and relatives who were willing to support. How you can convince them? There are a lot of variety ways. Go on a bet, offer little “thankyou’s” , make crazy actions, just tell about the project and the partner organizations. To give a few suggestions we interviewed Matze from Team “Solidarische Trampwirtschaft” who already gathered some donations very successful. Check tramprennen.org/blog.

However, we also considered something:
To support every team, there are some postcards in every hitchpackage. You are very welcome to send them as a little thanks for the donations! In addition this year´s race will be “gamificated”. Sounds funny, but we think it can be super cool: Each team will receive a game card for every 50€s of donations they collect. With them you can condemn other teams to wait or do other funny things. Let yourself surprise!

So, enough prated! We keep our thumbs crossed for a successful donation search. Let us bring the donations counter to spin around!

  1. Film project

 

Roman is planning a small film project for this year´s race. If you want to be a part of it, no matter in which way, get in touch with him: gro.nennerpmartnull@namor

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So that´s it for a start, more information are coming soon!

The dearest regards from your Tramprennen-2016-Crew!