The German Go Federation proposes to hold the congress 2017 inOberhof
in the Thuringian Forest, the heart of Germany.
The date will be the same as planned for the congress in Ürgüp:
22 July to 6 August.
Although Oberhof is a small village, it is a famous Winter sports centre, being a regular host of World Cup Events in Ski Jumping, Nordic Skiing, Biathlon, Bobsleighetc. Hence, there are plenty of restaurants in town.
Oberhof is also a popular place for summer holidays. Located at the Rennsteig, Germany's
most popular hiking
trail, other possible
summer activities besides hiking include
biking and mountainbiking, renting Segways as well as making use of the wintersports facilities such
Thuringian Forest
as summer bob (inreal bobs!), biathlon shooting and Nordic Skiing in a huge skiing hall (open each summer day).
Congress Venue and Accommodation
In order to offer highest pleasure and enjoyment for the participants, a good congress venue
needs to provide top-class playing areas as well as nice indoor and outdoor areas where youwant to spend time,enjoy a drink or playsome games. The
proposed Treff Hotel
Panorama in Oberhof
fulfils these requirements perfectly. Its
futuristic shape mimics a ski jump and thehotel provides sufficient space for morethan 600 players
Treff Hotel Panorama
within the main
Video: http://www.treff-hotel-panorama.de/fileadmin/buildings and about
user_upload/video/video-treff-hotel-panorama-oberhof.mp4
500 more in the1'Event Hall' right next to it – in the picture the smallbuilding in the lower left. Many extra rooms, multiple
bars etc. will be available to the congress participants. The top boards will be played at the top rooms
with a magnificent view over the Thuringian Forest.
All participants can be accommodated in the Treff
Panorama hotel. There are more than 300 double/twin rooms and 90 family rooms. In the building
Medium sized playing roomnext door, there are more than 50 apartments for 4
to 6 persons and 28 ‘Rennsteigstuben’, some kind of two-persons apartment.
After submitting our proposal to the EGF board, we carried on the negotiations with the hotel,
and we managed to get better rates for the hotel rooms.

Comfort RoomSuperior Room

Panorama ApartmentFamily Room

Room Type(all rooms/apartments with breakfast included, separate bathroom with bath tub/shower, telephone, SKY TV and free WiFi

Daily Rateper adult person

Comfort Room

Size: ca. 22sqm, for two adults (plus one child)

32.50€

Superior Room

Size: ca. 22sqm, for two adults.

37.50€

Family Room

Size: ca. 28sqm for up to four persons(plus one child)

3 persons: 35.00€
4 persons: 26.25€

Size: ca. 45sqm, for up to six adults plus one child.
Two separate rooms and a small kitchen unit.

2 persons: 47.50€3 persons: 35.00€
4 persons: 28.75€
5 persons: 25.00€
6 persons: 22.50€

Panorama
Apartment

Besides, Oberhof has plenty of small hotels and B&Bs. There will be around further 80 placesof accommodation for 15-30€/person in a twin/double room or holiday apartment within awalking distance of less than 5 minutes.
Finally, the camping ground offers very cheap accommodation (6€ per tent).
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The Panorama Hotel offers plenty of special facilities:
••
•••
•••

Swimming Pool,Wellness area,Sauna,
Beach Volleyball,(9 pin) bowling alley,
Squash pitches,Children animation,
Indoor and outdoor playing areas forchildren, including- bouncy castles,- a small indoor football pitch,- basket for playing basketball,- mini golf.

Hotel swimming poolDirectly in/at the hotel -- your children will enjoy this!

There are a few bars within the hotel, and there is outdoor seating with a bar and BBQ facilities
for the hotel guests. Everything is usable by the hotel guests for free. Although you will not
be allowed to bring your own drinks to the tournament hall, we will make an arrangement toget simple food and drinks like water, tea, coffee etc. at very reasonable prices at the playingareas.

Play friendly games inside…

or outside in the hotel garden

3Eat and Drink in Oberhof
Restaurants are plenty and very affordable in Oberhof. You can have a good lunch or dinner
in a restaurant close to the tournament for around 6€. If you are into fast food, there is alsoa McDonald’s in Oberhof. A good beer (0.3l) in a restaurant costs around 2€. Besides traditional German food, there are a number of international restaurants (e.g. Italian, Chinese,Swiss, Bulgarian) and also some nice upper-scale options with international cuisine.
Finally, Oberhof also offers a number of bars and pubs for those who don’t only want to play
Go until late at night…
Activities in and around Oberhof
There are plenty of things to do in and around Oberhof. Within walking distance from thehotel you will find an Exotarium, an Aquapark and a high rope course. You can visit the Ski
Jumps and the Bobsleigh Run. Do you dare to take a seat in a real bob and try it out?
Or do you like Nordic Skiing? In Oberhof you cando this even in summer. If
you are the biathlon kindof person, you can try
some shooting as well.
If this feels to wintery toyou, you can also have aswim in the barrier lakenext to the camping
Indoor skiing and biathlon in Oberhof
ground. And of course,
there are plenty of hiking trails through the Thuringian Forest starting in Oberhof. Explore
them yourselves or take part in a guided tour. There are also guided night walks with torches.
After too much of hiking, you might consider making a trip by horse carriage.
Within Germany Thuringia is famous for two kinds of food: Bratwurst and Klöße. Want toknow more about Germany’s most famous sausage? Visit the Bratwurst Museum in a neighbouring town. Or learn how to make the original Thüringer Klöße, a special kind of potato
dumplings in a cooking workshop with the current Kloßkönigin, the Dumpling Queen.

Thüringer Bratwürste

Thüringer Klöße
4Excursions
We will also offer one-day trips to places with top tourist attractions around the Thuringianforest, such as Eisenach, Saalfeld, Weimar, Bamberg, etc.

Wartburg Castle near Eisenach (65km)

Feengrotten in Saalfeld (70km)

Goethe and Schiller in Weimar (75km)

Old town hall in Bamberg (120km)

Farbglasmanufaktor(Coloured Glass Manuactory) in Lauscha (60km)

These places are of course also easily accessible by train or car for individual trips.

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Access to Oberhof
The closest airport to Oberhof is Erfurt, however, you need to be lucky to find a direct flightfrom your place to Erfurt. If you travel by plane, Frankfurt International Airport is probably
the best choice, Nuremberg Airport is also a good option.
The Oberhof train station provides connections to cities such as Erfurt, Würzburg etc. Theseare linked by high speed trains to major airports in Germany such as Frankfurt or Munich.
Distances from/to German airports by train:
Erfurt:1:20 hours
Nuremberg: 3:00 hours
Frankfurt:
3:15 hours
Munich:4:40 hours
We consider organising a shuttle bus from Frankfurt or Erfurt train station to Oberhof.
Regular train tickets in Germany are expensive. For instance, a regular one-way ticket fromFrankfurt to Oberhof costs about 67€, from Nuremberg 57€. However, you can get cheapertickets:•••

You can get a special early-booking rate (29€), when you book early online. Earlybooking rates become available three months in advance.
There are discounts for group. As a member of a group of six persons, you can get agroup-early-booking rate from only 19€ per person.
If you are prepared to travel longer only by local trains (about 4:30 hours from Frankfurt, 3:30 hours from Nuremberg), there is a special weekend fare of 60€ for six persons. No early booking required for this kind of ticket.

Oberhof is located close to the motorway A71, so it easily accessible by car. Some estimatedtravel times to Oberhof by car:
• Praha:3,5 hours• Brussels:
5 hours• Vienna:
6 hours
The Treff Panorama Hotel offers free parking.

6BudgetThis is our provisional budget plan. As most services to run a congress are covered by thecontract with the hotel, there are not many points to consider so far. We do not expect tofind one big main sponsor, but, just like in Bonn 2012, we consider it realistic and likely to findmany sponsors who are willing to give around 1,000€, adding up to more than 10,000€.
IncomeExpenditure

Registration Fees
550 players à 100€ average,incl. 1-week participants

55,000€ Rent

23,000€

Expected sponsorship(various small sponsors)

10,000€ Prizes

20,000€

Others5,000€

German Go Federation

5,000€ 10% Risk

6,500€

Sum

70,000€ Sum

69,500€Professionals

10,000€Helpers

5,000€

Please note that this budget does not contain any support from the EGF! The EGF announced to add another 10,000€ as prize money for the top European players of the European Championship. This will increase the overall amount of prize money to 30,000€.
Distribution of Prizes
We would like to set the prize money in relation to prizes of previous congresses and the EGF
policy for awarding prize money. This year’s AGM asked congress hosts to spend at least
20,000€ on prizes, and we shall respect this request. Including the 10,000€ from the EGF, ourbudget for prizes is double than from most recent congresses in the past up to 2015 (the numbers from St. Petersburg are not yet available to public).
There will be prizes for all side events as well as for 7/10 records for two-weeks players and4/5 records for one-week players in the main tournament.
Go around the Clock!
Go is what it is all about at a Go Congress, and we will offer plenty of side competitions. Besides the main tournament we will offer at least 15 side tournaments in the afternoons andevenings, including a Midnight Madness tournament for those who cannot get enough of go.
The hotel offers to keep some rooms open as long as we want them.
So it is basically up to you to add some more games to your Midnight Madness tourney games.
Professionals will attend the congress and give lectures, open game commentaries and play
simultaneous games.
Germany has a rising community of young go players. We hope to attract many of these as
well as foreign go playing children and run various events dedicated to youth players.
And of course there will be some new event as a special surprise.
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Organising Team
Just as at the Bonn congress in 2012, the congress will be run by an experienced organisation
team, consisting of a core team and plenty of volunteers. About half of the organizers of 2012agreed to take over the same job in 2016 in case the congress goes to Germany. Members ofthe core team will be in charge of certain areas, such as• Webmaster• Requests• Marketing• Professionals (Schedules, Looking after...)• Registration• Finance• Information desk
• Tournaments• Sport activities• Excursions• News• Ceremonies• Equipment and Rooms
Designated Congress Director:
Manja Marz
• Any other businessDespite the shortage of time since the EGF asked for options as substitutes for Ürgüp, we haveso far already been able to find experienced volunteers to cover most of the main areas. Themain Congress Director will be Manja Marz.
Project Plan
Seven months is a very short time to prepare a congress. To make sure that everything will
run smoothly, proper planning is essential. This is the updated draft of our project plan for
the first stage:Task

Due Date

Sign contract with Panorama Hotel

23-12

Fix Registration Fees

24-12

Launch Website

24-12

Set-up Schedule

10-01

Open Registration

10-01

Contact East Asia for Sending Professionals

10-01

Set-up Core Team

10-01

Create Flyer

10-01

First Press Release to Attract Sponsors

10-01

Set-Up Biweekly Skype Meetings

15-01
8As you can read in the open letter from the Russian and the German Go Federations, bothassociations agree to cooperate in running the congress 2017, may it take place in Sochi orOberhof. Therefore, we will include members from the Russian Go Federation in our organisation team and hope to benefit in particular from their technical equipment and expertise
We also intend to make Kerem Karaerkek, the Turkish Congress Director, part of the organising team to run side events, thereby adding Turkish cultural elements to the congress.
Objectives and Merits of Running an EGC in Germany
After getting knowledge of the cancellation of the Turkish congress in Ürgüp, the Germany Go
Federation spent much effort in finding a suitable congress place for the European Go players
within only one week. We are convinced that we fully succeeded in doing so.
Congress participants include two important groups of go fans: Those who come to have agood holiday and those who fight for titles.
By choosing a modern congress hotel in a top touristic area surrounded by peaceful natureand clean air, Hotel Panorama in Oberhof addresses the needs of both of these groups.
In addition:• Germany has a highly experienced organisation team, led by the official EGF Congress
Advisor as Congress Director. This is a big advantage in preparing a congress in such
short time.
• Both, the president of the German Go Federation as well as the assigned Congress
Director live within a good one-hour drive from Oberhof, so we can show up to sortout issues during preparation of the congress with the locals face-to-face on site.
• Germany is a popular touristic country, in particular to go players from East Asia.
• It is easily accessible from all Western European and many Eastern European countries.
• Many EGC participants might have stayed in Germany several times before and haveseen the Rhine gorge, Neuschwanstein Castle or towns like Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig orMunich, but most likely they have not yet experienced the hilly woods of the Thuringian Forest. A trip to the Thuringian Forest will provide a different, but also typical andby no means less interesting view of Germany.
• We received a very interesting offer to host the EGC from the Treff Panorama Hotel,
and a visit on 25 November exceeded all of our expectations of a perfect venue.
• The German Go Federation is financially strong and able to cover deficits if necessary.
While it is our primary goal to keep our guests happy, an EGC in Germany shall also be used
to promote Go in Germany and possibly in its surrounding neighbour countries.
••

The AlphaGo boom raised the visibility of Go a lot and Go has become of interest toGerman media. A Go congress in Germany can feed this interest, making news andbroadcasts of a Go event in German mass media likely.
Some years ago, we started a special programme to promote Go among young players.
At the last EGC in Germany, most of German go youngsters were to new at the time.
Making them come to an EGC would raise their motivation in studying Go.
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