The Fifa World Cup has left indelible images of Germany in our minds from the month-long football fest. Now, a three-day, all-action German window just before Christmas is seeking to carry that connect with Calcutta forward.

The Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC), the oldest bipartite (now bi-national) chamber of commerce in Calcutta, will hold the final lap of its golden jubilee celebrations in the city, tentatively from December 14 to 16.

To make the marking ?memorable?, the chamber is working on a three-pronged initiative aimed at underlining Germany?s growing association with Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee?s Brand Bengal.

?We are looking at the probability of coinciding Lufthansa?s inaugural flight out of Calcutta, the flagging off of Metro Cash & Carry?s EM Bypass distribution hub and launching a management course with a German B-school tie-up, all in that three-day window,? IGCC regional director B.G. Roy tells Metro.

German ambassador in India Bernd Muetzelburg is expected to be the chief guest at these functions and also at a ?lavish reception? lined up by the chamber at Tollygunge Club on December 16.

A golf tournament for the IGCC Cup will be held on the Tolly greens as part of the celebrations as well.

Lufthansa officials have been hinting at a ?2006 winter? launch of their Calcutta operations and IGCC Calcutta is hopeful it could be squeezed into that three-day frame. ?Lufthansa?s director of South Asia operations Werner Heesen has promised to look into this possibility,? says Roy.

The German carrier will operate three flights a week on the Calcutta-Frankfurt sector and the travel trade buzz is that the inaugural flight will take off on December 15.

Metro Cash & Carry, ?system leader worldwide in cash-and-carry wholesale distribution, servicing exclusively professional business consumers?, is also on track for a December inauguration.

Top officials of the German giant, including Thomas M. Hubner, chief executive, Metro Cash & Carry International, who met chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee recently, were assured of ?fast-track clearances?, and the government has been ?true to its promise?, according to the chamber.

The two-year MBA course for which city-based Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management (IISWBM) has tied up with the Institute for International Management Consulting of the Ludwigshafen University of Applied Sciences, will also be inaugurated by the ambassador as part of the IGCC golden jubilee.

One semester will be held in Calcutta, another in Germany, where students will be allowed to work and earn. The course kicks off in January 2007.

?The ground has been laid with the soccer pitch and Germany?s image has received a boost in this city, mad about its football. We hope to carry the association forward with this three-day window,? says G?nter Wehrmann, consul-general of Germany in Calcutta.

Wehrmann feels the stage is now set for a multi-layered collaboration with Germany and that one of the surest ways to Calcutta?s heart is through its taste buds.

?The German food festival during the World Cup (held at a city star address), including the German evening for the F&B trade, was a huge success and I think such promotion of German food will continue in future,? he adds.

The golf tournament will attract participation from members of all the IGCC units in the country, including the Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore chapters. ?We are sending feelers to all our members and hope a fair sprinkling of Germans will participate in the meet,? says Roy.