This morning, we jumped into the car and then realized that we were missing one runner. Who was it? PETR the Czech! Of course, he had flown to Italy early in the morning to join another adventure, on tour with a music group in which he plays the bass guitar. Now who will make us laugh, with his usual sentence every second moment: ''I want to run''?

It was 10-kilometre run through the dusty and busy traffic of Tirana which brought us finally to the centre of the city, where we stopped at a school.

We were greeted with loud applause as we ran into the school.

Girls in beautiful national costumes performed a typical dance of this North-Albanian region.

We passed the torch to a representative from the President´s office, who delivered an inspiring speech to the school children.

The Minister of Culture spoke words of support for the ideals of our run.

We also heard original poems in Albanian and French, written by the pupils.

The director of the school presented us with a collection of drawings.

We had huge media coverage here, with 6 national and regional TV stations at our event.

There were members of an athletic club among the students and they joined us running, after the school ceremony.

Some of them are national athletic champions. They ran with us to Mother Teresa Square.

Rain finally caught us, on our way from Tirana up to the mountains.

Frank started to run up one really long hill and, after 5 kilometres, he said he wanted to do more. We waited for him another 5 kilometres ahead but he still would not stop - in all, "Frank the hill-killer" did a half-marathon in one stretch, uphill in rain!

He just had a lot of joy doing it!

Just before Elbasan, our final destination of the day, we met the beauty queen of Albania. Beautiful!

Tatiana explained the route to the hotel staff of Univers Hotel, at which we spent the night.

---

Team Members:
Martin Leitner (Austria), Jana Chochlikova (Slovakia), Tatiana Chochlikova (Slovakia), Frank Foerster (Germany), Amur Basic (Czech republic), Safet Belegovic (Montenegro)

Harmonemail:
You can send a message to the runners or read the messages.

< Albania 17 May < Bulgaria 17 May < Turkey 17 May

Albania 19 May > Bulgaria 19 May >

Bulgaria 18 May