Our alarm clocks woke us up at 4:30 this morning – a very early start, as we had to drive from Copenhagen to the port of Rodbyhavn in southern Denmark to catch the morning ferry to Puttgarden, Germany. Sadly we said farewell to our smiley Dutch runners, and goodbye to Gints who travels back to Latvia.

As we arrived at the port it started to rain; something we haven’t seen for quite a while. The ferry trip from Denmark to Germany lasted only 45 minutes, and the rain had cleared by the time we met our German regional co-ordinators Johanna and Caroline. We were also met by a reporter from the local newspaper. We hope to see an article and a photograph in the newspaper tomorrow.

Our first meeting of the day was in “Whirlwind” kindergarten in Burg on the island of Fehmarn, 7 km from the town of Puttgarden.

There we were joyfully welcomed by 4 and 5 year old children waving national flags they had made themselves. It was a fabulous experience to visit these young children.

They were so enthusiastic and ran with the torch on the playing field with their teachers and principal of the kindergarten. Also children from the Klaus-Kroth-Schule were present an have sung a song for the runners. They then formed a large circle and passed the torch to each other. The Mayor from the town of Burg, Otto Uwe-Schmiedt not only ran with the Torch in his hand but he was so kind to translate Ondrej's speech into German, so that the children and everybody else could understand what the team captain of the international team of runners was saying.

On our way we crossed bridges spanning the Baltic Sea.

Throughout the day we had three meetings with mayors in Oldenburg in Holstein, Lutjenburg and Neustadt.

As we ran along the roads in the sweltering heat we had a great reaction from passing motorists who waved, flashed their lights and honked their horns.

Neustadt, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, has been a ‘Town of Europe’ since 1969 and every three years holds a folkdance festival where many nationalities congregate to celebrate in harmony.

Before we finished our day’s running at Ahrensboek we met with a delegation of the community of Scharbeutz and Mayor Günter Stoyke at Poenitz and they kindly gave us much needed food and refreshments.

After a long and hot day we were relieved to reach Ahrensboek. We finally drove to Hamburg where we were to sleep for the next two nights. Exhausted we retired to bed early – 23.00 – quite late, but on the World Harmony Run this is early.

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Distance: 110km

Team Members:
Colm Magee (Ireland), Jadranka Grbic (Serbia & Montenegro), Janos Derekas (Hungary), Mark Collinson (England), Marlen Bernhard (Germany), Olesya Ilyasova (Russia), Ondrej Vesely (Czech Republic), Petar Mihaylov (Bulgaria), Petr Machacek (Czech Republic), Svetlana Gorshkova (Russia), Valentine Bebik (Ukraine).

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

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