This morning was quite special. Our first visit was to the Mr. Schabergschool in The Hague. A multicultural school with 27 happy and enthusiastic kids that welcomed the team. We talked to them and explained what we are doing all these months on the road and whom we all meet along the way. While talking we tried to make a connection with the children to bring the idea of friendship and harmony between people more to the fore.

We were happy that this whole classroom wanted to become a member of the harmony running team. They said the motto (really loud!!): ‘Harmony begins with me’, they ran with us around the school (really fast!!) and they passed the torch between each other.

One of our team members works at the school which made it especially nice to visit all these wonderful kids of teacher Esmeralda and Hermien.

After the school we ran to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest judicial institution of the world and a part of the United Nations. The ICJ is situated in the Peace Palace, an amazingly beautiful building, a real palace. It was built as a peace temple and is a true monument.

Many different countries offered parts of the building from their own resources. For instance: Italian marble, Belgian gates and American coloured glass windows.

The palace opened in 1913 and the Peace Palace fitted perfectly with the dream of world peace as cherished by the First Hague Peace Conference. After its completion, it was hailed as a true dream palace for world peace, "just as powerful and grand as the idea of world peace itself’", to quote a Dutch writer of the time.

We had a very special meeting here. The runners ran over the big lawn towards the palace carrying the torch and flags from many different nations and at the end climbed the stairs to the top were we were very honoured to meet the vice president of the ICJ, Mr Al-Khasawneh from Jordan.

We passed him the torch and he was extremely kind to give some of his precious time to welcome the World Harmony Runners and to offer some words of inspiration and support. He was all smiles and goodwill in receiving the torch and was kind enough to run a few steps with us, even though he had an extremely busy day as the Court was scheduled to pronounce a verdict later that afternoon.

After that we were led inside to take a closer look at the court room. We had been here last year as well and were very happy to be back indeed.

From the ICJ we went straight to another institution in The Hague, this time a political one.

We were greeted by two members of the Dutch parliament, Krista Van Velzen from the socialist party and Mariko Peters from the green party awaited us at the inner court of the parliament.

Both were extremely kind and supportive and ran a lap with us around the square. We are very grateful for their sincere encouragement.

From the parliament in The Hague we ran to the town of Katwijk, where we were received at the ‘Duinroos’ elementary school. We first met all the children in the schoolyard and ran a few laps with them.

After that we went inside and visited all the classes separately, giving all the kids the chance to hold the torch and answering their many questions.

From Katwijk we ran the remaining distance to Amsterdam, the capital of The Netherlands, where we will have the final ceremony tomorrow. That’s going to be an exciting day!

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Distance: 47km

Team Members:
Salil Wilson (Australia), Dipavajan Renner, Edi Brodtrager (Austria), Ondrej Vesely, Rosta Vagner, Michaela Pokorma (Czech Republic), Balavan Thomas (England), Rabinath de Lange, Pradeep Hoogakker, Roos de Waart, Peter Zuidema(Netherlands), Ieva Kurzemniece (Latvia), Akos Laczko (Hungary), Aleksej Egorov (Russian Fed.)

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