Newness, newness - A new month, a new morning, a new country: Welcome to Albania! Early today our ferry arrived in the harbor of Durres, where we started off right away. We ran off the boat straight into our first short interview with a national TV crew. After all our runners had introduced themselves, we set off. Around a dozen kids joined in for our today's first leg - all the way to the capital Tirana.

To the joy of all the runners, it turned out our route would lead us along the beach! It was a spectacular sight to have a police car ahead, several other cars behind and our team of runners in between, each with a huge smile on their faces .

In Tirana we were invited into a restaurant for lunch.We had pizza and french fries, before we were shown the Mother Teresa Monument in the centre of the city.

Later on, on the way to Elbasan, our final destination for today, we had the opportunity for a little work out - 30 km uphill into the Albanian mountains. To make it a little more comfortable for the runners, a downpour made sure that nothing (and I mean literally nothing..) of the runners' gear remained dry.

After finishing her 7 km uphill stretch which seemed more like swimming then running, our new runner Tatjana from Slovenia, had to give another short interview to our TV team that was following us the whole day.

To everybody's relief we arrived in Elbasan before it got dark outside. We had enough time to clean our van, take shower (to write the report :-) and to enjoy dinner together with our Albanian friends in the restaurant of the hotel we were staying.

Another wet and exhausting day is over. If we haven't announced it so far - yes, we are ready for sunshine and warm weather!

Our deep respect to all the policemen on their motorbikes who braved the rain and accompanied us the whole time. Thank you!

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