Yesterday was the splitting day. One part of the team stayed in Italy and the other part departed from Bari by ferry to Dubrovnik. The ride lasted the whole night and at 07.00 the ship arrived in the harbour. As soon as the Team came off the ferry, people from the Dubrovnik City County greeted the runners. A choir of children spiced up the atmosphere with singing songs on the subject of harmony and a girl read out a beautiful text.

Ondrej, Roberto and Mark together with new comer Sebastian from Serbia and Montenegro, and Croatian organizers Ana Jerkunica, Mirela Malovic Vassung, and Drazen Vassung are making now the World Harmony Run team in Croatia. A guy, the runner of the year in Croatia for 2005, also joined the team and he really had such a great experience informing us later on how he felt as if flying while running.

We entered Dubrovnik ‘stari grad’ - old town from the east side, as if from the sea thus were able to see the town from the perspective by far the most famous - the complete city walls in all their beauty and magic. Dubrovnik is really a city like no other. Running through the thousands of years old stoned streets we came to the main square where some people already gathered although it was that early. Right next to the statue of Orlando and in front of the most famous church named after the city guardian St.Vlaho the runners witnessed one of the most beautiful speeches ever. Mr Jelavic, the deputy mayor recalled the time how Dubrovnik suffered during the severe war, and when the runners who came to Dubrovnik in those difficult days, encouraged them to still believe in peace and harmony and gave them joy and hope that somebody out there still believed in such things. Being a sportsperson himself he said he knows what it feels to do things together and to be a team and to know how to win and sometimes even to lose, and he emphasized how much he admired the ideas that our team are spreading around. The nicest was his note on a fact that the prize for winning in a competition is a gold medal but the prize for doing such a thing is unspeakable.

It was also very interesting to see ‘lindjo’, a traditional folk dance. Dancers were very nice and no one could take the smiles from their faces. Then we gave an interview for the Croatian national TV.

The City mayor came to meet the runners and then we started to run out of the town across Stradun the famous Dubrovnik’s old street.

Next we had the sea on our right side and the road in front of us. Dubrovnik’s area really enchanted all of the runners finding it one of the most beautiful coastline ever visited by the run.

We visited another school after a few kilometers. Young schoolboys and girls dancers from Slano then performed another presentation of a lindjo. A wish to recognize the beauty of difference was the main emphasis of the speech by the mayor in Slano.

Then it was just the sea and the road for 85km, and the Team speedily make up time from the morning. A famous, eagerly Croatian ultra-distance runner Ivan Jelavic joined the team in Metkovic, and ran with us to his hometown Vrgorac.

Here we had over 100 chidren running with us. Ivan is also a teacher in local school and he’s like a hero here. The town of Vrgorac made us a great welcome playing traditional Dalmatian songs and presenting us with t-shirts with Tin Ujevic (born in Vrgorac, and one of the greatest Croatian poets) picture printed on. The runners were treated like celebrities, with children clamouring for their autographs.

The children must have heard that our German runner, Roberto, is an excellent cook, as he was inundated with children pushing paper and pen in front of him. I think he was quite overwhelmed by the situation.

We’ll never forget these places where the blossomed trees and flowers smell so nice and so magically and all you can see is the green of the nature, and all you can hear is the birds singing.

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