Today our journey into the Baltic countries began. Everybody in the team was looking forward to running through this special region, in north-eastern Europe.

We started at the border between Poland and Lithuania.

Despite being the 25th of July, it was quite cold. So we had to spontaneously warm up our hands!

Our old friend of the World Harmony Run, Romas came all the way there to greet us. He brought several Lithuanian runners, and with our little international group we started the run northwards.

The first meeting took place in Kalvarija, where the mayor received us. The community fed us like Christmas geese; we got so much to eat that we could hardly continue running!

Afterwards, the mayor took the torch for a few steps and we then went on.

Along the road in the middle of nowhere, runners constantly joined in and carried the torch a few kilometres.

As we reached Marijampole, the deputy mayor welcomed us and spoke very nicely about the Run.

Our friends from Lithuania invited us for a special lunch: Romas, the Lithuanian coordinator is also a singer and songwriter. So while we had lunch, he entertained us with a few of his own compositions.

Here in Lithuania you are offered food all the time; hospitality is very important in the Baltics. We wonder if we can keep up running when we have to eat so much!

As Lithuania has a very low population density, not much happens in the countryside - you meet people mainly in villages. So we made our way towards Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania.

As we reached the city, a group of local runners welcomed us and we went for a final lap through the beautiful, historical part of Kaunas.

We reached a central square in front of an old church and all of our team members received tons of presents from the director of the Olympic Committee of Kaunas.

He told us about the great tradition of Lithuanian athletes at the Olympics; it is outstanding that a small country like Lithuania has already won 29 gold medals!

We ended our first day in Lithuania enjoying a nice evening dinner with our friends in Kaunas.

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Distance: 105km

Team Members:
Dipavajan Renner, Sandra Aurenhammer and Martin Prettenhofer (Austria), Anita Borics (Hungary), Roger Rogge (Germany), Roos de Waart (Netherlands), Sandro Zincarini (Italy), Ksenia and Daria Soboleva (Russian Fed.)

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Gallery: See more images!

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