The ship from Turku sailed into Stockholm at 06.30 under a blue sky and brilliant sunshine. We had all slept well in our cabins and were fully refreshed.

We met up with our good friend Mahalaya in the centre of Stockholm, beside a plaque marking the city of Stockholm's dedication to the cause of World Harmony.

On the plaque it reads,

"With its majestic natural and man-made beauty, Stockholm preserves the sacred purity of land, water and sky while soaring toward ever-new horizons of achievement. Here, the inner world and the outer world, the ancient and the modern, the Swedish depth and the international breadth, harmoniously blend and complement each other."

On this Sunday morning Stockholm was peaceful and still, and felt quite deserted. Yesterday Sweden, along with Finland celebrated Midsummer Eve, so people have gone to the countryside just as in Helsinki.

The whole Team drove to a local runner's apartment, where we had a great breakfast.

After negotiating a rather complicated and confusing route out of Stockholm we started running to cover the short distance today. Initially we nearly lost Jadranka, but her experience found the correct road to run on. However, Olesya, one of our Russian girls, did get lost. For about 30 minutes we drove roads that she might have taken. We stopped at a petrol station to ask a driver, and Petar was met by the response, "Woman, torch, I don't understand what you mean; speak to my friend". Her friend was able to understand Petar (more than we can sometimes!) and pointed us in the right direction. As she did so, we could see Olesya running on a completely wrong road towards us. We later discovered that she had simply misunderstood Ondrej's Russian instructions. He had told her to go straight and keep the rail track to your left, but Olesya went straight then turned left at a roundabout. From now Ondrej promised only to speak instructions in English to our Russian runners.

On the road we meet many characters. One such person was a man driving an American 1960s car. We all piled in his car and took a photograph with him.

We also met some local climbers. Petar looked the part, but unfortunately he didn't have time to climb a rock face.

The countryside was similar to parts of England with farmers making hay whilst the sun shines. The weather was sunny with a cool breeze that made running very refreshing and enjoyable. There were of course some differences from England: a "beware of moose" road sign, and one runner badly imitating a moose!

We split into two teams to run the day's kilometres before both World Harmony Run vans met up outside Uppsala and ran the final 3 km into the centre.

We finished early and met our Sweden country co-ordinators, Komal and Mahalakshmi. They kindly let us stay the night at their magnificent house, which we thoroughly enjoyed and they were great hosts.

We ate our sandwiches (kindly prepared by Svetlana and Olesya in the morning) out in the garden. To end the day, this was followed later by a fantastic evening meal prepared by Jadranka.

Late in the afternoon Martin, our Austrian runner, who had been the team leader in Russia, unfortunately left us to return home to Graz. We wish him a safe journey and he plans to join the Team again in Iceland at the end of August - we look forward to running with him again. We gladly welcome Roger from Germany to the Team. As soon one member leaves he/she is instantly replaced by another, keeping the dynamism and energy of the Team nice and high. We will all need high energy levels for tomorrow to run the scheduled 200 km!

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Distance: 76km

Team Members:
Alexey Egorov (Russia), Colm Magee (Ireland), Franz Hintereger (Austria),Gints Peleckis (Latvia), Jadranka Grbic (Serbia & Montenegro), Janos Derekas (Hungary), Jirka Albrecht (Czech Republic), Mark Collinson (England), Olesya Ilyasova (Russia), Ondrej Vesely (Czech Republic), Petar Mihaylov (Bulgaria), Peter Zuidema (Netherlands),Petr Machacek (Czech Republic), Roger Rogge (Germany), Svetlana Gorshkova (Russia), Valentine Bebik (Ukraine).

Harmonemail:
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