After a restful night and a superb breakfast at our hotel accommodation Hotel Europe Basel we said our final farewells to those runners that have to return home. We said goodbye to our Swiss runners and country co-ordinator Pranam. Many thanks to Pranam, and the daily co-ordinators for organising the Run under difficult circumstances and it was great fun and a joy.

We warmly welcomed Elke from Germany who joins the International Team for the weekend.

We crossed into Germany at Friedlingen/Klein-Haningen where we met our very happy German co-ordinators and helpers Achim, Harald and Wolfgang. Our first meeting in the country was at Weil am Rhein where we met the vice mayor Norbert Adam.

The town is on the border of three countries - Germany, France and Switzerland.

In good heart and good voice we sang the World Harmony Run Song .

Our next meeting was with the vice mayor, Marion Dammann at Lorrach. It is a hometown of the Milka factory, so we got some good chocolate.

At Lorrach we also ran with local runners from the running club. (FeG-sports.de) They were very friendly and good runners.

At Laufen we met a group of local runners that ran with us to Staufen. Runners are always smilers, and one of the local runners was wearing a great t-shirt.

The weather was kind to us with the dark clouds from the morning clearing to reveal bright sunshine through the white clouds. We ran past vineyards and on the south facing slopes we could see there were many vines.

The running was very enjoyable in the cool light breeze, and it felt rather autumnal. We have noticed over the past week that the summer appears to be ebbing away and autumn is slowly approaching. The days are getting shorter and the long days we experienced in Scandinavia seem a far and distant memory away.

In Staufen, the historic city of Faust, we met the vice mayor Herbert Rinderle.

From Staufen we continued onto Freiburg where we met two local runners. They ran with us through the city and we had a fantastic reaction from people and motorists who waved, cheered and applauded us. We had even angels with us protecting the torch runner!

In Freiburg park we where guests at the annual festival, Schlossbergfest where we met many young children who held the torch and ran with us. After the ceremony we met the organiser of the festival who held the torch.

For an hour the dark clouds had threatened rain, and as soon as we started the ceremony it poured down. People scattered in all directions to find shelter. Fortunately we were on stage under cover, so many people joined us to avoid the pouring rain. We met some kind and warm hearted people including the Indian and Chinese people on their food stalls.

To end our day we ran from the festival over the bridge leading from the park, and as we did so the sun came out and revealed a magnificent and brilliant rainbow.

It was a wonderful ending to our first day’s running in Germany.

We checked into the four-star Hotel Stadt Freiburg that had so generously provided our accommodation for the night. We met with the manager Mr Henning Buchelt, who was very supportive of the idea of the World Harmony Run.

We had the most delicious Indian meal cooked by Kerstin. It was one of the best meals we’ve had on the World Harmony Run. Completely full and contented we returned to our hotel and retired to bed for an early night.

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Distance: 80km

Team Members:
Anete Klavina (Latvia), Bernadett Hammel (Hungary), Elke (Germany), Mark Collinson (England), Ondrej Vesely (Czech Republic), Petar Mihaylov (Bulgaria), Petr Machacek (Czech Republic), Sandro Zincarini (Italy), Terezia Hammel (Hungary), Veronika Kuliskova (Slovakia).

Harmonemail:
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