The International Four Days March, also called 4Daagse or Nijmegen March is the world’s largest marching event with a combined track of about 160 kilometres. Every year ten thousand of participants take up this challenge including thousands of soldiers from all around the word.

To successfully participate in this event thorough training and preparation is necessary just as it is for a marathon. The biggest difference however is that the march is not just an individual performance but rather a group performance. Military participants are part of marching groups of around 10 to 20, which spend time training together, teaching each other regarding equipment and preparation, and ultimately motivate each other to pull through.

Due to the many foreign nationalities participating, especially the servicemen and women who are all situated together in a camp just outside the city of Nijmegen, the 4Daagse is not only a great chance to showcase the results of relentless training and discipline but also for international understanding.

Furthermore, I want to highlight the outstanding hospitality of the Dutch, cheering and handing out snacks along the route. This is even more astonishing from a German point of view, Germany invading the country during the Second World War and even banning this particular march. Now the German delegations’ teams were sometimes the most joyfully welcomed.

I am grateful to see that the pasts seem to be the past for most of the people in Nijmegen and that we nowadays see each other’s as friends, as we should!

Some of my marching groups members said that there are only two options for people who did the 4Daagse:

Declaring this was the first and the last time, and never coming back

or

Acknowledging that this was one of the best experiences in life, already starting to plan for the next years

For me I am certainly eager to go through all this struggle again in the future and would be glad to meet some of you on the track or at the camp in 2024!