< Kyokushin Summercamp on Sylt >

From 1st through 6th of August I participated as a candidate for shodan in this years German Kyokushin summer camp in List on the island of Sylt. The approximately 40 participants, among them four kids, were housed in the youth hostel "Mövenberg", in the north of Sylt. Here is a picture of some of our group members:

Here is a picture of our accomodation, called "Peter Pan" (you know what Peter used to say: everyone can fly - all one needs is a happy thought ;-) )

The mood was very good and the camp started with an evening training at 8pm on the very first day; during the next days Marek Zmarzly took care of the German competitors as a trainer for the coming world championships in Tokyo: Alireza Shams (1st Dan, Hamburg), Darius Schoeneich (1st Dan, Dortmund) and Milena Kovaleva (4th Kyu, Frankfurt). Other sempais (including me) joined the group to help prepare the guys for the championship.
Our group had to perform a running course each day at 6am and we were drilled by Marek with fighting combinations and sparring.

The other group was trained by Sensais Ulrich Münzer, Darius Czaplarski, Slawomir Urbanczyk and Sempai Peter Gawlik, while the performance of the examinees was always thoroughly monitored by the black belts.
Independently of the groups, there were normally four training sessions per day, and the breaks between the trainings were spiced up by beach-volleyball, Sumo and Rugby.

We visited various nice places on Sylt ;-) Here with my "XXL-Burger" in the restaurant Sansibar:

We all enjoyed the good and mostly sunny weather, the sunbathing and the water training with Gi - the sunsets on Sylt were also very nice:

A spontaneous "after-work" party in front of "Peter Pan":

On the fourth day, the examinees had to show kihon, kata and their stamina under the eyes of the present Sensais and Sempais.
The final test for the shodan candidates, 20 rounds of kumite against brown and black belts, came on the fifth day. I was tired but happy when the examination was over and I was already looking forward to the sayonara beachparty, here Evgeny and I directly after the test:

This is the beautiful landscape where Evgeny and I passed our shodan test:

On the sixth day, we had a final running course at 6:30am (half an hour later as usual due to sayonara partying last night ;-) ), then we all met for breakfast to hear the results of the examinations: Sempai Evgeny and I passed and we are now proud to be Kyokushin Shodans - OSU!

For me personally, going Shodan on Sylt was an experience that I will never forget. I wish to thank all Sensais and Sempais for helping me redefine my own limits ;-)

Some more impressions from northern Sylt:

 

<Prague>

Recently, I have been to Prague for a short weekend trip. Wonderful city, beautiful architecture, (mostly) friendly people, nice food, tasty beer ;-)

In case you didn't know: Prague is the home to such diverse cultural amusings like the Kafka museum, the museum of medieval torture instruments, the museum on communism and the museum of sexual toys ;-)

I have taken some very nice pictures there, but I will only put the most beautiful and/or fascinating ones in this blog.

Number #1 (the most fascinating picture):


I took this picture somewhere in Prague near the hotel, I don't remember the street name. But I have been told that this sidewall is famous throughout Prague for it's varying paintings. To me, it seems to represent the eternal fate of destruction and reconstruction that we are experiencing...

Number #2 (the most interesting picture):


This picture is called "Absinth Dreams" and I took it in the restaurant "Slavia" in Prague. This was a very interesting restaurant, indeed. Even Hillary Clinton has already been there...