It was time again for the Leipzig Arnisadores to leave their home turf to accept the invitation of Guro Dan Kroupa to attend a training course with Grandmaster Randy Remolin in Brno, Czech Republic. In search of new insights and to explore and overcome their own limits.

On Friday, 17 November 2023 at 2 pm, we set off in two cars in the direction of Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic, to Prague.

Torsten, Alexander, Marko, Micha and Mandy from Leipzig and Patrick from Königslutter were accompanied by Janine and Annika, the partners of Micha and Patrick.

We travelled the 450 km to the Czech Republic in two cars in convoy. We made relatively good time and only needed two "bull breaks"... ;)

We arrived at the Hotel Cosmopolitan at around 7pm. After checking in and settling into our rooms, we made ourselves comfortable in the hotel restaurant and enjoyed a good dinner accompanied by piano music.

We started the next day with a proper breakfast. Afterwards, Janine was kind enough to drive everyone in two trips to the historic gymnasium under the castle, where we were due to start at 11am.

On Saturday and Sunday we trained from 11am to 1pm and 2pm to 4pm.

We immediately started with techniques that would accompany us for the next two days, the Sinawali and later Palis-Palis. Many variations were shown with counter techniques, resolutions and disarming. At the beginning, everyone had two sticks, then one had two and one had one stick. Or two sticks against one knife. Then one stick against one knife. Stick against unarmed and knife against unarmed...

At the end of the course it was Mano Mano, i.e. completely unarmed. Whether stick, knife in knife position or dagger position or unarmed, the techniques were always the same but due to the different constellations we had more or less problems with the realisation.

We had an hour's break between 1 and 2 pm, which was used to regenerate, to discuss or repeat the techniques again or to get some fresh air and take a look round the town or the castle, which was just round the corner.

We were picked up by Janine and Annika at 4pm on Saturday and took the tram back to the hotel together. During the day they visited the city and a castle, the weather was very good. At 7.45 pm, the German and two Hungarian participants met in front of the hotel and walked together to the evening meeting point with the others. After a short walk to the "Restaurante Na Chate", they enjoyed a delicious dinner and lots of conversation. It was a very cosy evening and we were back at the hotel by midnight.

Sunday we went to breakfast at 9am and after checking out we took the tram back to the gym. Janine and Annika accompanied us and then went on through the city. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't quite so good on Sunday. It was raining.

By the time the course ended at 4 p.m., everyone's heads were already spinning.

Everyone said a warm goodbye and thanked us for the informative course.

Before we set off on our journey home, we stopped for a bite to eat at the nearby Stopkova restaurant in the city centre. After Janine and Torsten had collected the cars from the Hotal, we set off for home at around 19:30. Now we only needed 1 break, everyone was knocked out and wanted to go home. We arrived in Leipzig at around midnight. Annika and Patrick had to drive another 2 and a half hours to Königslutter. Fortunately, everyone was on holiday on Monday and could recover.

We would like to thank GM Randy for this great and interesting course and Dan and his team for organising it. We would love to come back to Brno.