Memories of Tomsk — Siberia Katherine Loukopoulos

“A picture is worth a thousand words”. If you look at this picture surely you will see the joy I felt while I stood before the Tomsk Seminar participants.

Our Training Hall

My joy was not because I was able to visit Tomsk in order to teach a Kobudo seminar. My joy stemmed from being able to fulfil a long time ago childhood dream which was to engage in training with Russian athletes.

Born in Greece, raised in the Greek tradition, schooled with enough classical history and philosophy and trained by strict Okinawa teachers, I spent most of my youth in search of athletic excellence. Rumours had it that Russian athletes were great; Olympic results confirmed it. Therefore, I wanted to learn about the Russian training methods which shaped their athletes into finely tuned turbo machines.

Due to the world’s political differences the many roads to Russia were blocked and my dream remained just a dream. Then, Perestroika took place, and the clouds cleared my path to Russia. You can understand, therefore, it was not just another training trip, but the training trip of my dreams.

When I arrived in Tomsk I came to face innocent looking youth, eager to learn youth, bright eyed youth. I wondered if I really had something to share with those young people. I sweated and trained daily with each person. I told them stories of great teachers who lived on Okinawa, and planted seeds in their hearts of future trips in order to study there because Okinawa was the Mecca of Karate and Kobudo.

In a few days I shared my entire training life with the participants. And, although the interpreters translated our words, it only served for technical understanding. Our sweat, our smiles, our repetitions, our effort, and our difficulties at the training camp bonded us in spite of our language handicap.