Summer aikido in Berlin
The end of the summer holidays was approaching, and some of us headed to Berlin to spend the last weekend of August at a summer aikido seminar in Berlin. This year’s edition brought something new: it took place at two locations simultaneously (Kranich Dojo and Little Kung Fu School), so the teachers’ lessons ran in parallel. Over the course of four days, each participant had the opportunity to attend lessons with any of the eight teachers of their choice. The teachers present were Heidi Grot and Reiner Buchholz from Germany, Gaston Nicolessi from France, Terhi Kallonen from Finland, Jorma Lyly from Sweden, Cath Davies from the United Kingdom, Andrea Arobba from Uruguay, and Martin Švihla from the Czech Republic. It was a time of enjoyable and intensive practice, meeting new people and old friends, which was facilitated by the time between practices and during joint dinners and barbecues.
Personally, I brought back a unique and new experience from Germany. It was my first visit to Berlin and my first time participating in a seminar abroad. I divided my time between selected lessons and exploring the city and its surroundings. This proved to be a good choice, as it allowed me to avoid being overwhelmed by the many new stimuli from the exercises, absorb new information, and at the same time gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in the culture. The paintings in the Old National Gallery on Museum Island and in the Barberini Museum in nearby Potsdam are definitely worth a visit. I got to know Berlin as a place of many faces, where social differences in society are visible, but at the same time it is a colorful cultural city adorned with beautiful buildings, squares, and hidden (in many cases even magical) courtyards. During the exercises, I enjoyed being “here and now,” where the obligations of everyday life could be put aside. I also noticed new aspects of the exercises that meeting others made possible.
The above describes one specific experience from the seminar, but for each of us, those days in August were a unique time that we each filled in our own way, not only with aikido, and now they are a fond memory for us.
