That does not mean that there were no trainings and happenings, they were simply not inspiring enough to kick my butt to sit down and write a post. Things in the club are quite the same, people also, not many new members and maybe a few old ones who come now and then. From one point of view it gives the feeling of having a Hankuk-style club all the time. Master Kim would probably like to have more new members despite I (and some others) even do not miss them too much. Economic approach should not be ignored...
Therefore in this post I would only like to share some (also photo) experiences from TKD camp on Vogar, Slovenian mountain above Bohinj Lake. We went there for reasonable price from June 26th to July 2nd, not knowing what to expect. We got much more than expected, luckily! And I decided quite in the last moment, thinking there is nothing to lose and comforting myself that working few hours a day over very slow mobile internet connection is not taking a vacation.
The team that went up there was small enough to insure decent sleeping rooms organization, yet big enough to make trainings look like more than a bunch of lunatics. Altogether there were 9 grown up people and 9 children, one (10th) guy had to go back after two days. Master Kim's idea was to invite as many people as possible, not necessarily with any TKD knowledge, to have fun. Except for one enthusiastic father (who later turned quite talented and enjoyed trainings as much as his red-belted son) and my sister who joined us to relax her lawyer nerves and renew her skills since she stopped training some years ago, we were all experienced Taekwondo-ists.
While still driving to the top (OK, the mountain is not so high with its 1054m ASL,
but still three times more than normal elevation and very rocky) via roads which took out some performance from my AWD, I felt the presence of doubt about training camp site choice, but as I always say - life is an adventure, you can not plan everything. So I like the rest decided let be surprised.
The first training of all we had was of course dragging equipment and other stuff some kilometers after the last point we were allowed to reach by car. That also gave us the first feeling of what it is to be mountain-mounted. And for several days almost cut-off of the civilization...
It seemed somewhat optimistic to go for Taekwondo training somewhere in the mountain since such mountain places are known only for people who like walking (in small groups or alone) across steep and stony paths up and down hill sides, often half-blocked with fallen trees or rolling stones (extremely slippery when wet). Of course one can not hope that in such woods and cliffs there is a Gym suitable for TKD training, but finding some plain square meters to have a decent surface to do a few jumps, kicks and other common TKD actions is also a challenge. Which shown very true. Like visible on photos, it was an art not to break something or twist some of joints while balancing between rocks on different elevation, shortening steps and redirecting moves with every action. That was the real test for our TKD mastery, more than knowledge itself.
Unfortunately, training on sandy and dusty "terrace" or concrete-paved dining area outside mountain house did not show much more convenient. As much as mountain paths shown practical for morning several kilometers run upside down...
... after which every-morning-7-o-clock tour we started to feel quite conditioned. Fresh, clean air and cold drinking water must really be healthy! :-)
Anyways, the plan was to have three trainings a day, which we fulfilled. In average everyone missed at least one and two were cancelled for overload and hiking. Not to count but guess in six days we had roughly 20 trainings. For me, that WAS a record. Especially in such conditions as extreme heat and inappropriate terrain. I wonder how my Kwon shoes survived...
Relations and socialization were at real high level all the time. For a long time I had not been involved in a happening with more that 10 people where after few days groups would not form and some unpleasant discussions initiated. Here we really experienced a real team atmosphere, even kids were good and did not cause any troubles. Well, except for gambling. At least they did not start drinking... and had no real money to play for.
Well, after all they probably took an example from older party. Texas-Hold'em evenings with excellent red wine (making landlord happy to sell few bottles every day, which is rare event for him) gave the cream to adventure-vacation feeling.
Speaking of relations, of course I took extreme caution in men-to-women relations which resulted in some attitude-correcting actions such as this one... :-)
Beside main training "areas" around the dome, we had two beautiful site-seeing places, on opposite sides of the mountain top, where we could relax in the free time (we had three trainings a day) and at one of them (at the end of running track) we had morning training, trying to scare s*it out of people in the wally. Like we heard from the inhabitant on the last day while leaving, we almost succeeded. :-)
To be real "mountaineers", we took a walk several hundred meters higher to Planina Jezero (Lake Mountain) and few brave among us took a forbidden bath in beautiful cold lake. We had a small conflict with local cows, luckily, without casualties.
The rest of all would probably not be interesting for most readers: nice food (after some corrections in the menu when housekeepers notified we are really going to train hard three times a day and something else than rice on milk would be appropriate), some drinks and good sleep at night. Most of all lots, lots of fun. And hope to experience some so nice days ASAP. And I like to thank Master Kim, all of participants, and our HouseMaster and his assistant for making it even more special.
On photos above accompanied by two blondes - my sister and master Jelka.
For the very end few more photos, description is probably not necessary. Thank you for reading this long post!
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