I’m back from a very nice holiday in Austria.

The first part of our holiday was spent training at the Takeda-Ryu summer stage in Vienna. Some people of our sobukan participated in the tournament and did exams. E and I are still beginners so we did not participate, but instead enjoyed watching the tournament. Part of the tournament was batto giri, which was very impressing.

See this impression from last year’s tournament:

After the tournament we also had our fair share of training, which we both really enjoyed (next year we definitely want to go again). My personal highlight was the opportunity (thanks Koen!) to train with a iato (non-sharp sword) during the first iado training. It changed my perception of aido quite a bit. Now I need to start saving so I can buy my own sword

After almost a week of training we left for Carinthia with the train. We ended up in Klagenfurt for some days and then decided to travel further south to Ossiach. We stayed in Ossiach for the rest of our holidays and enjoyed swimming in the lake and one really nice walk towards the Landskron Ruin through the woods.

Now I’m back and working on new projects both for clients as well as for Stichting Open Media/Simuze and Vrijbit.