Rolling Through The World: Rolling through Russia Part 1: Vladivostok - rolling with Magid Hage, climbing huge electricity post and surprise bday cake

So my journey has officially began. Vladivostok has been super welcoming as my first stop. But first, let me briefly describe how I got there.

To get to Russia, instead of taking the plane from Incheon to Vladi I decided to take a ferry from Donghae. It's slightly more expensive (around 165 usd with students' discount) but it's totally worth it. Of course the only way to get to Donghae was via hitchhiking, so after my last lunch with remaining friends at the dormitory I left Daegu.

I got straight to my hosts' place in Donghae in 3 rides. My first ride was quite interresting, I got picked up by an Opera singer with who I spoke Italian for an hour ( well I don't speak Italian, but my Spanish was enough to communicate without any problems. Then I got a ride with 2 Christian ladies and finally I was picked up by ship captain from Busan. No waiting time longer than 4 minutes.

In Donghae I stayed at local couchsurfer's place and in the morning I got a ride to the ferry terminal. I bought my ticket and got on board. On the ferry there were several backpackers (planning to take trans Siberian rail), few bikers, several Russian workers I guess and 2 or 3 Korean organized groups.

The cruise was super pleasant, I managed to write few blog posts (yeah, finally), had a short chat with few travelers, then went to sleep and in the morning I went to a tiny Jjimjilbang (it was more like one

jacuzzi in a sauna) on board, and it was an amazing beginning of the day.

Soon we arriver to Vladivostok. After struggling to find an open wifi (it's not Korea anymore!) I managed to find one and contacted my host, Alyona. Soon after I met her, her roommate and her little sister, we went to grab something to eat and then we went to see the beach and a light house.

In the meantime I contacted Vaga, a guy involved in local Jiu Jitsu scene, who invited me for an evening training at one of the local gym. You can imagine how surprised I was when I heard for the first time that they are having Magid Hage and Jeff Higgs for their training camp. Yeah I went to the end of Russia and who do I find there? World class black belts teaching... Nice!

Vaga picked me up from the place I was staying around 20 minutes before the training and we went to the gym together. The place was quite packed - around 30 people I would say. There were several blue belts and plenty of white belts. Everyone was super welcoming. Thst day Magid was teaching some escapes from armbar, kimura and lapel choke from the back - good stuff.

Then I got to roll with some local guys and just as I expected they were pretty good, very high level compared to their grades, some of them had some experience in wrestling or sambo. It's not unusual in such places. Then I got to roll with Magid, of course I had nothing to say, he did whatever he wanted, submitted me several times. And his hands are huuuge, don't even bother breaking his grips haha.

After the training I got to chat with some of the guys and soon later Vaga gave me the ride back to my place.

The funny thing is that I arrived in Vladi on the day of my birthday, so Alyona prepared a little surprise cake for me, which was quite unexpected but awesome!

The next day in the morning I went to another training, no gi this time. And it was Jeff Higgs teaching. He showed some self defense moves, defense from Thai clinch, but also several defenses against wrestling takedowns, finished with brabo choke, shoulder lock and a kimura. It was awesome because I rarely do this kind of stuff.

After the training was over I talked for a while with a guy called Sasha, who hitchhiked a lot around Russia, he gave some tips and exchanged contacts if I needed any help. After leaving the gym I went for a walk along the sea and then headed back to Alyona's place.

I met Alyona again around 15. We decided to go eat something and go to the island where they built new campus of Far Eastern Federal University. And the campus is amazing. It looks like a five star sea resort. Dorms look like hotels, everything is nice and new. And of course there is a beach on the campus. I think I have never seen cooler university. We got back from that place quite late in the evening and went to sleep around midnight cause Alyona came up with this awesome idea of going in the morning to climb this huuge electricity post on the middle of the sea, which we've seen the day before.

So next day we woke up at 5 o'clock, we took Alyona's scooter and went to that post. Unfortunately it was really foggy and couldn't see further than maybe 50-100 meters, but still we decided to climb it. I personally consider it Russian national sport so I had to try! I'm scared of height so it was freaking challenging for me but I managed to do it. It was pretty cool.