One or two days before planned arrival to Khabarovsk I've sent several couch requests and Sergey was the first to reply so I decided to stay with him and his wife Natasha.
As mentioned in a previous post, Sergey picked me up from train station and we went straight to his place.
I was welcomed with a proper dinner which was awesome cause I was a little hungry after the route. After we ate we chatted a little and it turned out they have been in Poland before. They also told about a bunch interesting guests they have hosted. Since Khabarovsk is, let's say, not the most popular tourist destination in Russia, there are not so many 'usual tourists' visiting this place. But on the other hand this city attracts plenty of freaks crossing Russia one way or another - so they have hosted, cyclists, hitchhikers and some other travelers with different objectives.
Later, since they both had to work the next day, Sergey showed me places to see in the city. So the next morning, after having a nice brunch I went to the center. Surprisingly (well I didn't know anything about that city, except for what I've seen in an episode of In Transit by Peter Bragiel) it is a very nice city, with few beautiful churches, several nice streets and and nice views overlooking Amur river.
And finally I ran across street vendors selling Kvas - I love Kvas(fermented bread beverage if i am correct), so I had two 0,5l cups. One cup is around 25 rubles (around 0,5 usd).
After I got back from town I got ready for training at local Gracie Barra gym.
The academy was super easy to find - they have facebook page - yaaaay! For those who don't know facebook is not that popular in Russia - they use VKontakcie.
I texted them on fb and received reply from Andriej - one of the English speaking guy right away.
The day before coming, Andriej texted me that the TV station which he works for wants to make a short report about my trip - how awesome is that?!
The training was scheduled for 20.30, I arrived at the academy 15 minutes earlier. There were 6 guys beside me if i'm not wrong. It wasn't crowded because the day before they finished their week-long camp with some Japanese BJJ and Judo black belt.
The training started with classic GB warm up. Then Dennis, the coach - he's a purple belt, showed some drills and that's when the TV guy arrived, so I had to stop to talk about my trip. The guy also wanted some footage from training so he filmed us drilling, but I believe he wasn't satisfied and asked if we could maybe spar a little, haha! Dennis agreed and we had few short rounds of rolling. After that we moved back to techniques and some more sparring towards the end of training.
I received a very warm welcome and after the training and few minutes of chatting I got a ride back to my place where again I was fed by my hosts - big thanks for everything to them!
In the morning I said good bye to Natasha and Sergey, who was so nice to give me a ride out of the city - nicest hosts ever! ;)
Summing up, Khabarovsk is a really nice place, I mean I will not tell you to go just there, but if it's on your way or you have a chance to drop by this place, do it!
And what about the link to the TV interview!!!
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