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Yesterday, I was in Sudak at the Genoese Fortress. There was a folk crafts festival called "City of Masters." In general, there wasn't anything particularly special at the festival, but the fortress itself was lovely. I chatted with Andrzej (he's been teaching recruits there for ten years; I've been there twice before, and he even remembered me!). Of course, I fought like a chicken, barely attacking, because when should you attack if you haven't had time to block – he's already performing the next attack. And all of this without any fancy moves – just the simplest attacks (left/right, upper/lower, as well as sideways with a step – a total of six) and blocks (no need to explain this). You can't thrust – the swords are made of cornelian cherry wood (the hardest wood in Europe), and it can pierce a person through and through. At the end of the first one-minute fight, I desperately blocked almost all the attacks. I just couldn't attack myself. As soon as I attacked, I immediately got hit on the head. Well, not on the head, but on the body. Because the point isn't in the block that I was doing, but in dodging the attack and making a counterattack, and I was just blocking. And I wasn't moving much. And I was doing it awkwardly. And I also get tired.
The second time, it went a little better. And the third time, with no time limit, I even switched the sword to my left hand when my right hand got tired, and, surprisingly, I fought not much worse than with my right hand, even though I've never trained. However, this is probably because I don't know how to fight well with my right hand either.
Andrzej is ambidextrous; he switches the sword from hand to hand several times during a fight.
Overall, it was fun. Now I have a creative crack on my watch, which I, idiot, didn't take off, and also a sore right hand (how did I manage to block with the guard missing?!). The guy said to find him on VKontakte, and he'll recommend something in Moscow related to the subject.