Today, on the brink of July, I am yet again contemplating on how time flies. Not long ago it was Christmas and now half of 2024 has passed. Maybe it's the busy life itself, but I kinda wish the passage of time was slower :)
June was the time of HEMA visits for me. Right after I got back from the UK, where I taugh a seminar in Newbury (good times, good times!) I was visited by the one and only Sean Franklin.
If you're not familiar with Sean, he's the man behind the website "Swordstem", a fantastic and unique resource into independent HEMA research. He's the creator of HEMA Scorecard, a free to use tournament software developed specifically for HEMA needs and one of the guys behind "Game Design 4 HEMA". He's one of the pioneers of competitive sharp cutting. Though Sean isn't fencing much in the latest years due to some health issues he remains a grey eminence figure in HEMA. I sincerely recommend to go through his content on Swordstem; his wits and writing style make it fun to read about various topics.
My next visitors were Yang and Eric from China and Australia (hey guys!). Yang and Eric went on a fencing trip through Europe and stopped by in Slovakia for a few days. Besides an intensive session where few of my guys joined we had quite a lot of fun discovering the nightlife in Bratislava and doing some castle sightseeing.
Both Eric and Yang are fantastic fencers, with their own distinct styles and approaches. I often wish that some people would live closer so we could fence more often but then again. it takes but a few hours nowadays to get to the other side of the world, right?
You can find Yang's fencing clips on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yang_aming/
Eric also promised to upload some more fencing content on his instagram so let this be a motivation for him: https://www.instagram.com/eric100065/ :)
I just dropped the last visitor at his hotel; Roberto Pérez Verdía is one of Mexican fencing champions. This year he won gold in Sidesword at Encuentro and he had quite some success before. I enjoy fighting him - he's a fierce opponent, very strong and dedicated. His strenght and passion comes from working with horses; he's a professional rider, a Charro, and he provides hipotherapy for children with disabilities. He stopped by after attending a therapeutic congress in Budapest and besides fencing we also enjoyed the summer Bratislava. If you ever have the chance to fence Roberto, don't miss it. In the meantime you can follow his work and great horseriding skills on his instagram https://www.instagram.com/robertoperezverdia/.
Some extra good news
Since life is calming down a bit, I've had some time to sit with my book and continue working on the translation. I finished about 30 remaining pages for the Fechtbuch Fabian part. Now I need to work on the annotated Speyer and I'm still deciding if I should include the translation of Leckuchner's messer in the English version as well. I consider Leckuchner the best complementary fencing book for learning longsword, but it's quite some work since it's very extensive. If I include it, the English version of my book will have up to 500 pages which is... chunky. Let me know what you think.
Thanks to all for visiting, I had a really good time and I hope you had a good time as well!
PS: I have an open slot for early September weekend workshop if anybody was interested; feel free to drop me a message.
Have a great rest of the weekend!