"This is now my 250th day on the road, just one day before my 29th birthday, 7th April. After Christmas, this is the second big traditional event that I have to celebrate away from my family but I will still celebrate it with my judo family and I’m sure it will be amazing.
In the last article (https://www.ijf.org/news/show/julien-goes-around-the-world-2) I was about to leave Warsaw in Poland to go to Krakow. I've had to go really slowly the last few months because of my ankle injury. Therefore it was hard to share content but now I’m back at a normal speed and since then I’ve met so many people.
After Poland I took the train to join Zilina in Slovakia. I was on that train for 6-7h and I was travelling with hundreds and hundreds of Ukrainian refugees. The train was 200% full, mostly women and children. We were all stuck together and the temperature was high. It was really tough. I felt somehow guilty to be there. The fact that those people were running away to save their lives and that I was in the train without such serious matters in my life, was not easy.
The Slovakian Federation was very kind to me and they decided to share my project through their social media platforms, helping me to find different places without having to search for them. The first person I met was Ludo and he hosted me in his family home. It was an amazing time. Ludo has a judo club where we played a lot with the children. The very interesting thing about Ludo's family is that with his wife they are big travellers and we had really interesting talks about it.
After that I decided to go to the capital, Bratislava. Unfortunately I couldn't find judo opportunities there but I had already received calls to go to other places so I decided to move quickly. The national team of Slovakia was waiting for me in Banska Bystrica. I didn't know that this would affect me so much.
When I arrived, I was welcomed by an athlete because the national coach, Jan Gregor, was abroad. Alex Barto showed me around a bit before guiding me to the place they arranged for me to stay. The next day I eventually met Jan. He is such a friendly person who, despite his busy schedule, took the time to take care of me.
As a national coach, he is busy with his athletes of course, but in that period he also has other very important concerns. He knows many athletes and coaches from Ukraine so he decided to offer his help and he welcomed many judo refugees and their families. Sending some money or food is something easy to do for anyone but welcoming people, giving them a place to stay, a potential new life in a new country, this is a lot of work and I was amazed to see everything he is doing. He drives a few times a week to the border to bring more people. In total there are 25 refugees in his city, thanks to him. Some of them left to other countries already, where they have contacts, but many of them stay and are now working and studying with the local Slovakians.
I've had training sessions with the national team. I could even deliver one session. It always feels a bit special when people give me the lead of a national team, this is such a big honour!
As I was training with them, it was the time for me to test my ankle again and do some randori with adults. I didn’t play too hard, not like in shiai, but still it felt so good to be back, trying to get back some sensations. In addition, I practised with some talented athletes such as Alex Bartos and Peter Zilka who recently won the European Cup of Warsaw.
I wanted to know more about the stories of the Ukrainian athletes who came to Slovakia, so I asked Diana, the Ukrainian coach, and the athletes to kindly accept my curiosity. One young judoka in particular was able to tell me his story in English.
After Slovakia, I went to Hungary, to Budapest. I couldn't find a club in Budapest because everyone was busy with the National Championships but I had much more important concerns. In fact, the young Ukrainian I met in Slovakia, who spoke English, had talked about my project to some of his friends and they understood that I had many contacts around the world. Thus he decided to contact me to ask for my help.
The young judoka, aged 16, used to live near Donnetsk. He and his family wanted to move but had nowhere to go so he asked me if I knew someone who could help them.
I managed to find some people I've met in Poland so they are now living in a big house in Poland near the Ukraine border.
I made it a short stay here, but it did take one week to find solutions. I even thought about pausing my project to go to get the guy at the border and bring him to France to my family, but thanks to nice people in Poland they could get all the help that was necessary. He is now doing judo there. The judo club of Lemur gave him a brand new judogi. The judo family is so nice and this is really warming my heart.
Then I moved to a small city south of Budapest called Paks. I could travel there because my friend Marius Paskevicius who hosted me in Lithuania, gave me the contact of his friend Barna Bor, who I don't need to introduce here.
Barna organised everything to help me discover his little city and how good the judo is there. It's surprising to see that they produce such good judoka in a small place like that. Beyond the medals, they also do a lot of judo in a non-competitive way.
After Hungary, I moved on to Serbia, the last country I am going to talk about now. I didn't know much about Serbia, apart from the fact that they have good judoka like Kukolj, Majdov, Obradovic, Nikolic and others.
To be honest, I expected people to be a bit cold and it turned out that it was the total opposite. They are some of the most hospitable people I've ever met.
I first went to Novi Sad. The secretary of the region, Natasa, organised everything and I could visit a different club everyday. I met almost 1000 judoka in just one week. They made a programme so I had activities and things to do every single day. I could not post on social media regularly because I was too busy. The president of the region has a restaurant. I could eat there for free everyday.
The young judoka were very excited to meet me and it made this time so enjoyable. I tried to give as much as I could, sharing the values of my project, the values of judo.
I've spend most of my time with Stefan Zuparic who dedicated all of his week to showing me around and bringing me to different places. Then Natasa gave me a contact to go to Belgrade.
I'm now hosted by the national champion in -100kg, Filip Djinovic and it's the same story: he takes me to a different place every day and to enjoy different activities. He's a host that you would never be able to even imagine, just pure kindness.
I went to a judo tournament and I saw that judo is a big subject in Serbia. The competition brought together over 700 judoka. I wasn't expecting to see so many!
With my birthday around he also took care of showing me the fun of Belgrade’s nightlife, from clubs to local bars with Serbian traditional songs and Rakija (their national drink).
I'll soon go to Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria. I'll try to reach Sofia for the European Championships at the end of April, to find a way to watch the competition.
I have to put an end to this report, because I'm about to go to more training and probably enjoy Rakija with the coaches afterwards.
Thank you to the IJF for helping me so much to make my dream come true. Thanks to the people that read and contact me to become part of it. Judo is the only sport that can allow such an amazing project.