Frankfurt
The worst part is the weigh-in. Hundreds of heavily muscled, cauliflower-eared, tattooed, menacing-looking, sweaty men — from Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Greece, Germany, Brazil, Canada, France, Hungary, the US, you name it — wait patiently and silently to step on the scales. Everyone holds his passport, which he is required to show once on the scales. It is a funny sort of scene. Naked men holding a passport. It could be out of the Gulag, as most fighters from eastern Europe have shaven heads and broad Slavic peasant faces. (The purpose of this is to stop ex-communist countries from sending in thinner men to pose as the heavies who later on do the fighting, a not unheard of custom by our friends the Russkies.)
By the time my turn came, I was sick and tired of the way the International Judo Federation treats us athletes.
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