In 2005 during one of my visits to Belgium, Ken Van Gilbergen and the rest of the crew from Leuven invited me to join them in a Tournament in Germany. In effect, I not only went to support them, but also decided to compete. The conecpt of tournament was that all the belts fought in the same division. I entered the open (which now I think was crazy) and end up fighting blue, purple and even white belts. Today, richer with all the experience I would not do it anymore for the simple fear of getting hurt.
When I came back from that tournament, I received an email from "Bagi", the leader of one of polish teams. He was very impressed with my skills and especially with the way I handled the bigger guys and basically, he invited me to spend 3 weeks to teach his team.
Finaly we met and it occured that since my Polish is terrible, for most of the time we needed a translator. Well, "terrible" is a nice way to describe language skills that come down to few words like: dzień dobry (good morning), dobranoc (good night), dziękuję (thank you), pacha (armpit) and kurwa (because a real polish has to use the word kurwa in every sentence). Anyway, despite the fact we needed a translator we got along very well and I was impressed with his leadership skills and respect all his students were paying to him.
At that time Bagi had a brown belt and I felt honored to be asked to lead the team. His black belt came a couple years later and ever since he is representing it very well, both as a teacher and a competitor, being a great example not only for his students but for every BJJ practitioner in Poland. No doubt his team is the number one in Poland.