by Maitane Iturrate
August 13, 2013
It is 10 o’clock and everything is packed and ready. In less than two hours, we will be at Yakutsk airport, heading back home. Today will be a long, long day (a day of 32 hours incuding the change of time zones).
We arrived at Yakutsk, again, yesterday morning, after having our last breakfast in Spasskaya Pad. It was really weird returning back to “civilization”, and to have a proper bed, a toilet at only one meter from the room and not at few hundred meters, supermarkets with a huge number of options in food… Indeed, we bought some food for lunch and it took us ages to decide what to buy. Once back to the accommodation, we needed to decide what to eat (so many options, including fruit, of course!!).
Our stay in Spasskaya Pad was great, like a kind of relaxing holiday. After the initial shock of not be able to do what we had planned, we decided to enjoy the experience of being in the Siberian taiga as much as possible. And the experience started really well, dinner and “bania”… our second “bania” in less than one week! The following day, Saturday, we had a guided tour of the installations, visiting and climbing all the measurement towers and enjoying the views. We were really lucky of having Aya as guide, we had lots of fun and lots of berries… we stopped every few meters and picked some berries. And after finishing the guided tour, he offered us birch sap juice, very tasty.
Spasskaya Pad flux tower (Photo: M. Iturrate, August 2013).
Spasskaya Pad flux tower (Photo: M. Iturrate, August 2013).
The afternoon was a working afternoon. My vegetation samples were dry, so time for weighing them. Inge helped me to write down the weight (thank you), so we managed to finish half of the samples before dinner. Although the other half was left, we decided to continue next morning as we were exhausted. It was a good decision because we were able to join the karaoke session. We sang and danced, first European songs and then Russian songs. It was wonderful. We feel really integrated, like two more Sakha people. After transforming the karaoke session into a disco session, I had time to listen to a couple of songs that one of the students, who attended the summer school, composed in Sacha, and to Stas playing the khomus, a traditional musical instrument used in the Sakha republic. I had even the opportunity of playing it, quite difficult.
Sunday morning was for finishing the weighing of my samples. The afternoon was for walking in the forest and picking berries. We only had a little problem, a summer storm. We were at almost two kilometers away from the research station when it started to rain cats and dogs. We returned completely wet, but with a big reward (just see the picture!!).
Vaccinium vitis-idea berry collection (Photo: M. Iturrate, August 2013).
Vaccinium vitis-idea berry collection (Photo: M. Iturrate, August 2013).
During the evening-night, we were talking a lot to other people, learning new Russian words and exchanging cultural facts of the different countries (Japan, Germany, Russia, and Spain). I could even exchange some knitting patterns with the cook. She saw me knitting my cardigan and offered me going to her house in order to show me all the winter socks she was knitting. They were really beautiful and colorful. It was amazing how we managed to understand each other.
It was a bit sad to say goodbye to the people yesterday morning. But, who knows! Maybe next year, we can also spend some days in Spasskaya Pad before returning home.
Only half an hour to go to the airport. It will be a bit funny being again in Switzerland after such an experience. I am looking forward to starting processing all the data collected, but first a couple of weeks in Spain to rest and recover after so many weeks without stopping. It has been really nice to share this experience with all of you. Next year, more! Have a good summer.