Wednesday, 29 August 2012



Autumn tundra, Photo by Carolina Voigt, University of Eastern Finland

Believe it or not, the last day of our stay here in Seida has finally arrived! These past few days we spent with packing and doing inventory. Not all of our equipment can stay in the green cabin over winter and a lot of things we moved to a storage place in Seida. Our sensitive electronical equipment and measurement devices will be stored in a warm place in the city Vorkuta. All of our samples – result of this summer's field work – will first go to Syktyvkar, where Maija will prepare them for customs.
From there they will be sent via cargo to St. Petersburg, where we will hopefully pick them up in mid-September and transport them across the Finnish border, to safety. Let's keep our fingers crossed that the sample transport will go as planned. Especially for our frozen and cooled samples it is critical not to get stuck in Russian customs.

Broken vehicle, Photo by Carolina Voigt, University of Eastern Finland

As the vehicle that picked us up was scheduled for Monday afternoon, we were on a tight schedule. Many small things that were left over the summer still needed to be done before leaving the field. We were able to finish just in time and enjoyed our last ride on a fully packed vehicle back to Seida. And just as we thought everything was done and were looking forward to our last "Banja" of course the vehicle broke down in the middle of nowhere. Luckily our drivers could fix it and Banja was back on.

And for us it provided a nice insight into what the inside of a huge tundra vehicle looks like, everyone was certainly very interested as you can see on the picture.

 

The rainy August weather has disappeared and last week was sunny and warm, as if to make it hard for us to leave.

Tundra is blossoming in beautiful autumn colors and shining in shades of red, orange, yellow and green. Thus, on the one hand we feel a bit nostalgic about leaving this place, which has been our home for two months. But on the other hand we of course look forward to enjoying the luxuries of the civilized world again, starting from water, that doesn't have to be fetched from a well first. Oh, what an experience it will be to just open the valve at the sink and have warm water! Only a few more days until the first shower within two months.

Now, in Seida, we have already packed everything and are waiting for the train that will take us to Moscow.

 

 

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Main page of the blog "Vorkuta/ Seida 2012": http://page21.arcticportal.org/blogs/61-vorkuta