DAY 5 and 6 - Mammoth and frozen Shutter

DAY 6 - Large Format Portraits

I got up and worked at the computer in the kittchen, which is the next door to our sleeping room. Actually Thomas and me were wondering that in our sleeping room are some electrical sockets coverd with paper which somehow looked burned. But ther must be a reason and should be okay then. Today we got to know that pluging in my computer in the socket in the kitchen, causes that sparkes appeared like a little firework in our bedroom. We didn't know why and spend a couple of minutes to find out how to stop it and were happy that 2 days before when I used the same socket in the kitchen, the house didn't burn down. Lucky ones.

Today I asked the family to make large format Portraits 13x18cm with the camera Thomas brought.
So we went out at -38°C after 2minutes I couldn't get out the light-meter from the leather case, because it was totally frozen and seemed to break, but anyway we start taking the photographs. For 20 minutes everything was okay, then we realized the shutter is totally frozen and we went back to the appartment with all together to warm up. The camera was pure Ice.



DAY 5 - DIMA


Permafrost in Yakutsk, icy the ground - frost from sky. Of course we must go to see a mammoth, when we are once here, so we decided to go to the Permafrost-Institut by bus. The last stop of line 19, we got off and were happy to see the sun was showing up, after the last foggy days, we took some pictures. Finding an instituts entrance is sometimes harder than you think, but if you surround a building you could find a door where woman welcoms you a kind of disappointed because you are late and missed the guidance tour which started some minutes ago. When she send you out in the garden of snow and tells you to take some picture and to wait for at least 30 minutes, you start doing this. She was kind and we felt like back in the school times. Finally she called us back, earlier then we thought and we met the group before us, they were very excited and told us the guide is a professional, the were happy to hear we are from Germany and we started. After going down, the stairs in the cellar, we entered the Permafrost. The guide stopped in front of a vitrine and uncovered a blanket. A baby mammoth, DIMA. She was found in this area. Exciting, to see the past, somehow, it looked like made of sandstone. We took a pictures and followed. He guided us some stairs more down and showed us some areas which the river Lene went through millions of years ago. Some teeth of mammoth, which he turned around several times - we were wondering. But on the way back we found out the real DIMA is in St. Petersburg, we only saw a Dummy.

We decided to go to meet Sakiko, an japanese teacher who was send to Yakutsk from the japanese government. She is living in a teachers dormitory and offered that we also can stay there when we come back from Oymyakon. Great offer. she can also help to find Even people and had some useful contacts to people who know about secondary bookstores.
2 hours later we met Vasiliy, who also offered help in Oymyakon and with the taxi, but since Tuyara organized everything, we appreciate his help, but everything was done.
It was christmas but somehow the people didn't celebrate that much, it'ss because the majority is Yakut people they celebrate new year more, christmas doesn't have this meaning in their culture. But still we checked the orthodox church, after passing the police, who checked our bags. The ceremony started at 12am, so we decided to go home, the tempreture was around 30°C.