Day 2: Morning, difficulties, first contact

Waking up at the lakeside is a beautiful event: You stand up, look out of the huge windows of a cozy house, the sun is shining, and you start preparing the breakfast table. It looks like there's a very holiday-like feeling to this project in the early mornings and late evenings, when we're not yet starting or when we already finished the days' work. Making sure this holiday mood of being at the lake doesn't interfere with what we have to do will be no small task!

But we don't forget that it's a work trip, and are reminded of this on this second day by a big number of small problems. As always, small problems start to look big when they come in big numbers. Let's list a few of the ones we found this day:

Mosquitos, lots of them. And we mean: Lots. Enough of them to make it difficult to sleep at night, despite of the mosquito net at the door.

Dead fish in the lake, and algae. Not a huge amount, but enough to be noticed. We're wondering what's up, until we're told that in such amounts, that's normal, the wind had come from the lakeside, and there's nothing to worry about.

The sleeping situation: We rented two houses, but since there's also a baby now, that means one house is for the baby and its mother, Mairi, as nobody else could possibly sleep there without waking up all the time. So for the time being, one sleeps in a tent. We're taking turns.

The Tele2 3G Modem we bought was certainly a nice idea, but we didn't expect that the Tele2 coverage here is so poor, respectively - actually pretty much inexistant. Inside or near the houses, there's no Tele2 whatsoever. You can catch a signal if you go some 50 metres away, in a particular direction, but then what do you do there? Work while sitting on the grass for as long as the computer's battery lasts?

This problem is caused because the houses' WiFi network doesn't reach the houses in which we stay.

And we don't have a fridge, which creates quite some problems, too.

So first of all, it's a day of problems and difficulties. None of them big, all of them of the kind that can be solved, but as said: If you have enough small problems, they start looking pretty big, and an apocalyptic mood sets in. After all, we're here primarily to film a documentary, and that's pretty hard work that requires a lot of concentration. You need good sleep, and you need good infrastructure, otherwise the film will suffer. We're a little worried now, and even consider moving elsewhere, despite that we like these houses so much.

A first excursion into the nearby villages raised the mood. It's a sunny day, people are nice and friendly and interested in what we're doing, so we do a few first trial shots and just walk around to see what's going on.

Some first trial shots, testing the equipment, making contact with people

 Friendly onion seller

Liza, a small girl who spends her summer holiday in Kasepää, and whom we meet regularly on the main street. Very talkative and open.

















By the evening time, we're still not sure what to do with all the little problems and difficulties we are facing, which seem to make it very hard to do our job. But at least we're in a better mood - we've spent some time going around, talked to a few people, had some dinner. The weather didn't stay so well though: In the evening, a major storm passed the region, though our lakeside home wasn't much affected.