Day 9: Early church, transcripts, rain

We really did it and woke up before 6:00 on a Sunday in order to go to church - that's not exactly the most common thing to do for any of us. This gave us a chance to witness another beautiful sunrise though. A bit after 6:30 we're near the Kasepää church, the ladies in proper dresscode. We take some photos, and a few minutes later Father Andrej arrives on his bicycle to get ready for the morning service.

We can't say it was easy for us: The early morning, a lack of coffee, and then more than two hours of church service... in all honesty, we had some difficulties to stay awake in there. The meditative way of reading the holy texts, the minimal melodies, the olibanum, the relative darkness inside the church, and all this standing. We tried our best to sit through (or rather, to stand through) the whole service, but nevertheless all of us had to leave once or twice for a few minutes to take some steps and some fresh air outside. That said, it was of course a very interesting experience, very intense, very different, and very spiritual.

After the service, we have a brief chat with Father Andrej, who is visibly exhausted as well and told us he'd go back home to have a nap, because in the afternoon he already has to go to Varnja for a christening. We went back to the houses to discuss what else we'd do that day, Katerina continues the tough work of transcribing the recorded videos, as the others are doing some other work. As we are almost ready to go on and use the beautiful late afternoon and evening light for some more filming, the weather turns worse quickly, and we have to decide to stay inside: Grey sky, rain and wind make filming impossible.

Instead, we go to buy some more food in Kallaste, and decide to have dinner at the "Kala- ja Sibularestoran" (the "Fish and Onion Restaurant") in Kolkja, a place the Old Believers opened up to serve their traditional food to an interested public. Dumplings with fish, fish with onions, and generally fish in all kinds of ways, usually accompanied by onions in all sorts of ways - the amount of key ingredients is limited, but the kitchen is nevertheless very varied and tasty.

A friend of Rene who happens to be nearby invites us for some sauna and fish in the afternoon, but we just can't manage to get everybody together at the same time. Later in the evening, she brings us some fish and other goodies - and we're not even home, so we get them later on from the landlord lady.

As the weather in the evening is still rather bad, and it's too cold for the traditional lakeside barbecue, we stay inside and... watch a film. For the first time during this trip.