31.05.2011 – 31.05.2011  24 °C

Another leisurely start (which was good because we didn’t get to bed til midnight). Bkfast was some cold cuts and bread with museli and yoghurt.. Probably one of the best I’ve had over the past few weeks.

Today we are off to Lake Baikal via the “Old Believer’s Village”. The Old Believers are Russian Orthodox christians who chose to not follow the reformation of the Orthodox church back in 1666 (Ivan the Terrible’s reign).

He decided that the church needed a shake up so decreed that the Orthodox church would change some of its practices.. not beliefs if I understand correctly more of the doctrine and ceremony that happens during the church services.

Those that chose to not follow the new church (and therefore are old believers) were persecuted and exiled to Poland for 100yrs. Apparently many of them died during the exile. Then 100yrs later, Catherine the Great decreed that they needed further exile and were sent to the outer reaches of Siberia. The exodus to Siberia took 8 years of solid walking!!! They were sent in chains with Cossaks to superivse the exodus (so there was no choice in them going to Siberia). I can’t imagine wanting to keep to your beliefs that badly that you would walk for 8 yrs solidly in leg and arm irons… They were exiled family by family, I would hate to think how many must have died during the journey.. Isn’t it incredible what people will do for religion??

We spent some time learning about the Old Believers and their incredible journey from Poland to Siberia and then the sad thing was that they were again persecuted during the Soviet times and forced to renounce their beliefs and had many of their relics destroyed. In fact, many of their bibles (which they had kept for hundreds of years) were used as road base and covered in tar and concrete. (Another interesting anecdote is the fact that the Old Believers actually speak old Russian (from around the 16th century) and their bibles are not written in modern Russian!)

The church itself was quite small, white washed walls, polished floor boards and very colourfully painted relics on the front wall. One of the key differences b/w Old Believers and normal orthodox is the fact that their relics are painted onto wood, whereas orthodox relics are painted onto canvas or paper and then stuck onto wood.. (If the differences are this minor, and based on what the Old Believers said, it appears to be, its amazing they refused to swap over to normal orthodox!)

We also had a traditional Russian lunch in the Old Believer’s village; Sh-chi- chunky vege and meat soup (geez I love the soup here in Russia!!), Chunky potato and some sort of meat (pork maybe) for mains and of course vodka! (The vodka in this village is flavoured with cedar nuts– bloody awful if you ask me– but many others really quite liked it… One of the boys bought some at an expensive rate of $6 a bottle… Potent stuff and damn cheap! (Actually everything is cheap in this part of Russia))

During lunch the Old Believers put on a traditional sing-a-long for us and dressed up one of the other ladies on the trip in traditional Old Believer style. The OB wear about 5 layers of clothing and still wear this clothing for all ceremonial occassions and on Sunday’s to church.. Carmen said that wearing all the layers was really a bit too warm…

While i’m talking about the OB village I wanted to put in a note about SIberian houses.. The houses here are really different to anything we have at home. They are all made out of timber and have very colourful shutters covering the front windows. Nearly all have wooden fences surrounding their houses and I would say that most houses are at least half the size of a normal sized house in AU. In fact my unit in Coorparoo looks like it is bigger than the average SIberian house!

After leaving the OB village we went onwards to Lake Baikal. LB is more than 3hrs away from Ulan Ude, we are staying in a village called Turka on the eastern shore of the lake (our guest lodge is right on the main river that flows into the lake so great view!). We arrived at LB well after 8pm and really only had time to have some dinner before hitting the sack for the night.. Turka is above the 50th parallel (check that out from a southern ocean point of view and you’ll get an idea of how far north we are already..) so the sun didn’t go down tonight til probably about 9.30-10pm.. Makes for a wierd day when you are ready to go to bed but its still light outside.. I guess I’d better get used to it because the days are only going to get longer! For the foodies reading, dinner was mashed potato, rissoles and vege soup.. I’m really loving the vege soup!!