21 August. The post-cruise conference & culinary ecstasy

The last day of our Baikal TTR adventure started. 7h30, five alarms go off at the same time but nobody wakes up in the boy’s dormitory.  

Oleg made me happy with his unexpected T-shirt choice.

Last night was a preparation day up to early morning and even a nice breakfast smell does not help to get the most of us awake. The girls prepared for us a great breakfast with Russian “banana-kasha”, which helped us to get the necessary energy level. Alina is in a good mood:  she thought that everybody will be happy today, but rain became. No worries, the marriage is planned (J). Also Oleg made me feel at home with his T-shirt choice.

After breakfast, we had only 4 hours left before the start of the TTR 2017 post-cruise conference. Our eating room became a brain storming centre, and, once in a while, a small nap is needed to recharge batteries. 

Preparation of cruise report and post-cruise conference: hard to keep concentration after a very short night.

At 14h, when the room got dark and Grisha officially opened the conferences, the nice results of TTR were highlighted by all participants. 

Igor explaining his results concerning the Bolshoy mud volcano.

The post-cruise conference was, of course, followed by a post-cruise reception: Russian champagne, Holland cheese, a TTR-train from Adriano to Grisha. 

A cute present from Adriano and TTR participants to Grisha, our chief of the expedition.

And when the snacks were finished, Adriano has started cooking his fabulous Italian inventions: cheese omelette and baked bananas in hot chocolate with ice cream. Here are some of the appreciations that were expressed: “Super-puper Pizza-omelette”; “this is Chiki-puki”, “I am in shock”, “this omelette makes me forget all my hard work and sleepiness nights”. Katya said: “This day was very cute”.  And Sveta added: “I really wish for everybody such days as today in their life: a lot of work, a lot of new information, a lot of delicious food, and most importantly a lot of interesting people”.  After this beautiful words in real TTR spirit, sun came out to give us a beautiful “goodbye” to Baikal. See you next year, our dearest Holy Sea.

Jeffrey Poort