ukraine: chornobyl

When I visited Naples in July I met a bunch of people...then, in another visit in August, I met more people and saw people from the first visit again...
Sometime in September I got an email from one of those people asking about a visit to kyiv...obviously I was excited :) ...Megan and will have been in Naples for a year-ish, and one of their goals is to visit every country in Europe while there are on the continent...they've come close, despite the large number of countries...in talking about the visit, I mentioned the possibility of touring chornobyl, they were keen...

I had already done one tour of chornobyl, set up through the old information office of kyiv...that office has moved, I have never found where it is now located...in order to find the best company for the tour, I posted in a Facebook group, and got a phone number as a result...a few emails and phone calls back and forth, and we were good to go...it isn't a cheap tour, and has to be set up a bit in advance (payment in US dollars)...
The company we went with picked us up at my flat, so convenient...we started out 30 minutes earlier than normal, since we knew sunset happens around 1600 at this time of year...

the drive is a couple hours, pretty boring for most people...as we drove through one small town the driver mentioned two former famous residents: the klitschko brothers...one is now mayor of kyiv, the other is still a boxer, engaged to an American actress...
We arrived at the 30km checkpoint, and met our guide...his name was Sergei, only 23 yrs old...(we found out later in the tour that his brother works at chornobyl 15 days a month)...he checked our passports against the list he had...(if the names and numbers don't match, your tour doesn't happen...I wonder how often that happens?)

We were the second group to drive through the gates...as we continued driving along, our guide gave us some information on the area...he pointed out some of the abandoned villages on the side of the road, I would've loved to stop, get out of the car and explore a little...strange to see the trees growing through everything...
Anywho, the first stop was the memorial area in chornobyl...a sculpture of an angel, and town signs of all the villages that no longer exist...will and Megan wares to get ahead of the other group, we didn't stay long here...

The next stop was quick as well, we saw the memorial to the liquidators killed by radiation within a couple weeks of the disaster...on the other side of this firehouse was an exhibit of vehicles used in cleanup just afterward...they looked like overgrown kids toys!
We also stopped at the kindergarten of chornobyl...this time we entered the building!!! the empty beds were so sad, as was the teachers room...strange to see the information board in the entry area, obviously not at all up to date...when the school was open i wonder how often everything was updated...

Our next stop was just after the 10km checkpoint, at which we didn't have to get out of the car, Sergei just showed the list...you have to have documentation for every checkpoint in the area if you want to go through...this stop was along the river, to see all the reactors; this includes reactor #5, which was never finished...the building cranes are still there, too contaminated to move...
Normally visitors feed catfish from a bridge over this river, but the fish don't visit when the weather is this cold :( ...our loaves of bread were if no use, booo...

We drove around to the other side of reactor #4, to see another memorial, and the new sarcophagus...the new sarcophagus was supposed to be finished in 2012, Sergei said they expect actual finishing to happen in 2020...I could see progress from when I last saw it in May 2012...
We stopped at the town sign for Pripyat, it feels like it is in the middle of nowhere...then on to the main platz of Pripyat...more overgrown than I remember from 2.5 yrs ago...I wonder if any of the growth will ever be stopped...trees growing through steps and all!

This is where our tour was different...we got to go in buildings! Our first entry was into the house of culture...during my last tour we had only stood on the front entry steps, maybe taken a couple steps in, but that was it...this time we went up the stairs to the 2nd floor...
there was once a movie theatre in this building, we saw the three remaining seats, as well as old reels of film...(how did all that end up on the ground? I'm sure when everyone left they didn't run around trashing everything and dumping everything on the floors...

We also saw what remains of the library...I was taught to love books and take care of them while I was growing up, it was surprisingly difficult to walk on so many of them...I even saw a few cards from the card catalogue...
There was also a big gymnasium, complete with a climbing rope hanging from the ceiling...it seemed to be in awfully good condition, is it really 30 yrs old? (Then again, it was hanging from the ceiling, I don't know that anyone would've climbed up there anytime after the accident to hang a new rope)...there were a couple frames for football goals, and a jumpy thing used by gymnasts...one side must've been all glass, it no longer exists...instead there are a couple trees growing in one corner...

We walked out the back of the culture building to the amusement park... Everyone has seen photos of this amusement park; the abandoned Ferris wheel and bumper cars...we got to make friends with a fox this time! I don't know whether this amusement park was open or not when the disaster occurred, I've been told it was supposed to open that coming weekend, or that it was already open...
We got back in the car and drove a little down a street...our guide took us in a school building...it was a big school, 1500-2000 kids of many ages...we saw a room where has mask drills took place, which was a bit creepy...(so many gas masks all over the floor)...we saw a room with a map of the former soviet empire still on the wall, complete with information about Lenin...we saw a science classroom, and a room dedicated to soviet heroes...

Next to the school was a sports building...we walked in, and saw the pool! The old pace clock was still on the wall, of course the pool was empty...there was a lot of trash on the bottom of the pool, who put it there? Will and I climbed down into the 'shallow' end of the pool, and would've gone to the bottom of the deep end except that we couldn't see a way to get down, or a way to get back up once we were down there...the deep end was under a 5m diving tower...unfortunately there were no steps to the first level of te tower, otherwise I would've climbed up the tower...

Our last sight was a bit of a workout...we all climbed up 16 floors to the roof of an apartment building on the edge of Pripyat...the view from the top was amazing...we could see the whole town, which really wasn't very big...we could see a former soviet anti missile radar off in the distance, and the sarcophagus being built for reactor #4...
After the roof we went into a couple flats, there wasn't much left...I noticed a fancy doorknob, and what was left of a chandelier...a couple ovens, and sinks...one sofa...no clothes or other personal effects...

From there we drove back to the 10km checkpoint and had our first radiation check...then a small cafe where we had a pretty good lunch (food brought from elsewhere in Ukraine) an I bought a few postcards...then back to the 30km checkpoint, and another radiation check...finally we dropped off the guide who was spending the night in the area as he had another tour the next day...
Driving back to kyiv took a couple hours, all three of us dozed off for most of it :)