Adventures in the Chernobyl Dead Zone

I remember when the Chernobyl disaster happened. I was in first grade. I clearly remember drawing pictures, showing how we needed to keep our windows closed to prevent radiation from coming in. I was living in Florida at the time, so that was probably somewhat silly, but then again, I was seven years old at the time – it’s a wonder Chernobyl was even on my radar.

Of course, I didn’t really think about Chernobyl much at all after first grade. It was something I knew about, something I was aware of, but – despite spending my undergrad years studying the former Soviet Union – I gave it very little thought whatsoever until 2004.

In 2004, I came across that semi-hoax website, Kidd of Speed. (I call it a semi-hoax, as the photos are genuine, but initially the author had this long, involved story, about having been given permission to ride solo through the Zone on her motorcycle; this wasn’t true – she had gone to the zone as part of a tour.) Looking at the photos on the Kidd of Speed website, I immediately became hooked on the notion of going and seeing what was left of the Chernobyl reactor and the nearby city of Pripyat for myself. It wasn’t until August 2011 that I got the opportunity.

Back in 2010, several of us from Desolation Travel decided we should meet up somewhere good and desolate. While we all would have loved to have returned to Kyrgyzstan, flights there were simply too expensive. We tossed around several ideas, before settling on meeting in Kiev in August 2011, and trekking out to Chernobyl. That’s how my three week vacation in Ukraine got its start.

Chernobyl is – allegedly – safe to visit. Allegedly, the dose of radioactivity one receives while on a day trip out of Kiev is equivalent to what you’d get from a long-haul overseas flight. Of course, in the space of six weeks I’ll have taken three such flights, gone to Chernobyl, and had dental x-rays, so I’m pretty sure I’ve exceeded ‘proper’ radiation levels. Meh. No physical harm.

You can’t just stroll on into the Zone whenever you want. You have to have permission from the Ukrainian government. The easiest way to visit the Zone is via a tour agency. There are several agencies out of Kiev which book tours to the Zone, and which arrange all the necessary paperwork. It can be done fairly quickly (assuming there’s space available), and with very little hassle on the part of the tourist. This costs between $150-$200, depending on what agency you use. We used Solo-East. If you have the time and money, you can apply for your own permit. I’ve heard it can take about three weeks to process. You’ll also have to arrange your own transportation and hire a government approved guide/monitor. I don’t see much reason to do that, myself, as it would end up being far more expensive, and you’d probably see exactly what you’d see as part of a tour.

The trip from Kiev to Chernobyl takes between an hour and a half and two hours, depending on the traffic in and around Kiev. The tour ‘bus’ (a mini-van) we were on had a television, which showed the documentary The Battle of Chernobyl – and excellent documentary, which you can watch in its entirety here for free. I highly recommend it to anyone who is even remotely interested in Chernobyl, nuclear power, and/or the former Soviet Union.

The movie finished just a few minutes before we arrived at the first checkpoint. The first thing that struck me was that farmland – active, arable farmland – went right up to the border with The Zone. It’s not like radiation just stops and says ‘oh, here’s the edge of The Zone, I’d better not flit across this line and contaminate those cows.’ But I guess you have to draw a line somewhere. Or in the case of Chernobyl, two lines – one at 30km from the reactor, and one at 10km.

The first checkpoint is located 30km from the reactor, at the entrance to the exclusion zone. No photos allowed. (Hah.) Here you will have your passports checked against the list of people who have been approved for entrance into the zone.

First checkpoint - no photos allowed! :-)

The small town of Chernobyl is located within the 30km exclusion zone – a pleasant, green swath of countryside, which looks as though it would be a wonderful, peaceful, rural place to live. Roughly 4000 people currently live in the town of Chernobyl. Most are there as part of the ongoing maintenance of the #4 reactor (the one that exploded), although others are there to maintain the other three reactors – two of which remained functional until 2000. When you see how close they are to reactor #4, you’ll find this fact utterly mind-boggling. There are also plenty of scientists living in Chernobyl, conducting experiments on the effects of radiation on the local wildlife and whatnot, as well as support staff… and quite a few elderly folks who returned after having been ‘resettled’ following the accident.

In an office building in the city of Chernobyl, we were required to sign a waiver, essentially saying that if we get fucked up in any way on account of having visited the Chernobyl zone, we cannot sue the Ukrainian government. Okeedokee.

After signing the waiver, we got back in the bus and headed for the 10km line, demarking the Zone of Mandatory Resettlement. No one legally lives within the 10km zone, although there are squatters, scavengers, and elderly people who have returned to the villages of their youth. Sadly, we were unable to meet any of these folks. That is something that I would really like to do at some point, although I’m not sure how feasible it is.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from our tour. I’d kind of expected a highly monitored tour, with lots of ‘stand here and look at this’ and ‘stand here and look at that.’ I didn’t expect to be allowed to run free at any point. I also didn’t think that we’d be getting anywhere close to the #4 reactor itself. As such, when we came upon our first glimpse of the reactors, I took a TON of photographs. Little did I know that I’d be getting MUCH closer! I’ll just post a handful of those I took:

Yep, that's me. And reactors #1 and #2? They remained in operation until 2000. That is mind-boggling to me on so many levels. I mean, if Pripyat (the town 3km away) was abandoned, how could it have possibly been deemed a good idea to keep people working just a few hundred meters from reactor #4?

Same scene, sans Cat Lady

From the same vantage point, this could be seen. It would have been reactor #5. It was under construction at the time of the explosion at reactor #4, and was never completed.

From there we went to Pripyat. For those who don’t know, Pripyat was built in 1970, for the sole purpose of housing workers at the Chernobyl nuclear plants, their families, and all the people necessary to support them (teachers, store clerks, etc). Depending on your source, Pripyat was home to between 43,000 and 50,000 people at the time of the explosion at reactor #4 in April 1986. The town was located a mere 3km from the reactor, and yet was not evacuated until the third day following the explosion. Residents were told that they would only be gone for a few days… yet the evacuation was permanent. The town has been slowly reclaimed by nature over the years.

It’s weird, visiting Pripyat. A town of 43,000-50,000 people is fairly large… but in this case, it’s difficult to actually see how large the town would have been, as so much of it is now obscured by tree growth. It’s also bizarre to imagine that the town was evacuated in order to avoid the devastating effects of radiation. Plant life, at the very least, is teeming. (The Zone is supposedly rich in wildlife as well, although unfortunately we saw only spiders, pigeons, and catfish.) There is nothing about Pripyat – other than its emptiness – to give any hint as to the disaster that befell them. If one were seriously lost, and somehow stumbled upon the city, it would be a thoroughly bewildering experience. It just seemed so normal. Except that it was empty. Like roughly fifty thousand people just left one morning and never returned.

I had expected that we would be very limited in terms of what we could do and where we could go while inside Pripyat. That was not the case at all. While we were taken on a somewhat organized route through the city (main square, amusement park, palace of culture, Hotel Polissya, sports center, school), we were allowed to essentially go wherever and do whatever we wanted. The only rule was ‘Don’t step on the moss!’ as apparently moss holds far more radiation than asphalt or dirt or grass. Or so we were told anyway.

Pripyat is a photographer’s dream, especially if you’re someone who is into photographing desolation, decay, or urban blight. I am, and I loved every minute of my time there. I mean no disrespect to those who used to live there or their families by this. I truly feel that images of what can happen if/when nuclear power gets out of hand MUST be shown to the world. This is something that everyone should see – especially proponents of nuclear power. It’s a grim, serious, and depressing reality. But as a photographer, I loved it. I have far too many photos from Pripyat to post below. To see my complete set of Pripyat photos, CLICK HERE.

Palace of Culture "Energetic"

Inside the Palace of Culture

Inside the school

Also inside the school

More from the Palace of Culture

Left: a gymnastics horse from the sports center
Right: Irradiated negatives from the Hotel Polissya

A tour like this would never be legal in the United States, where both safety concerns and the potential for lawsuits are huge. Not only were we 3km from the world’s most famous nuclear disaster, but as you can tell from the photos, we were exploring decaying – and not entirely safe – buildings. Broken glass was everywhere. Rotted floorboards were common. As were piles of what looked suspiciously like asbestos. And sketchy things dangling from – and dropping from – ceilings. I loved it. And it would so never fly in the US.

After thoroughly exploring Pripyat, it was time for lunch. We were taken to the cafeteria that’s located on site to feed those working at the power station, where we ate *quite* a tasty lunch of locally produced food. Safety, shmafety. Before we were allowed into the cafeteria proper, we had to pass through this lovely radiation detection device:

No one ever said what happens if you register ‘contaminated’ though!
Like I said, lunch was delicious, and very typical Ukrainian/Russian:

One fellow on the tour was a vegetarian, though, and he had a bit of a rough go of the lunch. Very much an Everything is Illuminated kind of moment. How do you make beef soup vegetarian? Scoop out the chunks of beef. Hah.

After lunch, our next stop was to feed the radioactive catfish. I find fish kind of boring, and while there were a couple of behemoths that surfaced a handful of time, for the most part, they just looked like fish. Yawn. On to the reactor!

Between the catfish feeding and the reactor, we passed a sign on a building that said NUKEM. Sadly, none of us was prepared to snap a picture. NUKEM? Talk about a seriously bad choice of name. It’s a German/American civil nuclear fuel company, that’s apparently involved in the maintenance of the facility.

Okay, okay. On to the reactor!

We were able to stand approximately 100m from the sarcophagus covering reactor #4… and the thing is, it all seemed so normal. There were people working at the other parts of the facility. There were buses ferrying workers about, people walking, driving. The weather was gorgeous. It looked just like any factory anywhere might. Get out of the developed world, and there are plenty of places that look much worse yet are still producing whatever it is they produce. This didn’t look dangerous at all. It just looked… normal. That was what made it creepy. If no one told you what it was, you’d have no clue. It wasn’t pulsating or glowing. It didn’t emit a smell or a sound. And yet it was emitting radiation. We weren’t allowed to stay in that spot too long.

Left: A monument to those who died, which appears to be holding a TARDIS.
Right: The reactor, up close and personal.

To see the complete set of my Pripyat photographs, CLICK HERE.
To see the complete set of all my other Chernobyl photographs, CLICK HERE.

With the Brits in Kiev, Part 2

We returned to Kiev frightfully early on Wednesday morning. While the return train trip wasn't as traumatic as our train ride to Dnepropetrovsk, I hadn't exactly had a full night's sleep. And the Cat Lady needs her sleep. I spent most of the day resting in my apartment. Except for when we went for Georgian food.

On Thursday, D and his fiancee went off to some rural Ukrainian festival, and A had to work (via laptop/internet, poor sod), which left me, B, and N to wander around Kiev. After lunch at the Georgian restaurant, we decided to go and check out the Гидропарк - the hydropark. The hydropark has its own metro stop on the red line, which lets you off on an island in the middle of the Dnepr River. Yes, this is the same river we swam in down in Dnepropetrovsk, although it's far cleaner (at least to the eye) up in Kiev. The hydropark island is home to tons of small cafes, tons of walking paths, numerous stray dogs and cats, beaches for swimming, an abandoned amusement park, and a somewhat functional amusement park (consisting of machines from the abandoned one which still functioned). The weather was gorgeous, and we had an absolutely fantastic day, as photos will, of course, show:

One of the many stray dogs, all of whom looked quite well fed.

There were stray cats and dogs on the beach as well.

B decided to go swimming in his boxers. To be fair, I probably would've gone swimming in my undies, too, had I been wearing any.


The train on the bridge is the Kiev Metro

B and N

The first evidence of abandoned amusement park: Vinni Pookh and Petachok (Russian Winnie the Pooh and Piglet)

Second evidence of abandoned amusement park: Geni the Crocodile and Cheburashka

And then came the abandoned rides, overgrown with vines...

...and in varying stages of decay

This was the street of rides which were still in operation.

As we were leaving, we met the friendliest cat ever.

As you can see, B was very happy playing with her!

Unfortunately, when it came time to go, she wanted to follow us. Being unable to take her was heartbreaking :-(

The Rolling Oven of Death and other misadventures

Sunday night, shortly after 11pm, B, N, A, and I boarded the overnight train for Dnepropetrovsk (which, as the shite 2010 edition of the Bradt guide to Ukraine says, 'is pronounced almost exactly as it's spelled') in order to visit D and his fiancee, K. We - being the cheap sort of travelers that we are - had purchased tickets for platzkart, or third class. It's like a rolling dormitory on wheels. Just imagine spending eight un-airconditioned hours confined with 50 of your sweatiest, stinkiest, ventilation-phobic friends. Ukrainians (like most Slavs, apparently) have an ingrained fear of the skvosnyak, or cross-breeze. Any sort of breeze blowing on you will, without a doubt, immediately lead to your death.

My seat/bed on the way to Dnepr was in a separate section of the train-car than my friends. I was on the bottom bunk. Top bunk passengers do have access to a window (which barely ventilates the bottom at all, but is better than nothing), but the locals on the top bunks slammed it shut as soon as we left the station. Wouldn't want the skvoznyak to get you while you're sleeping. I sent D a text, informing him that we were all aboard the rolling oven of death, then tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to get some sleep. (I tried consoling myself with the thought that people sit in saunas for pleasure... and tried to ignore the responding thought that if one sits in a sauna for 8 hours, one will probably die.)

We arrived in Dnepropetrovsk at 7am, having had little to no sleep, and feeling pretty much like shit. D met us at the train station, looking unbearably chipper (nothing like being greeted by a morning person who has had a full night's rest in his own comfy bed...). D was ready to start partying right then and there (I should mention that this popping over to Dnepr was a bit of a stag/bachelor party for him), but the rest of us demanded a short nap.

Dnepropetrovsk was a closed city during the Soviet Union, as it was home to the CCCP's main intercontinental ballistic missile factory, ЮЖМАШ (UZHMASH). It wasn't even shown on maps until after Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union. Not that much has changed in Dnepr since then. ЮЖМАШ is still cranking out ICBMs of suspect reliability, and the rest of the city still seems trapped in the late 1980s.

D rousted us from our nap far too soon and took us down to see what little one can see of ЮЖМАШ from the street:

Then the madness of Dnepr's First Ever Stag Party occurred. I figure the less said about that the better. Here's the only picture from that part of the trip that I'm willing to post:

The plan for the next day was to go swimming in the pleasantly polluted green waters of the Dnepr River. Nope, I'm actually not kidding. The combination of industrial pollutants and and agricultural runoff has led this portion of the Dnepr to become a fabulously dark green color, topped in many places with a sheen of neon green algae. Why wouldn't one want to go swimming in that?

An almost civilized looking sort of beach...


D was actually disappointed - he'd promised us exceptionally green water, and said that this was actually the cleanest he'd ever seen it.

B bravely (er...) wades out into the waters.


K, D, and B. D has gone native and now wears speedos. Yeah.


N & A debate getting in. As you can tell, I was in the river when I took this!


A didn't get in, but N did!


D and B were the only ones who actually went swimming though.

That night we took the night train back to Kiev. The way back was far more pleasant. I was in the same part of the train-car as my traveling companions, and slept on the upper bunk with the window open. It was noisy - and even a tad chilly - but paradise in comparison to the trip down to Dnepr.

With the Brits in Kiev, Part 1

The Brits (B, N, and A) arrived in Kiev on August 13th. They were flying Aerosvit, and were supposed to get in at 7:30pm. Their flight was delayed by three hours. They were told that the plane was late coming in from Kiev; however, when they were finally able to board, B learned the truth. As they were walking down the gate towards the aircraft, B noticed a clipboard containing some official looking paperwork, unguarded and just begging to be read. It was the maintenance manifest. Apparently the flight was delayed because they COULDN'T FIND THE KEY. Seriously. (Their taxi driver in Kiev asked them if their flight had been delayed because of the London riots. Sadly, no.)

Meanwhile, the taxi driver whom Pavel and I had requested to meet the Brits was getting a little cranky. At 11:00pm, he called us to say that everyone had disembarked and our three folks were not on the plane. We told him to keep waiting. Five minutes later he called to say that he had found them. Woohoo! They didn't make it to our apartment in Obolon (northern Kiev) until just after midnight.

A, N, me, B, and Rosya the cat

The next day (or at least up until 11pm - but that madness belongs to my next post) was pretty laid back. We all slept in, then went out to eat Georgian food and explore the city. I took them to Mimino - which I have to admit I'd been eating in pretty regularly since I discovered it. Then we wandered around the city, taking pretty much the same route I took the other day - from Kontraktova Ploshcha down to Pochtova Ploshcha, up the funicular, around St. Michael's Cathedral and St. Andrew's Church, then down the Andriyivskyy Descent and back to Kontraktova Ploshcha.

N & A and tons of khachapuri


B meets Kontraktova Ploshcha dog for the first time


A interacts with a statue, as one does


St. Michael's Cathedral


Random church. I don't know its name, but it just looked so different from typical churches in the area that I had to photograph it.

Stay tuned for the next step in our adventures, which began that night at 11pm...

I know I'm behind, sorry!

I was doing well keeping up with my blogging until the rest of the group arrived in Kiev... obviously I haven't done any blogging since. Ooops. We had tons of fun in Kiev, a crazy time in Dnepropetrovsk, and quite enjoyed ourselves exploring Chernobyl and Pripyat. Sadly, we are no longer in Ukraine. At the moment, I am in the US, working on getting my next Korean work visa. In theory I'll be back in Korea in about two weeks. In the meanwhile, I'll try to get caught up on my blogging... but not right now, because I need a nap.

stray animals and cultural differences

I spent yesterday and today doing very little of consequence, just resting up for the upcoming madness. I’ve done a good deal of wandering about, playing with the stray(ish) animals. I say stray(ish), because many seem to have their own territories staked out, and seem to do very well off scraps provided to them by their neighboring humans.

In Korea, keeping animals as pets is somewhat of a novelty, and really only done by those who purchase purebred animals from pet stores. The idea of taking an animal off the street (generally viewed as dirty, diseased, and dangerous) and bringing it into your home is just about unheard of. Granted, cat and dog cafes are becoming popular in Seoul, but they’re still quite a novelty. When I say that Charlie was once a street cat, most Koreans tend to recoil in horror. (“Why didn’t you buy a cat from a pet store?” is a common question.)

Stray animals in Korea are not treated well by the general populace (they’re viewed more like vermin than anything else), and as a result they tend to do everything they can to avoid contact with humans. The only interactions I’ve had with stray animals over the past year (prior to arriving in Ukraine) involved opening a can of tuna, setting it down, then watching as a stray cat warily snuck over to eat. Most strays don’t have an International Cat Lady around to put out tuna. However, as a result of the way garbage is collected in Korea, there are plenty of ‘trash heaps’ in every neighborhood, and that’s usually where stray cats and dogs eat. There are far more stray cats in Korea than stray dogs.

In Kiev, there are stray dogs and cats all over the place. The dogs aren’t small, either; most of them seem to be large-sized shepherd mixes. And, oddly enough, most seem fairly well fed. Few seem fat, but I’ve yet to see any that are skin-and-bones. I haven’t encountered any threatening stray dogs. Most are either friendly, or rapidly become uninterested as soon as they discover that you’re not bearing food.

My favorite Kiev dog is a female shepherd mix who lives in a park near Kontraktova Ploshcha. I’ve seen her there three times now. She is incredibly sweet and friendly, and is totally willing to play, whether or not you have snacks for her. I brought her a hotdog today, although as someone had recently given her the remains of a t-bone, she only ate part of it. (She did however drive away the few pigeons who sought to steal her hotdoggy prize, so I guess she’s saving it for later, when the steak wears off.)

The dog that lives near Kontraktova Ploshcha (in the park across from Пузата Хата)

Not only do I see stray dogs with their begging territories, I see stray cats with them, too. I saw quite a few kitties both times I walked the Andriyivsky Descent – and the second time I walked it, I noticed souvenir vendors sharing scraps with the cats. One had even brought some catfood! Meanwhile, here in “my” neighborhood, there is one particular cat who hangs out near a group of kiosks (one of which is a butcher’s). He’s incredibly friendly, and I’ve seen quite a few locals playing with him – and feeding him.

Me and Kiosk Cat in northern Kiev

Then there’s Rosya. He lives with my host family, and is seventeen years old. He’s quite a stately chap, and very demanding when he wants something. He frequently demands entrance into my room, simply so that he can sniff all of my bags for eau de Charlie. Apparently, in his younger and more athletic days, he used to sit on the floor beneath an open window, patiently waiting for a pigeon to land on the windowsill – and he was apparently quite good at catching them! (Keep in mind, he lives on the 13th floor!)

Rosya

Rosya

Then there’s the part of the US where my mom lives (and where – rather frighteningly – I’ll be in less than ten days). My mom is now up to NINE dogs, all of which had been abandoned, and most of which were starving when she found them. This is her latest acquisition, an incredibly friendly skin-n-bones hound that was dumped out on her land just a few weeks ago:

Having worked with animal control in that neck of the woods, I am most unfortunately aware that being a stray in that part of the US is much more similar to being a stray in Korea than in Kiev. People would call and demand immediate removal of a “dangerous animal” (which nine times out of ten would be something small and friendly) and threaten to shoot it if it wasn’t picked up within the hour. Christmas puppies would grow into summertime dogs and be left tied at the shelter’s gate – or dumped on my mom’s land. Animals would be hurled over the shelter’s fence in the dead of night, often resulting in injury or death. Idiots hurling a puppy or a cat over a 10 foot fence into a pen of adult, male dogs? Yes, that happened way too many times. Dog fighters who train with puppies and kittens? Sadly, I've seen then remains of that too many times, too.

While there are certainly people in the area other than my mother who have ridiculous numbers of animals (and who do so because no one else is willing to care for them), the vast majority of people in that area simply don’t care. I’ll be there soon, and I’m trying to prepare myself. (This might give you a clue as to what I mean when I talk about the ex-job, and you can probably understand why I get pretty worked up about it.)

the next few days...

Not much has been going on the past few days, although starting tomorrow (Saturday) things are going to get pretty hectic.

Tomorrow evening, B, N, and A are flying in from the UK.

Sunday evening, the four of us are taking the train to Dnepropetrovsk, where our friend D lives. (From what I gather, Dnepropetrovsk is an industrial sort of place where no one in their right mind would go while on vacation. D has written a little about the absurdity of five foreigners being in Dnepropetrovsk at one time on his blog, which you should totally read.) After taking the overnight train into Dnepr, we'll spend one night and two days there, taking the overnight train back into Kiev on Tuesday night, rolling into Kiev at some ungodly hour like 6am on Wednesday.

We don’t really have much in terms of specific plans for how to entertain ourselves in Kiev during the rest of the week, but having traveled with these folks before, I know we’ll be able to amuse ourselves with no problems. On Friday, assuming all goes as planned, we’ll be off to Pripyat and Chernobyl for some pleasant romping through radiation.

Then bright and early Sunday morning (actually, probably not bright at all…) I’ll be boarding a plane for the USA :-(

I don’t know how busy I’ll be whilst the Desolation Travel crew are together, and I may or may not have time to blog about our adventures on a daily basis. No worries, though, posts about our adventures will totally go online as soon as possible.

More Georgian food, the Chernobyl Museum, and Podil

I spent most of my day today in the Podil region of Kiev. I set out with the goal of visiting the Ukrainian National Chernobyl Museum. As a secondary goal, I wanted to try another Georgian restaurant, Mimino, located in the same part of the city. I knew that both were located somewhere within walking distance of metro station Kontraktova Ploshcha. I had their addresses, and a very crap map (I believe I've mentioned my disdain for the 2010 Bradt Guide to Ukraine...), and figured I could probably find them.

I found the restaurant first - and rather accidentally - but it was already 2pm by that point, and I was pretty hungry. Minimo was great! Much better ambiance than Alaverde (where I ate on Monday), and incredibly good service. I didn't just eat khachapuri this time - I added in an appetizer of eggplant in walnut sauce. Both the khachapuri and the eggplant were fantastically scrumptious. Monday's khachapuri at Alaverde was yummy, but todays was simply wonderful. Granted, this place cost a bit more, but it was DEFINITELY worth it.

There were a handful of people dining, although you can't see them in this shot. Even nearly empty of customers (2pm on a weekday isn't exactly prime dining time), the ambiance of Minimo was far superior to Alaverde.


Egglpant in walnut sauce appetizer. Yum!

After my lunch - and feeling wonderfully stuffed - I continued on my quest for the Chernobyl Museum. The museum's website provides its address as Khoryv Lane #1. Silly me, I only looked at the English language part of the website, not the Ukrainian. All street signs here are in Ukrainian, but I figured I could transliterate it with no problem. I had jotted down Хорив #1, and set off on my merry way. Well, I found вул. Хорива with no problem - and although I had no idea what the abbreviation for 'lane' was in Ukrainian, I figured that surely this must be where I needed to be. I had a nice scenic walk down to #1 вул. Хорива, only to discover that it was a furniture store, located within an absolutely hideous example of Soviet era architecture not even worth a photo. Sigh. Wrong place. Time to retrace my steps. Luckily the area was scenic.

Seen while walking about looking for the museum

After much more walking, I discovered про Хоревий #1 (ironically located a stone's throw from Minimo). Apparently in Ukrainian, 'lane' is провулок (similar to the Russian переулок). Ahh well. Anyhow, I had arrived at the Chernobyl Museum. Entrance to the museum costs a little over $1 (although if you want to take photos, which of course I did, you must pay roughly an additional $2). I'd say it was worth $3. If you didn't know very much about Chernobyl, and hadn't spent the better part of the past year researching it while planning your upcoming trip there, it would probably be incredibly eye opening and educational. As it was, I'd pretty much seen it all before.

I'm not sure if this was a deformed pig or sheep. I thought it was interesting that it was on display, since many of the tour agencies that take groups into the exclusion zone (I'm going next week!!) point out on their sites that you will not see deformed animals on your trip...


Photos from the abandoned city of Pripyat, where those who worked at the reactor lived.



There was a lot that seemed designed more to creep one out than to educate.

The most interesting part of the whole thing was the speaker. There was some large group of middle-aged American tourists at the museum, and their guide had arranged a speaker for them. I may have snuck in. The speaker's name was Vladimir. He had been in the Soviet Army reserves in 1986, and was drafted to be part of the cleanup process after the accident. He worked at Chernobyl for a month and a half, leaving with severe radiation poisoning. It was incredibly fascinating, and I wish I hadn't missed the first half of his speech.

Vladimir (right) and his translator (for the middle-aged American tourists)

After leaving the museum, I decided to walk around Podil for a little bit. I'd gotten somewhat oriented during my quest for the museum, and after walking around just a tad more, I realized where I was in relation to the funicular and the church that's I'd tried to visit on Monday. And off I went! This time I had no problems getting on the funicular. I'd already checked the internet and determined that the church I was looking for was the St. Andrew's Church of Kiev - and I knew exactly how to get there from the top of the funicular. Yay, google maps! The church is currently closed and undergoing massive renovation (apparently it has some serious foundation problems), but I was still able to get quite a few good external shots.

St. Andrew's Church of Kiev

Afterwards, I walked down the narrow, winding, cobblestone street - the Andriyivsky Descent - which leads from St. Andrew's Church, back down to Kontraktova Ploshcha. The street was lined with tons of venders of Ukrainian arts and crafts as well as of Soviet era kitsch. I must go back some day when I have more cash in my wallet. Along the way I encountered several cats and dogs - all of whom were friendly.

This cat was chilling on a souvenir stand... and there was no human in sight. Was he the salesman?


Bet you can guess who this silly critter reminded me of!