Chornobyl

So one of the things I’ve wanted to do, really since I first found out we’d be living in Kyiv, is visit Chornobyl. (I guess maybe I’m a little morbid.) The Ukrainian government keeps the area tightly regulated, which means that you can only visit by using an official travel agency. And there’s about seven different Ministries involved (the Ministry of Emergencies is my personal favorite), so that’s a lot of people who want a cut of the profit. Which means that tours usually seem to run between $150 and $300 per person. A little steep for us. Just as I was beginning to give up all hope that we would get to visit while we were here, our friend Phil stepped up and put together a group trip. And somehow managed to keep the cost around $80 per person. So Sunday was the day our trip to Chornobyl finally happened.

Since I have also visited the Auschwitz concentration camp, I can say with authority that Chornobyl is not the most depressing place on earth. I would actually classify it as creepy rather than depressing. I think the Chornobyl museum in Kyiv is more depressing than the site itself. But I have to say that I was glad to have visited the museum a few times since the “guide” for our day trip to Chornobyl took a rather hands off approach to tour guiding. He held up the Geiger counter at the appropriate times and allowed us to gasp at how high the number reached, but he was not exactly forthcoming with information about the disaster.

After we made it through passport control at the entrance to the exclusion zone (about 30 kilometers away from the power station), we drove through the town of Chornobyl. This was the town that the station was named after and is currently the part-time home of the people who still work at the station doing maintenance and monitoring (Chornobyl is no longer a functioning nuclear power station as of 2000). Then it was off to the station to see the sarcophagus that now covers the exploded reactor.

The next stop was the most interesting (and creepy) part of the day. We went to Pripyat, which was the city where all of the power station workers lived (it was built specifically for that purpose when the power station was constructed). It is, literally, a ghost town. When it was evacuated, people were forced to leave all their belongings behind and no one has lived there since. Buildings are crumbling, trees grow through concrete, and wild boar and wolves roam through the tall grass.

I assumed we would just be driven through town on our minibus, but it turns out that there is one building in town, the Hotel Polisya, that visitors are allowed to enter. Our guide encouraged us to climb to the top (seventh) floor to get some good views of the city. Of course, he also stated that the building could fall down at any time - “hopefully not today.” Right. So we climbed at our own risk, the entire time stating that this would never happen in the US, at least not without signing a dozen release forms first.

Exploring the hotel was kind of like walking through a horror movie. I kept waiting for the zombies to show up. It was hard to tell how much of the building was still “just as it was” on that fateful day in 1986 and how much had been altered by vandals and previous tourists. (We’re guessing the room we found full of gas masks was probably a set up.) We made it up the stairway - covered in broken glass - to the top where we found trees growing out of the linoleum floor. There was a good view that demonstrated just how close these people lived to the power station. Other than our group, it was completely silent and no movement could be seen in any direction.

Our final stop in Pripyat was an area where amusement park rides had been set up for the 1986 May Day celebrations. A rusty ferris wheel covered by vines on one side towered over the area. A tree was growing through another ride. And the bumper cars, while still recognizable, were in pretty sad shape. After we walked around for a while (this was where our guide told us he had spotted wild boars in the past), we got back on the minibus and headed back to the town of Chornobyl. We stopped a couple places in town where the government had moved some vehicles after the disaster. This time our guide told us not to get too close (I guess the metal holds radiation better) and I noticed that he didn’t even venture out of the bus for a smoke as he had on every other stop.

Then it was lunch (yes, I can now say I’ve eaten lunch in Chornobyl!) and back to Kyiv. But first, another stop at the entrance to the exclusion zone where we were all “tested” to ensure that our radiation levels were low enough to reenter society. We individually climbed into a contraption that looked like it was the best of 1972 technology and were deemed “cheesty” (clean) or “grazny” (dirty). Luckily, we all made it through with clean marks. I’m not really sure what would have happened otherwise. Condemned to a life in Chornobyl? Maybe that’s where they got the workers that are still employed by the power station.

All in all, it was definitely worth the trip and humbling to see a place where such a major disaster occurred.