Ukraine
(19/07-22/07 2016)
The 10th and most extreme country - so far.
First of all, I would like to say that everyone I met and talked to while in Ukraine were super friendly and welcoming. There weren’t any bad vibes or grumpy locals.
However, I will warn you that Kiev is NOT the place to go if you are an inexperienced traveler or are a bit shy with tendencies towards minor panic attacks. Kiev is huge, noisy and confusing and absolutely not used to or designed for tourists from the West. The city definitely gave me some challenges, but at the same time I also had some really incredible experiences here.
As soon as I walked out of the airport, I was bombarded with taxi drivers yelling something or the other. For the most part, I had no idea what was said.The only thing I could get out of all their squawking was: “TAXI? YOU HAVE MONEY?”, which was repeated constantly, and loudly.
As a person who does not respond well to in-your-face yelling, nor am I especially trusting of taxi drivers (having been recently fleeced by one), I immediately dropped the idea of a quick cab ride into the city, Instead I decided to take the nearest bus, without really knowing if it was heading to the city. There were no (decipherable) signs and the bus driver couldn’t speak English. So I was really taking some chances.
Fortunately, the bus’ first stop was Kiev’s central train station, which also had a metro station. Yes! I remembered that there was a metro stop near my hotel, so all I had to do was find the metro that went to that station. Simple - normally. There was just one little detail: all signs were written in cyrillic letters (think Russian).
And unfortunately, that is a script that I still have yet to master.
After being astonished that there actually existed a European city with absolutely zero signs in English (or any other Western language), I desperately started looking for a person who could help me. However, I noticed people quickly shut down as soon as they heard my English, so I decided to try with “Maidan?” (”Independence Square,” which was where my hotel was located) to a man sitting peeling an orange. Fortunately, he nodded enthusiastically, grabbed my hand and started walking off. At that moment, I said a little prayer, to both God and Odin, and submissively followed after onto a packed metro car. My giant backpack only just fit through the doors, but we made it.
Apparently/surprisingly, I had made myself clear enough, cause when we walked out of the metro station, I was exactly where I needed to be: Independence Square, and only a few minutes from my hotel. I thanked my good Samaritan with several “Spasiba! Spasiba!,” as I climbed the stairs towards the square, only to find out later that that’s not “exactly” how you say thank you in Ukrainian. Oops.
Independence Square or Maidan Nezalezhnosti (or just Maidan) is the most central square in Kiev. It has been used over the years for political demonstrations - most recently during the Ukrainian revolution in 2013/14, where riots and street fighting filled the square with gunfire and blood.
That day, it was beautiful and peaceful under a picturesque sky.
Directly behind the spot pictured above is where my hotel, Koziatsky Hotel, stood. What luck! However, the hotel did not take credit cards and bank machines do not allow over 1000 hryvnia at a time - and I needed at least over 3000. So, at 9pm, with my giant backpack, in a city that did not speak English, I had to find 4 different cash machines before I could finally relax and get some sleep.
When I finally got to my room, I dropped everything I had on me, and threw myself on the bed crying from both exhaustion and relief. Then I called my mommy 😄
Even though I was super tired, I simply could not sleep. The bed was hard as concrete and some lady upstairs was yelling and screaming and stomping around all night. I finally got to sleep around 4 in the morning, and amazingly still able to drag myself out of bed to meet outside the hotel at 8 am for a tour to Chernobyl and the nuclear power plant that was destroyed in 1986 (the worst nuclear disaster ever).
So with morning-after hair and sleep in the corner of my eyes, I bought a breakfast wrap at McDonald’s (hallelujah for McD) and jumped into a minibus, where 6 other travelers waited for me, and headed north to Chernobyl.
After about an hour’s drive, we made it to a gas station, that was the last stop inside of the “accessible” Ukraine before entering the Exclusion Zone. We bought water, snacks and mosquito spray before heading towards the zone’s entrance. From then on, we were not allowed to take pictures. I managed to get one anyways - we were a bit further away from the guards as we waited to be checked.
But it’s part of the story, and had to be shown!
After our bags were thoroughly checked, we signed a waiver saying that we would not blame Ukraine if we ended up radioactive monsters with 8 legs and fangs. Then we drove into the zone and into Chernobyl, which is NOT where the explosion took place but is the city where the reactor’s workers now live while they are within the zone.
Workers live here 2 weeks at a time - maximum. Their families live outside the zone and may only visit here for short periods. Besides those that actually work at the plant to clean up, there is also a small police force, some firemen and a couple of people who work at a museum in the middle of the city. Next to the museum is a giant angle statue that is there to protect the residents.
Further in the Exclusion Zone is the fire station, whose primary responsibility is to put out any forest fires that pop up in the untamed, extremely dry forest that stretches across the entire zone. Next to the station is another monument, “First Responders” that honors the men who had no idea what happened or what would happen later, but jumped into the scene of the accident and died as a direct consequence of being so close to ground zero.
The monument was financed completely by the firemen themselves, as the government did not recognize their actions as heroic nor did it feel responsible for their deaths.
After the fire station, there is one more checkpoint before entering the 10 kilometers zone, which has even stricter restrictions. The rules are quite simple: 1) Don’t touch anything, and 2) Listen to your guide. Boom. Easy. :)
The 1st stop in the 10 km zone is Kopachi kindergarten. This was an emotionally difficult place to visit, with little slippers, toys and children’s drawings scattered throughout the building.
Everything was abandoned as they were tossed aside or forgotten as people rushed out of the building. In the years following, anything with even a small amount of value was ripped out by looters. Mattresses were removed from beds, copper extracted from pipes, lamps and walls, and even the eyes of dolls were popped out to get at the glass. What was left, was a spooky, spooky place.
All the dust in the air made me nervous, since there was a lot of it, and radioactive fallout is basically just dust. Our guide, Nikolai, assured me with his Geiger counter, that it was just as safe as if we were in Kiev. That was both scary and calming at the same time.
We then traveled to Pripyat,
This ghost town is just 2 kilometers from the nuclear plant, and therefore, hardest hit.
The workers have tried to maintain the main road leading into the city center, but nature seems to be against them. The road is overrun and distorted by bushes and trees, and it is completely impossible to drive on it with a regular car. It was actually quite cool to see how quickly nature takes over when man leaves it alone.
Pripyat was established in 1970 as a community for those who were to work at the newly built nuclear power plant. At the time of the accident, Pripjat was seen as one of the Soviet Union’s more luxurious cities where the residents were highly educated and specially selected to live. In the city center, there was a large supermarket and entertainment center with a cinema, disco and sports hall. Today, everything is completely blacked out with an undefinable liquid dripping from the ceiling.
Here’s the public swimming pool.
Early in the morning on Saturday, 26 April 1986, reactor 4 exploded. Pripjat was evacuated 36 hours later. At the time, the city was busy preparing for their May 1 (Workers’ Day) celebrations. Among other things, a carnival was being put up for the occasion:
One of the most iconic symbols of the Chernobyl catastrophe is the large ferris wheel in the middle of the amusement park. It’s said that after the accident, the day before the evacuation, they test ran the ferris wheel in the hope of still holding the May 1 celebrations.
We then went to Pripjat’s highest building, a 16-floor apartment complex, to get a view of the city from the top. I am not sure if you aware of this, but most abandoned buildings don’t have electricity. And if there are elevators, but no electricity, you can’t really use those elevators. So, for us that meant 16 flights of stairs using our own energy. For a relatively seasoned stair climber like me, thanks to previous tours up church towers and whatnot, this was not so bad. However, for my 6 tour compatriots, the dark narrow stairs caused a lot of dissatisfaction, puffing and moaning.
When we finally made it to the rooftop, we were met by the most spectacular view. You could see how nature had grown and taken over the city in the 30 years it was left to itself. This is even more incredible considering how dangerous radioactivity is for humans. Nature seems to be doing fine.
On the horizon you can see the nuclear plant and the new sarcophagus covering the melted reactor.
We had a half hour to look around before heading to the minibus. In that time, we could look around the apartments. Most everything was taken by looters, so there weren’t many objects left inside the apartments. But, it was still interesting to see how they were designed. Each room was tiny, with only space for the absolute necessities. And each apartment was identical to the next.
You could imagine that there were a lot of families living here, as close by was Pripyat Elementary School. It was evident that the school is a popular place for music videos and photo shoots. The few pieces of furniture that were there seemed staged, and in some cases it looked like things were moved from one location to another (even though it is strictly forbidden to touch anything!). In the canteen, children’s gas masks were brought in and spread out all over the floor. Macabre!
The irony is, the school had all these unused gas masks in case the Americans attacked with atomic bombs.
At the end of the day, we drove back to Chernobyl, and back to the hotel where we had lunch earlier in the day.
Here we were served a gourmet dinner of freezer pizza and soup (no idea what was in the soup). There is a 9pm curfew in the city, at which time the hotel’s doors are closed and locked and the bar stops serving alcohol. Normally the “locals” go out and buy beer at around 8pm, which they take back to their rooms and drink themselves silly. I wasn’t feeling especially silly, so I drank just one beer together with my tour mates, Michaela and Raphael, and went to bed early.
At 8 the next morning, breakfast was served: eggs, bacon and a strange baked good with poppy seeds and chocolate. The eggs and bacon were lovely; the “cake” wasn’t my thing. Nor did it sit well with our guide, Nicolai, who was the one who insisted that we try it. Typical Ukrainian 😄
At 8:30, we headed out to the Duga Radar, which is another icon of the Chernobyl catastrophe.
The radar was built to spot American missiles. Despite its massive size, nowadays the radar’s detection capabilities are about the same as an iPhone 6. When it was at its strongest, the radar’s signal could be heard on radios across Europe. Back then, the radar’s true purpose was top secret, so a lot of people thought that it was some kind of brainwashing technology. It wasn’t until 2013 that the radar was open to the public.This happened only after 2 teens sneaked in and base jumped from its tower.
Then we went to the highlight of the tour: reactor 4. It was here the meltdown actually took place so many years ago. We were shown what the Ukrainian government is doing to keep the world safe from the still life-threatening reactor core. The catastrophe was caused by Soviet errors, but the responsibility for its clean-up has been placed on the independent state of Ukraine. Right now, the only solution they have is a thick steel sarcophagus that will cover the entire reactor when finished, and which they guesstimate will contain the contamination for the next 100 years. After that time, a new sarcophagus will have to be built. The sarcophagus is the world’s largest single, moveable structure, but it will only be moved once.
Due to the extreme conditions, the project will first be finished this November (2016).
While the others who purchased a guided tour of the reactor went on their way, me and few others went to Pripyat Hospital. It was here that the first firemen were treated before they were flown to Russia where they later died of radiation poisoning. The hospital is still so radioactive in some places, that our guide does not dare go in, even with a protective suit and mask. Everything is accessible though, the safest area being the entrance and the maternity ward, so that’s where we went.
Again, anything of value has been stolen, so we saw none of the possibly exciting medical equipment. It was nevertheless, still quite eerie to walk past all those empty cribs.
In one of the rooms, one of the firemen was washed clean of radioactive dust. The cloth used on him still lies on the floor where it was dropped - and still registers extremely high levels of lethal radioactivity.
It was totally creepy to visit that hospital.
We then went to the old police station, which is one of the few places that still has intact furniture. These tables and chairs are in the interrogation room. They have not been stolen - perhaps because they are nailed to the floor so that interviewees could not use them as weapons!
Next to the police station is the small car graveyard, the big one is filled with cars used by clean-up crews and highly radioactive and therefore forbidden to enter. In the small graveyard is the cars that were just pushed there to move them out of the way of tour buses and workers.
This is of course, after they were “relieved” of their wheels, motors, headlights, and so on, and so on…
We drove back to the reactor to pick up the rest of the group and to eat lunch at the workers’ canteen. The workers seem quite used to eating together with small tour groups, but I thought it was a pretty special experience.
The last stop was the unfinished reactor 5. The intention was to have 6 reactors in total, but they were never able to finish number 5 before reactor 4 melted down. Inside the reactor moss is growing, which is incredibly radioactive due to its natural absorption ability. Because of this, you had to be especially careful where you walked - that is if you wanted to keep your shoes. If there is even the slightest indication of radiation on your shoes when they measure you at departure, you will be required to leave them where they stand!
In the middle of the reactor I found 5 bullets on the ground (not radioactive according to the Geiger meter). Hopefully though, they were there because someone got off on hearing gunshot echoes, and not because we had stepped onto a murder scene...
My fingerprints are, unfortunately, all over these - so cross your fingers :)
After a successful tour without the loss of a single shoe, we drove all the way back to Kiev where I had one more night before moving on to Moldova. Before hopping back onto the bus, I managed to get a group shot of our tour group.
Thanks a lot for a fantastic tour and for teaching me to read some cyrillic script (probably one of the most important lessons I learned on this trip!)
From my arrival to this country, where English was completely useless, signs incomprehensible, and people seemingly unapproachable (at least compared to other countries I’ve been to) and through to my incredible adventure in Chernobyl - I have learned and experienced a lot. It has been truly an unforgettable trip to Ukraine.
I will never really figure out what makes people tick, but this trip has shown me that nature always wins in the end - and that there are good people out there. For that alone, I will always remember this place.
Useful words and phrases:
A thousand, thousand, thousand times many thanks for everything!: tysyacha tysyach tysyach raz velyke spasybi za vse!
