Finally - today is the day
It's six o'clock and they already started to make noise at the construction site, close to the hotel. I can't sleep anyway because of the expectations running through my mind. Will it be dangerous today and is the tour guide as good as I hope?
No need to stay in the bed and I go through my photo-bag for I guess, 20th time in the last 24 hours. Just to be sure that I don't forget anything. It could be stupid to travel thousands of kilometers and then forget the battery that I will need in the middle of the ghost town of Pripyat.
We are all going to the breakfast-restaurant at the hotel. I'm not hungry but guess that I will not eat before late evening again and push some bread and cheese into my mouth. No complains about the hotel breakfast, there was a wide selection of food to choose from. Just to bad for me that I wasn't hungry.
Take off again
All 12 of us plus two other guys from Norway and Holland if I remember correct were picked up in front of the hotel. Everybody needed to show the passport to a guide - to be sure that we are not spys or secret nuclear experts from USA I guess...
The Mercedes sprinter was packed with people and equipment, no room for fun in there. And then there was the driver! Maybe it's just me, but putting a non english speaking driver together with 14 foreigners is a total misunderstanding. No points to Solo East Travel for that one. We were told that if we want to stop somewhere on the 2 hours ride to the forbidden zone, we just say STOP.
Why did I call this part for "take off again"? Because it felt like a plane take off, when our driver started the van and headed for the road out of Kiev. Damn, I will never feel good with these death drivers. I was really worried if we would reach our destination. I can already now tell, that I was more worried on the way back. But you will read that later...
While driving, the DVD player showed us a documentary about Chernobyl and the accident in 1986. I've seen it before I remember but I know that some of the other people didn't, so that was nice I guess.
Arrival to the zone
We are there now - the forbidden zone. The place i've been reading about for one year now. The forbidden zone is a 30 kilometer zone around the nuclear plant and we have to be checked again here. Our passports are compared with a list. We're not allowed to take pictures here, but who cares?
From the checkpoint where they check our passports again
We are now inside the zone but have another checkpoint before the real deal. Before that, we drive to the information place in Chernobyl city. In here we have to sign a piece of paper where we accept to enter the inner zone at our own risk. We don't see any high radiation on the dosimeter and we just sign the paper to move on.
This is where we meet our guide, Yuri. I guess he lives in Chernobyl city most of the time and he tells us about what we will see and not see. A good guide if you ask me.
A normal trip to the zone is different than ours. We changed it already before coming to Ukraine and the guide tells us that we will hurry through the boring stuff and go straight to Pripyat - the ghost city. That's what we want to hear, no more talk for now and we head for the last checkpoint where they check everybody for the last time.
A sign, giving an overview of the area
The power plant
After driving a bit, we are getting closer to the power plant. The dosimeter starts to show more radiation, but still not dangerous i believe. You've already seen my picture in front of the reactor 4 (in part #1), so i will show you this instead.
The power plant from the other side. Still a place where people are working!
Standing in front of the reactor 4 is strange, only 150 meters to the place where people died back in 1986. Actually people died where we are standing right now! Creepy feeling, even now when i'm writing about it. We can't stay here for a long time, because of the radiation. Remember that this power plant actually was seen as one of the safest, by the Soviet Union.
Dosimeter showing 4,75. The normal here in my home is 0,10
We are leaving again and is heading for the ghost town Pripyat.
Pripyat the ghost town
Pripyat was a middle large city, compared to cities in Denmark. Prior to the disaster, the population was almost 50.000 and they all stayed there the next 36 hours, before the evacuation started and 1200 buses was sent in to rescue them. 3 hours to evacuate all people - why the hell didn't they begin much earlier? A question that will never be answered I think.
A sign will show that we are there now.
The city sign of Pripyat
The city is not like I thought. There are more trees than expected and if we didn't had a guide, I think it could be difficult to find the way around. We know that we have about 4 to 5 hours in here, and we've all agreed to visit the hospital as the first place.
The hospital was hidden between the trees but unexpected, the radiation was not that bad in there.
The entrance to the Pripyat hospital
Inside the hospital it was trashed and messed up. But it was possible to find old bottles with liquids, manuals, operation rooms and much much more. Very interesting place. I managed to find a ladder to the roof and climbed up to see the view. But radiation raised a lot on the roof and I hurried down again.
One of my pictures from the hospital
Next place in Pripyat was one of the schools. It was so shocking to find old school books, dolls and other things that was left behind when the city was evacuated. Trashed like the hospital, but also a spooky place to visit.
A newspaper found at the school. It's dated 1st of january, 1986. Same year as the accident happend. Things like this touched me a lot emotionally! Believe me, I didn't stand there and cried, but it was tough.
Another picture from the school. This is from one of the class rooms. Poets still hanging there.
Time is running fast now and we are heading for the next place. We decide to visit the amusement park, where the well known ferris wheel and bumper cars are placed. This was the most contaminated of all the places that we visited in Pripyat. The dosimeter showed as much as 17 here.
The famous ferris wheel. Used in some computer games and still standing there
Bumper cars at the amusement park
There were so many places and I can't tell about all of them. But to show how trees are growing and how destroyed it is, take a look at this picture.
Trees are growing through the concrete. Crazy stuff.
Last place I want to write about is the public swimming pool that was one of three places with indoor swimming in Pripyat. The building was huge and it was weird to walk around in this place. No water in the pool but stuffed with dust and dirt.
I climbed the 5 meter diving board to get THE picture. Hope you like it as much as I do
The swimmingpool from the other end of the building
We did visit some other places too. One place was the old radio company called Jupiter. At this time I was stuffed with impressions and trashed buildings. It wasn't a boring place, but I just had enough now.
Returning to Kiev
We all had enough now I think and wanted to go back to Kiev and the hotel. Before leaving the zone, we all had to go through some machines that could measure our radiation level. I'm still not convinced that they are working for real and is only a "tourist" thing. Nobody watched us when we went through these things that showed red if you needed a chemical wash or green if everything was ok. All people was having green light.
A tourist thing or the real deal? I'm not sure.
We dropped the guide off the car again, when we returned to Chernobyl city. Thanks to Yuri for a very good day! Now we could just lean back and relax the next 2 hours... But no, I forgot how our death driver was handling a mini van.
Of course it's always nice to get home in a hurry, but not like he did. He put on a movie in his DVD player and was watching this all the way back to Kiev. This is not it, because some times his two cell phones was ringing and he managed to drive the van, watch a movie, speak in the cell phone and write down something on a piece of paper. Damn it was crazy with a speed of 120 kilometers / hour on bad roads. I would rather run naked through the reactor 4, than drive with that guy one more time.
But we survived and returned to the hotel in Kiev (we had a break half the way to Kiev, but the food was so strange that I can't write about that).
The end
We stayed to 2 days more in Kiev and it was nice to see the city and think about different things than death, contamination, ghost towns, etc. But believe me, when I returned to my PC at home to watch my pictures, everything went back in my head.
It was the most scary and mind-blowing thing I ever did in my life. I would do it again I believe, but I think I could do a two day trip next time, with one night at Chernobyl hotel.
If you reached the end here, I hope you liked the story. If you have any questions, feel free to comment this.
And at last, thanks to all my friends from this trip to Ukraine. I would go again with you guys and girls!
Subscribe