Location: Kiev, Ukraine

All my body wanted to do this morning was sleep in, but Ian and Richard and I had big plans! We woke up at ass o’clock after only 4 hours of sleep, bumbled around the apartment and set out into the streets. We grabbed coffee at a small kiosk in the park and trundled down cobbled walkways, running across 4 lanes of traffic and underneath bridges to finally arrive at hotel Dnipro, our pickup location to head to…

Chernobyl!

A small pink haired young woman with a heavy Ukrainian accent and even heavier black eyeliner greeted us, introducing herself as our tour guide. I was really looking forward to the tour, but was unsure what to expect. We were told we had to wear long pants and long sleeved shirts. Bring your own water. Reconsider going if you’re pregnant. All things that made it feel risky to even be going in the first place. All day I was thinking about how tough it was going to be to write about this.

It takes almost 2 hours to get to the centre of the exclusion zone, passing through 2 passport checks, one where they give you a radiation tool you wear around your neck that measures how much radiation you’re exposed to over the day. Just for their info though we don’t actually get to know… We decided to rent the optional Geiger counter, assuming it was more of a novelty than anything but that it might be cool to have on hand (spoiler: it’s not a novelty. Turns out it was kind of freaky).

We started passing by abandoned houses and overgrown farms on the outskirts of the exclusion zone. Closer in we saw a rusted out shipping port, and a military base. We saw radioactive equipment that was just behind a hip high fence. Oh. Okay then. At one point we walked down ‘The Alley of Sorrows’, a long path lined with signs of the name of every settlement that used to exist in the exclusion zone. I started getting emotional, but had no idea what was coming next.

We watched as the trees passing by slowly turned from lush green to bright red to black. The Geiger counters in the bus all started beeping more insistently as they rose from 0.11 to 15. It was an unsettling sound, to say the least. I laughed in the bus, because I wasn’t really sure what else to do.

I assumed we would see the reactor from afar, but we drove almost right up to the building, which really just looks like a giant silver warehouse. Our guide showed us a picture of the reactor when it was built, then when it blew up, then when the initial ‘sarcophagus’ was build around it and then finally when the structure that currently exists was built. Of the 400,000 liquidators who cleaned up the disaster, 20,000 died within a year, and a further 200,000 are permanently disabled.

The whole time Ian kept saying ‘”oh wow ok this is a lot closer than I thought we’d get” and then we would continue getting even closer. I was having a really difficult time describing how I felt out loud. Discomfort wasn’t quite right. I wanted to be there, but something felt off. I was just uneasy, I guess. I didn’t know whether to smile in pictures, but I wasn’t sad. The guide showed us a hotspot where the Geiger counter rose up to 46.

We stopped for lunch at what I can only describe as a soviet-era style canteen, where they served mystery meat on mashed potatoes, watery rice soup, room temperature coleslaw (maybe?) and apple crêpes with sour cream. Each table had 3 little bowls of spices that were COMMUNAL. I could see the finger pinch marks in the salt and just stared incredulously at it. There was also cups of what looked like yogurt. Much to Richards dismay it turned out to be drinkable sour cream. I think that sour cream might be Ukraine’s staple condiment. Ian was super impressed.

We saw the infamous kindergarten school with skeletons of bunk beds lining the walls, eyeless dolls strewn on the floor next to abandoned shoes and handwritten report cards. We saw a football field turned forest, an overgrown swimming pool, and an amusement park that looks a thousand years old, but in reality had been open for one single day.

Our tour guide covertly took us up to the roof of a 17 story apartment block, shushing us the whole way up for fear of getting caught. At the top we looked out over the exclusion zone. Side stepping the rotting parts of the roof, we gingerly made our way to the edge to look out over the affected area, from the top you could almost believe nothing had happened here.

I feel like I’m processing everything I saw today really slowly. Like I can’t think too hard about it or my brain just re-directs. It doesn’t feel like any of it was real. It could have been a movie set straight out of 28 Days Later or The Last of Us. Minus the zombies. I’m shocked at the places we were allowed to go, and the lack of security in and around the towns. I feel like I never quite grasped the full effect that the explosion had in the surrounding area and it was a sobering look at human impact on the world.

We made our way back towards Kiev, stopping once to do a radiation check on each passenger individually, as well as the van. I fell asleep almost immediately afterwards and was glad to wake up back in Kiev.

We met up with Mack and Land to grab some dinner at a Turkish place down the street where we ate lamb and veal and had a beer, before returning to the apartment to relax for the evening. I did some sewing on my chausses, we watched Game of Thrones and wound down from the day.

All in all I’m really glad we went, and I know it’s good to be left speechless sometimes by the things you see and experience. I would recommend going if given the chance because I don’t think anyone will ever really do it justice in words or pictures.

S

#yxygirlsgohereandthere

P.S. Okay but a few fun things from today:

1. I didn’t bring pants that completely cover my legs, so I had to rip a pair of black socks to wear around my knees so my knees wouldn’t show through my ripped jeans. Ian made fun my sock knees all day!

2. Ukraine serves burgers and finger foods with rubber gloves. So you don’t get your hands dirty when you eat. Also they are served in a shot glass which we found extremely entertaining.

3. Our weapons bag made it! Looks like we’re all good to go for Thursday’s fights!