Kiev and Chernobyl
Day 71-72 - Kiev. Spent a day catching up on laundry and developing videos. Still way behind in this arena, which feels like a burden sometimes. But, I still want to capture it all, and producing videos helps relieve the anxiety of having hundreds of hours worth of footage to deal with when the trip is over.
Visited some cathedrals and an small museums. The Holodomor Museum is dedicated to the ten million Ukrainians that died in a man-mad famine. Over 7,000,000 died the winter of 1932-33 as record amounts of food were exported by Stalin's regime.
Also took a day trip to Chernobyl--ironically exactly 31 years after the disaster. It was closed on the day of the first explosions, but the next day, April 27, was when they evacuated local communities. Really an amazing place, and I got to ride for two hours in a "bus." I've seen many tourists in these contraptions the last few months and always wondered what it was like. Verdict: I was able to sleep while someone else drove. It was magical.
I'm not sure if "preserved" is the appropriate description for Chernobyl, as all of the buildings were stripped out during the post-disaster "liquidation." Ceiling material, furniture, and all household objects that had been contaminated were buried in graveyards. I was unimpressed at first, thinking, "Sure, you leave any small town alone for 31 years, and you're going to see trees grow through cracks in the sidewalk." But as we walked among once-pristine buildings, it became a bit more memorable, and creepy. The town, actually called Prypiat, was founded in 1970 specifically to serve the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It was "the ideal socialist town," home to 47,000 people, complete with an amusement park, sports stadium, and huge fitness complexes.
It started to feel more like hundreds of thousands of people had lived there. Differing "official" counts claim 30-60 people lost their lives due to the nuclear accident, but other studies show nearly 60,000 people's lives were shortened by the initial fallout and disaster relief efforts. Hard to tell what's accurate, as the Soviet government covered up many facts.
Another interesting tidbit...while we walked around with Geiger counters to measure radiation exposure and there were places when readings spiked through the roof, in a day we were only exposed to as much radiation as someone taking a trans-Atlantic flight (according to the tour guide). And, those who fought to return to the area to live have actually had longer lives than those who stayed in the cities. Granted, Ukraine life expectancy is lower than any other European country, but it comes to show how happiness and clean air can have a real impact on health and longevity...even when living on the grounds of the largest nuclear disaster in history.
Overall, this was a great break in Kiev. Green camped out in one place for three nights in a row. Every garment is clean. All maps are updated. Ready to crush some miles.
