Kiev, Ukraine

Dear Friends ! - as our Chernobyl guide would say



So, we stayed in the Dnipro hotel, near the main maidan square, it was an old soviet style hotel and was decent price and breakfast included.
Very well heated too, it was quite cold when we were there.
First day we headed around the maidan square and thought it was a bit grim, was dull and gray - got some food into us (so cheap and nice) and allready the mood took an uptake.
Headed to the Santa Sofia church and climbed the bell tower, some great views, then down to st Peters Church (I think) and went to a service ... now I am not religious but the singing was incredible - noticed a lot of young people there, they are still quite religious.
Day 2 we went to that aviation museum out by the smaller airport in Kiev
Amazing - http://aviamuseum.com.ua/en We now are into aircraft, but still even if you don't like planes much it's very interesting, all Russian planes, some real beasts there
and we could board a Tupelev 154 as well as a military helicopter.

Day 3 we took an internal flight to Lviv - on an old YAK 40 - great experience, and Lviv was a gorgeous town.

Day 4 was the money trip, Chernobyl, left early - drive is about 2 hours and they showed us some documentaries on the accident and the building of the Sarcophogus to house the reactor 4 ruin.
As well some docs on the town before and after - fascinating and really set me up for the day with real knowledge of what happened.
Tour guide was also very knowledgeable and answered lots of questions.
Driver was also a sound lad - chatty.

We got to go to Pripyat and some other small abadoned village - Zalissya , very interesting to see the way it was all left behind and eerie to walk
around - we could also enter some buildings (allthough officially I don't think people should) and went to the top of a 9 story apt. block in Pripyat and got great views - also took a walk around some apartments.

Seeing a childs school and toys, dolls and teddy bears left there was so strange - no one takes or touches them they could be contaminated.
In fact you are not allowed to take any souvenirs whatssoever.




We got quite close to reactor 4 too - look at this stray dog! there was a few of them around the villages, tour guides bring them food and some
guests too - they are all tagged and have been sterilised, I guess they don't want the population getting out of hand and genetic mutation perhaps?



I was amazed at the return of wildlife to the area, they are thriving .. wild horses have been introduced to control wild fires in the area, but there
are lots of wolves, foxes and carribou (we only saw Horses and stray dogs tho) These horses were close to Zalissya


The famous ferris wheel,
There is actually a hotspot under it look at the docimeter ...

link to a large image of the readout, so you can see - https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7867/40317854953_5a8a9e4303_k.jpg
176 rontgens per hour - normal city level in Kiev is 0.15-0.30

There are some hotspots around the area, the red forest one of the most famous where a lot of the dust ended up after the explosion -
we couldn't get off the bus here, we just drove through ...fast!! and on the bus it was showing around ~30 rontgens !! if we had gotten out and examined the ground in the forest she said it would be been approx 2,000 rontgens !! crazy levels of radiation.


Back to Kiev, the metro is decent and is a good way to get around - There is a train service to the airport (80 UAH about 2.50EUR)
Don't let the hotel tell you it's not reliable, they want to order you a taxi.
We had different flight times back, my brother got the train I got an Uber - Uber was 330UAH (about 10EUR) Taxis might be 2/3 times that.

robyntmorton wrote: »

The tour to Chernobyl looks fascinating! It must feel weird to be walking through a place where life literally... stopped. No tidy up, no orderly withdraw, just "you can't be here any more"

Thanks for sharing it!

It's incredible, as I said it probably is the most fascinating thing I have done as a tourist.


The people in the villages were told that they would return in 3/4 days, so leave everything behind, just get on the buses.


Regarding the red forest, seems a lot of the original trees that were contaminated were just bulldozed and buried there, hence why it's so high levels - not just the dust.

Since the visit to Chernobyl I have been really interested in the whole disaster

- This elephants foot of Corium scares the shyte out of me! :eek:

But fascinating stuff..


http://nautil.us/blog/chernobyls-hot-mess-the-elephants-foot-is-still-lethal


https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/the-elephant-foot-of-the-chernobyl-disaster-1986/

and this fron NewsTalk
https://www.newstalk.com/news/the-elephants-foot-of-chernobyl-and-the-worlds-deadliest-selfie-601165