Friday 31 January 2014

The Missing Link: Part 1.4: Kiev to Odessa

world-map odessa

Greetings!

Today’s posting is the tale of a train journey.

I love trains. I’ve loved them for as long as I can remember and most of my best travelling has been done on them. Indeed, only last week I went on a trip to London with someone whom I’ve known for a while and yet, sat together on a train for less than two hours and I learnt far more about them than I had in months. There’s something about trains that makes that happen, human beings in close proximity, in a non-place between two worlds, that makes them open up and really get to know each other. Strangely though, this happens far less on aeroplanes, in cars or buses. Trains do it best and that’s why I love them. In a fortnight’s time I’m booked to travel around South Wales on a few and I must admit, I’m rather looking forward to it. Who shall I meet? What shall I learn?

On the trip from Kiev to Odessa, (or ‘Kyiv to Odesa’ if you wish to be very Ukrainian about it all), I learnt a lot. I learnt about a whole tribe of people that I never knew existed, thousands of Bulgarians descended from a group of settlers who fled the Ottoman Empire in the 18th and 19th century and started a whole new life on the plains of Ukraine. It was a fascinating story and, if I ever see him again, I shall thank Genaidy heartily for telling it to me.

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to all parts of the travelogue:

Introduction

Ukraine

1.1: Konotop

1.2: Chernobyl and Pripyat

1.3: Kiev

1.4: Kiev to Odessa

1.5: Odessa

1.6: Bolgrad

Moldova and Transdniestra

2.1: Bolgrad to Chisinau

2.2: Chisinau (I)

2.3: Tiraspol and Bender

2.4: Chisinau (II) 

Romania

3.1: Iasi (I)

3.2: Iasi (II)

3.3: Suceava

3.4: The Painted Monasteries of Bucovina

3.5: Targu Neamt, Agapia and Sihla

3.6: Suceava to Viseu de Sus

3.7: The Mocanita and Viseu de Sus

3.8: Viseu de Sus to Bucharest

3.9: Bucharest (I)

3.10: Bucharest (II)

My Flickr Album of this trip

MLM03  

Journey: Kiev – Odessa

I like great railway journeys and I like great railway stations to embark from.

And Kiev’s railway station certainly falls into that category. It is huge and it is monumental and as well as sleeping in one part of it, I had also spent an evening drinking in its restaurant which is without doubt the most spectacular station eatery that I have ever been in. A large vaulted space, more ballroom than buffet, adorned with fabulous socialist realist murals depicting idealised scenes from life in the old Ukrainian SSR. They truly are the stuff of communist brilliance and fantasy: a combine harvester ploughing through fields of grain or a beautiful Italianate garden looking out onto a gigantic coal mine with slag heaps. The Soviets truly had brought art to the people and as I nursed my beers, I loved them for it.[1]

ML050 Kiev’s station buffet

But now I was leaving that grand terminal and heading for pastures new: Odessa, the grand city on the shores of the Black Sea. In entered my four-berth cabin on the magnificent Soviet Era train and settled down to enjoy the journey, the next link in the chain which would close the gap between my European and Asian wanderings.

I viewed the scenery on and off until a few miles beyond Zhmerinka by which time the light was drawing in. To be fair, the scenery on offer, like on the trips to Konotop and Chernobyl, was none too inspirational. One doesn’t tend to visit Ukraine for the landscape as the country is largely empty and undulating, enormous fields of grain punctuated by trees, villages and swathes of uncultivated land. It is a vast space and a distinctly un-European space.

Asia and Europe are essentially one gigantic landmass yet they possess very different characters and histories. Asia is, and always has been, a big place: huge, multinational empires or kingdoms stretching for thousands of miles. Europe, on the other hand, has always been intimate, a patchwork of tiny kingdoms and principalities. Prior to the modern age, only one power, Rome, succeeded in managing to unite the majority of it into a single political entity yet when one looks at a map of the Roman Empire one can see clearly that it was based around the Mediterranean not the continent, held together by sea lanes as much as its famous roads. And even Rome was piffling in size compared to the vast empires of the Mongols, Chinese and the Russians.

The main reason behind all this is geography. Asia is largely plain, a vast steppe stretching from Minsk to Macao, across which invading armies could sweep, devouring all in their path and uniting all into their huge empires. Europe, on the other hand, is all mountains and valleys, the only plain of note being Hungary, (where, incidentally, one of the most famous of all the nomadic Asiatic tribes settled). The difference was clear to me in 2002 and 2003 when I did my two great trips, across Asia from Japan to Konotop and then across Europe from Bulgaria to the Netherlands. My aim had been to see how Asia evolved into Europe and in many ways I found the great cultural barrier to be the border between China and the former Soviet Union, Oriental to Slavic. This distinction however, is somewhat superficial and false, a product of the last two hundred years, not two thousand.. The Chinese had colonised westwards and the Russians eastwards and this was where they’d met. The indigenous peoples of that region however, the Kazakhs and the Uyghurs were far different; nomadic, Muslim, Asian.

But the change in landscape I had not yet witnessed. Russia and her satellites seem very European because all her tsars after Peter the Great, (and the Bolsheviks after them), had looked that way. But her landscape is pure Asia and travelling from Kiev I knew that I was still very much on my Asian tour. The question remained therefore: when would I enter Europe?

Besides watching the world evolve before your eyes, the other great thing about train travel, particularly long-distance overnight train travel, is that you always seem to meet someone interesting. In my compartment there were two other men talking loudly in Russian, (or Ukrainian, I honestly can’t tell the difference), whilst I read my book and wrote up my diary. When I’d set it down though, the one opposite me tried to start up a conversation. I answered as best I could in my dubious Russian stating my name, age, nationality and so on before explaining with great apology that my Russki ain’t too hot since I don’t actually speak the language but instead speak Bulgarian as I once lived there, but since the two are similar there’s a lot of crossover.

To my surprise though, instead of this admission causing our conversation to peter out into niceties as often happens, this caused a smile to spread across the face of my travelling companion and him to declare, “No problem! I am Bulgarian!”

“Really? Where are you from in Bulgaria? Varna? Sofiya? Plovdiv?”

“No, no, I am Bulgarian but I am not from Bulgaria. I’m from Ukraine.”

Genaidy – for that was the name of the man whom I was talking to – was a member of a Bulgarian minority of, according to him, around half a million,[2] who live in Ukraine in the far south-west of the country, (the bit which separates Moldova from the Black Sea), the Budjak Province, centred around the town of Bolgrad, (lit. ‘Bulgarian town’). I’d never heard of them before, but having a fervent interest in both Bulgaria and minority peoples in the Balkans, I was eager to learn more so we talked on into the night about his people and mine.

The Bulgarians of Ukraine – or ‘Bessarabian Bulgarians’ as they are sometimes referred to – moved to the region voluntarily during the reign of Catherine the Great. Despite there being evidence of human habitation in the region from ancient times, when the Russians took over it was somehow largely empty and Catherine wanted settlers to till the land. She looked to her brother Slavs under Ottoman control, the Bulgarians, and in bands they came. They did not however, come alone, for there were others as well; Genaidy told me about a village near to Bolgrad called Zhortnevoe which is even today populated entirely by Albanians who also made the trip and in addition to them, there were the Gagauz.

The Gagauz I had already encountered during my time in Bulgaria. Near to where I worked in Varna there was a village full of them and in the city’s ethnographic museum, an exposition on their costumes and culture.[3] They truly are an intriguing bunch, a group of Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians who ended up living largely in southern Moldova, (just a few miles north of Bolgrad). But quite how did a group of Turks get to become Christian, (or Bulgarians get to speak Turkish), and in Moldova? No one is quite sure, but at the last count anthropologists had come up with no less than twenty-one separate theories to try and explain the mystery.[4]

Genaidy had a lot to say about the Gagauz as he knew them well. I asked how integrated they were with the local Bulgarians and Ukrainians and he told me that there was a degree of separation. My belief is that true integration comes with intermarriage, (which may explain why in the UK the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis have integrated notably less than say the Caribbeans or the Poles), but Genaidy explained that whilst the Gagauz could intermarriage since they were of the same faith, they tended not to as they generally put race before religion. This tendency had become more pronounced since the establishment of an autonomous Gagauzia in Moldova in which Turkey, he claimed, invests a lot of money and promotes a Pan-Turkic identity.

Returning to the Bessarabian Bulgarians, Genaidy told me that fortunately they had suffered little and not been persecuted during World War II and the years preceding it. This was primarily because prior to the war there little chunk of territory had lain within the borders of Romania, not the USSR and so they had been spared the horrific Holodomor and the terrors of collectivisation and the purges. The region eventually became part of the USSR in 1940 after a secret clause in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of the year before in which it had been agreed to had it over – along with the territory of the present-day Republic of Moldova – to the Soviets. During the war they also fared well compared to other minorities within the USSR for whilst Bulgaria was an ally of Hitler, there was a clause in the alliance forbidding them to take up arms against their Slavic brothers the Russians, so the Bulgarians in the Soviet Union were seen as being quite trustworthy indeed. In fact the only discrimination they really suffered was that the Soviet censuses routinely put down the numbers of Bulgarians as being far less then (Genaidy reckoned) they actually were.

Our conversation then moved onto the topic of religion. I’d been intrigued whilst in Kiev to learn that whilst Ukraine is overwhelmingly Orthodox, the country is still religiously divided with there being no less than three separate Orthodox churches there.

Unlike Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy is divided into separate patriarchates which generally hold sway over a particular national territory, (e.g. the Bulgarian Patriarchate in Bulgaria and the Romanian Patriarchate in Romania), but in a new state like Ukraine, things aren’t so clear cut.

The largest church in Ukraine (abut 68% of the population) is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarch). Prior to the establishment of an independent Ukraine, all Orthodox churches in the Ukrainian SSR fell under the jurisdiction of Moscow and after independence this situation continued for most churches. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarch) has its headquarters in the Lavra where I’d visited that day, it generally conducts its services in Old Church Slavonic and is particularly popular in the Russian-speaking east of the country.

The next church is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kiev Patriarch) which was formed after independence when the Kiev Metropolitan Filaret broke away with the blessing of the new national political elite to create a Ukrainian national church free from Russian influence. This commands the allegiance of about 15% of the population.

And then finally there’s the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church which was formed when Ukraine was briefly independent during the Russian Civil War and which conducts its services in Ukrainian. It was persecuted severely under Stalin but survived in exile and was given state recognition again in 1993. It’s adherents number some 10% of the population and are found largely in the Ukrainian-speaking west.

But which of these do the Bessarabian Bulgarians follow? They are in the west of the country but they don’t speak Ukrainian. Do they follow Moscow then or perhaps instead their own Bulgarian Patriarchate? Genaidy was very firm in his answer.

“The Moscow Patriarch. This is the true Patriarch, not some later invention. We have always followed Moscow and we always will.” Of course, if I’d thought about it properly, I could have guessed. These Bulgarians feel little if any allegiance to an independent Ukraine for they are products of the Russian Empire which invited them in to a better life two hundred years before when the Bulgarian Orthodox Church did not even exist, (they were still under the Patriarchate of Constantinople then). Bulgarian they might be, but they are also citizens of a far greater multinational entity in which they were not dominated by the local Ukrainians. Their situation clearly demonstrates one of the major problems that nationalist politicians have whenever they divide up a multinational empire: inhabitants who belong to none of the national groups and who owe their whole reason for being there to that empire which is now being dismembered.

But whatever patriarchate one may follow, Orthodoxy remains of huge importance to many Ukrainians as was obvious from the huge crowds displaying obvious piety and religious fervour at the Lavra and also from talking to Genaidy who loved to discourse on his faith. His wife, he told me, had a PhD in [Orthodox] “Religious Etiquette” but on the other hand his sister had converted to a Reformed Protestant church which had caused some problems. “She says that candles and icons are a sin but how can they be when you can connect with God so powerfully using them?” he asked me. I replied that as a (admittedly very Catholic) Protestant myself, I didn’t see them as such and thought his sister to be quite wrong, for I too find them powerful spiritual aids. This caused him to launch into a lengthy philosophical monologue on the power and sanctity of icons which, I must confess, I understood very little of, but I nodded in all the right places and when finished, greeted my new comrade warmly before turning in for the night.

ML051 With Genaidy on the overnight train to Odessa

Next part: Odessa

My Flickr Album of this trip


[1] Although in terms of the gigantic fields of grain being harvested, it was also more than a little cruelly ironic, for the Central Station building was constructed in 1927-1932, (designed by O. Verbytskyi), during the height of the Holodomor, the manmade famine of 1932-3 which caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians due solely to the Soviets not allowing the peasants access to all that grain that was being harvested.

[2] This statistic and all the others that follow are all what Genaidy furnished me with. Later on I shall compare them with the official version of events.

[3] See my travelogue ‘Balkania’.

[4] Menz, Astrid (2006). "The Gagauz". In Kuban, Doğan. The Turkic speaking peoples.

Friday 24 January 2014

The Missing Link: Part 1.3: Kiev

world-map konotop

Greetings!

Kiev, (or ‘Kyiv’ as it is pronounced in Ukrainian), is a city that’s been in the news a lot of late. The political epicentre of Ukraine, questions are being asked and a variety of answers being provided. Should  they look to Russia or Europe, inwardly or outwardly; economic prosperity or democratic freedom? The answers are far from sure even today, but when I visited two years ago, they were bubbling away then as the protest camp in the main street and the EU propaganda display in the park attested. These are interesting times in Ukraine: watch this space.

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to all parts of the travelogue:

Introduction

Ukraine

1.1: Konotop

1.2: Chernobyl and Pripyat

1.3: Kiev

1.4: Kiev to Odessa

1.5: Odessa

1.6: Bolgrad

Moldova and Transdniestra

2.1: Bolgrad to Chisinau

2.2: Chisinau (I)

2.3: Tiraspol and Bender

2.4: Chisinau (II) 

Romania

3.1: Iasi (I)

3.2: Iasi (II)

3.3: Suceava

3.4: The Painted Monasteries of Bucovina

3.5: Targu Neamt, Agapia and Sihla

3.6: Suceava to Viseu de Sus

3.7: The Mocanita and Viseu de Sus

3.8: Viseu de Sus to Bucharest

3.9: Bucharest (I)

3.10: Bucharest (II)

My Flickr Album of this trip


MLM02

kyiv_city

Kiev (I)

Back in the capital, I travelled with the Michigans on the metro to Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) where we said goodbye and I went to recover from a day spent tramping along radioactive streets by taking a bath. Just off Maidan Nezalezhnosti are the Central Trade Baths. Up several flights of stairs in a Stalinist block, these traditional Russian baths are aged, filthy, skanky and brilliant. I spent several hours overheating in the sauna, (whilst all around me burly mafia types whipped themselves with birch twigs), before then cooling down in the cold pool before then repeating the entire process. It was a vivid reminder of my trip a decade before to Moscow’s most famous bath house, the Sandunovski, and I enjoyed it just as much although a dull headache reminded me that things are not quite the same these days – with age, alas comes an increase in blood pressure.

I left the Central Trade Baths rejuvenated and sauntered onto Maidan Nezalezhnosti which is the heart of Kiev and was the setting for the Orange Revolution of 2004, (some of the graffiti on the pillars has been lovingly preserved, although, alas, the hope that the revolution sparked seems to have all been washed away). It’s a stunning space and vibrant with cafés and Euro 2012 paraphernalia. I’d seen little of Kiev so far save a brief trip to the Podil district on the evening of my arrival and a jaunt to Maidan Nezalezhnosti after returning from Konotop the previous day. Then I’d walked from the square down the main drag, Khreschatyk, past the TsUM (former state department store) to the Bessarabian Market, stopping en route at a traditional restaurant where I’d enjoyed some fantastic creamy bacon and potato soup served in a hollowed-out cottage loaf whilst being treated to a display of pretty Ukrainian girls folk dancing in traditional costume. Cheesy perhaps, but he-ho, when on holiday such things are allowed.

ML038 Maidan Nezalezhnosti

The highlight of my evening expedition though, had been the Blok Tymoshenko Camp, a strong of tents strung out along one side of Khreschatyk uneasily shoulder to shoulder with the official Euro 2012 Fan Zone. Yulia Tymoshenko with her trademark peasant-plaited blonde hair was the right-hand woman of Viktor Yushenko, the hero of the Orange Revolution. Together they stood hand in hand in Maidan Nezalezhnosti as they defied the powers of darkness and toppled the dastardly Viktor Yanukovych. After their victory Yushenko became President and he made Timoshenko his Prime Minister and all seemed well. But in the game of politics things can change quickly and their relationship soon turned sour with the two turning against one another and forming their own parties which, along with their old foe Yanukovych who instead of rolling over and dying, instead resurrected himself and is now President again, have dominated Ukrainian politics ever since and have produced a number of fractious and antagonistic parliaments and a thoroughly disillusioned electorate.

However, in 2011 things got even nastier when Yanukovych had his old enemy put on trial for abuse of office over a gas deal that she’d signed with Russia during her second spell as Prime Minister in 2009. Found guilty she was sentenced to seven years in gaol where, despite pressure from the EU who described her trial as “politically motivated” she has stayed ever since, twice going on hunger strike. This Blok Tymoshenko Camp has been set up permanently to protest against her imprisonment and to raise awareness of Yulia’s plight. The beardies on the bus to Chernobyl had described her as a bad guy (or girl…) who got caught doing what all Eastern Bloc politicians do: getting rich quick by dubious means, but the these folk she is a heroine, the potential saviour of Ukraine, the only pure and noble soul in parliament, martyred in gaol by the forces of evil. Their camp abounded with emotive imagery; her symbol was a heart and there were posters everywhere of her with a large cat (a leopard?), and there was also a large banner depicting figures from the past – Stalin, Hitler, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko and Yanukovych – a continuum of evil from which only Yulia can save us. But my personal favourite was an icon of Tymoshenko portrayed as a saint with symbols of Ukraine behind her and doves resting on her hands. St. Yulia the martyr or Inmate Tymoshenko, abuser of public office, which is the truth?

ML039 Blok Tymoshenko Camp on Khreschatyk

ML040 ML041

Yulia v Yanukovych: Good v Evil Ukrainian style

ML042 St. Yulia the Martyr the Kiev

Today the Blok Tymoshenko Camp was still there, as too were hundreds of boys and girls all dressed up as if going to a ball and all wearing blue sashes over their shoulders. They were school leavers celebrating that most magnificent of days when the exams are over and adulthood awaits, but I had no time to dwell on such milestones for reaching into my pocket to pull out my camera to photograph them I discovered with horror that my camera had disappeared.

I returned to the obvious place, the bath house, but it wasn’t there either and I began to get worried. What if I had truly lost it and all those images of Pripyat, Chernobyl and Natalie were gone forever? I returned to my hotel a worried man and the two helpful, (if somewhat morose in a classically Soviet fashion), receptionists helped to phone the tour operators from the Chernobyl trip who then got in touch with the minibus driver who eventually turned up at midnight with, joy of joys, my little black camera in his hand! I could have kissed him and I tried to tip him but he would have none of it. So much for crime-ridden Eastern Europe full of dishonest individuals who only care for personal gain, eh? I returned to my bunk that evening a thankful and relieved man, a smile across my face which, sadly, was not reflected in those of the receptionists who still look as if the sky was about to fall on their heads.


Kiev (II)

Despite sleeping in the city for three nights already, beyond Maidan Nezalezhnosti and the railway station I had seen very little of the city and as I had booked a train out to Odessa that evening, then I knew that this was the day to rectify matters, so after another breakfast at the fake McDonald’s I headed out to Kiev’s premier attraction: the Lavra.

In AD988 the great king of Kievan Rus, Vladimir, decided that he needed a new state religion for his growing empire so he sent out emissaries to the four great faiths of the day: Judaism, Islam, Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. When they returned he dismissed the Jews and the Catholics out of hand, for the former had far too many restrictions whilst the latter, based in a Rome that was now but a shadow of its former glories, he deemed to be a spent force. But if Rome was dying, Constantinople and the Empire of the Arabs were going from strength to strength and Vladimir was particularly interested in Islam until he offered the envoy a drink at which point he was told that alcohol is forbidden to Muslims. “What? Tell the Russians to give up alcohol? They will never accept that!” declared Vladimir and so Orthodoxy won the day.

That is the legend, but whereas its literal truth is questionable, what is beyond any doubt is that in that year Vladimir returned to Kiev with a new Orthodox Christian wife and converted his kingdom to her faith and ever since the land has remained a bastion of Orthodoxy. And as part of that grand conversion, in 1051 St. Anthony of Lyubech left Mount Athos and settled in Kiev. There he lived in a manmade cave on the banks of the Dnieper and so began the Lavra. The word ‘lavra’ literally means ‘caves’ or ‘cells’ of monks and over the years following St. Anthony’s arrival the complex was extended so that today it includes two sets of interlinking cave monasteries – the Near Caves and the Far Caves – as well as two enormous complexes above ground – the Upper and Lower Lavra – including a cathedral and eight churches.

I entered through the main gate of the monastery and explored some of the buildings of the Upper Lavra complex. I looked into the reconstructed Cathedral of the Dormition, (the original was destroyed by retreating Soviet troops in 1941), and then attended a beautiful service in the Refectory Church which was crammed with worshippers whilst the clergy in their finery paraded the Good Book around.

After that I headed down to the first set of caves, the Near Caves, which are accessed through a packed chapel. The caves, (or to be more precise, subterranean tunnels with niches in them containing the mummified bodies of a thousand and one saints), could have been a moving and deeply spiritual place, but alas, as Ukraine’s holiest site as well as Kiev’s Number One Tourist Hotspot, they were more like hard work, shuffling along with a lit candle in my hand as part of a steady stream – or queue – of pilgrims. I tried to pause at each tomb and pray but after several dozen it became impractical and so I just walked round before climbing up the stairs and re-emerging into the sunlight.

The landscape in-between the Upper and Lower Lavras was beautiful and with small plots of vegetables, vines and other crops, it seemed more fitted to a village than a spot in the heart of the city. By the pathway, in amongst the stalls of religious trinkets, there were also stern monks selling the produce of those plots: honey, kvass and other organic products.

ML043 The Lavra: a village in the heart of the city

I walked down a fine covered walkway of the type that you often see in Central Europe to the Lower Lavra and the Far Caves. This was more of the same although the tunnels were slightly less congested and in a small underground chapel I managed to sit and pray properly. However, as I departed and walked back up to the street, I reflected that the Lavra had been something of a disappointment to me. Several months earlier I’d visited Częstochowa, the spiritual heart of the Polish nation and, despite its artistic and architectural style being less to my taste than the golden domes and icons of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, I’d felt a strong presence of the Divine. Here however, at the home of Ukraine’s soul, I’d felt little. Why? Who knows? Life is just like that I suppose.

ML044 The Cathedral of the Dormition, Kiev Lavra

Heading out to Konotop two days before, I’d spied an enormous metal statue of a lady perched on a hillside near to the Lavra; a sort-of Ukrainian Statue of Liberty as it were. A dip into my guidebook revealed her to be Rodnya Mat, (lit. ‘The Nation’s Mother’), the colossal Soviet memorial to all those who fell in the two battles of Kiev during World War II. As a long-time seeker of communist sites, this was definitely a place to visit.

And I chose the right day for that visit for as I neared I could hear Soviet military songs blaring from tannoys and a battalion of smartly-attired soldiers marched past. Far less regimented and somewhat older were hundreds of other men – and a few women – in uniform who were milling around, taking photos of each other by tanks and guns and polishing their many medals.

ML045 A battalion of soldiers at Rodnya Mat

They were all members of the Party of Afghan Veterans, an organisation promoting the needs and voice of the veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-89), which involved some 115,000 Soviet troops and claimed over 14,000 lives. The Afghanistan War was very much the USSR’s Vietnam, (or to be more contemporary, the UK and USA’s current war in Afghanistan). In Vietnam the USA intervened to stop an allied capitalist regime with little support amongst the people from toppling to communist forces. Whilst the USSR did supply the communist Viet Cong with arms and funds, they wisely did not commit ground troops whereas the USA did and so got seen as an imperialist aggressor. In Afghanistan though, it was exactly the reverse with the USSR committing the ground troops to prop up a tottering socialist regime whilst the USA supplied arms and funds to their foes, the Mujahedeen. In both cases the defensive force suffered horrendous causalities but triumphed, largely because they could soak up more human blood. But also, in both cases, the war transformed the society of the foreign intervener: Afghan veterans and the protests of the mothers of the fallen are seen today as being major factors behind the collapse of the USSR and judging by the numbers milling around Rodnya Mat, they are still very much a force to be reckoned with.

Wandering in amongst the crowds was a fascinating experience for the entire Soviet Union was on show there: round-faced Kazakhs and swarthy Georgians mingled with the pale Slavs of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. All were united by the past and a shared tragic yet powerful bonding experience. Most were waving red flags and crowded around a stage upon which an ex-general spoke forcefully in-between bursts of military music. It was a meeting of a bygone world, a generation largely forgotten by the Westward-looking Ukrainians of today.

ML046 Kazakh veterans of the Afghanistan War pose for photographs

ML047 Rally of Soviet veterans of the Afghanistan War under the watchful eyes of Rodnya Mat

To further understand the spectacle all around me I popped into the Wars on Foreign Soil Museum just before the main memorial complex. This was a fascinating two-storey exposition commemorating all the wars fought by the USSR in the name of socialist fraternity. Whilst the upper floor was dedicated solely to Afghanistan, the lower looked at a myriad of half-forgotten conflicts and interventions which the Soviet Union undertook to help support its socialist allies/puppet states. I browsed through fascinating exhibits on wars in Ethiopia, Vietnam, Cuba, Hungary, Cambodia, Czechoslovakia, Angola, Somalia, Korea, China, Mongolia and others, many of them bringing back memories of visiting those countries myself and seeing their own, sometimes very different, take on the conflicts.

But that was merely the hors d’oeuvre, the main course was up ahead surmounted by a colossal sixty-two metre-high titanium statue. Kiev’s Museum of the Great Patriotic War, (which is how the Soviets always referred to the conflict that we call World War II), is immense and impressive. Opened in 1981 it covers every aspect of the two very costly and hard-fought battles for the city.

The first raged from the 23rd August, 1941 to the 26th September and it resulted in a crushing German victory. By diverting troops south from the Central Front the Nazis trapped the Soviet troops defending the city in a gigantic pincer movement which resulted in the largest encirclement of troops in military history with the Soviets having to surrender 452,700 soldiers, 2,642 guns and mortars and 64 tanks. It was a disaster for Stalin whilst Hitler gleefully called it the greatest battle in history.

The Second Battle of Kiev in which the Soviets retook the city was far less dramatic but perhaps equally telling. It lasted from the 3rd October, 1943 to the 22nd December and resulted in a total Soviet victory. However, as with virtually all engagements on the Eastern Front, Stalingrad excepted, the Nazi retreat was orderly. There was no dramatic encirclement here and the German losses for far less; a mere 6,491 troops although also 286 tanks and 156 planes, (note the huge difference in tanks between the two, a clue perhaps as to why the Soviets lost everything prior to Stalingrad – they had the men but not the equipment). Soviet losses were similar in number.

The museum covered both of these battles in detail as well as many other aspects of the war including the horrific massacre at Babi Yar where 33,771 of Kiev’s Jews were shot by the Germans in a single day. It then reached its grand finale in a large circular chamber in the base of the great lady herself on the walls of which the names of the 11,600 soldiers and 200 workers who were honoured as Heroes of the Soviet Union or Heroes of Soviet Labour during the war were inscribed.

ML048 Rodnya Mat

After learning all about the Kiev of seventy years ago it was now time to move forward four decades and so I took a bus and then thro to the Chernobyl Museum in Podil in order to garner a bit more background information on all the surreal sights I’d taken in the previous day. However, it was all a bit disappointing as the museum provided little in the way of information being instead more of an “experience” as seems to be the fashion amongst many museums these days. Whatever. Beyond the emergency vehicles parked outside, I personally “experienced” very little save for a mild sense of annoyance at having had to pay for a ticket to such a crap institution, so after wandering around rather quickly, I exited and made my way back up to Maidan Nezalezhnosti for there was one more thing that I wished to see before I headed south.

ML049 Emergency vehicles parked outside Kiev’s Chernobyl Museum

I’ve long been a fan of large communist statues, (after all, why had I made sure I paid a visit to Rodnya Mat?), and there is one in Kiev that is famous. The Friendship of Nations Monument depicts two muscular brothers – Ukraine and Russia – raising their fists in mighty union. Whilst many Ukrainians today might not share such noble internationalist ideals, I do and the site is popular and commands incredible views over the Dnieper Canyon. When I visited though, I found it none too awesome; after Rodnya Mat it was probably always going to be a bit of a damp squib but the main problem was that the monument itself was virtually hidden by a large “European Village”, a propaganda enclave erected as part of the Euro 2012 celebrations in which representatives of the EU were dishing out freebies and promoting their various projects in Ukraine. Self-serving propaganda or not, I’m very pro-EU anyway and so found it all rather interesting and besides, I got several good teaching resources which I popped into my bag before photographing the rather ho-hum monument that I’d come to see and then heading off to the railway station to catch my train south.

Next part: Kiev to Odessa

My Flickr Album of this trip

Friday 17 January 2014

The Missing Link: Part 1.2: Chernobyl and Pripyat

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Greetings!

This week’s offering details what was arguably the best day trip of my life. Everyone has heard of Chernobyl, everyone knows what it symbolises. Of course why one should think of going there for an outing is less clear but hey, where else on earth do you go equipped with a Geiger counter rather than a sat nav and where else on earth can you find a whole city abandoned in a few hours, just left to rot as the vegetation takes over?

And where else on earth, a quarter of a century later, does the danger which destroyed that place still lurk, silent, unheard and unseen, yet real, an awesome menace that can bring you to your death, lurking in the trees, grass, water and moss..?

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to all parts of the travelogue:

Introduction

Ukraine

1.1: Konotop

1.2: Chernobyl and Pripyat

1.3: Kiev

1.4: Kiev to Odessa

1.5: Odessa

1.6: Bolgrad

Moldova and Transdniestra

2.1: Bolgrad to Chisinau

2.2: Chisinau (I)

2.3: Tiraspol and Bender

2.4: Chisinau (II) 

Romania

3.1: Iasi (I)

3.2: Iasi (II)

3.3: Suceava

3.4: The Painted Monasteries of Bucovina

3.5: Targu Neamt, Agapia and Sihla

3.6: Suceava to Viseu de Sus

3.7: The Mocanita and Viseu de Sus

3.8: Viseu de Sus to Bucharest

3.9: Bucharest (I)

3.10: Bucharest (II)

My Flickr Album of this trip

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Excursion: Chernobyl and Pripyat

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The day after my little trip to Konotop, I was heading out of Kiev again, this time to a rather more famous – or infamous – destination. Several years ago I’d been reading an old issue of National Geographic at work when I stumbled across a photo essay on the city of Pripyat some one hundred kilometres to the north of Kiev right on the Belorussian border. Pripyat is a fairly new city, constructed from scratch in 1979 as a Soviet atomgrad – a series of new towns built to house the workers in nearby nuclear power plants. The moment that I saw the images I was desperate to visit for Pripyat is a unique city, unlike no other on earth for on the 27th April, 1986 its entire population of almost fifty thousand was evacuated in a single night and ever since then nature has been left to take over. The Soviets evacuated this brand-new flagship atomgrad because a day earlier there had been an accident at Reactor No. 4 of the nearby power station where most of Pripyat’s population were employed. That power station was called Chernobyl.

Since that date the whole region around Chernobyl has been sealed off to the world due to fatally high radiation levels. There are two zones of exclusion – the 30km and the 10km – and whilst within the 30km zone a few people now live – specialists working at the plant or elderly residents who have returned to their homes despite the risks – within the 10km zone in which both Pripyat and the power station itself are situated, no one dwells. However, since 2005 it has been possible to go on guided day trips into both and as soon as I knew I was travelling to Ukraine, then I knew that I just had to see Pripyat.

But I almost didn’t manage it. Tours are expensive – at just under £100 it was by far the priciest day trip that I’ve ever been on – but more than that, there’s the red tape. Bookings have to be made a week in advance in order to process all the bureaucracy and I was booked onto a trip with one operator when, only a few days before my departure for Kiev, he cancelled.

What was I to do? I was only in Kiev for a short while and I did so want to see Pripyat yet I was now past the five days cut-off point. I frantically emailed several other operators and some time later received a phone call from Canada of all places saying that one of them could squeeze me in. I booked up immediately and that is how I found myself standing in front of a hotel in the Podil district of the city with my fellow day-trippers, all waiting for a minibus to take us to the most infamous power station on earth.

There were six tourists and the driver who didn’t speak a word of English. Apart from me and the driver, all the other radiation-seekers were Americans: a pair of beardy university students and a family of three from Michigan, mom, dad and their tousle-haired son, soon to join the undergraduate ranks of his two bearded compatriots. Thus all introduced and crammed into the minibus, we set off through the dreary suburbs and then out into the wide, flat landscape that I’d seen so much of the previous day.

What we were headed for and had paid so much to enter were the Chernobyl Exclusion Zones, named the 10km and 30km respectively, (although the distances are approximate as neither are circular and both drift heavily to the west of the power station, that being the direction in which the winds blew most of the radioactive dust). When we got to the edge of the 30km zone it was like reaching the borders of a new country with a manned military checkpoint, a gate blocking the road and a high fence stretching off across the fields in either direction. Far more appealing to behold however, (although probably just as lethal to any unsuspecting young gentlemen), was our guide who joined us there and checked all our paperwork whilst Michigan kid and I winked at each other, looking forward to the rest of the day. Her name, she said, was Natalie, although I suspected that it was probably Natalya really, the anglicising being part of a process which she had energetically thrown herself into after spending a year in New York where she’d acquired a grating accent that was far less sexy than those of most of her English-speaking Ukrainian sisters. But there was method in her madness you see, for she was due to emigrate to Toronto in a year’s time, something which she was most excited about, as too were the Michigans who enthused over her future home and bade her cross the border sometime and come to their house to stay for a night or two. Whilst I too would have no hesitation in bedding her – if that is the correct term to use – I could not share her excitement about being Canada-bound. After all, why would anyone wish to swap a life in the former USSR where they’re about to host the European Football Championships and you get to work in a radioactive ghost city each day and eat borsch in the evenings, for a miserable existence in a country without any significant nuclear disasters or other history, and which considers ice hockey to be the pinnacle of sporting bliss. Indeed, mad, quite mad, although my vast life experience has taught me that women, particularly young and pretty ones, often are.

ML009 At the 30km checkpoint

After the ‘border’ the road was empty, straight and forested on either side. It looked much like any of the other Ukrainian roads that we’d travelled along until we stopped by the large sign that had been erected in Soviet times to welcome people into the town ahead. The name on that sign was infamous the world over: Chernobyl.

ML010 Welcome to Chernobyl! (It’s buzzing!)

The city of Chernobyl was not what I’d expected. It’s no dilapidated, overgrown ghost town but instead a reasonably – in comparison with many other Ukrainian cities – well-maintained living settlement where some former residents who have decided to return and the workers on the new sarcophagus for the radioactive reactor live for periods at a time. We drove through its empty streets to a small building that serves as a motel for the said workers and an information centre for us tourists, and after being ushered inside by the delectable Natalie, were treated to a display of photos and maps and a presentation on what exactly happened on that fateful day in 1986 and then over the weeks that followed.

On the 26th April No. 4 Reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station was shut down for routine maintenance and it was decided to test the electrical system to see if it could keep the reactor’s cooling system going in the event of power loss. However, something then went wrong and it could not and as the emergency cooling system had been switched off, the reactor began to overheat resulting in a nuclear explosion which killed two workers outright and shot nine tonnes of radioactive waste a mile up into the air.

The inhabitants of Pripyat, the town next to the plant, watched all of this in shock and disbelief from their apartments as firemen were sent in to try and quench the fires and in doing so received lethal doses of radiation. The blaze in fact continued for an entire fortnight and in total thirty-one firemen lost their lives in this initial struggle, although without their brave sacrifice, the death toll would have been much higher.

What made Chernobyl a double tragedy though, was the official response to the disaster. Partially due to ignorance over how to deal with such an incident, but far more motivated by a paranoid desire to keep things quiet, Pripyat – which lies less than a mile from the plant that it was built to serve – and the city of Chernobyl – which is a little further away – were only evacuated two days after the explosion, by which time thousands had been needlessly exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. The world at large however, including the population of the Ukrainian and Belarussian SSRs, only found out that there had been a major accident almost a week later when Swedish scientists discovered a rather large and unexplained radioactive cloud blowing north towards their territory. By this time considerable environmental damage had been inflicted not only on the area around Chernobyl but in surrounding countries as well, particular what is now Belarus and Poland.

Getting back into the minibus we continued on our way and at the edge of the city stopped at a modern monument dedicated to the firemen who lost their lives and a collection of vehicles that had been used to help combat the blaze.[1] Some of these looked like standard emergency or military hardware but others were a lot weirder, more like moon buggies than emergency service vehicles, but if we thought they were freaky, things were only just getting warmed up…

ML011 Chernobyl: Fireman Sam meets the Transformers…

Outside the city we turned off down a small lane which ran for some distance through fields and then into the forest. There we stopped, got out and walked through the trees to get a view of our next ‘tourist site’. It was an old Soviet radar station, top secret back in the Cold War days, tuned into the airwaves of the decadent West. It’s technical name was the Duga-3 over-the-horizon radar station and it served as one of the Soviet Union’s state-of-the-art anti-ballistic missile warning stations. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go right up to the thing, (because of radiation levels, yeah right…), but still, it all felt very James Bond.

ML012 Ground control to Major Tom… (not my picture by the way)

Our next stop though, was weirder still. In fact, it was plain disturbing. A small building, derelict, windows smashed as if everyone had suddenly just upped and left. Which of course, they had. There were desks, decaying toys, a room full of wire bunks, one with a freaky-looking doll which I suspect had been placed there purely to petrify passing Michigan moms, (it worked). The local kindergarten. A world of childhood, carefree and simple, abandoned. I picked up a mildewed and faded old textbook instructing good Soviet toddlers how to cross the busy road safely and shuddered. Ours was the only car left on the road now. The question remains, how many of those toddlers are still with us…?

ML013 The deserted kindergarten

ML014 How to cross the road…

After the hors d’oeuvres it was onto the main ‘attraction’ itself, the power station that caused all the trouble. First into view came the concrete-lined river, then the almighty cooling tower. After that, Reactors 5 and 6 which were still under construction when the accident occurred and so never completed. Then came the ones that did function: 1, 2, 3 and 4. We stopped by the roadside to have a look at them and at the worksite of the French company that is building a new sarcophagus which will replace the crumbling one hastily erected over Reactor No. 4 back in 1986 to contain the radiation. Natalie informed us that the workers on the project could only be at the site for twenty minutes at a time, after that they had the whole day off. To me that sounded like the kind of job I might excel at and I wondered where to apply.[2] Similarly, Natalie herself would work fifteen days on and then return home to Vinnitsa, several hundred kilometres south of Kiev for a mandatory fifteen days off. Again I wondered why she wanted to leave for what would undoubtedly be a much harder – and less interesting – existence in the suburbs of Toronto. True, money is a big incentive, but a job that gives you fifteen day holidays every couple of weeks?! Women, who can ever understand them?

ML015 Beauty and the Beast: Natalie by the Chernobyl cooling tower

Equally incomprehensible was the fate of the reactors. Nos. 1 and 2 were shut down immediately after the accident whilst No. 4 of course, was totally unusable. No. 3 however, which is physically attached to No. 4, only a thick concrete wall separating the two, stayed operation until 2005 when it was finally decommissioned! Imagine that; going to work every day in an ageing nuclear power station with only a few feet of concrete separating you from the decomposing site of the worst nuclear disaster in history! Jesus! In that position even I’d be tempted to swap it all for a life of drudgery in the freezing wilds of Toronto!

Particularly if Natalie was there to keep you warm at night…

ML016 Reactors Nos. 3 and 4. To the left of the chimney = blew up; to the right = worked until 2005

The highlight of the tour however, was what came next: a walk around the ghost city of Pripyat. This is what I had come to see, what had really fired my imagination; the chance to visit a chunk of the old USSR untouched since the Gorbachev Era.

Mind you, Pripyat, even when it was inhabited, was never a standard Soviet city. As I’ve already said, it was newer than most other cities, only being established in 1970 and granted city status in 1979. Its population at the time of the explosion was 49,000, (the eventual projected population was to be around 70,000), most of whom were in some way or another connected to the huge and expanding power station next door. Pripyat was, after all, an atomgrad, one of a series of new cities planned and built specifically to service the USSR’s new nuclear power stations. And in atomgrads residents had more privileges, more services and access to more goods than in ‘normal’ towns and cities. This was not a socialist city, it was a model socialist city, a veritable beacon of progress for the proletariat.

That was then, but it clearly is not now. Almost two days after the explosion, when most of the residents had already been exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation, the entire city was evacuated by bus in two hours flat, moved to a new city, Slavutych, some thirty miles to the east. Since then Pripyat has been left untouched and nature has reclaimed her own to a degree that I found astonishing. I’d expected to be walking around an empty, ruined city with weeds and trees everywhere, instead we strolled through a forest with abandoned tower blocks peeping through the trees.

We were dropped off by the hospital where many of those injured in the initial blast were treated, and then walked through the overgrown streets to a former park with a café – unimaginatively named ‘Pripyat’ with some antique water vending machines round the back and a small harbour – half sunk below the water these days – from which pleasure cruises used to leave.

ML017 ML018 Café Pripyat then and now

ML019 ML020 Fancy a drink… or a boating trip?

Then we continued with the leisure and recreation theme by moving on to the town’s cinema, ‘Prometheus’ which once sported a grand statue of the character from Greek mythology but which has now been moved to the front of the power station itself.

ML021 ML022 Prometheus Cinema then and now

We then headed off the maid road, past some apartment blocks to a school where desks still lined the classrooms and propaganda posters peeled off the walls. Here more than anywhere else we’d visited looked like everyone had left all of a sudden.

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Time for school…

After that we walked down the main street to the central plaza where the Hotel Polissya and the very Soviet Palace of Culture ‘Energetik’ stand whilst on the other side of the square are two tower blocks, the tallest buildings in Pripyat, one of which sports the arms of the USSR and the other the emblem of the Ukrainian SSR. Outside the hotel Matt, (the Michigan son), and I took silly photos aping the Hiroshima Shadows[3] that people had painted on the walls whilst in front of the Palace of Culture Natalie knelt down and got her Geiger counter out to demonstrate just how radioactive the moss is compared to everything else, (moss soaks up radiation apparently).

ML025 ML026 The Central Square then and now

ML027 Hiroshima shadows at the hotel

ML028 Our guide comes with glowing recommendations; she positively radiates professionalism…

After the central square we wandered through the city park with Soviet propaganda posters still affixed to the lampposts before then gaping at the large Ferris Wheel which, according to Natalie, was never used as it was due to be opened the week after the explosion took place.

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ML030

Propaganda in the Park, then and now

ML031 The Ferris Wheel

Then it was back in the van but only for a short distance to the city’s sports complex. Here Natalie was very naughty[4] and let us go into the building itself which is strictly forbidden. We crunched our way through the broken glass which covers the floor of the reception area, up the stairs, through the basketball courts and into the great expanse of the empty swimming pool. And with that rather surreal site done, our tour around the untouched USSR was completed and it was time for lunch.

ML032 In at the deep end!

All in all, my feelings were mixed. I must confess that the sheer amount of vegetation made it difficult to visualise a lot of how it had once looked and of course, ex-communist cities – of which I have visited a great many – tend to look rather dilapidated anyhow. The school in particular reminded me of the Alexander Pushkin School in Varna where I once taught where I once taught in classrooms identical to those deserted chambers, whilst the city park, the Palace of Culture and state hotel could have been in any town or city east of Vienna. This was a world which I knew intimately, yet at the same time it wasn’t, for there was no one around and nature had taken over. A feeling of disaster permeated the air, fear as the Geiger counter buzzed yet it all looked normal and harmless. The evil was invisible.

The bus took us to the power station itself and as we drove past its southern side – the direction of the prevailing wind that day – Natalie stuck the Geiger counter out of the window. In the Chernobyl 10km Exclusion Zone the background radiation seemed to be 1-2uSv/h but there it was over 8uSv/h. Even though it was hot, we kept all the windows firmly shut.

We had lunch at the canteen where the French sarcophagus workers eat. It was clean and very proletarian. As we dined I got chatting with the two beardy students. One of them had a father who was in the US Army. (which explained why, whenever Michigan mom addressed him, he replied with a very military “Yes ma’am!”), and he had lived all over the globe, (or at least, wherever the US has troops stationed which seems to be most places these days). Both of them were studying politics and specialising in secessionist groups in Central Asia and the Caucasus and so I had a good long chat with them about the ongoing conflict in Mindanao in the Philippines, (ok, not their area of interest but Military Beardy had lived there), and also about various Islamist and nationalist groups in Uzbekistan.

The two beardies were likable and intelligent guys but talking to them betrayed to me one of the essential differences in outlook between us Europeans and our Transatlantic cousins. Whilst well-read and knowledgeable their whole way of looking at things seemed to be informed by a basic starting premise that there were two sides in all these conflicts, a right side and a wrong side, good guys and bad guys. Whilst they may disagree with certain aspects of their country’s policy and direction – they were both firm Democrats and as such unimpressed by the Bush administration – they had no doubt in their minds that, in the big picture, they were the good guys and those folk who wished to secede from America’s allies were the bad guys. To me though, as a European, it never is so black and white, shades of grey abound with factors such as education, geography, interpretation of doctrine, poverty and the like bouncing around in my head and clouding the issue. To me Islamism is a pretty ridiculous political doctrine that, like most religiously-founded ideologies, can in the long run offer very little, but does that necessarily mean that a democratic Islamist regime is worse than a dictator? Maybe its something that they just need to get out of their system, like we did with our Christian fundamentalism in the Victorian Era?

Likewise with the Soviet Union, which, considering where we were, came up quite a lot in our conversations. At one point I made a comment which was somewhat positive about the old USSR and they both looked at me confused as if to say, “How on earth can you say that about the bad guys?” At the very heart of it, as we wandered around the dark heart of the old ‘Evil Empire’, I almost suspected that they were gloating, that they’d always known that the commies were the bad guys and all they were doing today was drinking in the proof of it. The communists were the bad guys, ergo they were evil, ergo they didn’t care for their own people ergo they let them all die. Simple.

But to me as I wandered around Pripyat and Chernobyl, I saw things somehow differently, somehow more mixed up and opaque, (or to use the Russian word, ‘glasnost’). Communism and those who founded it weren’t evil, it was more that as the years passed they somehow lost sight of their goals or to coin a common phrase, they couldn’t see the wood for the trees. The original impetus for the ideology had been dismay at the plight of the poor and the injustices in society. Communism was the pre-packaged medicine to right all these ills, but in their zeal to implement the cure they seemed to have forgotten about the illness. The focus shifted away from helping the poor towards the implementing of this new order and defending it against both fascism and capitalism. Chernobyl and the terrible events of 1986 is a good example of this: the great tragedy was not simply the nuclear accident, (after all, there have been plenty of these, including one at Three Mile Island in the über-capitalist USA, but more their reaction once the accident had happened. The focus was not on helping the people but more on concealing it because if it got out then the USSR would look bad in comparison with its enemies. The fault an inability to admit failure and that is not evil, but it is weak. The strong person or country admits and learns from his or her mistakes just as much as their triumphs. I just wish that some of my managers could learn from that very Soviet lesson.

Yet walking through the overgrown streets of Pripyat, I also saw much that was good about Soviet system: leisure facilities, parks, schools, kindergartens, a Palace of Culture. No, the Soviets had never completely forgotten their original purpose for existing, they did help their people in many, many ways too. There were shades of grey everywhere.

After our meal we went to the river that runs by the power station where we did something rather unexpected: we fed the fishes! Natalie pulled out some slices of bread from a bag and started throwing them off the bridge and into the water. Immediately the fish came and My God, what fish they were! Huge, mutant monsters with bulging green eyes, several feet long, churning the water as they gobbled up the white sliced! Of course, considering where we were, mutant fish or animals might be something that you’d expect to find[5] but in fact these river monsters were not mutated at all; they were naturally bulbous-eyed and had grown to such extraordinary sizes because the accident had killed off all their predators and instead these days silly tourists fed them bread. For the fish of Chernobyl at least, the explosion it seems was something of an happy event!

ML033 Chernobyl river fish, (the white spot is a slice of bread)

Our final stop was the ‘climax’ of the entire day, a trip to Reactor No. 4 itself! Although not allowed within 100m of the building, we went pretty near to that limit and Natalie’s Geiger counter buzzed merrily. We took pictures by the monument to all those who died with the sarcophagus-covered guilty mass of decomposing radioactive material in the background. You don’t get scenes like that for the family album on the Algarve now, do you? And that done, it was all back onto the bus and back to Kiev.

ML034 Reactor No 4: dead good

And after that it was all a bit disappointing. True we did stop again by the old Pripyat city sign and then in Chernobyl to view a monument to all the villages and towns abandoned due to the blast and at the border we were all made to pass through a very Star Trek-esque machine which checked if we had any radioactive material on our personages, but after that it was just one long drive through the wide open plains of Northern Ukraine which the beardies said were “a bit like Iowa” whilst learning from them and the Michigans that there was no doubt whatsoever that Obama would get re-elected for a second term six months later. Thankfully they were right, although the margin was much closer than any of them predicted.

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Welcome to Pripyat!

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Michigan Matt by the Lost Villages Monument in Chernobyl City and me getting decontaminated, (and I thought that stripes were meant to be slimming…)

Next part: Kiev

My Flickr Album of this trip

N.B. All the photos of Pripyat in its Soviet heyday are taken from the excellent website http://pripyat.com/en.


[1] Not the actual vehicles which were too radioactive and had to be destroyed, but identical ones.

[2] Want to know how they’ll do it? Check out this brilliant video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=F9URUQvGE9g#!

[3] In Hiroshima after the A-bomb fell there are permanent shadows caused by the intensity of the nuclear blast when the bomb was dropped. Sometimes, there were shadows left of people, but no bodies found. This resulted from the extreme heat of the explosion which vaporized the bodies, leaving the shadows behind.

[4] Alas, not in that sense…

[5] Particularly if you’ve watched the 2012 cheesefest ‘The Chernobyl Diaries’ in which some stranded tourists get chased by mutants and which was filmed in Pripyat.