Chernobyl, Day 3 – the wrap-up

•July 16, 2012 • 1 Comment

As this was our final day, there was no lunch break, and we had a solid day of exploring until about 2pm.

After leaving the rooftop we went to another school.  This was Middle School #3.  This is the school that you may have seen in other photographs before, with gas masks scattered across the floor.   The gas masks are all still there.  There was a beautiful old cash register in amongst them too.

The schools of Pripyat had posters on the walls in the hallways, advising students what to do in case of an attack by the United States.  Fear during Cold War times was high, but I don’t think anyone would have thought that the city’s undoing would come from within it.  There were also other posters, more of the patriotic nature.  The next translates roughly to “There is no higher rank in the world than the working man” I think (sorry my Russian is pretty poor).

There was also a copy of Pravda (the main Soviet/Russian newspaper) from January 1986.  I wish I could have taken this with me!  But that would have just been wrong.

There were so many books littering the hallway of this school.  It made me feel sad, that all these promising students had so much to look forward to, and had their lives turned upside down by the disaster – many of whom are undoubtedly suffering from complications to this day.

After this school, we went back to the gymnasium/swimming pool complex we visited on the first day, when we hadn’t been allowed to go inside any buildings.  This time we got to see the iconic swimming pool.  The bottom of the pool is littered with discarded things.  It was clearly a great pool in it’s day; this would have been one of the most state-of-the-art training pools in the Soviet Union at the time.

After the pool complex we headed to the music school and cinema.  The cinema was completely trashed, with all but about ten cinema seats gone; everything in the projector rooms had been looted.  The place was pitch black.   The outside of the music school was decorated entirely in a beautiful mosaic design, less affected by the elements than I thought it would have been.  One of the upstairs rooms had a floor that was caving in; completely covered by moss and water.   There was a large auditorium, with a badly damaged piano still on the stage.  Imagine the concerts that they would have held here…

After the music school, we visited one last kindergarten.  I believe that Pripyat had five schools.    This kindergarten looked similar to the others – furniture, shoes, toys and dolls everywhere.  And a happy-looking Cheburashka.

I was amazed at the number of beautiful murals that were largely intact, having somehow defied the elements.  This one below was amazing, the intensity of the colours (I think being in the stairwell away from windows protected it) and parts of it were “raised”,  I don’t know how you describe it.. “embossed”?  Mostly the pot on the fire.  If you click on the picture you can see a bigger version on flickr.

The little shoes and gas masks probably got me the most.

Afterwards we were driven back to Kiev, via the checkpoints to have our radiation levels checked one last time.  This time they did a whole sweep of the car as well, to make sure it as well as our camera equipment was okay.  By this stage we were used to radiation checks and weren’t nervous at all.

There were two things I regret not getting photos of.  Firstly, the memorial beside the road, in between the lunch hall and our hotel, where a white cross has been erected for every person who died as a direct result of the explosion.  Nearby, a building is painted with an epic mural of peace doves flying out from an atom(?), with what looks like nuclear rods following it; this is the only picture I could find online, so annoyed I didn’t take one.

So.  Chernobyl.  One of the places I have wanted to go to most in my life, and now I have seen it.  It was moving in a way that I don’t know quite how to put into words; not just the way it affected people and families on an individual level, but how it contributed to the disintegration of the USSR, with a financial debt that has still not been pain off (and with the cost of the ongoing treatment of the site – will it ever be?)  It’s a work in progress, still.

When we asked our guide if he or anyone he knew in Ukraine knew anyone who was affected by the Chernobyl disaster, he said “Yes… everyone  does.”

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Europe, Things I see, Urban exploration
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Chernobyl, Day 3 – a school and a rooftop

•July 14, 2012 • Leave a Comment

We started the third day with a visit to another school.   I found the schools to be very moving, and I imagine that most people who have visited Pripyat would say the same thing.

Books, toys, and little shoes still covered the classrooms.

After the school we checked out a few nearby apartment blocks.  Again, the lure of getting onto the roof was too strong for us to say no to. These blocks were taller, and we climbed one that was 18 stories tall.  Great view from the top.  We could see the reactor in the distance.  It was windy as hell.  Murdoch was brave and worked on conquering his (now dwindling) fear of heights by getting as close as he could to the edge despite the perilously windy conditions (even I didn’t stand right on the edge, it was that windy).

Wrap-up coming soon.

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Europe, Things I see, Urban exploration
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Chernobyl, Day 2 – Pripyat Hospital

•July 12, 2012 • Leave a Comment

Pripyat Hospital gets it’s own post – it was huge, and it took us the whole afternoon after lunch to explore it.

There was much more to see inside the hospital than in most other buildings in the city.  Operating lights were still fixed to the ceiling, rusted beds could be found in many rooms, glass bottles and files littered the floor and shelves – many still containing pills and fluids.

We ended up splitting up and exploring on our own; as I wanted to move a bit faster than the guys so I could see the entire building, I took off alone.  This worked great for at first, but as I got down into the lower levels where there was little light (and of course I didn’t bring a torch, hey) it started to get a little creepy.  No, “a little creepy” is an understatement – I was straight-up creeped out!  A couple of times I went back up to the higher levels to look for the guys – no sign of them.  I listened for their voices, or for the sound of glass breaking under their feet – nothing.  I’d (kinda sorta begrudgingly) make my way back down to the lower levels to continue photographing.  The rooms themselves weren’t as creepy, as they had windows to let light in, but the hallways was dark and eerie, and you couldn’t really see that far in front of you, or what was around the corner.

One thing that definitely did make my downstairs exploration worth it, was discovering the children’s ward.  This may have been part of the maternity ward as well.  Each room held little rusted beds, and assorted hospital equipment.

Another room I found interesting was what seemed to have been a common room, or communal lounge.  There was a broken piano, and the wall art was semi-destroyed.  A lot of water from leaking from the ceiling, and the moss-covered floor was soaked.

One thing we had discussed when we first entered the hospital, was the possibility of us finding the morgue downstairs.  Morbid, I know, but that’s us.  The stairs that appeared to lead down to what may have been a basement led to nothing but a wall.  We abandoned that idea and went back upstairs.  A few days later, we found out that that part of the hospital was one of the most radioactive in Pripyat – a person could only be in there for 30 seconds before being exposed to a fatal dose of radiation.  Apparently, the firefighters who were first on the scene of the reactor fire were taken down there, and their clothing was so radioactive that it could not be removed from the room.  So that would explain why it’s walled up then… yes, good idea.

After being attacked by hungry, flesh-craving goliath mosquitoes whilst waiting for Shane to emerge from the hospital, we headed back to the hotel, completely exhausted after what was the biggest day of our three-day tour; both physically and mentally.  It felt both satisfying and a privilege to be experiencing all this, though.

Still one more day to go.

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Europe, Things I see, Urban exploration
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Chernobyl, Day 2 – the funfair, and surrounding buildings

•July 10, 2012 • Leave a Comment

The ferris wheel in the centre of Pripyat is perhaps one of the best-known images to come from Chernobyl.  The funfair was brand-new and was due to open on May 1st.  The nuclear disaster occurred five days before this.  Despite the funfair never having officially opened, there are images available that show people riding on the attractions – dodgem cars, a carousel, a swing boat ride, and the ferris wheel.  One theory I have read is that the funfair was opened early in order to keep people distracted until the evacuations were carried out, but who knows for sure.

Past the funfair was another large building which housed another gymnasium and what looked like it was once an auditorium of some sort.

We explored another neighbouring building, a multi-storey construction which looked like it was probably a hotel or an apartment block.  We couldn’t be sure though, as most of the rooms had been looted and were empty.  We did find what looked like a dentist’s chair in one of them, as well as quite a number of rusted bed frames.  It was interesting to see how much nature was reclaiming the area – plants grew wildly throughout the buildings, including on the rooftops; not just on the ground outside.

We had to climb onto a rooftop to get an aerial of Pripyat.  We had to.  We weren’t sure if that was permissible, but we were going to do it anyway.  We climbed up to the top of a tallish apartment block behind the funfair and got a 360 degree view of the abandoned city.  It was extremely windy up there, but it was worth it.

Upon returning to our hotel after lunch, we stopped to get a close-up look at the Pripyat sign.  The date indicates what a young city Pripyat was.

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Europe, Things I see, Urban exploration
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

New Drab Art pasteup

•July 9, 2012 • Leave a Comment

It’s 4am, in my friendly Berlin neighbourhood, and around the corner from my apartment is a new Drab Art pasteup… still wet too.

Good way to occupy yet another sleepless morning.

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Artyness, Europe, Things I see
Tags: , , , , , ,

Chernobyl, day 2 – Palace of Culture

•July 8, 2012 • Leave a Comment

After leaving the rusted machines behind, our guide told us he was taking us to the centre of Pripyat.  This is where the day tours who only have a few hours in Chernobyl spend all their time.  When we arrive, our driver parked the car and our guide told us that we were free to wander around wherever we wanted until lunchtime, he would wait in the car.  To say we were excited was an understatement.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, Shane had already offered our guide a bribe, and he had turned down our money, but said we could go inside the buildings anyway.  What a rad dude.

The first building we came to was the Palace of Culture.  It’s a huge building, with remnants of a gym, swimming pool, a theatre, among other things such as dance studios and study rooms.  This was where people would go to enjoy sports and recreational activities, and was only one kilometre from the reactor.  Palaces of Culture were common throughout the Soviet Union; the one in Pripyat was named “Energetik”

The words ” сильныe, смелые, ловкиe” translate as “strong, courageous, dexterous”.

The famous ferris wheel is visible through the empty window-frames of the gymnasium inside the Palace of Culture.  After seeing so many photos of it over the years, it felt kind-of surreal and a bit eery to finally see it in person, looming up from the trees in the distance.

Most of Pripyat is graffiti-free, though there were a few tags inside the Palace of Culture that were dated the week before.  I’m not sure why people would make the effort to get into Pripyat to then tag buildings?  But anyway…

One of the things I loved the most was the murals, posters and signs from the Soviet 80s which could still be found around the buildings.

The paint, now peeling from the walls, was done in bright cheery colours and the thought of the happy and vibrant place it once would have been contrasts starkly with the state it is in now.

At the end of the building was a room filled with old Soviet posters and wall hangings.  This was my favourite part.

After the Palace of Culture, we checked out a couple of the large multi-story buildings nearby, before having a close-up look at one of the most well-known sights, the funfair…

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Europe, Things I see, Urban exploration
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Chernobyl, day 2 – morning in the machine graveyard

•July 6, 2012 • 2 Comments

Day two started bright and early with breakfast in the same diner we’d had dinner in the night before.  Once again we were segregated in our little curtained-off booth.  Breakfast looked like this:

There was also a whole plate of orange slices, and a whole plate of bread.  We ate as much as we could, but couldn’t even come close to finishing it.  Then, just as we were about the finish, the diner lady brought out huge bowls of noodles.  She left, and we looked at each other, asking ourselves silently “what do we do with this?”

After breakfast, our guide and driver took us out to an area filled with old, rusted machines and buses; and several warehouses.  He told us not to step on the moss growing on the ground as it’s highly radioactive (yes it’s bright green) but also to watch out for snakes in the long grass.  OKAY.

I was photographing inside a bus when a bird flew in and scared the crap out of me.  However, the bird wasn’t nearly as scary as the GIANT FLESH-EATING MOSQUITOES that were everywhere.  They are aggressive, man!  They’ll find the one little patch of skin on your body that isn’t covered by a bit of hoodie or sock in about .000264 of a second and dive onto it, feasting hungrily, and as you swat at it, another two will hit another part of your body.  Sometimes they’d get caught in my eyelashes.  Our guide had insect repellent, but the guys still got bitten a lot (me not so much, they seem to like the pale skin more).

Most of the buildings were fairly empty, probably looted as well, but here and there would be a hardhat or another piece of workers’ equipment.

The vast space has a desolate, kind-of otherworldly feel to it.  It really felt like we were in the middle of nowhere.  And I’m not talking outer-suburban-Melbourne middle-of-nowhere.  Big rusted machines littered the landscape, some hidden amongst trees, some out in the open as though they were deliberately on display.

We didn’t encounter any snakes.  I did step on a fair amount of moss (would you prefer the radioactive moss or take your chances with the snakes?  Hmm, decisions…) but I also passed all radiation checks.

Second half of the morning coming next.

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Europe, Things I see, Urban exploration
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Chernobyl, Day 1 – the afternoon

•July 4, 2012 • 2 Comments

Over lunch we had discussed what the best plan of action to get ourselves into the buildings was.  Should we offer our guide a bribe?  Should one of us keep him occupied with questions whilst the others snuck into the buildings to take photos?  Should we just plead?  We didn’t want to annoy our guide on the first day of our tour in case it ruined the next two days for us, and we didn’t want to deliberately break the rules by sneaking in anywhere in case we got driven straight back to Kyiv.  Hmm what to do.  We decided we’d play it safe for the rest of day one, then possibly offer him a bribe tomorrow.  What was the worst that could happen?  If we weren’t allowed into the buildings, there’d be no point spending the full three days here anyway.

After lunch, we piled back into the car.  Shane asked if we could please go to one of the schools.  Our guide told us he’d take us to one of the kindergartens a bit further outside the centre of the city.  We would be be able to go inside this one because it was out of the way of the day tour groups (wouldn’t want to give them any ideas about sneaking into buildings… heh).

The front yard of the school was overgrown and quite thick with trees.  Dismembered dolls and rusty toy trucks were lying in the grass on the way to the front entrance.

The kindergarten was incredible, and incredibly sad.  There were a lot of beds, childrens’ toys, books and shoes remaining; it seemed like tourists didn’t go to that kindergarten often, and looters probably weren’t interested in much from a school.

There were a lot of childrens’ journals and workbooks scattered around, on tables and on the floor; and  I could read some of what they had written.  There were Cyrillic alphabet cards all over the floor too, and a medicine cabinet with empty and semi-empty bottles in it.

Aside from the childrens’ writing books, I found the rooms of beds the most moving, imagining little children napping there.  Most of the mattresses and linen have been taken, with the frames left behind to rust.

Could have spent all day there,  but it was getting late in the afternoon, so we got back into the car and visited one last place, what used to be a synagogue.  There wasn’t anything inside the synagogue, everything had been cleaned out.  There were trees growing from the roof gutters which was pretty fascinating.  Not just weeds, but actual trees.

After we were done at the synagogue, we went back to the centre of Pripyat for dinner.  On our way, we stopped at one of the checkpoints to have our radiation levels checked.  I didn’t take any photos of the machines, but here’s one that someone else took a couple of years ago.  I’ll admit, the first time we had our radiation checked we were a bit nervous, but the lowest-level light came on for all of us (I think there’s four levels?), and we went off to dinner.   This time we didn’t eat in the workers’ lunch hall, we ate at a pub/diner-type place.  We felt everyone stare at us as we walked through the room and were shown to our booth.  After our food and drinks were brought out, they drew a curtain across the booth so that we were separated from everyone else.  This was pretty funny – we’d been segregated!  As with lunch, dinner was way too much food, and we couldn’t even finish it.  We felt kinda rude, but it was a ridiculous amount of food, even for the boys.

After dinner we were driven back to our hotel (literally a thirty metre walk around the corner from the dinner hall, but no tourists are allowed to walk around Chernobyl, under any circumstances).  We chilled out in our rooms, having some drinks and checking out our photos.  At about 10pm we went downstairs so the boys could have smokes outside, and found the front door locked.  They even lock you in overnight to make sure you don’t sneak into Pripyat!  This is the result of so many idiot tourists having gone to Chernobyl and having done stupid things, like holding drunken parties in the abandoned buildings.  Dicks.

The boys had to have an early night ’cause they’re soft, so that concluded day one of our Chernobyl tour.

Day two coming soon.

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Europe, Things I see, Urban exploration
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Chernobyl, Day 1 – the beginning

•July 2, 2012 • 2 Comments

We were picked up from Kiev and driven out to Chernobyl early on a Monday morning in May.  Murdoch80, myself and another friend from Melbourne, Shane.  We were met at the first check point by our tour guide, had our passports checked, and drove on to the hotel where we left our luggage in our well-sized rooms.

Then it was on to Pripyat.  By the time we arrived, we had passed through three check points.  There is no problem getting in if you have been given permission from the Ukrainian government, or have booked a tour through a legit travel agency (as we did).

Our guide gave us some unfortunate news – as of four weeks prior, noone was allowed inside the buildings. We were pretty shocked, and disappointed… it would have been nice if they’d told us that before we came all the way, as taking photos of the outsides of the buildings wasn’t really what we were there for, and our three-day tour was fairly pricey.

We decided to play it by ear for awhile and then maybe try out our excellent persuasion skills a bit later.

The first building we stopped at (I can’t remember what it was) had two little puppies in a kennel out the front.  I thought they’d be shy and wary and but they bounded over the us and wove around our ankles like cats.  Cute!  We resisted the urge to hide them in our bags.  Our guide told us the Pripyat workers feed them.

As we weren’t allowed to look through the building, we moved on to the next building, close by.   This was a factory that had claimed to be manufacturing radios or something innocuous like that.  What were they really manufacturing?

Electronic components for nuclear warheads.

Our guide told us it was too dangerous to go into the buildings, but also not to wander too far down the path outside because there were sometimes wolves roaming about, and tourists have been attacked before so, frustratingly, we could only take a few photos near the entrance to the building.  There were a few toys scattered here and there, and bits of electronic components, old telephones, someones uniform jacket left behind.

Shane disappeared while Murdoch and I were photographing the bits of toys, and after awhile we realised he had snuck off into one of the buildings.  Our guide came by and asked us where he was.  It was obviously he’d gone into the building, despite being clearly told not to.  Oooh shit, we didn’t want to push our luck!  Our guide didn’t really say anything about it though, just reiterated that we couldn’t go inside.

Our next stop was the pool/gym complex.  Those of you who have looked at photos of Pripyat online will probably recognise the pool.  But we couldn’t see it, because we weren’t allowed in the building!  There wasn’t much to see from the outside, as the pool is on the second floor and the building was surrounded by trees.  The clock on the top of the building read 1:24, the exact time that the explosion occurred in 1986, but after looking at other peoples’ pictures since coming back from Pripyat, I’ve realised that the time has changed on at least several occasions, so someone obviously got up there and changed it to 1:24.

Our guide and driver took us to the “Bridge of Death”, where people stood watching the colourful flames of the burning nuclear core straight after the explosion of Reactor 4 occurred.  All of them were dead 24 hours later, exposed to fatal doses of radiation which had blown onto the bridge.

It was surreal seeing the reactor in person, encased in it’s disintegrating sarcophagus.  It’s strange to think that the cause of so much death and destruction is enclosed in that box.

Also seen here are Reactors 5 & 6; construction of these had not even been finished, and they remain in their semi-completed state to this day.

After that, it was time for lunch.  Lunch was held in the big dining hall that the workers also use.  We had a number of dishes prepared for us, and it was all pretty tasty (chicken coated in fried egg is a bit weird though).  The soup was delicious, as were the extremely-garlicky garlic rolls, and everything had a tonne of oil on/in it (mmm).  There was even dessert.  They sure know how to feed people.

More soon.

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Europe, Things I see, Urban exploration
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

‘Sup.

•June 27, 2012 • 3 Comments

I’m baa-aack.

So at the moment I am living in a light, airy apartment in Berlin.  It’s nice to be out of hostels, although I did meet a cool 30-something Canadian urban explorer in the last one.

My days currently consist of Deutsch classes (going okay; I keep accidentally dropping in Russian words though, oops), failed urbex attempts (turns out Germans take the law seriously), and the occasional spot of sight-seeing, although I haven’t done too much yet.

Back in May two friends and I went to Chernobyl.  My photos have been up on flickr for awhile now, but I will be writing some posts about that trip in the days to come.  Stay tuned!  Kitten of Doom is getting back into the habit of blogging.

Yay! 😀

x Kitten of Doom

PS. I have updated the Sites I Rate page with a few new photography blogs, check them out!

Berliner Dom! (Berlin Cathedral.) It’s pretty and the view from the top dome is great.

Posted in Europe, Things I see

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »