Travel-Week One

I used to like how my blog roughly chronicled my grouchy life, then I actually started being fairly content and everyone knows blogs get boring when bloggers are happy. So not much is happening.

It's also hard to manufacture things to write about when my job, while not sensitive, isn't something I can really write about. I guess I can write that I write reports all day, some days I draw plans and make maps. I like my job and that's boring too. My work is generous with vacation days, which meant this summer I cashed out all of this year's vacation for two weeks in Chernobyl and Kazakhstan touring atomic and cosmic sites with a group of forty other architects, landscape architects, artists, film makes, photographers, and graphic designers.

From home I flew to Chicago to connect to London and immediately my flight was delayed three hours. Luckily I was still at home and could have lunch-dinner brought to me because in Chicago I had 15 minutes to run through O'Hare to connect with my international flight. Not my original flight, but the rebooked one where I ran up to the gate panting trying to ask if my bag would make it. The flight attendant could fortunately make out what I was trying to say, hurriedly reassured me it would make it on, and forcefully told me to get on the plane. Oddly, there were four people from my Champaign flight getting on the London flight and I was only the second to last person on the plane.

Week one was in Ukraine. We flew out of London at mid morning and although we got to Kiev in the late afternoon ended up hanging out at the airport for two hours because someone's dosimeter got stolen off the airplane.* With a stolen dosimeter setting the stage we headed out to our hotel. The hotel was nice, but strange. We got there late in the evening and missed dinner because the hotel's two bars and one restaurant ran out of food or they wouldn't make anything for us. The people who stayed up late found out that the hotel turned into a brothel at night.

The next morning we got on the bus for the two hour ride north to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. I'd done some reading and there's a lot of images online, but I didn't really know what to expect. The group organizers had made us packets including orange suits, dust masks, and safety glasses and had recommended we pack shoes and pants we could throw away. We got to the Exclusion Zone in the early afternoon and after going through passport control we were allowed in. What I didn't know is that the Exclusion Zone is a pretty busy place, and it has always been since the explosion in 1986.

Apparently, after reactor 3 melted down the authorities decided to keep reactors 1 and 2 online where they continued to operate until 2003 when they were finally closed. Back then more people were in the Exclusion Zone, but now the daily total is around 5000. From the main gate to the reactors is about 15 km and the drive cuts through overgrown grasslands, forests, and the occasional pocket of lived-in high rises. Heating pipes are above ground and arch over the roads. The towns were originally constructed this way, but now, because of the radiation nothing can be buried or disturb the soil. We stopped at the town of Chernobyl where our hotel was and got a safety briefing, signed papers saying we would never sue the Ukrainian government for our future cancers, and got a brief history of the explosion and migration.

Driving toward the ground zero from the south the first thing you see is the plants cooling towers, these are of the stereotypical nuclear power plant variety and then you see the unfinished reactor 4. Reactor 4 was under construction when reactor 3 blew and so it still has cranes and other construction equipment forever frozen around it. Being relatively uninformed everyone thought this was the famous reactor 3 and so we were shocked when the bus turned and parked at a building close to it. We were told to get off and directed to walk down a road its sides crowded with overhanging trees and shrubs. At the end of the lane was the cafeteria where we were given a lunch of mystery meat with dill, lots and lots of dill. Outside the open windows we could see the construction workers building the new sarcophagus over the old one that was allegedly containing so much of the radiation.

Even by that point we were becoming desensitized to the idea of radiation. The next stop was Pripyat the town north of the reactors that was one of the first places to catch the fallout from the explosion. The Soviets built it as a model town illustrating how safe nuclear power plants were and there all the workers lived with their families. Now, the buildings have trees growing in them and everything is wearing away. Standing on the ground it's hard to make out the impressive boulevards from the main town square. Here, in front of the culture center, is a plaza that had fountains, limestone stairs, and benches. Visibly plants have taken over, but we have to stay with our group because there's a very real danger of running into wild boars, which, when startled, will gore you to death. It was hard to see because of the tree growth, but surrounding the main nucleus (if you will) of the city are rows and rows and rows of housing blocks. The rumor was that wolf packs were now populating the lower floors of some of the apartment complexes, but we didn't see any.

We didn't actually stay too long the first day we were there, just climbing through the public buildings before heading back to the town of Chernobyl for dinner and to stay the night at the Hotel Chernobyl. The authorities like to have everyone at the hotel long before sunset so no one can sneak out and, I guess, spend the night in the abandoned city. I'm not picky, but dinner was gross. It was hot that day and we had been wearing long sleeves and pants under safety suits and at dinner we didn't get water just a strange smoke flavored tea. It tasted like smoked sausage and wasn't refreshing, but I kept trying it to see if it would get better only it just got worse and worse. Afterward, we spent the evening listening to presentations about psychology of long-term space travel and how to design environments for it and how to make dark matter in your bathroom sink (I'm still a little unclear on the actual results). Hotel Chernobyl is more of a barracks than a hotel, but they did have beds, which was counter to the rumors being passed around.

Breakfast the next morning was plain dill pasta, another piece of mystery meat, and bread. And then we were out for a full day in Chernobyl, which meant spending more time in Pripyat. But this time we got to climb to the roof of one of the tall housing blocks for an unparalleled view around. From the roof we could see the arrangement of the housing blocks, the town center, and the river; everything, though, was grown up with trees with the buildings emerging from their canopy. Later we saw giant catfish in the river and got really close to the sarcophagus. We were told we could only stay at reactor 3 for five minutes, but we were there longer.

In the late afternoon we headed back to Kiev where we would fly out of the next evening. The next day was spent at the Chernobyl museum, the grocery store, and being rejected from touring a former military ammunitions factory.

Our flight to Almaty, Kazakhstan was supposed to leave at 7:00 pm arriving in the early morning. There we would have two hours to clear customs, get luggage, and make a connection to our 33 hour train ride. Of course, in Kiev the flight was delayed for two hours and left at 9:00, ruining the schedule.

Kazakhstan is a big country.

*Kiev's airport is strangely laid out and there I've enjoyed the shortest bus ride of my life. They also had the best wifi for the next two weeks. It was also free.