Blogs from Chernobyl, Kiev, Ukraine, Europe

Today we’re taking a guided tour of Chernobyl, together with Olena, our Ukrainian hostess. We board our minibus in Kyiv and are issued with permits and a Geiger counter before setting off for the exclusion zone. Upon arrival at the 30 km exclusion zone, we are provided with dossimeters and told not to eat or drink anything we find in the forest. We proceed to the town of Chernobyl where 2500 people still live and work on a shift basis, staying in dorms and spending half of each month outside the zone to decrease their radiation exposure. Following the fall of communism, Chernobyl is the only Ukrainian town to retain a Lenin statue in the main square. Presumably it’s too radioactive to mess with. Our tour guide is quite bossy and a little crazy. We have ... read more

Aangezien Kiev slechts op 100 km van Tsjernobyl ligt (Chernobyl voor de niet-Nederlandstaligen), was de verleiding erg groot om daar eens een kijkje te nemen. Probleem 1 is dat we niet graag dingen op voorhand vastleggen en dit natuurlijk minstens een week op voorhand geboekt had moeten worden. Probleem 2 is de minimumleeftijd van 18 jaar. Het eerste probleem kon mits extra geld opgelost worden bij een bereidwillige tour operator en voor probleem 2 kon ik op Yves rekenen. Terwijl hij een dagje met de kinderen naar het strand ging, kon ik de radioactiviteit gaan meten in het niemandsland rond Chernobyl. Aangezien het hele gebied in een straal van 30km rond de reactor al 31 jaar onbewoond is, werd het grotendeels overgenomen door de natuur. Dat desolate heeft natuurlijk iets magisch… Op onze laatste dag in ... read more

Dan's movie trailer he made... worth a few yucks Igor It was here, finally. A journey over a year in the making. An idea born out of a flippant comment and in less than 12 hours, it would be done and dusted. We hoped it would be worth it. Breakfast was an early affair and we then regrouped in the hotel lobby. We were being picked up at 08:10 by our tour guide. We found him outside sat in a very clean looking mini-van... almost too clean for Kyiv, where everything was a lada or worse. The driver jumped out and introduced himself. Igor. One of the few people we'd met in Ukraine who's English was not limited to 3 words and a grunt. He opened the van up and warned us not to sit on ... read more

When I tell somebody, especially a girl, that I’ve been to Chernobyl and Pripyat, there is immediately a reaction that, don’t I want to have children, and it’s always the same thing, as if I cannot think for myself and choose for myself and what do babies have to do with someone’s trip to Pripyat? I don’t even have a girlfriend, and doubt so much it’ll change in the nearest future, so should I care that much about unborn babies? If I am father to a mutant-baby, that’s another story, though… I’d rather not dwell on the scientific approach to the radiation dose one receives during the 4-5 hour stay in the Zone, because I do not know how to calculate all the stuff and neither I am able to use a dosimeter. But I do ... read more

So on a cloudy, cold day in Kiev we make our way to the street the travel agent told us to meet up with her and she will make sure we get on the van for the trip for Chernobyl, this trip was not very easy for us to organize, we were supposed to go a week earlier but last minute screw up by another travel agent, sent us waiting it out in Kiev, they need passport details etc, and apparently paperwork takes a couple of days for permit to be issued to enter the Chernoobyl site, and it does not run everyday, only on specific dates so time it perfectly.quite costly for us both but we want to do it. We stood for 25 minutes in the cold then the agent came and we were ... read more