Chernobyl, Part 3

After the train yard, we had our last major stop of the day.  I'm still not really sure what this place was, I'm afraid I was thinking about the train yard still and not paying enough attention to our guide, Helen.  So, if any of my Chernobyl people are reading this, help a sister out and tell me where the hell we were.  I think it's some kind of administration building.**

This was a map of the surrounding areas.

Part of the tragedy of this place is how pretty everything is.

We drove through a portion of the Red Forest.  It was so named after the event, when the fallout killed all of the trees, turning them a rust color.  Flying over them, the forest looked red.  They pulled them down and (I'm assuming) buried them, like they did everything else.  They replanted trees, so none of the trees you're seeing in my pictures are older than me.  The Red Forest remains highly radioactive, because the radioactive dust landed on the ground and soaked into the dirt.  Even though our windows were up, they pulled out the Geiger counter on our drive through.  The beep that had become the background noise to our lives slowly increased its tempo.  Helen read out loud to us, "4 microsieverts. 5. 6. 7."  Already higher than outside Reactor 4.  Beep, beep, beepbeep. "8. 9. 10. 11. 12."  As we drove on, it slowly decreased until it finally stopped.  Looking back, I'm not sure why I was surprised it could reach us through the van.  You get so used to thinking that being inside something provides some level of comfort and safety.  Gamma radiation can pierce through a solid meter of concrete. 

Here's the scary thing about radioactivity.  You can't see it.  You can't smell or hear or touch it.  You start to think you're in a pretty place and turns out it's killing you (sometimes not so) slowly.  So it's easy to forget that you're in a place where they restrict access.

And, perhaps worse of all, it's inconsistent.  Depending on how the wind blew during the days after the event, the dust fell randomly, gathering more in some spots than others.  You could be standing in a spot that measures 2 microsieverts, then 2 feet away, it's 75 microsieverts.  This may seem like an exaggeration, but it's not.  There was a hotspot in the amusement park in Pripyat that was used as a landing area for helicopters and gathered radiation.  It counted up to almost 75 microsieverts before Michaela got up and walked away from it.  The Geiger counter was screaming at her.

We then exited the Zone of Forever Deadly.  Upon leaving the 10 km zone, we had to exit our van and go through a checkpoint that scanned for radiation on our bodies.  I'm not entirely sure if it actually works, but it looked somewhat imposing.

This thing looks older than me.

Following this, we were taken to the single store in Chernobyl.  We were told that we weren't supposed to drink, but they wouldn't mind if we bought a couple of beers for the night (they seemed very nonchalant about the rules).  So almost everyone did.  I ended up with some mystery beers (everything was written in Russian or Ukrainian or whatever).  I called it Beer Roulette.  Nobody knew what they were getting.

This was mostly a convenience store for the people who live and work in Chernobyl, selling stuff like meat and deodorant.  They had a small "souvenir" section that was pitiful.  I wish I could tell someone that they could pay me minimal amounts of money to completely rework their souvenir section into stuff people actual want, they could make so much money.  Some of the guys bought the horrible shirts they sold, because they were so horrible.  See?  Hipsters exist outside of America, too. 

We went back to the hotel for the night after dinner (they fed us really well, like 3-4 course meals).  We hung out in a small common area that consisted of about 12 chairs, a dilapidated couch and a ping pong table, lacking any actual ping pong accoutrements.  We shot the shit, got a little tipsy (my 2 beers were 5-6% each).  Our group was made up of some quite interesting, intelligent and witty individuals.  We had a great time together.  I think we bonded quickly over our mutual travel interests and the fact that we were forced to stay together at all times.  They even locked us into our hotel, "for our own good" from 11pm to 7 am.  I can just imagine why they started doing this- some stupid tourist must have decided to go for a midnight walkabout and wandered straight through a hot spot or something.  Although, I can't say the temptation wasn't there to look around at night.  We weren't allowed to go anywhere without the accompaniment of a guide.  I felt like a kid in kindergarten or something. 

I made it until almost 10 pm before surrendering to sleep.  It had been a long, exciting, eventful day.  Tomorrow we go to Pripyat.
 

Not exactly your stereotypical hotel notice.

**Note: I was informed by one of my friends that this was in fact the Pripyat bus station.  Now the giant map on the wall makes way more sense.