Lost Places - Chornobyl Zone

I was not in a city from the beginning of summer and have started missing it a little. All the summer long we with Natasha travelled around on the Zone, but for Pripyat somehow there was no time... Therefore, when one week before a trip Sasha Sirota has called me and told - "Lets go to Pripyat", I did not deliberate a second: certainly we will go!

This area do not show to visitors... To look, from the point of view of the ordinary tourist and the journalist writing about "horrors of Chornobyl", especially there is nothing, neither of the coat of arms of the USSR, nor dolls, gas masks... Impassable thickets and level of Gamma background above 2 mR/h... We go to one of most radioactive the polluted areas not only in Pripyat, but also in all Zone... We switch radiometers on top range and go forward, to Ognev street. Pripjat life-saving station. I did run a lot around a rusty board, but could not photograph it so that it was possible to read an inscription (believe me there it is really written: "life-saving station" :). Mushrooms... I think by this word it would be possible to describe all our expedition to east area of Pripyat... Brown cap boletus, orange-cap boletus, cep, Boletus luteus, magnificent fly agarics... It is very difficult to set foot on land not to touch any mushroom... I saw such only on pictures in children’s books where mushrooms always stuck out from the ground in improbable quantity... It appears so happens in a reality... Level of Gamma background does not fall more low then 2mR/h.

We turn off on the left and the footpath leads us to the semiflooded landing-stage – this is the second Pripyat wharf (says that it was used during the whole year after failure).

On a landing-stage and near it is rather pure unexpectedly - level not above 50 mcR/h. We remove masks to recover the breath and take rest... Water as if a mirror, will not stir... Canes... Silence... It seems that the landing-stage not semiflooded, but is simply gradually dissolved in dense autumn water... In the distance are seen boxes of Pripyat houses. We leave from a wharf and we go further along the bank... Here is the "office" of OSWOD (life-saving station)... It is interesting that though we, judging by a map, are in the Ognev street, on a life-saving station building the tablet hangs: st. Naberezhna... And without a number :)

Two-storeyed building. A hangar for a saving boat... On walls have still remained the labels of monitoring team: 30 mR/h, 25 mR/h, 10 mR/h... Now here in 10 times less 1-2 mR/h, in premises - nearby 100 mcR/h.

Court yard of former Pripyat dispensary... Kolya pulls me for a sleeve - listen! Peep of our radiometers changes a tonality... 3 mR/h.

Having wandered on a dispensary we leave back on Ognev street and we go further aside the Pripyat garages. If to go further on bank behind a dispensary, in meters about 50, the plutonium stain of "northern trace" begins.

Here garages... Heard about them a lot of positive responses. That supposedly they any unusual, warm, spacious, convenient... In general not such as were in other cities... I don’t know, may be... Likely to estimate it, it is necessary to be the skilled Soviet motor-car enthusiast :) Level of Gamma background in territory of garages is about 2-5 mR/h.

We go on road and go in a direction to Pripyat cemetery. To OU (sarcophagus) of ChNPP on a straight line is not more then 2,5 km. We now are in the centre of "Y" of "northern" and "western" trace. The radiometer confidently whistles in a jacket pocket: 2-3 mR/h. Here is a cemetery... In difference from rural Woodland cemeteries with their unique stacked cover crosses and rushniks (kind of Ukrainian folk towels with embroidery), the Pripyat cemetery looks a little sadly and provincial tasteless - clumsy obelisks from the polished stainless steel, fences painted in intensively "disco" colours... Peep of radiometers changes a tonality: 6-7- 8,5 mR/h. Says, that here it is possible to measure even 20 mR/h, but we have no such purpose, us suffices 8. Having taken a detour on a cemetery and having frightened away in its thickets some noisy living creatures, we come back on road to a city.

We climb in a thicket with thought to make the way in area of Druzhbi Narodov street (Friendship of the People Street). In thickets it is visible an accurate brick small house - one of four cottages of the "high" city and station heads. But further there is no way – infront of us the real wall from an acacia and a nut-trees... No, here we will not pass. We are turned around and go back. We bypass thickets on edge and here we are already near Pripyat stomatologic polyclinic, and through road... The Dance pavilion! It has for some reason stirred up in me warm waves of nostalgia. I as fascinated stood in the centre of a concrete platform trying to recollect that we listened then, in 1986... Names of groups and performers by itself have merged in my head in any shapeless weight with the name "Ottavan"... Indeed old residents say that the dance pavilion has lost the popularity after occurrence in a city of a legendary disco club "Edison" in a recreation centre "Energetik" and became a place of meetings of the first city skateboarders.

We leave a dance pavilion and we go in northern direction. Gamma background level slowly falls to 200 - 400 mcR/h. And here we in a court yard of repair shops. Already after failure here there was a repair shop of the "Complex", one of the organizations working in the Zone. Now the shop is thrown, on a hangar floor familiar to me by CR 4 there is a thick PVC film covered with various "scrap metal". On my belt the portable radio set starts to peep: Max on communication. They "have already grazed" the American visitors and now wait for us near school №1.

We pass near a hockey box and sport club "Builder" – it is before-failure epicenter of a Pripyat sports life. Here is the Druzhbi Narodov street. On radiometer something about 50 mcR/h. We pull together masks and goggles... I remove a portable radio set from a belt: "the general call". We have returned... We at home.