Kiev / Cherobyl - boy

After some forgettable food on the planes and an eight hour wait in the dump that is Moscow airport we headed straight for the typical Ukrainian style cafeteria restaurant where we had our first mostly non-fried meal in a long time: wonderful mayonnaise-laden salads, Borsch (soup) and cherry Varenyky (filled dumplings). We also sampled excellent food in one of the many typical Ukrainian style themed restaurants. This place, decorated in 1900s style Kiev complete with fish-holding cherubs, wax people staring through wooden windows, rustic scenes and saddle-like bar seats, was actually one of the more toned down themed restaurants in Kiev.

At the Lavra (Ukrainian Orthodox catacombs) and the Ukrainian Orthodox churches we were treated to a show of religious devotion that transcended reason every bit as much as the Buddhists in the Jokhang or the Hindus in Varanasi. In these churches, such is the wanton ache for those portrayed in paintings and such is the effect of other assorted religious objects that the glass covering such holy matter and holy paintings is plastered with kisses. In the Lavra we saw queues of devotees constantly slobbering over glass coffins containing mummified bodies while the empty rooms still showed evidence in the form of puckered up shapes of sweat residue clearly visible against the light. Here I imagine communicable diseases thrive. Maybe that’s why these pilgrims supplement their lip-work duties with some furious crossing of themselves at every corner; to ward of the evil microbes.

The compound where the Lavra was situated wasn’t all uninspiring mindless practice however. One room showed an amazing exhibition of micro-miniature sculptures of truly head-scratching proportions. A golden chess set on a pin head; portraits notched into half a poppy seed; camels, pyramids and palm trees all excellently carved and resting comfortably within the eye of a needle; a rose placed within a hollowed-out strand of hair. To dissect and arrange with this kind of precision seemed like such an unbelievable feat that at one point I wondered if the microscopes were fake; set up to give the illusion that we were looking at tiny objects.

Our day trip to Chernobyl got off to a uncertain start when we had to hand over a couple of hundred dollars to some dodgy guy standing outside a hotel. I revised my first impressions when I found out he was our guide but reverted back by the end of his day’s lacklustre, indifferent and sometimes dubious dialogue; apparently there were never any mutated plants in the area - better tell that to the Chernobyl museum so they can take their fraudulent specimens away. There were moments when a hint of a spark of enthusiasm were present; like I’m sure years ago when he began these tours, but it didn’t hang around.

We did however see some cool stuff. We watched our Geiger counters rise from 14 μR/h (micro-roentgen per hour) to well over 500 μR/h as we approached reactor number four and its decaying concrete shell, just a stone’s throw away. Complex plans are afoot apparently to build a large concrete arch on rollers that will slide over the toxic edifice; no foundations can be dug since highly radioactive earth sometimes lies beneath like super contaminated underground land-mines that wound in slow motion (our guy did give us some interesting facts). Until that happens, ionizing radiation will continue to jet out of the many cracks. And surprisingly three thousand people still work next door in the other reactors, keeping the now useless and unwanted uranium rods cool enough so they don’t blow. Russia’s legacy Ukraine’s inheritance.

The ghost town of Pripyat was less exciting than anticipated. After 24 years a forest has grown in its place; it barely resembles a town any more but a place where separate vandalised decrepit buildings live. There was some interesting looking soviet textbooks in the old school, some still on their shelves though the shelves themselves were toppled long ago. And of course it was fun scanning for gamma and beta hot spots around the town. You had to be there I guess.

The tour was nicely (I thought) rounded off with a remarkably genuinely dire soviet style meal. Soviet meals are new to me and although I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy I nevertheless enjoyed the experience of eating such authentically bad food for the first and last time.