Negosentro.com | Trips to Chernobyl: the city which fell asleep for centuries |Today, you an find an abandoned city in every country. People left their cities after the war, some due to economic factors, but there is one place that was abandoned after the fatal mistake of people. The catastrophe of April 26, 1986 was hidden from the very beginning by the Soviet Union, which naively believed that unpleasant information could be covered. Nowadays, everyone can book any of Chernobyl trips to see where time has stood forever.
The Chernobyl accident happened not because of an ‘experiment’, and not because of mistakes made by the NPP personnel. The cause of the catastrophe was two constructive miscalculations in the design of the reactor. The most important of this was revealed by his designer, and he even sent a letter, but no one paid attention to him. Such inattention later forced thousands of people, leaving all their belongings, to flee their homeland in the hope of returning. But as time has shown, they can only return as part of trips to Chernobyl.
What so attracts tourists to the Exclusion Zone?
Before visiting, this city seems to many as a kind of neglected place, where there is almost nothing left. Imagine the surprise of tourists when they see all these preserved houses, and some of them still have furniture. For example, a kindergarten with toys and books that are just there. Gym with soccer goal and amusement park. All these may be seen with the people who organized trips to Pripyat in Ukraine.
The virtual trip to Pripyat
- First you will be dropped off at the concrete memorial ‘Pripyat’: here everyone quickly captures a photo.
- Further, a little more interesting and creepy – the city center, where you will spend a couple of hours. There is an amusement park with a rusted Ferris wheel and children’s cars with peeling paint – everything looks like a horror. These rides were supposed to open during the May holidays.
- A few steps away is the ‘Energetik’ culture house, inside which trees have grown. Cinema ‘Prometheus’, hotel ‘Polesie’, school. Dark graffiti can be seen on the buildings: shadows of children, signs of radiation and drawings that will be understood by those who played ‘S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’.
- Since the houses are crumbling, it is dangerous to enter any of them on your own, guides accompanying trips to Pripyat take responsibility to take people to the school, where old chairs, desks and creepy paraphernalia like an abandoned doll are preserved. There are rooms littered with gas masks and overalls left by the liquidators.
- Near the center there is a garden with spreading pear and apple trees. In October, they are ‘bursting’ with fruits. Using a Geiger counter, you can see that the apple tree does not ‘phonite’. But the pear tree outweighs the permissible level of radiation. This is because of apple’s pectin, which removes radiation.
Trips to Pripyat in Ukraine give us the opportunity to plunge into a place of sadness, watching how nature still tries to be reborn. No abandoned city evokes such emotions in you as this one. On the one hand, you may have fun with friends and find everything ‘stunningly beautiful’ to take photos. But, on the other hand, everyone understands they have come to the place where the worst nuclear catastrophe in the world occurred.
