Moving on! Take your seat. In Part III of our Chernobyl tour, we stopped at a mysterious WWII memorial by the roadside and followed a small path into the woods, where we discovered the last remaining building of Kopachi village – the kindergarden – and its spooky artifacts. Today we finally move on to Pripyat ...

The Heart of the Zone

Our bus passes the Chernobyl NPP on our way to its home city of Pripyat, the devastated jewel of the zone. We have now also reached the first and most severely contaminated 10 km layer of the zone, where people are never meant to return. The picture you see above is of an intact reactor block, the exploded reactor block No. 4 is a little further ahead.

And here it is. Do you feel history in the air (or is it plutonium)? Don't worry, we will return here and take a very close look at the reactor, but not now.

Brief Stop at the Roadsign

Yes, this is the official roadsign of the city of Pripyat and your's truly in front of it. My eyes clearly reveal the effects of the booze and the Ukrainian karaoke I mentioned in Part I. But there is another reason to revisit Part I at this point. Remember how I promised you to explain the term "radiation release traces" that was mentioned on the Chernobyl Tour website?

Well, we just passed one of these traces while driving up to that roadsign. All the Geiger counters in the bus were going crazy for a minute. The thing is, when reactor block No. 4 of the Chernobyl NPP exploded 30 years ago, most of the radiation was carried in the direction of the wind that day. There are two distinct traces of high radioactivity that literally encompass the city of Pripyat.

Yes, indeed, the radiation levels in Pripyat itself aren't all that high. But it is surrounded by two highly polluted traces from the North and the West. And there is another highly polluted place right next to the roadsign we are standing at.

You see the rail track right in front of us and the trees in the background? Make one step in their direction and your Geiger counter starts buzzing like a swarm of bees. There used to be many more trees here that were cut out and buried in the soil we see on this picture. This area is very close to what used to be the Red Forest.

Let's not stay for too long and get back on the bus.

Entering Pripyat

We drive through the first few rows of houses in the perimeter of Pripyat, all of them barely visible due to the high level of forestation that has evolved in most of the abandoned cities and villages we find here. It only starts to feel like a real city once we reach the former town square, where we can finally get a clear view on the surrounding landscape.

Parts of this square also show relatively high levels of radioactivity, but this is not due to "stains" (mentioned in previous parts). You see, when the Soviet authorities tried to "clean" the city from radiation in the first days after the nuclear disaster, they had planes drop chemicals on the houses and streets of Pripyat. Those planes would take off and land on the big squares of the city, including this one right here – and they would carry radioactive material from the air to the ground, so all big squares in Pripyat show hightened levels of radiation.

It also goes to show how hesitant the people and the authorities were to abandon Pripyat, since it was a wealthy model city and no one could really believe that the evacuation would be forever. People still hoped for months that they would be able to return to their homes.

What you see here is the 'Palace of Culture' called "Energetik" – the city was very proud of its state of the art NPP. It is maybe the Soviet version of a townhall.

And here we see Hotel Polissya. Although it is "closed" according to Google Maps, the comments reveal that it had many recent guests in the last couple of years.

Inside Energetik

Let's take a brief stroll through the 'Palace of Culture' before we head off to our next destination. Everything in Pripyat feels Back in the USSR-ish and that well preserved socialist mural just adds to the nuclear mix of nostalgia and tristesse you are guaranteed to feel as a Russian visiting the Chernobyl Exclusion Area. "Back in the USSR, you don't know how lucky you are" – indeed.

On the second floor we find what was once the city's cinema. As you can see, three chairs are still intact – the others, not so much. I have literally no idea what destroyed the other ones, but it's nice to close your eyes and imagine people sitting here and watching movies.

In the next room, we find a former library or book cabinet with literature about art.

And political booklets. The one on the right explains the Soviet voting system. Still perfectly readable, by the way, but it is strictly prohibited to collect "souvenirs". Actually, it still wouldn't have been very hard to smuggle out a booklet like that, but I didn't want to disturb the place and leave it as it is for future visitors.

Our last stop: The football court, it is also inside this building. The floor is extremely high quality. After all these years, it still feels perfect. You could easily take a ball and have a game there. The windows, though ...

Strong – Brave – Clever

-------------------TO BE CONTINUED-------------------

Time to move ahead, there is still plenty to see in Pripyat. You don't have to hop back into the bus this time, we are going to walk. In the upcoming Part V of our Chernobyl tour, we are going to explore the Chernobyl amusement park with its legendary ferris wheel and the former public swiming pool, after which we climb on top of an abandoned 16 story building and get a wonderful view on Pripyat and the Chernobyl NPP. Make sure to follow me and resteem my posts. :)