Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
That night I lay restless in my bunk and imagined—as only an American can—the post-
Soviet gloom slipping by outside, felt the train shudder as it pushed through the thick ether
left behind by an empire. In the topic of Chernobyl survivors' stories, I read an account by
a firefighter's widow. They were newly married when her husband responded to the fire
at the reactor. One of the first at the scene, he received catastrophic doses of radiation and
died after two weeks of gruesome illness.
Desperately in love, his wife had snuck into the hospital to accompany him in his ordeal,
even though his very body was dangerously radioactive.
“I don't know what I should talk about,” she says in her account. “About death or about
love? Or are they the same?”
Kiev is a beautiful city, a true Paris of the East, a charming metropolis whose forests of
horse chestnut trees set off its ancient churches and classic apartment buildings like jewels
on a bed of crumpled green velvet. The trick is to come in the summertime, when a warm
breeze blows across the Dnieper River and the bars and cafés spill out into the gentle even-
ing. You can stroll down the Andriyivskyy Descent, lined with cafés and shops, or explore
the mysterious catacombs of the Pechersk Lavra, with its menagerie of dead monks. Or you
can dive into the city's pulsing downtown nightlife.
I went straight for the Chernobyl Museum.
There's a special blend of horror and civic pride on display at any museum dedicated
to a local industrial disaster, and the Chernobyl Museum is surely the best of its kind. The
place incorporates history, memorial, commentary, art, religion, and even fashion under a
curatorial ethos that is the mutant offspring of several different aesthetics.
In one of the museum's two main halls, I found a bizarre temple-like space. Soothing
Russian choral music emanated from the walls. In the center of the room lay a full-size
replica of the top face of the infamous reactor. A dugout canoe was suspended above it,
heaped with a bewildering mixture of religious images and children's stuffed toys. I tried to
understand the room's message, and could not. Empty contamination suits lingered in the
shadows, arranged in postures of bafflement and ennui.
The second hall housed a definitive collection of Chernobyl memorabilia, as well as a
tall aluminum scaffold hung with mannequins wearing nuclear cleanup gear. They seemed
to be flying in formation, a squad of unusual superheroes. Their leader, arms upraised, wore
a black firefighting suit with large white stripes and a metal backpack connected to a gas
mask. Through the bubble of the helmet's face guard, I could just make out the cool, retail
gaze of a female head, with full eyelashes and painted plastic lips.
