Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
He went on, recounting how he had read about a doctor who argued that constant, low-
level doses of radiation were actually good for you. “The people who didn't leave the zone
after the accident lived better,” he said, referring to the several hundred aging squatters who
have been allowed to live, semi-legally, in their houses in the zone. “This doctor said they
had adapted to the radiation and would die within fifteen years if they suddenly leave, but
could live to a hundred if they stay.”
I had heard similar claims before, and I was doubtful. There probably were health bene-
fits for zone squatters, but surely they came from living in a little cottage in the countryside,
where they grew their own (albeit contaminated) vegetables and breathed clean (if radio-
active) air, instead of being evacuated to a crappy apartment in Kiev. I suggested this to
Dennis, that perhaps around here, quality of life just trumped radiation dose. He shrugged.
But not everyone in Ukraine was as casual as he was about radiation. He later told me how,
whenever he would visit his sister in Kiev, she would make him leave his boots outside.
The amusement park is Pripyat's iconic feature, an end-times Coney Island, with a broad
paved area surrounded by rides and attractions that are slowly being overcome by rust and
weeds. Dennis was more interested in the moss. He was a collector of hotspots, and around
here the moss had all the action. Near the ruined bumper car pavilion, he waited for a read-
ing before picking his radiation meter up from a mossy spot on the ground.
“One point five mili,” he said, wiping the meter's backplate on his fatigues.
We left the amusement park and walked down the street, past the post office, past a low
building that Dennis said was a technical school, past more apartment blocks. Turning off
the road, we scurried through a large concrete arch attached to another building; Dennis
eyed the unstable structure warily as we passed underneath.
We continued through the rear courtyard of the building and into an overgrown area
beyond. The warm shade of the forest was alive with the hum of bees. As we walked, I
pushed aside branches and squeezed between bushes that grew in our way. At the end of
the narrow path was a two-story building made with pink brick set in a vertical pattern.
“Kindergarten number seven,” said Dennis.
If you have been insufficiently sobered by the sight of a deserted city, Kindergarten No.
7 will do the trick. We came through a dank stairwell into a long, spacious playroom with
tall windows on one side, their glass long since smashed out. Thick fronds of peeling, sky-
blue paint curled from the walls. What had been left behind by the looters—or shall we call
them the first tourists?—was strewn on the floor and coated with twenty years of dust from
the slowly disintegrating ceiling. Mosquitoes made lazy spirals through the humid air.
The door was torn off its hinges. Next to it lay piles of orange play blocks and a
mound of papers printed with colorful illustrations—marching elephants, rosy-cheeked
