Chernobyl Museum

Today we decided to be a little adventurous.  We were told that there's a Chernobyl museum on the far north side of Kyiv, the Podil district.  It would be a 15 mile round trip to walk, so we decided it would be interesting to take the Metro.  Neither of us had ever been on a subway system, so it was a bit of an adventure.

We actually got off at the right stop to change trains, found the right train, and went the right direction (not as easy as it sounds!).  Once we were off at our correct stop, we emerged from underground.  Not having a clue what road we were on once we came above ground, we wandered to attempt to find street signs.  I really think street signs are optional here.  We wandered a few blocks and still didn't know where we were.  There were numerous street-car type trains running the roads, which we haven't seen on our side of town.  We finally found a taxi driver and attempted to ask him.  Our map is in English.  I think he was more confused by our map than by our non-Russian speaking.  He finally figured out where we wanted to go, and offered us a ride for 10 grivna.  (about $2).  We accepted and he took us the 4 or 5 blocks that we needed to go to get to the Chernobyl museum.

Upon entering the museum, we were pointed the way to the guard.  It was 5 grivna each, plus 10 for a camera pass.  The museum was moving.  There were thousands of photos of people that died either during the incident, or during the cleanup.  Photos of children born with massive deformities.  Photos of destruction.  There were news articles from all over the world, even a 2 page NY Times on display.  Some of the equipment that was used during the cleanup (or similar equipment, I don't know if it was the actual stuff) was on display.  It looked like equipment from WWII, not 1986. 

We wandered the museum for a couple hours.  We were the only visitors while we were there.  There was a lady that sat in a chair right inside the door of the room we were in, just kind of watching us.  When we went to the next room, she moved too.   Photo album is at:  www.philgreen.blog-city.com/photo_album_3.htm

We finally left the museum and went to find our way back.  We wandered and found the entrance to the underground Metro station, and went towards home.  We passed our stop and went one stop further, as it was closer to the grocery store.  We left the Metro station and walked to the grocery store for a few supplies.

We received a call from our Translator informing us that we will leave Kyiv tomorrow morning at about 5am to head towards Kharkiv.  It will be about a 4-5 hour car trip.  We will have the same driver (Vitaly) as we had on our first full day here for our tour of Kyiv.  We were very happy with this news, as Vitaly speaks pretty good english, and is an extremely nice guy.

I'm not sure when we will be able to reconnect to the internet after tomorrow morning.  Hopefully we will be able to get internet access in an apartment in Kharkiv, but I don't know yet.  As soon as I find it, there will be some posts regarding our visit to the orphanage!