Bel-Air-Ree-Us gets no respect

Had a long weekend and took the opportunity to visit Chernobyl, which is only an hour flight from here. Originally, I was going to go with a friend but she got sick. (No, not COVID-19.) The flights were non-refundable, as was the hotel room, so I decided to go ahead and go.

Gray blobs represent Ukrainian communities. See how
close they are to the yellow line? That's the Belarus
border. The damage crossed the line, but nothing I saw
on the tour or at the museum acknowledged it.

I’d been to Kiev before and looked forward to getting more chocolate. As you might recall, the head of the chocolate company was elected president in the last election. I am not much into politics, but holy cow, Rosen is wonderful chocolate. Beyond Chernobyl and the museum, that was my only other goal.

I didn’t take any time off for the trip, so I didn’t waste any time in Kyiv, either. Pretty much as soon as I go to my hotel, I left it again for the Chernobyl museum.

I remember the word “Chernobyl,” and know that it was a nuclear accident, but honestly, my knowledge of the subject is extremely limited. It wasn’t in my history books because, duh, it was going in my lifetime. But all we ever saw of the world, really, was from those short little newspaper articles we had to present in Coach Cone’s class. And hearing some uninterested student trying to regurgitate an AP news blurb to the class isn’t gripping.

Even since then, I haven’t attained much more knowledge of it, although I learned where Kyiv was and understand more about the Cold War. But what happened? I really don’t know.

No one else, does, either. Even after returning, I’ve talked with several Belarusians and they have mentioned that it’s still a mystery. Last night, I watched a documentary called “The Russian Woodpecker” and it spun a well-reasoned conspiracy theory, too, but in the end, no one really knows.

It was this. Over and over again. So awful

What we know is there was a nuclear accident on April 26, 1986, though the rest of the world didn’t find out until April 29, and that was thanks to Sweden, not the Soviet Union. Radioactive clouds from Chernobyl wafted that direction (and others) and the Swedes picked up on it and reported on it. The New York Times published a front-page teaser above the fold (complete with map) and had a huge story inside. Meanwhile, that same day, the Ukrainian local paper had, on the bottom left of page three, a red small box saying there’d been an accident at the nuclear plant, but no need to worry. And that was the first the accident appeared in the media. Radiation was all over at that point.

The museum in Kyiv is pretty haunting. There weren’t too many people when I went, and I got the headphones and paid extra to take photos. (Still, less than $6 overall.) I probably spent a couple hours in there.

But from the get-go, it was clear the story was from the Ukrainian side only. When you enter, there’s a staircase, and you see city signs lining both streets. The narrator said they represented the 70-something Ukrainian communities that had been wiped out.

Reactor 4 is now covered and sealed as best as possible.
For now.

Now, one of the books I read prior to going came from the Belarusian side: Essentially, 75 percent of the fallout affected Belarus. Being a smaller country made it even worse – there are lands there now that cant be used, and it’s a good portion of the country. But at no point in the museum, or in the actual Ukrainian side of the zone did anyone mention Belarus whatsoever.

Other than that, how was the play, right? But it is sad. The world mourns and sympathizes with Ukraine, but Belarus doesn’t get an acknowledgement.

The next day, a very appropriately gray one, I met my tour and we set off. It was an all-day thing and at lunch I surveyed the three minivans of people who went and realized that, other than diving, that was the first tour I’ve ever been on where the guys outnumbered the women. We had maybe 12-14 in our van (two empty seats) and I think there were only four women.

The scene is as creepy as you’d expect. The area is 30 kilometers around, and there are checkpoints as you go from safe to reasonably safe to I-warned-you not-as-safe. (No one under 18 is even allowed on the tour.)  Except for immediate looting afterwards, nothing’s been touched for 30 years, and nature has taken over. There’s broken glass everywhere, trees coming out of windows and rusted-out cars here and there.

We only went into a couple of the communities, with Pripyat being by far the biggest one, which had been about 50k residents in 1986. It’s where the Chernobyl workers and their families lived. The average age was 26.

The never-debut Ferris wheel at Pripyet.

The whole thing is utterly depressing, and it was more so because on the drive there, we watched documentaries on the event, which included footage of the city the day of and after the accident, and all looked normal. A lovely spring day and kids were frolicking and getting ready for the opening of the city’s new amusement park. They had no idea they were being poisoned.

“Haunted” is the best word I can come up with to describe the entire area, and some parts were more so than others. When the word finally came down for people to evacuate, they had two hours to gather up documents, a little money and clothes. Even after extensive looting, you could tell that people just left. There’s a kindergarten that still has schoolbooks and dolls lying around. If that’s not haunted, I don’t know what is.

When the people evacuated, they were told they’d be able to return in a couple of days, but that was over 30 years ago and no one has been allowed back. Everything’s gone.

But Belarus is forgotten. There’s a memorial – an angel made from some kind of piping – and again, all those city signs from all the Ukrainian communities that are no more, but not a word about Belarus’s plight. There’s even a map of the 30-kilometer exclusion zone with all the Ukrainian communities marked, all he way up to the yellow-printed border but nothing just over the border, even though those communities were wiped out as well.

The whole trip was sobering, but I told my would-have-been traveling companion that I would go again. The tour company, SoloEast, offers two-day tours as well. As I love ruins and stuff like that, there were a couple of points during the day that I thought I’d love to spend two days there, but there were also points where it was like, “Oh man, more dilapidated buildings. I don’t know how much more I can take.”

Tribute to children at the museum.

Maybe in another season, post COVID-19, I will go again. I deliberately didn’t cash in my Ukrainian money because I figure I’ll be back at some point.

And now I am looking forward to the next adventure, but I’m up in the air as to when it will be because of this whole virus thing.  I’m supposed to go this weekend and had planned to take off a couple days next week. I have time to burn and had planned on taking a long weekend every month or so.

At this point, I have no idea if I’ll be able to go, but in preparation, I had to get more money out, what since I didn’t change back my Ukrainian cash and all. I got a new debit card from Envision and decided to use it. I tend to juggle bank accounts, and I’d just gotten a package from Leanne that also had mail in it. After spending around 30 minutes on the phone to activate the darn thing, I thought I’d try it.

I went to a different ATM than normal and tried, but it declined my card twice. Dejected, I went home and discovered I had a missed message for two “fraud alerts.” I only have Google Voice, so if I get a phone call, it doesn’t register until I have Wifi.

Anyway, I called the fraud number and sure enough, it was from trying to use my debit card. The little voice asked me if I’d intended to use my card in – and at this point I was expecting to hear the bank name – “Bel Air Ree Us” and I had no idea what kind of store that was, but it said about $85, so I said yes. As I’d tried the card twice, I went through it again and this time, when the voice said, “Bel Air Ree Us,” I realized it meant Belarus.

Chernobyl or cash. This amazing country gets to little respect.