MoldovAnn

Chernobyl home
Special Christmas Eve trip
by Sergii Mirnyi and PRIPYAT.COM

HOME.
This short simple word denotes something crucially important for each human being.
You idea and your perception of your home and, perhaps many other things which matter in your life, will be different after one day of this Christmas Eve trip devoted to Chernobyl homes.
The ex-homes, actually – because of the explosion of the nuclear reactor, more than a third of a million of people lost their homes in the adjacent area.
Now the peopleless homes welcome those few human beings who come to this abandoned space.
Empty cottages in the empty village of Zalissja.
Non-existing cottages in the bulldozed and buried village of Kopachi.
The decaying 5-story apartment buildings and lines of cottages along the asphalt streets of the small provincial town of Chernobyl, now sparsely populated by a handful of shift-workers.
The dozen thousands of homes in (then-brand-new) 16-, 9- and 5-story apartment buildings, assembled in the neat and beautiful town of Pripyat amidst a pine forest. 45,000 Pripyat inhabitants were evacuated during three hours, one and a half days after the explosion. They thought – they were told so – temporarily, just for 3 days. As it turned out – for eternity. In this town the clock still shows the year of 1986, in the country of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
You will be guests at all of these homes.
And will also see the apparent reason of all this humanlessness – the ruin of the exploded Chernobyl reactor #4, now housed in the tremendous reinforced concrete Sarcophagus.
And, at the site of a field military camp, the remnants of field casernes which sheltered the men – the Chernobyl mitigation workers, the “liquidators” – more than half a million who made the zone of the disaster visitable.
With good luck, we will be able guests in a real, human, live home, – a simple traditional Ukrainian Polissya village cottage, – warmed by the work and soul of its owners, so-called “self-settlers” (samosely), who, in spite of the ban, returned to their generations-old homestead in the village of Paryshiv, on the other bank of the Pripyat river.

After this trip, you will meet Christmas with totally different feelings.

Your guides will be
- Alexander Sirota, former resident of the town Pripyat, now leader of the NGO (and the chief editor of) PRIPYAT.COM,
- Sergii Mirnyi, an ex-officer of Chernobyl radiation surveillance, who for several months after the explosion monitored the core of the Zone and the affected settlements; now a writer, scriptwriter, scholar of Chernobyl and contemporary disasters and expert in their mitigation. For more info see personal data and excerpts of his books at
www.mirnyi.arwis.com
and reports about presentation of his screenplay “Chernobyl comedy” pripyat.com/en/news/2007/04/16/1645.html
pripyat.com/en/publications/2007/04/25/1662.html)
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/godavem/AChernobylComedy (photo-reports)
http://mfrphoto.blogspot.com/2007/04/author-sergii-mirnyi.html
http://files.pripyat.com/mir.wmv (video-report)

The prospective itinerary of the trip
(Warning! There can be some changes due to weather conditions)

We will gather from 7.00 to 7.30 a.m. at McDonalds at Metro station “Mins’ka” (at the Blue line)
We’ll depart from Kiev at 7.30 a.m. SHARP.

We will see:
the field camp of the 25th brigade of radiation, chemical and bacteriological protection – the zone checkpoint “Dytjatki” – the abandoned village of Zalissja – the town of Chornobyl – the eliminated village of Kopachi – the abandoned town of Pripyat – the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the Sarcophagus – the inhabited village of Paryshiv.

Lunch (or rather dinner) at approx 5.30 p.m.
(A really hearty and ecologically clean meal. UAH 66, or $13 per person, paid on the spot; it is not included into the cost of the trip and is optional. Vegetarians should report themselves in advance in the day of the trip)

Return to Kiev APPROX. at 8.00 pm (depends on the weather!).

To make your trip really comfortable and enjoyable, we advice you to:
- have some sandwiches, snacks and bottled water with you to have a bite on the route
- have really warm clothes and a kind of high boots or hiking boots (especially in case of snow on the ground) for the walks on the stops, an extra pair of socks won’t hurt.

The cost of the trip is $150 per person in $ or UAH.

If you would like to make this trip please send an email to vizit@pripyat.com with your passport data (it’s necessary for getting permission from the authorities to enter the zone)

- name, family name
- citizenship, passport number
- birth date
- issue date
- valid until

and we’ll send bank account number for the payment.

Deadline for making the payment – 10 days prior to the day of the trip – December 14.
After this date (the submitting the documents to the zone authority) the payment is non-refundable.

ATTENTION! The participants of the special Christmas Eve trip will have
a SPECIAL SURPRISE PRESENT from the organizers.