Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
At the World’s End: Chernobyl and Prypiat
Rusted Ferris wheel, a reminder of happier years in the Chernobyl ghost town of Prypiat
I was two years old and living in the U.K. when the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, on April 26, 1986.
Naturally, I have no memory of the event, but my mother assures me that as the radioactive cloud swallowed Europe and rendered livestock unfit for consumption, she had joined in the panic buying of long-life milk. It loomed as a terrifying threat of nuclear retaliation throughout my life. Is it any surprise that 28 Days Later is my favorite movie?
Twenty-three years after the disaster at Reactor Four, my husband and I stepped off a minibus in the remains of Prypiat. Originally built to house the families of workers at the nearby power plant, the city in northern Ukraine now stands empty within the exclusion zone – or, my preferred translation, the zone of alienation. Technically, this was my honeymoon.
We were part of a small tour group with SoloEast (all in our mid-twenties; clearly the Chernobyl Generation). Yuri, our cheerful guide, invited us to feed the catfish in the reactor cooling ponds. They were the size of sharks.
As the prehistoric fish splashed after chunks of bread, Yuri assured us that their size had nothing to do with radiation, but was due to an absence of predators and the increased temperature of the cooling waters. As a four-foot fish leapt and swallowed a whole loaf, I was not so sure.
We had a few hours to explore the city. The most notable thing about Prypiat was the silence; despite what I had read about the blossoming ecology, no birds were singing. Branches pushed their careless way through shattered windows and creepers had taken over entire buildings. Grasses were waist-high wherever the earth was not concreted over.
After a quick dosimeter reading of radiation levels – for our reassurance, we were told – our guide ran ahead to the amusement park, as if aware that every breath in the city was an extra second off his life.
The amusement park was spectacular: The rusted yellow of the Ferris wheel stretched up into the flawless blue sky, one car creaking in the breeze. Flaking swing sets spun on their weathered pivots like desert wind chimes. I watched my husband climb fearlessly into a discarded bumper car, grinning for my camera as my hopes of motherhood slipped away. Our laughter sounded empty in the eerie dystopia.
The most haunting sight in Prypiat was the school. Rows of desks displayed open notebooks and colored chalks, evidence of the town’s rapid departure. A row of cubbies still contained tiny gym shoes. Hundreds of books of Soviet math and science spilled from overburdened shelves.
But time was against us and we hurried on through our final stops: an apartment building, a decaying leisure center, a theater. All frozen testaments to the Soviet era.
The journey back to civilization was silent and somber. We had stood witness at the end of time. My husband agreed – what a fabulous way to start our life together.
Here's something you might be interested in.
At the World’s End: Chernobyl and Prypiat
At the World’s End: Chernobyl and Prypiat
Rusted Ferris wheel, a reminder of happier years in the Chernobyl ghost town of Prypiat
I was two years old and living in the U.K. when the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, on April 26, 1986.
Naturally, I have no memory of the event, but my mother assures me that as the radioactive cloud swallowed Europe and rendered livestock unfit for consumption, she had joined in the panic buying of long-life milk. It loomed as a terrifying threat of nuclear retaliation throughout my life. Is it any surprise that 28 Days Later is my favorite movie?
Twenty-three years after the disaster at Reactor Four, my husband and I stepped off a minibus in the remains of Prypiat. Originally built to house the families of workers at the nearby power plant, the city in northern Ukraine now stands empty within the exclusion zone – or, my preferred translation, the zone of alienation. Technically, this was my honeymoon.
We were part of a small tour group with SoloEast (all in our mid-twenties; clearly the Chernobyl Generation). Yuri, our cheerful guide, invited us to feed the catfish in the reactor cooling ponds. They were the size of sharks.
As the prehistoric fish splashed after chunks of bread, Yuri assured us that their size had nothing to do with radiation, but was due to an absence of predators and the increased temperature of the cooling waters. As a four-foot fish leapt and swallowed a whole loaf, I was not so sure.
We had a few hours to explore the city. The most notable thing about Prypiat was the silence; despite what I had read about the blossoming ecology, no birds were singing. Branches pushed their careless way through shattered windows and creepers had taken over entire buildings. Grasses were waist-high wherever the earth was not concreted over.
After a quick dosimeter reading of radiation levels – for our reassurance, we were told – our guide ran ahead to the amusement park, as if aware that every breath in the city was an extra second off his life.
The amusement park was spectacular: The rusted yellow of the Ferris wheel stretched up into the flawless blue sky, one car creaking in the breeze. Flaking swing sets spun on their weathered pivots like desert wind chimes. I watched my husband climb fearlessly into a discarded bumper car, grinning for my camera as my hopes of motherhood slipped away. Our laughter sounded empty in the eerie dystopia.
The most haunting sight in Prypiat was the school. Rows of desks displayed open notebooks and colored chalks, evidence of the town’s rapid departure. A row of cubbies still contained tiny gym shoes. Hundreds of books of Soviet math and science spilled from overburdened shelves.
But time was against us and we hurried on through our final stops: an apartment building, a decaying leisure center, a theater. All frozen testaments to the Soviet era.
The journey back to civilization was silent and somber. We had stood witness at the end of time. My husband agreed – what a fabulous way to start our life together.
Comments