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So being over here in Ukraine has been great, and despite all the jokes and ignorant comments about Chernobyl made to me in my visits to Ukraine, I haven’t ever really seen the effects of Chernobyl in my travels. I mean you hear stories about it from people who were here, stories like the black cloud over Kyiv, a city 4 million strong forced to flee to the far reaches of the country, or of babies being deformed, firefighters and police men dying at the ripe old age of mid twenties due to their being called to duty. Those kinds of stories, but the places I’ve lived haven’t shown any effects of the largest nuclear disaster in the history of the world, so accordingly it has been a stretch at best, for me to try and understand the meaning of the word Chernobyl, a word that still has a chilling effect on the residents of this good country. Well, today, that all changed as I had the opportunity to be one of the few westerners who have been able to make the journey past the 3 exclusion zones and on to Chernobyl. As we got to the first exclusion zone, sitting at 30 KM away from the reactor core, the radiation warning signs started appearing, and after passport drama from the group, we were waved on with an escort taking us to the second exclusion zone. The second zone was essentially taking us to the town of Pripyet (the closest town to the reactor), to get there we traveled through Chernobyl, (which is the largest town near the reactor, thus the reactor is called by that name) which has about 300 residents now, residents which are returned to their homes waiting to die. There are no children allowed there, as the radiation is too high to be exposed to for any length of time, but this is now a town of 300 of what was once several hundred thousand. When we arrived to the second exclusion zone, or the town of Pripyet we were greeted with an eery silence. This was a town which at one time boasted upwards of 40,000 residents, and now is in a forbidden zone. There is no one there, which is one thing to say, but a whole other to look at enough buildings to house 40,000 people standing empty, the doors just hanging open, windows broken out, streets becoming overgrown, but long and empty. It’s an experience to drive through the streets of town knowing there is no one else there, our driver was speeding like a maniac, but there was never any danger, there was absolutely no one. As we walked through the town, we saw the abandoned restaraunts, stores, and government buildings, we saw the amusement park, which was slated to open a week after the reactor core blew up. It was brand new, finished, and never used, no I see a weathered, destroyed, antique, which had all the potential of being the reality of thousands of kids’ dreams, and instead serves as a reminder of the young lives destroyed by this tragedy. Eventually we made our way right up to the reactor, and listened to the story I’ve heard a number of times, though it was a bit more dramatic with the actual reactor, or as our guide calls it the “Omnipresent monster”, staring at us through the window. The story of the meltdown, the cloud, the workers brought in to fix it, the Soviet propoganda (slogans such as “the Soviet bond of friendship are stronger than the atom” were printed on banners and hung through the town), and lies and denial, and destruction. As we heard about it all, and then could see the casing that is now starting to break down and is still being repaired, it was a much more real experience. You don’t walk away from a place like Chernobyl the same. You are much more cautious, you feel much less safe, even in you big city where no one could ever get you. You feel vulnerable when even a cloud could be a bringer of such massive destruction. I really am at a loss of words for how to describe this experience, I am very grateful I had the opportunity to see this memorial to this tragedy, it is the most artistic and dramatic portrayal possible, beyond description is the only description for Chernobyl, and as is the chant of the natives in regards to this tragedy, “Let us never forget”