Chernobyl should not be confused with a dead city Prupyat. It has a long and nice history being one of the oldest cities of Rus’. It was first mentioned back in 1193. By the beginning of the XXth century it had population of seventeen thousand people.
The city was named “Chernobyl” after a plant growing there – mugwort which is pronounced in Russian like “chernobylnik”.
The first impression of the city – it’s not dead! Its streets are cleaned, lawns – cut, five-storey houses have no “eye-sockets” of empty windows. Even buses go from Kiev to its bus station (you should have a permit to use them though). The city still has some functioning shops with a range of goods like in a village, it has all community facilities, a hotel, a canteen and much more.
At the bus station.
Smooth roads and fresh marking.
The city has a lot of flowers. To the right is a hotel – two-storey house built in 1967 where one can stay overnight for 10 bucks. It is like any other hotel of the Soviet past – cheap and cold and dirty, with no hot water, but with perfectly clean linen. Nearby is a canteen/cafe with a waitress in a national Ukrainian dress.
Even if flats are empty they are not plundered.
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