A cold autumn sun is kissing yellow leaves that are dancing in the wind. A squirrel is looking for something to eat on the ground. It does not scare people. The grass and tree trunks break through asphalt and concrete walls. I am walking in the city that does not exist now... Prypiat. The ghost town near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
It is a very specific monument to USSR epoch with the portraits of Lenin, signed with optimistic slogans of bright Communism future and modern scary graffiti of black ghosts nearby. Somebody from the group is singing ironic Ukrainian song: «Let USSR to live on Chernobyl, Khmelnytsk and Rivne Nuclear Stations...» This total emptiness of hospital, hotel, school and block buildings cries in despair. Broken windows, ugly well-known rusty Ferris Wheel and neglected City Center Gymnasium are robbed and mutilated... As much as human destinies, connected with the Exclusion Zone. Doll without hands and legs and with the only one eye lies on a floor between shards of glass...
I want to run crying out loud as far as I can see. But even running is prohibited here. You might do step right or step left and radiation would hunt you. Because everything that surrounds you here, this whole fantastic nightmare, is deathly poisoned. Unperceivable killing radiation lies everywhere in this City. It shoots into the human's cell. It is a good monument to mankind’s stupidity.
I hear voices of 50 thousand citizens of Prypiat. They want to come back to days before April 26, 1986. But they will never do it. They will never come back to the City of their youth and sweet dreams. «Do not destroy this. Respect the City of our memories, please» - is written on a wall.
Depressing emptiness of the streets. And alive nature with plants and animals so close. The nature is conquering the Human's land. It gives strength to plants for breaking through asphalt.
Wolves and foxes, wild boars and herds of wild horses, elks and deers are living here, in Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, now. Giant sheatfish are swimming in the rivers. Nobody is fishing or hunting them. It is ironically a rare place, where these animals can feel safe. The nature is teaching us to be humankind.
