Day Ten. Andrews Journey.

This entry is heavy with family history and emotion. I make no apology but am aware of the diversity of our readership and so feel I should offer an explanation of the change of tone. This entry is still a travel log but also contains comment on a personal, spiritual, journey.

In the opening entry of the blog we introduced you to 2 very important  people. Our baby son Tyler who died, during pregnancy, 3 months before the trip and our cousin Andrew who died in 2010 aged 23. Both have a part in the story of how this whole trip came about and both are very firmly in our hearts and very prominently in our minds every step (and train, plane, metro and infuriating Ukrainian junction) of the way. In a kinder alternative universe I would not be taking this trip but would be at home growing my son inside me, the idea of taking the trip seemed disloyal to him. That is until Auntie Fiona heard about it and shared with us that it had always been Andrews goal to visit Ukraine and in particular Chernobyl and that we could honour his memory as part of our trip. And so the trip became something more meaningful and right. For me, to honour Auntie Fiona’s wishes is also to fulfil Tyler's legacy and therefore to honour him too. If that doesn't add together and you want to understand more my blog Courageandhope.co.uk should explain.

But back to the journey. As you will know from earlier entries we had hoped to take a tour to Pryp'yat' within the Chernobyl exclusion zone, here we had hoped to leave a laminated card showing Andrew's picture and a short explanation of his wishes and link to his Facebook page. We were thwarted in this when all tours were cancelled in honour of the anniversary of the disaster and due to Orthodox Easter which fell at the time of our trip.


It came as no surprise to me that Kevin did not intend to allow this to get in the way of wishes he shared with cousin to get as close to the site as possible. And so we set off in our hire car early on the Ukrainian equivalent of Good Friday.

Our hire car is basic but modern and reliable and the air-con is good. The route looks straightforward as long as we can negotiate Kiev city and emerge on the correct road at the other side. After a tour of the area surrounding our hotel we are on our way.


This is our first full day in Ukraine and as we travel toward and then through Kiev we notice differences again in this new country. There is a lot more commercialism than we saw in Romania with advertising hoardings regularly spaced down the highway touting regular stuff such as mobile phones, jewellery and restaurants. Police speed traps are profusive, every kilometre or two, a cop with a speedgun. In Kiev construction is everywhere, there appears to be some considerable investment in infrastructure, we see a bridge, railway and roads under construction ; we resolve to learn more about the Ukrainian economy, there just isn't enough time to see and learn (and then write) everything in one trip!

As we leave the city behind we see beautiful rural Ukraine and it is closer to what we have seen in Romania. Villages grown around agriculture, roadside vendors selling veg, many roadside shops selling colourful plastic flowers, cranes/storks (we haven't fully established which) nesting on lamp posts, horse and carts, motorbike and sidecars.

Another hour and we are running out of villages. The scenery changes to forest, mile after mile of cooling evergreens. We start to look for clues that we are approaching the 30k exclusion zone enforced around the Chernobyl plant and village in the aftermath of 26th April 1986. An abandoned farm? Stern looking warning signs? Roads becoming increasingly empty of traffic.

We spot a pleasant picnic area and pull over to assess our position. I am not willing to discuss here my personal spiritual beliefs and the following is therefore offered in the most secular sense: it is here that I feel that I am no longer adventuring with just my husband, from this moment Andrew's spirit is very much with us. I can feel the 2 boys excitedly enjoying their adventure together. The GPS tells us we are 42k from Chernobyl village, a photo opportunity! We are 12k from The Zone.

We return to the car and continue following the predetermined route. We get closer and closer, Chernobyl village is now less than 30k away; this gives us a wobble, are we somehow skirting the border of the zone? Have we slipped through and if so is it wise to continue? Or have got it completely wrong and are actually in completely the wrong place?

Then we see a radiation warning sign, then 2 monuments either side of the road....and then! There it is. The barrier of a checkpoint across the road about 300m ahead.

We are not sure whether Ukrainians are acquainted with the concept of dark tourism, we do know that they are protective of their borders and that the language barrier will certainly hinder attempts to clear up any misunderstanding. So a brief stop, hastily snapped photograph and a prompt u-turn mark the pinnacle of our adventure.

We came to leave the memorial card for Andrew in Chernobyl so that he could, in spirit, make the journey he had wished for. Kevin knows just the place. We drive back about 1km to the monuments erected on the road. One is a beautiful, edgy structure constructed from dark stone. There is life here, trees grow, we see a beautiful brightly coloured lizard and ants scurry, but it is silent and still. Its perfect. It is isolated but we hope that someone will pass by and notice our small memorial to our friend who wanted to come here in life and now has been able to make the trip and share our adventure.

Day Three. A surprise.

So we ate a meal in Klausen Burger last night with six Romanian friends.  The food was great, the conversation was fun, and interesting.  The beer was good, perhaps a little too good, as my hangover proves this morning. 
After the meal Alin and Lidia took us on a tour of Cluj, we drove to the top of the mountains on both sides of the valley and looked down on the city at night.  We then went onto a Cuban bar (Havanna) and drank tea.  The whole night was fantastic and we were made to feel very special.
They say you learn through your mistakes, and according to this trip, we are at university (of which there are 7 in Cluj!).  Hands up who knew that Easter is celebrated on a different date in Eastern Europe.  We certainly didn't, although I did find it strange to see Easter displays in the shops!
This applies to the Ukraine, and guess what, the dates we are there is Easter.  Experiencing a festival in a different culture is certainly a good thing, but when I learnt this last night, I was worried.
When we got back to our hotel in the early hours, I went straight to the tablet and did a search on Booking.com The first hotel in the list £1000 for three nights.  I panicked.  Game over, we couldn't afford those prices!  Especially worrying, was this price was for a Holiday Inn,  Booking.com said "It is busy in Kiev on those dates, prices might be higher than usual"  Too right.
Changing the criteria, I found a few hotels about 20 miles from Kiev at around £200.  Still more than we were used to paying on this trip, but at least affordable.
One hotel I found on Expedia seemed to stand out, it's name was "boutique Hotel Seasons Spa", there wasn't any photo's, reviews, and very little description, but the name stood out.  I Googled it, set in the forest, full spa facilities, two pools, and beautiful rooms.  It seems everyone wants to be in the centre of Kiev, and not the countryside.
But how would we get there?  Would there be public transport? Would it run on the holiday?  We decided to sleep on it.
Waking up with the idea of hiring a car, I set to Google yet again.  £100 for the four days, giving us a chance to explore the area, it looked like a good idea.  So i set to booking the hotel, first try, ended with an error, unable to confirm the booking.  Maybe the card details were wrong, 2nd time, same error.  Okay, I'll try another card, same error.  Right I'll refresh the site, same error.  Now I'm panicking again.  Maybe, it's because I'm on the mobile version of Expedia, error, but this time it says the hotel has increased the prices, would I like to book at the new prices.  My heart sinks, here we go, I knew it was too good to be true.  I click on the link, it's gone up by 10p!  I click confirm and the booking goes through!
I have now booked the car, although I am still waiting for confirmation of this, hope that's a bit smoother than the hotel!
All the while I keep receiving e-mails from tour operators in Kiev saying nyet to the tours in Chernobyl, knowing about the public holidays, it's making more sense why!
Edit: email just received confirming the car hire is secured, phew.

The start.

It's only a week to go before we leave for Cluj-Napoca in the heart of Transylvania.  We are going for two weeks, and haven't prepared at all, no packing, only three nights accommodation booked, in fact the only things we really have prepared  are our air tickets and passports.

This is unlike us, normally everything is carefully planned and thought through.  We managed to get in this position through a series of protracted twists of fate.

The day after we booked our flights Carolyn found out she was pregnant, we have suffered too many miss carriages in the past to risk a trip away from home, so we made the decision to cancel them. Except we couldn't under Wizzair's terms and conditions.  So the tickets sat in our inbox.

Very sadly our world changed again and we lost baby Tyler at 15 weeks.  We have a blog about baby loss at http://courageandhope.co.uk/ and a twitter feed https://twitter.com/survivingloss

It wasn't for a few weeks when remembered the tickets.  And something to focus on other than baby loss seemed like a really great idea.

Plan A was to hire a car and take a grand tour of Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and the Ukraine. However the car hire company let us down, with only a couple of weeks to go. Out of all the countries on our route, the Ukraine was the one I was most interested in, and I suggested a train journey to Carolyn. She agreed and a bit of googling found a night train to Kiev.

Further googling revealed tours of The Zone of Alienation were possible, this is the area around the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Carolyn was a bit harder to convince on this one, but eventually she agreed. 

Her decision was patrially influenced by Fiona, my aunt. Her son, Andrew died at 23 years old, and it was his ambition to travel to Chernobyl. Fiona asked if we made it could we take something of Andrews with us.  You can see his story on this Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/AndrewsJourney

If you ever travel from Romania to Ukraine or Russia, forget about booking tickets on the internet. We discovered that it COULD be done, with great difficulty, but it is also far more expensive. Also don't expect to be able to book over the phone. After a very, very long phone conversation with a employee of the train company DDB, who operate a train on the the route, they still couldn't tell us how much their own train would cost!

So the decision to wing it was made for us, and the unplanned holiday is soon to begin.