Chernobyl Street Art

Street art in the Zone? This sound bizarre enough, doesn't it? But if you've seen recent pictures from Pripyat, you may have noticed some strange graffiti on the walls. Most of these depict people, supposedly in their original environment. Screaming faces, playing children. Dark and disturbing images.

Right before the twentieth anniversary of the disaster, seven artists from Moscow, Minsk and Berlin traveled to Pripyat. As a strange artistic and social project, they've painted graffiti on the walls of homes and other buildings - interacting with the dead city. You can read more about the project and see their work on this site. Radiating Places - A requiem of a special kind.

Inside the Sarcophagus

There is a BBC Horizon documentary about Chernobyl on Google Video at the moment. I guess the upload violates every possible copyright law. Since it's been "dugg", I don't expect it to stay around much longer. But I highly reccomend to watch it.

There is some incredible archive footage I've not seen before. And believe me, I've seen a lot about Chernobyl. The film crew went inside the infamous reactor 4 control room and the sarcophagus. Even if I had the chance, there is no way I would do that. Especially with highly radioactive dust and extreme radiation around. Some of the footage makes me shiver, truly creepy:

Lookin' good!

Looks like the transfer went all right afterall. I was kinda worried, since the transcript from the bank did not show half of the information needed... I was already planning intricate conversations in my head: things to yell at the bank people. "Hooow could you screw this up, you sorry excuse for a human being" - you know, all the works. ;) But today I've received an email - from the best customer service I have encountered so far:

Dear G[...]

I am writing to inform you that today we have received your payment[...]. Thank you very much. We are planning to dispatch the TERRA-P to you tomorrow. I let you know about the shipment additionally.

With kind regards,
Oxana

Money transfer

I've made the money transfer to the Ukrainian company, which makes the geiger counter I've ordered. This was not so easy as it sounds. Unfortunately it is a royal pain in the ass to make a simple bank transfer. Even between two neighboring countries, like Slovakia and Ukraine. It is pretty sad, that you need to fill out endless forms - which even contains the home address of the beneficiary. Then the money travels from bank to bank, halfway across the world. Yeah, like it would be as simple as changing a couple numbers in a database. Or is it? I'm starting to value the power of Visa and MasterCard.

Right now I'm wondering whether the transfer was even successful. I'll know in a couple of days. Keep reading, will let you know. :)

Green light

I've talked to my thesis supervisor today. Actually he is also Danex's supervisor. We are supposed to have quals (preliminary exams) this spring, the question was whether the date would conflict with the planned trip to the Zone. According to the professor, the date for the exams is set to the end of February or beginning of March. That means we have about two months less to write up a first draft of the dissertation thesis. Not all that great. Especially that I have to use LaTeX . But hey, look at the bright side: we are clean to go to the creepy vacation :-)

Some pics I've stumbled upon...

Some pictures I've stumbled upon tonight, while browsing English Russia. Of course there are lots of good collections out there on the Internet, but I have not seen these ones yet. Eerie and dark as always. You can check out the first set here and the second one here. You might want to look around on englishrussia.com for more on the topic.

Aaaand, we're back...

By that I mean, I'm back to Slovakia from Oxford - now I will have more time to deal with our little brain-child. It would be a shame to abandon this blog, wouldn't it?

Anyways, one of the reasons why there was no post lately was the lack of actual developments regarding the Chernobyl trip. Up to a couple of days ago.

About a month ago I made contact with a very nice lady from Ekotect, and agreed on the price and conditions of sale of a dose/dose rate meter. I told her, that I will have time to actually sort out the payment in december. Well, she did not forget about it either - so contacted me before I had a chance to do the same. Riht now we are negotiating the details, so the whole Chernobyl project is back on tracks again - assured by my travelling / blogging companion Danex as well.