Part 2: KIEV: LAND OF KEVIN KEEGANS

Whilst most teenage girls have their first lone holiday adventures in the sunny climes of Zante or Magaluf, my excursions this year seem to have taken on the characteristics of a Magical Misery Tour.  Rather than ingesting sickly cocktails and eying up shaven headed youths on crowded beaches and nauseating clubs, I have ventured to Eastern Europe, edifying myself at the sights of Chernobyl and Auschwitz to better understand the circumstances in which these hideous nuclear disasters and man-made evils occurred.

I met Alex at Luton, immediately feeling his warm Geordie beams radiating outwards towards me like a heat-seeking missile for Tyneside love. My head felt soupy from the overnight journey riding the Blue Snake; the not-so psychedelic Megabus for you who've ever tripped on this bizarre and often unpleasant come-down of national transport. In the queue for security we nervously laughed at how bat-shit insane we were for going to Chernobyl, mutually sharing that he'd also been close to a nervous breakdown when confronted with the true reality of our minimal travel insurance given our excursion to the site of the worst nuclear explosion in history.

The explosion, which affected over 500,000 Ukrainians who were sent into direct contact with the radiation when helping to cover the blast, has increased cancer rates and mutations over most of Europe since the graphite rods caused a spark in Reactor Four and resultant explosion of radioactive matter more than four times that of an atomic bomb on the 26^th April 1986. Twenty five years on, some estimates from Russian publications have reached 1000,000 in excess cancer deaths alone. The USSR only attributed thirty one deaths to the explosion; all the reactor engineers, and firemen who were sent in without radiation suits to put out the lethal flames, armed with standard equipment and water. Although it may have confronted European authorities to question their dependence on nuclear power, until pressure from the UN in 2001, other units on the site of the Chernobyl power plant were still actively used for generating nuclear energy.

With tired, stinging eyes we looked out onto the beautiful fields of Ukraine for our arrival. There were miles of plush green forests, which filtered out to sparse green fields, big concrete looking blocks dotted along grey motorways and more yellowing grass. On landing, a fully camouflaged and fur collared soldier ushered us into a small tent where other big booted army officials chucked suitcases down from the plane onto the tent floor. This was the baggage reclaim and arrivals area. As we stepped into passport control the flimsy grey booths that contained the officials reminded me of a cheap, flimsy film set. The woman in front of me was sporting a bleached mullet and matching leopard print coat and leggings. Everything looked slightly like a bad, 80s-time-travel pharce. Until now this airport had only been used for domestic flights, and I imagine a pretty good testament to its original Soviet purpose.

Staring hollowly at the concrete punctured wilderness around us, insane drivers occasionally clunked past us in their 1977 issue Soviet Ladas, shooting round the corner with time to pass a glare at the obvious tourist scum we had become. My frazzled brain snagged repeatedly on half-missing Cyrillic lettering, propped on the top of the building blocks. We wandered down the road to a graffitied and half-shuttered porta-cabin with cigarette cartons in the window. There was a woman with heavy make-up and an apron behind a plastic mock-marble bar and a variety of meaty, sweaty looking substances piled onto plates and litre bottles of £2 vodka. She couldn't speak English, but we purchased bottled water after reading that even brushing your teeth in the local tap-alade could cause a nasty bout of dysentery. Also, with the entire of Ukraine's water supply running under the Chernobyl reactor we didn't fancy taking our chances.

Eventually from under our layers of panic induced cold sweat we decided to consult my £3 guide book which strictly advised us to not stray away from the centre of Kiev, a good ten miles away. This particularly cheery paragraph did nothing to soothe any feelings of apprehension; "As you get further from the city centre, the underlying poverty becomes more obvious, fewer and fewer people speak English and facilities that can help or cater for visiters become fewer and fewer." And fewer, and fewer, and fewer...said the voice in my head, along with "you're sacrificing revision time in the middle of exams to get lost in Eastern Europe and contaminate yourself with radiation and you forgot to even ring your parents to tell them where you were going."  We eventually plucked up the courage to hop onto a beat up yellow minibus that served as unofficial public transport, chucking coins onto the mat beside the driver and praying for a divine sign to guide us to our stop. Luckily, a rare, English speaking local overheard our pathetic whining from the back of the bus and felt compelled to help us on way, interrupting our panic with an offer of help, frogmarching us to the stations and buying us our 15p metro tokens.

We followed him onto a never-ending escalator, descending into the art deco gloom of the underground. Soviet splendour and mosaics lined the walls at the bottom. Some stations are situated in old nuclear attack shelters, the hundred metre descent took some time before we could reach the rickety old trains and dark splendour of the station. On boarding heads of commuters bowed solemnly as the bulbs flickered on and off and the extremely old looking trains shuddered through tunnels. We initially observed the etiquette of not speaking on the train before Alex felt it necessary to nudge me, pointing in the direction of a fully leisure suited, middle-aged man. A gold sovereign ring was bestowed upon each sweet, hairy knuckle, a bellowing crown of shiny, permed mullet fell around his ears, and a perfect, testosterone-rich moustache framed his lovely eastern European lips. “It’s Kevin fucking Keegan man” Alex blurted in full blown hysterics, much to the disdain of our fellow travellers. From that moment on we embarked on a mullet count that was to number a full eighties Newcastle squad by the end of our trip.

 Reflecting on the possibility that were it not for the kindness of strangers we could've been bundled into the trunk of a car by now and slowly chopped into hotdog meat, we were arrived into the beautiful streets of Kiev to immense relief. Ukrainian break dancers were performing outside the metro station to what sounded like the basic drum setting of the ancient KORG synths we had at school, complete in old shell suits and miss matched sweat bands. In a country with only 20 years of capitalism, it seemed from the occasional smug Ukrainian in full, red matching leisure suits that Nike and Addidas were the ultimate status symbols, perhaps the epitome of Western cool. Balconied apartments lined either side of the main street, fountains and beautiful wrought iron street kiosks, golden domed, icing cake monasteries and cobbled winding lanes. Thousands of shoppers walked around in conservative skirt lengths and fleeces, despite the 25 degree heat that would have most Geordies stripping off their Toon Army away shirts.

Our landlady for the evening sat quietly spooning cabbage salad into her mouth as she strained to decipher our ridiculous regional accent, “Are you sure you’re speaking English?”  As I looked around I saw the Ukrainian equivalent of Cheryl Tweedy circa 2003, complete with vertically placed hair scrunchie and double denim girl-band ensemble. The original Charlie's Angels theme tune played out on the speakers as I slurped on sour borsch and observed the fleece wearing, stern faces around me. I didn’t judge the locals for being weary of tourists. Reading up on the history of the Ukraine, I learnt about features such as repeated crippling of the economy in the Chernobyl disaster,  the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 2008 economic crisis, civil war, invasion, political repression under Stalin and the Nazis, struggles for independence and governmental corruption up until 2004, to name a few.