Day One - Kiev to Slavutych

After meeting on Sunday morning at the Hotel Ukraine, we will travel together to the town of Slavutych where we will check in to the hotel where we will spend the week. You will have time to settle in, tour the main square in town where you can visit the Memorial to the Heroes of Chernobyl. The memorial is dedicated to the workers who were at Chernobyl at the time of the accident, all of whom died within a few days from radiation sickness.

The city of Slavutych was purposely built in 1986 after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, to provide homes for those who had worked at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and their families. The city was intended to replace Pripyat which became a ghost town after it was evacuated thirty-six hours after the nuclear disaster due to the nuclear fallout. A unique feature of Slavutych is that during the construction of the city, workers and architects from eight former Soviet republics became involved: Armenian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Estonian SSR, Georgian SSR, Latvian SSR, Lithuanian SSR, Russian SFSR and Ukrainian SSR. As a result, the city is divided into eight districts named after the capitals of the contributing republics. Each district has its own unique architectural style and atmosphere.