Friend of mine visited Chernobyl. I asked to describe what he saw, and the only thing he told me was "Spectral."
He basically refused any other description of what he saw, or of his feelings.
Surreal, would be my description.
You have the utterly bizarre, and paradoxical, juxtaposition of one of the world's worst ever nuclear disasters - in a formerly well off town that was unusually privileged and well resourced by Soviet standards - with plenty of well paid and prestigious jobs, attracting exceptionally well qualified people from across the Soviet Union to live and work there, and supporting many services and support industries (very good schools, cinemas, playgrounds, coffee shops etc) - the nuclear industry was a flagship one in that world - and it is now, yes, "spectral", and gently and weirdly rotting and decaying and disintegrating in a unique way.
This is now co-existing with, or inexplicably, now finds itself alongside a part of modern Europe (a mostly cultivated land mass for centuries, indeed millennia in some spots - try flying from Asia to Europe, or Africa to Europe, and note the stunning differences in the topography - the agricultural land in Europe, once you cross the Black Sea from Turkey - is
cultivated, and has been for countless centuries, which is not the case in the countries you fly over in parts of Asia or Africa) that has been allowed (because contaminated with nuclear matter that will not degrade for millennia) to revert to the status of a wilderness.
So, alongside nuclear degradation, and disaster, you have a thriving (if poisonous) wilderness where wildlife (bears, wolves etc) is - are - actually flourishing as species return and reclaim this space where they are unchallenged - or, are no longer challenged for mastery of the region by humanity, - who have abdicated control and abandoned the place.
It is absolutely astonishing. Wildlife diversity flourishing in a region abandoned by humanity, in one of the most toxic places on the planet.
This juxtaposition of pallid destruction (spectral) alongside a paradoxically thriving (if toxic) wilderness is something that I found absolutely stupefying. There are supposedly catfish in some of the waters; I myself saw a hare dash through what had once been a children's park, hotly pursued by a madly barking (and bleeding) dog, the drops of blood sprayed on the pristine snow oddly disturbing.
