Abandoned Places
Seen one of my abandoned places videos and wondered where it is?
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Abandoned Hospital. Bucharest, Romania
There are a lot of abandoned buildings in Bucharest, but none more intriguing for me than an abandoned hospital. I found some info on this abandoned hospital online, but I wasn't sure whether I would be able to get in easily. After walking around the perimeter, I found a hole in the fence next to a private car park, which provided access to the abandoned hospital. I got onto the roof, into pretty much the whole abandoned building, and it was pretty cool.
Abandoned Theme Park. Chernobyl, Ukraine
After the insanely popular 2019 Chernobyl show on HBO, millions more people now want to find out more and to visit Chernobyl, but what is it actually like? Is it anything like the HBO series?
I've been interested in Chernobyl, but more specifically Pripyat for years since I saw a documentary from the early 90s about the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster. The abandoned theme park in Pripyat is such an eerie looking place that a lot of people seem to take photos of, and it does look extremely eerie, but is it actually like that?
How can it be eerie with thousands of tourists visiting each year? Surely to be eerie, you need to be there alone, with the deadly silence causing the eeriness?
I decide to book a group tour to Chernobyl whilst in Kyiv to see what it was actually like on a guided tour, which most people would need to be on to actually see Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Pripyat Amusement Park, Reactor 4 and the other famous spots in Pripyat and Chernobyl.
I've decided to keep any music, fancy editing or anything else not needed out of the video to keep it as raw as possible to show you what it is actually like on a Chernobyl Tour 2019.
In the video you can see we visit The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Pripyat Hospital, Pripyat Ferris Wheel, Bumper Cars, Pripyat Abandoned Stadium and the very eerie Pripyat abandoned school, which still has all of the desks sat in line.
I'm not going to lie, it's very touristy in Chernobyl, there's even a souvenir stall at the exclusion zone exit. A private tour would be much better than a group tour, however, my group were really good, quiet and respectful, but I can imagine that's not always the case.
A few key things about the tour: You get picked up on a bus from outside of KFC near Kyiv's Central Train Station at about 7.30am. The bus looks good from the outside, but is a bit rundown inside. Whilst driving, they throw a documentary on the TV to give you some information, which is cool because Kyiv to Chernobyl is a couple of hours on the bus.
You need your passport to get into Chernobyl and you must wear long sleeves and trousers. On this tour you get given a Dosimeter to check the radiation levels. The big question people asked me when I got back was whether it was still radioactive. Well, yes, but actually no. In most parts it's just not at all, it's similar to other cities in the world. However, there are parts of the road that the bus drives through (which you can see in my video), where the dosimeter goes insane. Also, in the video you can see where the guide puts the meter on some soil and it flies off the scale. Do not touch these areas.
There's actually a piece of fabric at the door of Pripyat Hospital from one of Chernobyl's firemen's uniforms that is extremely unsafe to be near as it's so radioactive. You can see this in my video as the guide uses the dosimeter on the fabric.
The tour lasts for a fair few hours around Chernobyl and Pripyat with a lunch break at the canteen in between. The food is standard Ukrainian food. Make sure you bring a bag full of snacks, as you may get hungry and there's definitely nowhere else to get food from if you get hungry.
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Abandoned Football Stadium. Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
I like abandoned stuff - it's cool. It's not often you get to go to an abandoned stadium, but I spotted somewhere only that this football stadium in Plovdiv was abandoned, well, at least the stands and surrounding stuff was abandoned, but the pitch and the running track were still in use and in pretty good condition.
Abandoned Railway Station. Asuncion, Paraguay.
I like abandoned places, I think they're cool. They're even better if they're not full of rubbish or human excrement, but if it's abandoned, you might find it.
I heard that Paraguay's railway system had been abandoned in 1999, but the central train station in Asuncion had been turned into a museum. My thought process was that if I went to the museum which I knew would be closed, near it would be some abandoned railway tracks that I could check out, turns out I was right and I even found some abandoned train parts.
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Abandoned Metro Station. Belgrade, Serbia.
Belgrade is the biggest city by population in Europe to not have a metro system, which is bizarre as they started to build one.
If you look into the history of this metro system in Belgrade, you'll see that there is a lot of controversy about it, where has the money gone? Why does the construction keep starting and stopping? Why have so many other capital cities got a metro but Belgrade hasn't?
I spotted some pictures online of an abandoned metro station in Belgrade, and decided to go to check it out for myself after doing a small bit of research into why it was abandoned.
It turns out the station isn't abandoned, but some parts of the entrances are what you could call abandoned. This is an abandoned metro station technically, as it's not used as a metro, it's used as a train station, which somehow is different.
Abandoned Soviet Concert Hall. Tallinn, Estonia.
Whilst in Tallinn, Estonia, we decided to walk over to the old abandoned soviet concert hall which was built for the Moscow 1980 olympic games. As Moscow didn't have the capability to host sailing events, they used the coastal capital city of Estonia, Tallinn as the place for this event.
The steps of Linnahall were originally built to signify Tallinn’s status as hosts of the sailing events for the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games.
The soviet concert hall is now abandoned and you can explore the outside and on top of the structure, but the insides have been closed off to the public, probably for good reasons.
When you're stood on top of this abandoned building, you can overlook the bay of Finland and you can actually see the abandoned soviet prison called Patarei in the distance, which you can walk to quite easily along the coastline of Estonia.
Linnahall is a perfect example of the rigid, rectangular and concrete style so closely associated with Soviet structures, providing a further illustration of Communist delusions of grandeur. The last concert was held here in 2009 and shortly afterwards the soviet concert hall was abandoned.
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Abandoned Wasteland by the Danube. Belgrade, Serbia.
In yesterday's video, down by the marina in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. I spotted an abandoned factory, some abandoned buildings and this abandoned wasteland, and I decided that I wanted to explore it.
I woke up at 6am and headed over to Dorćol, near the Danube river in Belgrade to jump through the hole in the fence into this abandoned wasteland, with the plan to head over to the abandoned factory I saw the day before. When I got there, as you'll see in the video, it's not exactly abandoned and is under video surveillance, so I explored as much as I could before getting chased away by dogs.
To make sure the video and my morning wasn't wasted, I headed back to the abandoned wasteland to check out what else was there, to find a guy had turned one of the concrete structures into his home, so I decided to be quiet and leave, not to disturb him as it was really early.
Abandoned Soviet Prison. Tallinn, Estonia.
We were in Tallinn, Estonia and found out about an abandoned soviet prison called Patarei Fortress so we took a walk from the Old City of Tallinn over to the abandoned fortress. The abandoned building is closed to the public apart from an exhibition about communism in this prison, which was closed when I was there.
We show you around the outside of the abandoned prison, which overlooks the bay of Finland. Apparently a lot of innocent people were held here by both the Soviet Union and the Germans.
Patarei fortress in Tallinn, part of European architectural heritage, is a Classical defensive structure that has retained its stylistic purity. This is a memorial to the victims of communism and fascism, as well as a meaningful symbol of resistance on the part of martyrs of the Republic of Estonia. The construction of Patarei Sea Fortress started under the orders of Nicholas I in 1828. After completion, it began operating as an artillery battery. The premises covering four hectares have had different functions – barracks and a prison.
The exhibition area ‘Communism is a prison’, introducing the ideology and crimes of communism and the history of the building, is open in Patarei prison.
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Abandoned village. Slapnik, Slovenia.
When we decided to visit Slovenia, we were looking for things to do. Seeing as we landed in Venice and rented a car, we thought we'd look along the route to see what western Slovenia had to offer. Slovenia is pretty unknown it seems, kind of forgotten about apart from Lake Bled and potentially the capital city, Ljubljana. So as we were searching on the map, Goldie found this village called Slapnik, which had been abandoned since around 1991 when Slovenia broke away from Yugoslavia.
Slapnik is a small isolated settlement in the Municipality of Brda in the Littoral region of Slovenia. It has no permanent residents. According to Wikipedia. When we arrived, it was clear that at least one of the buildings was at least owned by somebody, whether it was lived in was a different story. Slapnik is so far away from any shops or civilisation that it would definitely be hard to live there.
We wandered around Slapnik, the abandoned Slovenian village to see what was left, what sort of state this abandoned village was in, and to show you guys who might want to know what an abandoned Slovenian village looks like in 2019.
Apparently the BBC were going to make a gameshow where contestants helped to rebuild Slapnik, but I don't think that is going to happen as it was supposed to be in 2019, and we visited in December 2019 and nothing had been done yet.