Racing Around Pripyat [Part 2]

After an hour of exploring the massive Hospital No. 126, it was time to resume the normal pace and continue around Pripyat.

Gymnasium

Our next stop was at one of the cities plentiful sports facilities, a large gymnasium. As mentioned previously it seems that sports and leisures pursuits were considering highly important within the Soviet Union with Pripyat featuring a staggering 10 gymnasiums, 3 indoor swimming pools, 10 shooting galleries and 2 stadiums. Whilst it seemed that most of the gymnasiums we would see were attached to other facilities this one was very much standalone, located a short distance from the Hospital and surrounded by residential blocks.

Commercial Centre

The commercial centre was a multi use building, it contained a barbers shop, a retail outlet as well as some repair shops.

Piano Warehouse

Originally this building would of been a general shop. However, in the initial aftermath it was used to store pianos. Pripyat's residents were generally fairly affluent when compared against the rest of the Soviet Union, and most had pianos in their apartments. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster before the full extent of the radiation release was understood it was assumed that after a short period the residents would return, therefore efforts were made to try and put their possessions into storage for safe keeping. There are other buildings around the city that contained other items such as televisions. After a while it became apparent that people were not going to be able to return and these efforts were stopped, some of the pianos that were left behind have now found themselves lodged in lift shafts or tumbling out of windows from multi-storey buildings.

Post Office

This large building housed the cities postal facilities as well as telecommunications. To the right of the main entrance was a room with booths to one side where people could make telephone calls. To the left was a room with a large mural, again typical of the areas architecture.

Children's Hospital

Not far from the Post Office was the Children's Hospital, considerably smaller than Hospital No. 126, it still contained some nice artefacts including a large collection of teeth moulds and some x-rays.

After the Children's Hospital it was time for dinner, so we headed towards the Power Plant workers canteen where we would eat dinner during our trip, whilst there we took in some of the sights around there.

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