The Nuclear Town Visaginas
Jul. 4th, 2020 21:43![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indrajaThanks to my friend, I had almost a week-long vacation enjoyably alone somewhere around the solstice. I was walking in the forest that is very accessible on foot or by local bus, and swimming in the lake Smalvas (it is visited by people, but one can find a spot to be really alone by it). I‘ve met a great grass-snake while still standing in the water there! There are lot of lakes around Visaginas.
While going to Visaginas, I had no idea how photogenic it was, so I had my low-memory camera and a tablet only. I saw it a couple of times earlier, but for a short time only; in March, I’ve walked to the closed nuclear power plant however saw very little of the town. The walking in the town now was like: shooting till the card is full, coming to the room, deleting everything doubtful, recharging, going out again. Three repeats in one day. This is a biased selection of the pictures. Those tourists, not always most interested in what is neat, new and pretty. Visaginas is a neat and clean city, however it is quite special. It was carved into a living forest, so there are fully grown patches of it among the houses. A couple of times it was expected to be bigger, however the nuclear power plant never got its 3rd and 4th reactors built (guess what caused such a great concern about safety). Also there was planning for a modern one instead of the old one, yet the voter majority said no. So there were houses built in expectation, and never finished. The overall look of the ones built since 1975 also became quite aged (happily for photographers, renovation of the exterior is here for schools only so far). I see why they filmed 'Pripyat before' in Vilnius, Fabijoniškės: Visaginas quite often looks like the one 'after'. A city on a red line. Note there are still alarm loudspeakers on the houses, installed to signal evacuation. A Soviet project, and a very pro-Soviet city for long, it still has the street of 'The Councils' – 'The Soviets', while such names were changed in the rest of Lithuania.
While going to Visaginas, I had no idea how photogenic it was, so I had my low-memory camera and a tablet only. I saw it a couple of times earlier, but for a short time only; in March, I’ve walked to the closed nuclear power plant however saw very little of the town. The walking in the town now was like: shooting till the card is full, coming to the room, deleting everything doubtful, recharging, going out again. Three repeats in one day. This is a biased selection of the pictures. Those tourists, not always most interested in what is neat, new and pretty. Visaginas is a neat and clean city, however it is quite special. It was carved into a living forest, so there are fully grown patches of it among the houses. A couple of times it was expected to be bigger, however the nuclear power plant never got its 3rd and 4th reactors built (guess what caused such a great concern about safety). Also there was planning for a modern one instead of the old one, yet the voter majority said no. So there were houses built in expectation, and never finished. The overall look of the ones built since 1975 also became quite aged (happily for photographers, renovation of the exterior is here for schools only so far). I see why they filmed 'Pripyat before' in Vilnius, Fabijoniškės: Visaginas quite often looks like the one 'after'. A city on a red line. Note there are still alarm loudspeakers on the houses, installed to signal evacuation. A Soviet project, and a very pro-Soviet city for long, it still has the street of 'The Councils' – 'The Soviets', while such names were changed in the rest of Lithuania.