The Polygon

  Kurchatov, Kazakhstan
Friday, June 2, 2006

We made a day trip to Kurchatov, a ghost town at the fringe of the old Polygon (the nuclear testing site). We arrived after a morning in a car with one of the most tightly wound people I've ever seen (our driver), only to be told we needed permission from the MFA to see the museum. It was a pain in the ass, but somehow less so because it was explained to us calmly in English, as opposed to the shrill and impatient "Nyet"s to which we'd been subjected for the previous 4 days.
This was the delivery van of the local baker in Kurchatov. We couldn't find anything resembling a restaurant there, so we got a fresh loaf from him for a snack. Almost all shops were operated out of trailers or carts there, and the majority of buildings we saw were empty, bricked up, or falling apart.