Here: Home » Posts » BD 2.01 - Heavy Khemikals

Siologen, as resident drain legend and livejournal whore has befriended both Ukrainian and Russian explorers over the years, all who seemed keen to bump and share some tasty treats of their cities. The Kiev explorers are broken into two camps: the Industrialists and the Diggers, though like the European and American 'scenes' the lines often blur.

Firstly we met with the Industrialists, solncasvet, Nitsche and friends (apologies for my memory) then rolled 15 strong to an old trolley depot. These modified buses ran on electricity fed via elevated booms which contact the mesh of overhead electrical cables - much like the trams of melbourne. Within 10 minutes some dirty geezer in a sagging muscle shirt and his dog had chased us out. What one guy was going to do against 15 was a mystery but on our third day in Kiev I was happy to play it safe and not push our luck, yet.

Far too early to conclude our nomadic party we crammed into a public bus, aussie sandwiched anyone lured into our venus flytrap by our rugged australian demeanor (hint: relatively unrugged in this part of the world) and found ourselves shorty at a large grocery store where we perused the aisles overflowing with all manner of alien food stuffs. I think we lost siologen somewhere amongst the endless racks of inexpensive vodka. This was a welcome relief from "Glenns - the exciting vodka" he'd been downing by the mouthful back at the London Drain Meet.

Nearby, nestled amongst the trees and forest rests a cluster of massive concrete building shells, the incomplete remains of a soviet era factory for super computers. With the collapse of the USSR (CCCP) the complex was never completed. Upon the tallest roof we started a fire, roasted sausages on sharpened twigs and exchanged stories with our hosts in combinations of english, russian, charades and the international language common amongst travelers known as Drunk. The Ukrainians passed around their killer liquor, sharp enough to strip the skin from your throat and Siolo passed back his $3 bottle of vodka. qx took a photographic wander and fell asleep among the maze of rooftops, staircases and confusing rooms while waiting for the shutter to close.



with the Industrialist the following day we jumped the metro to an old (but active) industrial estate. The security guard at the front entrance didn't buy the hastily concocted "we're just taking a shortcut" story, understandable since there is fuck no destination within miles we could conceivably be walking to. Undeterred we took a circuitous route which passed by the two toughest cunts I've every laid eyes up. In the scorching heat, armed with oxy torches and a crowbar they were tearing every salvageable piece of metal from an old industrial boiler. Covered in grease and grime to the elbows they sweltered in the both the blazing sun and heat of their tools. I wanted a photo but every aspect of taking one seemed innately wrong. Everything about these men personified the word rugged and makes me feel I've never really worked a day in my life.





Immersed in decay pr0n heaven we wandered an abandoned chemical factory, taking in the scents which fluctuated from intense delicious candy (Allen's Fruit Tingles if you're keen to know) to nasal burning acrid evilness. Small luminescent drops of liquid mercury dotted the floor in various rooms. Anywhere else they'd seem a little out of place, in an ex-soviet chemical factory they're par for the course, as are the ominous elephant-man gasmasks. In the adjacent building we hit the jackpot - thousands of gasmasks, sealed and packed into wooden crates. Masks of all varieties were present from the elephant-man masks mentioned above, masks with backpack mounted filtration units and the more common full-face rubber units with the filters mounted at the cheeks.



Further into the industrial estate the locals paid a security guard for passage across his property, a shortcut to the woods on the other side we claimed. The equivalent of $5 changed hands and we took off towards the woods of course, and the old chemical buildings conveniently on route. The moment we lost sight of his shack we darted in.





This day was the birth of a meme, started by Solncasvet's explanation of the building's purpose.
"This is where they made the, how do you say, heavy khemicals". Repeat after me, "Soviet era heavy khemicals".

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