It was a sunny day. May 1st, The Labor Day.

As usual we went on a picnic. Up the hill, to the summer theater, dancers played on stage.

Joy, music, children, colorful balloons, the smell of fried meat …

A cloud passed over the spectators and took a frugal shower. Rain with sun. Nobody left the show!

In the evening, when we got home, more and more people suspected that a tragedy had happened to the Russians. Nobody knew exactly what. It was a secret. Radio ”Free Europe” broke the news.

We don’t listen to that post, so we drank tap water, cooked, bathed … with contaminated water (or not? Who knows?)

Five days had passed since the Chernobyl explosion. That radioactive cloud would reach us on Labor Day!

It could no longer be kept the secret. The official instructions appeared: to wash vegetables and fruits well, not to drink water from the spring, to take iodine tablets, not to stay outside …

The streets were deserted as never before in such a sunny day! Strange and mysterious everything!

Something similar to the deserted streets now, from 20 in the evening to 5 o’clock in the morning, on the pandemic … It’s been 35 years since…

April 26, 1986.

If it didn’t happen again!