I took a ferry from Ilichevsk, just along the coast from Odessa, to Batumi, in Georgia. It was an experience, on more than one level. First of all were the trials of embarkation. When purchasing the ticket at the ferry company office in Odessa, the friendly clerk explained with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment the convoluted procedures for embarking a ferry in Ukraine. I think he must have been confronted with open-mouthed amazement from other western passengers before me. But this, he told me, was how it was done in Ukraine.
Firstly, while he could tell me the day of departure (or rather embarkation), he could not tell me the time. There was one ferry for Batumi per week. The captain would tell him the time of embarkation the day before, and he would pass on the information by SMS. The message duly came, and informed me that I should be at the embarkation office in Ilichevsk to register at 16.30. I turned up a little bit early, to be on the safe side. Three other western travellers, from England, France and Scotland, had the same idea. Usefully, the Scot had gone through all of this twice before, and was able to show us where to go and what to do.
So we went to the registration office, where we received a stamp on our tickets. Then it was a short walk down to the harbour, taking the short-cut, down a dirt track recommended by our Scottish fellow traveller. But there was no need to hurry. There followed a wait of several hours in a dismal little room, crowded with luggage, with no drinks machines or food, and not enough seats for everybody. Goodness it was tedious. The boredom of the six-hour wait was relieved only by the requirement to go to register once again with another lady at a little hatch in the wall in the corridor, who ticked our names off on a list. There was no announcement that we had to do that, and we only knew to do so because of our experienced Scottish friend.
At one point I needed to go the lavatory. This was hardly surprising given the length of the wait. I tried (with my extremely limited Russian) asking a lady in uniform who also seemed to be checking people off on a list (apparently she was not interested in checking me off), where the lavatory was. She pointed upstairs. So up I went, to what seemed to be an office. As I reached the top, I saw someone come out of the lavatory and lock the door behind her. I signalled to her that I wished to use it too. She seemed affronted, and angrily pointed me back down the stairs. This lavatory was not for passengers. I tried to explain that someone downstairs had told me to come upstairs, but she was having none of it. So back down I went, and tried (again with my very few words of Russian) to explain to the lady in the uniform that I had been told to come back down. At this point she lost patience. I could not understand what she said, but clearly I was nor to bother her further. So off I went to find a bush.
Through all of this, our Scottish friend remained untroubled. In fact, he seemed to being enjoying it. He sat there, with a smile on his face, assuring us that all would be well once we were on the boat. At some point, “that door there” would be opened, and we would be called through. In fact the door did open quite early on, for a man who spoke to us in Russian. His words did not seem to elicit any great excitement among the majority of would-be passengers who could speak Russian, so I did not worry. When we finally boarded the boat, and this same man gave me the key to my cabin, I asked him where we could get supper (we had been told at the office in Odessa that we would be given a meal the first evening). It’s 10.30, he replied, supper finished was hours ago. He had announced that there would be no supper on the boat, and that passengers should eat before boarding. Yes, but you announced it in Russian, I replied, and I don’t understand Russian. “What”, he was incredulous, “not at all?” So to bed without supper.
First thing in the morning, after a peaceful sleep, the ferry was still in Ilichevsk. Why had they made us check in at 16.30 the previous afternoon, when we would not board until 22.30, and not leave until 7.30 the following morning? Not just Ukrainian procedures, I suspect, but rather the lady at the office in Ilichevsk who stamped our tickets, and wanted to leave work by 5 pm.
But finally we were on our way. The ferry was actually first of all a freighter, carrying containers, lorries and, on a lower deck, railway carriages that were trundled on and off, directly on to railway tracks in Ilichevsk and Batumi. Many of the passengers were Georgian truck drivers, who spent the voyage either watching DVDs in the lounges, playing chess or drinking heroic quantities of vodka in the bar. A young Czech who was assigned to the same table as me for meal times spent an afternoon with some of these Georgians getting hopelessly drunk (they, of course, were hardly affected). It loosened his tongue remarkably that evening, as he told us, his voice slurring all over the place, how he was looking for God and could not stand Russians.
Spending three days on a boat, isolated from the world, without phones or internet access, is an unusual experience in this day and age. For a short while you become quite close to a small group of fellow passengers with whom you eat, drink and chat. During our voyage, the sea was calm, the sun hot, and we gently steamed along, each day following a natural rhythm from mealtime to mealtime. We could not understand why the boat sometimes chugged along very slowly indeed, while at other times it set quite a pace.
The Scot, who had made this voyage in both directions twice before, and clearly enjoyed it, was quite a character. In his seventies, I would guess, he made long journeys each year, with a backpack and a sketch pad, sleeping mainly in a tent, just occasionally spending a couple of nights in a cheap hotel to clean up. His trips included long walks of several days duration, pitching his tent by the side of the road, and eating what he could find as he went along. At the start of our voyage he was quite miffed, as his tent had been taken in Odessa, together with his best trousers. He had pitched it in a city park for five nights, and he suspected that the police had taken it. Perhaps not surprising, as pitching a tent in a public park was surely illegal. But he was annoyed that they had not given it back. He entertained hopes that somehow it would materialise, that even at that late stage the police would relent and let him have his tent back. No such luck. He was, however, not unhappy about having to spend a few nights in a hotel in Odessa, as he had needed a wash. He had stayed in a very cheap hotel. Having spent one night in a cheap hotel in Yalta (though not as cheap as his), I knew what cheap Ukrainian hotels could be like. His sounded horrible, complete with bed bugs. Why did he stay there, I asked? Would he at least not have wanted to be somewhere clean? Well, it was cleaner than my tent, he replied. There was no answer to that.
A remarkable man, with enormous energy and youthfulness for his years, gently taking everything in his stride, open to whatever adventures, hardships and pleasures came along. Good natured to a fault, he was also a committed member of one of those hard-line Scottish protestant churches, and held strong, if not always coherent, views on gays, Catholics, Jews and the leading Scottish Aristocracy. He considered that the Papist Scottish dukes really controlled Scotland, were responsible for the deaths of leading Scottish politicians, and were conspiring against him personally.
And then suddenly the voyage was over. Mobile phones were connected again some time before we reached the Georgian coast. And then we all went our separate ways.
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