Floating Prison Has Nice Sunsets

[May 21st, 2024]

“Come to our office by 6pm tomorrow to book and pay. I’ll send the location. The ferry will leave early the next morning,” said a woman’s voice on the other end of the phone in clear and fluent Russian. I was excited to have found someone who I could understand on the phone after several days of combing through travel forums to gather intel about the evasive Georgia-Romania ferry and calling every possible lead. Most calls had been answered with either an incomprehensible level of English and Russian, a straightforward “NO” that sounded like it was yelled while holding the phone at arms length, or, most commonly, they simply hung up the phone when I asked inglisurad laparakobt (do you speak English)?

I didn’t know the name of this mysterious ferry company or anything at all about the conditions of the trip but it felt like an interesting adventure. They didn’t appear to have a website; it’s a secret passed between truck drivers by word of mouth. So, Krista and I packed up our van, Janet, and drove to the sales office near the port of Poti.

An abandoned concrete building with a dilapidated ‘for sale’ sign stood at the location the woman had sent with instructions to come to the third floor of the building across from the church. Well, we were across from the church and there were no other 3-story buildings nearby, so we tried the doors. Locked, again locked, again locked, and finally the fourth door jerked open with a loud creak. Inside was a large unfinished atrium looking onto concrete rooms with a few packs of dusty wall paneling that had never been mounted. We ascended the oversized staircase and heard muffled voices.

A cramped, sweaty room on the third floor housed at least eight people on old desktop computers, one of whom had fiery red hair, spoke thickly accented English, and knew immediately who we were when we entered. I guess there weren’t many tourists on the reservation list. He took our passports, printed some documents, and instructed us to go to another room to pay. There we met Tamar, the helpful lady from the phone, to whom we handed 800 Euros cash and she stamped and signed our papers. I asked about the conditions on the boat, expecting a cruise ship for that price, and was told that the ferry is very comfortable and we’d have a cabin and 3 good meals per day. That was a huge lie. She informed us that there is a small delay and I should call the next day at 6pm to find out if the boat will leave that evening or the following morning.

The police kicked us out from the beach that we hoped to camp on so we drove further to our favorite camping spot in Ureki, 20 minutes away, which would become our beautiful home for the next 3 nights. We couldn’t complain about the unplanned beach holiday but had some building anxiety about the expensive delayed ferry. Each day I called Tamar and received the response “not today, the ship didn’t arrive yet, maybe tomorrow”. Finally, she instructed us to go to the port at noon the next day.

[May 25th, 2024]

We arrived to the specified location, unnamed on any map, where there was a line of trucks in front of a small police checkpoint. When we reached the checkpoint a few hours later, a policeman asked for our permit to enter Romania. Not being a truck, we don’t need a permit, but this was impossible to explain to a guy who works exclusively with trucks and may have never seen a tourist. After all four uniformed policemen and a few unidentified guys in plain clothes had a look through our passports, argued amongst themselves and come to a conclusion, they smiled and waved us through.

We pulled up to an empty ferry and were told by a frustrated crew member that they still have one truck to unload before they can start loading. I was baffled by how a ferry could take so long to unload but that was to be clarified later. A couple of guys in a nearby shipping-container-turned-office asked us to park and wait until the customs officer arrives. Eventually, he stamped our passports out of Georgia and told us we’re good to go. The ferry began loading around 4pm and we were the third vehicle to embark out of 95.

The crew spoke very little of any language but Turkish but we managed to understand where to park, packed our backpacks, and then were told by another guy to move the van. They strapped the wheels to the boat so nothing would move if we hit rough seas. A man led us to our cabin which was not exactly cruise-worthy but it would be our home for the next four nights.

As we watched the trucks slowly embarking from the upper deck, we understood why it takes so long. The genius who built the port placed the customs/border check office (a converted shipping container) right next to the dock so each truck had to go through the border check one by one just before entering the ship, which took up to half an hour per truck. Despite being located inside the port that houses the majority of the country’s shipping-container-moving-equipment, that container office had not been moved to a more logical location to expedite the loading process. The efficiency of customs coupled with the efficiency of a crew that appeared to have never seen a ship before in their lives hinted that this was going to take a while, so we went to Janet and took the projector and speaker.

Our stuffy and hot little cabin-turned-cinema felt like a cruise ship berth from a horror film. The shower was lukewarm at best, the beds hard, the sheets felt like plastic tarps, an aroma of rotting flesh wafted through the vents, the floor was covered in hair and dirt from previous occupants and may not have had a proper cleaning in decades, the walls were greasy, and the outlets were not properly grounded so my metal laptop electrocuted me when I plugged it in, but the view of dolphins jumping on the horizon, our clean blankets, pillows, and yoga mat from Janet, and our makeshift movie screen made it livable.

In the morning we went to breakfast at 8am to find two guys in the dining hall speaking English. One was a 24 year old Hungarian truck driver and the other was a German traveler with a camper van–the only other car/van on the ferry. This comprised the entire English-speaking community. Breakfast actually started at 9am because the crew hadn’t changed their clocks so we had time to get to know each other. Thomas recounted how he heard that it was this ship’s first time doing this route because the previous ship had crashed into a dock so the ferry company had to scramble to find a new ship and brought this one in from Turkey. This was later confirmed by numerous truckers and the ship certainly appeared to have been rotting away in a harbor with no intention of moving for quite some years.

Down in the port, trucks were slowly slowly passing the border check and entering the ferry. Lunchtime came and went and the line of trucks was finally dwindling until the last truck was loaded at 2pm, for a total loading time of 22 hours. Silly naive me expected an immediate departure once the last truck was loaded and consequentially I twiddled my thumbs anxiously for the next 2 hours as nothing happened. I called the ferry office and a new guy answered the phone and said the ferry would leave the next morning. Luckily, he didn’t know what he was talking about, and at 4pm two tugboats appeared alongside us, pulled us away from the dock, and we were in the open sea by 4:20.

Days go slow when you have no internet and no space to exercise, and surrounded by the glimmering blue Black Sea, time ceased to have meaning aside from breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Meals were neither delicious nor nutritious but became something to look forward to only by virtue of being a social gathering space. Onboard cuisine ranged from green eggs to mushy plain pasta to unrecognizable sludge, with a highlight of soggy french fries. Those who valued a little bit of hygiene would clean their silverware themselves before use, thanks to the questionable sanitary practices onboard and the black gooey residue left behind after “dishwashing”.

On Day Two, the truckers were understandably upset with the breakfast and demanded to speak with the captain (breakfast that day consisted of flaccid cucumbers, rotten tomatoes, almost inedible oversalted cheese, stale white bread, and the lowest quality olives imaginable). Many of them had sailed this route on the previous ship and did not restrain their justly crude opinions about how much dirtier and less comfortable this boat was and how much worse the food was. One of the officers put a stack of paper and pens on a table and asked the passengers to write what they would like to see in each meal, and specifically to write in Russian language with Latin alphabet.

The officer handled the situation well and it was heartwarming to see all of the rough-looking truckers put their heads together to complete the task considering what ingredients they knew were on the boat and what dishes the Turkish kitchen staff would understand. “Fried Eggs!” requested one, “No, I don’t know how to write it in Latin alphabet in a way they’ll understand. Let’s write omelet. Everyone knows what an omelet is,” replied another. With this logic they created a menu that seemed quite reasonable and pretty tasty aside from the abundance of hot dogs in every meal. I felt like I was witnessing an activity at adult summer camp. Unfortunately, the effort was to no avail, and the boiled eggs in the next breakfast emitted a funky odor somewhere between fart and French cheese and had turned a concerning green/brown color. This must be what prison is like.

Floating prison wasn’t all bad, though. Having no internet meant spending the hours after meals chatting with Thomas, a very interesting and inspiring man who had a wealth of valuable knowledge and fascinating experiences to share. Sunsets over the sea were vibrantly beautiful and dolphins entertained us jumping though the boat’s wake. We finished crossword puzzles, read, became masters of solitaire, stretched in our entryway which perfectly fit a yoga mat, laughed at stupid jokes, and sometimes did nothing at all. Krista reminded me that it’s healthy to be bored sometimes. It’s necessary in order to appreciate the excitement in small things. Otherwise, you constantly need more and more and more excitement which becomes unsustainable.

Our fellow passengers were mostly Ukrainian truckers crossing the Black Sea to circumvent Russia as well as some Georgians, Moldovans, and Romanians. The lingua franca was Russian and conversation topics ranged from which gas stations serve the best hot dogs to which type of moonshine is better, chacha or samagon. A skinny 40-something year old in an Adidas tracksuit proudly stated, “My father’s samagon is so strong that you get drunk in three shots but you don’t even feel it going down,” to be countered by a massive bear of a man with back hair protruding from a sweaty gray tank top and a puffed out chest, “my chacha is 80%, it buuuuuurns and it’s so pure you’ll never get a hangover.” An interesting cultural phenomenon surfaced: the Ukranians on the ship valued their moonshine by how smooth it goes down whereas the Georgians onboard valued theirs by how much it burns.

One Georgian group invited Krista, Thomas, and me, to their table to drink with them. Having spent a lot of time in Georgia, I learned long ago to run away from such situations, but given the circumstances, I sat down and entertained them with my mediocre knowledge of Georgian language and made a toast to friendship between nationalities. Not wanting to get shitfaced, I took a small sip from my cup of cognac and set it back down.

In Georgia, drinking at your own pace is only accepted in progressive circles, but in this instance, Giorgi who was sitting across the table from me was offended that I didn’t finish my shot. Strike one. Another guy made a toast and I took another sip.”Why aren’t you drinking? You’ve been in Georgia, you know what it’s like. Finish the cup,” instructed Giorgi. I shrugged it off. Strike two.

At this point, the plate of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers was the only thing keeping me at that table. After a few days of prison food, the sweet sensation of sinking my teeth into a real tomato was well worth withstanding a bit of drinking pressure. Next, they made a toast to Krista, and more generally, to respect for women. She thanked them and drank a small sip. Strike three. That was too much for Giorgi whose face flushed red with anger.

“We made a toast to you. Show us some appreciation and finish your drink. We’re being so generous to you, we deserve thanks,” Giorgi barked with rising aggression in his voice, turning to me to demand that I force my woman to finish her drink out of respect for Georgians and their generosity. The tomatoes weren’t worth it any more. I fired back, “show the respect that you toast about and don’t force anybody to do anything,” trying in vain to sound calm and assertive but actually terrified of being punched in the face. Finally, the smiley guy with four teeth sitting next to me jumped in and instructed Giorgi to shut up. Thomas, Krista, and I excused ourselves to have a smoke. None of us smoke, but I knew this would be the least dramatic way to leave the table. We didn’t attempt to make friends with anybody else after that, although the rest of the passengers seemed quite a bit more respectful.

[May 28th, 2024]

On the evening of May 28th, the first sight of Romanian land appeared in front of us. Dozens of cargo ships rested at anchor around us and the cranes and smokestacks of the port rose up on the horizon. The reception guy, who spoke a comical mix of Russian and Turkish that provided a linguistic puzzle to decipher, announced on the intercom “8 o’clock port. No more vodka. Here there, here there,” and later corrected himself “No port. Sleep cabins. Nighttime, morning,” which presumably meant that we would have to wait until morning to disembark. We unpacked our bags for the second time.

Morning came and went with no sign of movement. Lunchtime passed and the tension was as thick as the leftover slop on the cafeteria trays. Another announcement was made, “2-3 hours port.” This time we knew not to pack our bags until the ship moved. Three hours later, nothing happened. “2-3 hours port,” said yet another announcement. Again, we didn’t pack. Five hours later, we felt the rumble of the anchor being raised. Movement!

A pair of tugboats guided us into the port where the ship was moored and the ramp was lowered. That’s it, right? Can we go now? Lol. The crew still had to pick up each of the metal flaps which bridged the ramp to the dock and slide a carpet under each one. Why this is necessary will remain a mystery, but what is clear is that the guy driving the forklift with the task of lifting each flap had never seen a forklift before in his life. What should be a five-minute task was completed in an hour and then…we waited.

Two hours later, we were in Janet ready to go, when a truck in front of us got stuck head-on with another truck and neither had space to maneuver on the packed ship deck. We opened the bed and took and nap until 11pm when the truck blocking us finally moved out of the way. On land, things seemed to brighten up as a port worker greeted us with perfect English and took us to the front of the line, but the look of confusion when I showed my US driver’s license to the border patrol officer signified the waiting wasn’t over yet.

Apparently, Romania has a law that US citizens must have an international driver’s license in order to drive there. This information is clearly available online but I had conveniently missed it until the exact wrong moment. Krista doesn’t have a license, so, we slept at the border patrol gate that night, contemplating our options. I ordered an international driver’s license online with expedited shipping to Romania, which seemed way too easy to be legitimate but looked like a good enough counterfeit to convince a cop. The “US government document” shipped from, sure enough, Tbilisi, Georgia, confirming my suspicions. Meanwhile, a friendly port worker agreed to drive Janet across the border checkpoint for us and the friendly officer conveniently agreed to turn around and not check who drives the van away from the border, so we could spend the next few days at a nearby beach while waiting for the document to arrive.

[May 30th, 2024]

Freedom felt glorious.