It was odd to wake up without a pressing need to get back on the road to our next far off destination. According to an email exchange with the ferry company that contradicted the information on the website, we didn’t need to get to the port until 3pm. That left us with half a day to find and buy a replacement tent for Katie and any other little bits we thought we might need before we left the shores of Europe.
After failing to find supposedly the best mall in Bulgaria we headed north through the city to a large brightly coloured megastore called JUMBO! which, we were told, sold a lot of toys but also other miscellaneous things for the house and garden, including tents. We surmised that it must be a new development as after the turnoff from the dual carriageway the road turned to gravel! We emerged with our wares still with plenty of time to get to the port so we popped into the Bulgarian version of Homebase. Pickings were thin for what we needed, unless we decided that power tools would help us set up camp, so we headed off to the port, still far too early by hoping we could get sorted for when boarding started.
Instead of a conventional address, the website for the ferry gave a set of coordinates to mark the entrance to the port. We rocked up about midday and, after being told to turn around and wait by the barrier guard, we duly mounted the kerb to keep clear of lorries coming both ways and sat and sweated for hours.
The time to arrive arrived, and with it’s arrival we pulled out from our parking spot, for up to the barrier and told the same guy we wanted to go to Burgas. He pointed back up the street, motioning for us to turn around. Katie said “No.”
He said “no?”
Katie said “no”
He said “ok” and opened the barrier.
Now we were inexplicably through the barrier, we then had to figure out how to turn our confirmation email printout into three boarding passes. We asked various people in various levels of English and hand signals about tickets and passports, walking all over the port and trying not to get run over. In the end we were indicated to an open door, peered round a corner to a closed door, prior around that to find a bustling office. When we asked the office at large “Tickets? Batumi?” a woman who could have been Bulgaria’s answer to Sarah Palin ushered us out of the doorway to a counter covered in visitor graffiti and a strategic ashtray where she lit up the world longest cigarette then asked us to wait five minutes while she ducked back into the office to complete whatever we interrupted.
Once boarding passes were obtained we waited. Again.
An hour later we got a message from the booking agent asking where we were. We never saw him but took this as a prompt to drive towards the only ship with a loading ramp, we had the contents of the back of the van critiqued with a grimace as the customs agent saw a bunch of amateur camping gear in a big pile between the week arches, and we were on the boat!
We drove down into the belly of the great metal behemoth, grabbed everything we thought we might need for the crossing, as weren’t allowed back to the van once we set sail, and heaved our bags and ourselves up to deck 7 following signs for reception.
An alternately stern and kind woman in reception took our €860 cash fare for our “car”and three people for the 2.5 day trip, swapped our passports for room keys and ran through the rules. We threw our bags into the room and headed to the deck to survey our new home.
Team Yes We Khan 