Black sea boat

After a couple days in Burgas was time to go across the Black sea. The burgas west port is actually located on the south of the city, on the Industrialna ulitsa 5. As we came closer to the port we realized that no other tourist would be there, it was definitely a cargo boat.  The person to whom we booked the trip asked us to be there between 16 and 18 hours. In my understanding that was the time for which they expect to have all the cargo (trucks) on board, but it was not. They requested us to be there at this specific time because the dinner was served at 18 hours. We went thru the different passport inspections until we were allowed to go up the boat where I been asked to park the bike on a corner next to a truck and follow a crew member up to the reception. We followed the guy three floors up, then crossed a bridge over the cargo area, and finally into a area at which we were later looked. On the reception we been told that the boat was not going to leave until the early morning since a lot of trucks had to be loaded. Anyway… we were there already, we made ourselves comfortable on our room and waited for diner time.  The area where we could actually move around was quite small, a small restaurant where the food was served (3 meals a day), a small small recreation area with a tv and a bending machine, always full of people smoking, giving to the space an unbreathable atmosphere, and a small terrace over the cargo looked thru a face on to the bridge. The place was slowly being filled by different nationality truck drivers, Bulgarians, Russians, Azerbaijans and Georgians. They did not mix the groups, and they pretty much hate each other.

Punctually at 18 we went to the restaurant area. There we had the fist short talk with the first person, the cook or the waiter, no idea. We exchange the first information of each other (in Russian), and he express a huge happiness to know I was from Spain. Then we put down his trousers and showed us the tattoos on his legs, the real Madrid emblem and the Santiago Bernabeu stadium. He was damn crazy for real Madrid (shoes, slippers, perfume…) , he looked also like a dangerous person that would be just your friend in prison, but as his friend later told me “he is crazy, but he has a big heart”

On the first diner we saw already a fight between some Bulgarian and some Russian track drivers. All of them looked at us wondering with u were we playing with. No one approached us until the end of the diner, where everybody was sitting in prison as small gangs.  At the end, the guy that had a fight came to me (always speaking in Russian), and told me that  the Russians were crazy, too much vodka. Later, he turned to be our best friend. Yuri, a Bulgarian truck driver.

Slowly we end up talking with the different gangs (mostly in Rusian but also in German, Italian or Spanish) and making friendship; although we stayed mostly with the Bulgarians, since they were the leaders of the boat. They offered me to go in their trucks to multiple destinations, Tibilisi, Baku, Iran… We had great fun, they invited us to drink their home made alcohols (wine, rakia), even when it was not allowed to drink in the boat; and treated Lilia as a princess. All of them approached to her in silence to give her oranges. Even the barman of the boat Georg, brought her a wine glass. A fine lady shouldn’t be drinking from a plastic cup as the rest of the animals, us.

One of the days was St. Georg; important date for Bulgaria and for the Barman. That night although everyone was drinking no one was drinking as him. He teacher us how to dance Bulgarian traditional music and danced a bit with Lilia.

We were the neutrals of the boat, the tourist; but as them, and may be because of my long trip we could say that we were all a bit crazy, so they adopted as one more of them.