Taking the Ferry from Zonguldak

Bryn and I are in Zonguldak, Turkey - up on the Black Sea coast of Turkey - about to get on a ferry for the Ukraine. We've been trying to organize a ferry to the Ukraine for some time (she's been looking into it for the past few months) because a) it'd be cool to take a ferry across the Black Sea; and b) there is a ten day swing dance camp happening in Mikolavka, Ukraine, from the 16 - 35 of June. Swing dancing has proven to be a very successful way to meet people and get to know an area, so we're both really looking forward to the Crimean Dance Camp 2011.

Our ride coming into the Port of Zonguldak, Turkey

According to the website, everyone else attending the camp is either Russian or Ukrainian. A few of the instructors are western European, but there's a good chance that we'll pick up some Ukrainian/Russian after all of this. As of now, I've only really got Nazdravya and Dobra Den. It should be fun.

And maybe the best part of it is that we're taking a boat there. And we're taking a real BOAT. None of this cruise liner stuff like I took from Iceland, this is an honest cargo ships with trucks and truck drivers and hardhat areas. The boat got into Zonguldak yesterday afternoon full of trucks from Yvpretoria, Ukraine (the boat only services the Zonguldak-Yvpretoria route) and we boarded it at around 7pm without having paid because the office was closed. It was a classic hand-signals and limited vocabulary conversation between us two Americans, an employee of the ferry company, the customs guy and the ship captain. I don't know exactly how it happened, but within about 10 minutes we had a cabin on the top deck with a nice view of the orange life boat.

Our home for three nights (note approach of full moon in top left corner)

We sail tonight at 1am, assuming that we have enough cargo on board to justify departure. We might have to wait until tomorrow morning to leave. No tellng. But the trip will take about 36 hours so we should be in Yvpretoria Friday afternoon - Mikolavka within an hour later.

The deck of our ferry at sunset. Trucks hadn't started loading at this point.

It's not exactly a passenger ferry, which makes the trip even more cool. There's a good chance that Bryn will be the only female on the boat surrounded by a bunch of Turkish and Ukrainian truck drivers, which is a little intimidating, but everyone we've met so far has been friendly and non-leary. We met the cook this morning, who served us breakfast, and he was very friendly, despite our inability to communicate with each other. It's been really helpful to be able to stay on the boat in harbor as it saves us money on hotels AND they feed us three meals a day. So far, so good. Will report on the more specific details once we get to the Ukraine.