The news of a 5 hour delay when already queuing on the port to board was not a good start. This was only made worse when the Italian man parked in front of me informed me that Friday the 17th is a ‘bad things happening day’. When I looked it up it was worse than that, it concerns a premonition of death. Not what you want to hear when getting on a ferry for 23 hours.
Two young Swiss guys, Eric and Finn, were in a van behind me and made the time pass quicker with good chat. They were off to Greece, looking for winter sun and climbing adventures. They were warm and welcoming and off their faces. Once aboard the 3 of us ambled about the ship, drinking and smoking, talking to random strangers and checking out good spots for bunking down. The top floor of the spookily empty ferry was dark and quiet, it was home to the After 7 dancing bar, a remnant of former glory days and with only one other passenger already tucked up, this was our best sleeping spot. Shared stories and Bukowski poetry ended the day but Finn began to get jumpy, saying alarms were going off and he disappeared with his stuff. I didn’t think much of it, claimed my part of the floor on the other side of the room, with comfy cushions from the sofa making a great mattress and crept into my sleeping bag. I was woken in the early hours by someone kicking my feet, it was Finn saying the ship had been in big problems but he had fixed it with the engineers, saved the ship and my van was fine, and look at his ‘scars’ – holding up his oil covered and cut hands. It was lot tricker to get back to sleep after a clearly deranged Swiss had told you he had saved the ship.
Day Two
I guess the 1,435 ‘terrible’ reviews on Tripadvisor should have given it away. The ferry company is obviously beyond terrible, not just the 5 and half hour delay but the sheer absence of staff or helpful guidance. Those who did appear were uniformly dressed in once-white shirts, stained and stretched over protruding bellies with a manner as jaded as the ferry. It seemed to be an interruption of their role if you asked something which, in some ways, is an attitude to be admired. Ironically, the place with the most staff was the ‘self-service café’, which is not a café in the ordinary sense. Breakfast is scant, miniature white rolls, no butter – something asked for in several languages while I sat there – cold fried eggs and small pieces of bacon or a croissant. As I write that, it sounds better than it was. Although two members of staff stood idly behind the solidifying fried eggs the man on the till told me to wait by the coffee machine before he then came to make it himself 5 minutes later. It would have all been hilarious if I had not been charged 9 euros for a stale croissant, a cold coffee and a small cup of carton juice. Things got better when I found a shower in the disabled toilet. I’d bought my towel with me on board just in case. Lovely hot water, it was bliss!
There were some remarkable views from the ferry as we chugged along, the craggy, snow-covered mountains of Albania, a lovely sunset over Corfu, as well as the relentless waves. Some of the life stories told inside were just as remarkable as the views, too bizarre, and therefore identifiable, to reveal but it made me realise that, like in Chaucer’s Tales, people share at a deeper level when on a journey in which time and space are limited. The thing about a voyage is that there is an end, the destination, and when that is reached, however delayed, everyone goes their own ways with their stories to continue.