ferry to odessa

Due to a lack of planning for this trip, which i blame on lines and the ridiculous amount of work involved, sean and i completely failed to book our passage out of istanbul. The plan was to take the ferry to odessa. The ferry only goes once a week, on tuesday evenings, and takes a day and a half. At least, that is what our net research told us. The guy at the tourist office, when we asked about it, said 'ferry cancel, since one year', which worried us. On monday we managed to find the ferry office, and were told that the ferry was fully booked, but that there might be a cancellation. We gave our phone number, and started working out a plan b. We were pleasantly surprised though, to get a phone call the next morning, offering exactly the ticket we wanted (that is, the cheapest), so we packed up, said goodbye to our couchsurfing host, and headed for the office. After buying our tickets we spent the afternoon on the Bosphorus ferries (to start getting our sea legs, of course). We could see our ferry at the dock- the big UKR on the side was easy to spot, but the first time was a little disappointing, as it was parked right next to two of the largest cruise ships i had ever seen. The website had tried very hard to make our boat sound like a cruise ship, so the juxtaposition was a little unfortunate!
After boarding, only 6 hours before departure (don't know why they wanted us on so early!) the impression of luxury continued to plummet, as we discovered the top deck was completely packed with body parts. Well, shop manniquin parts, anyway. And they continued to load things. A small army of men carrying packages on their back up to the rear passenger decks continued working right up to departure. After we left i headed back there to see what they had done, and discovered the sun deck and starboard side deck (the one that had been empty of people, as the view was to port) had also been entirely loaded up with more body party and what was apparently rolls of plastic tablecloth. Such luxury! We were also glad to find we had a cabin with a window, until we looked out the window and saw ladders. Lots of ladders, stacked up and almost completely obscuring amy natural light. On the upside, at least noone would be peering in our window!
The journey was pleasantly relaxing, overall. I did almost all the sleeping and most of the writing and other things i wanted to do. 36 hours of enforced nothingness was great really. They even fed us at regular intervals, and all but one of the meals was edible! We were much entertained by an ascerbic running commentary on the eastern fashions displayed aboard. Marvellous mullets, mismatched stripes, painful colours... There was much to be discussed. We completely failed to be entertained by the disco bar, or by the tacky eastern euro-pop emanating from it. The exchange rate for turkish lira at the snack bar was exceedingly entertaining (the boat works in US dollars), but we discovered that they were a little more reasonable in euro! And the served the best coffee i've had in ages.
So now we've disembarked and are waiting in the ukraine passport control line. In the time it'r taken me to write this on my phone, one person has good through th EU line. The computer was apparently kaput for a while, but even the 5 of up still waiting are settling in for a long wait. If we ever get through, the plan is to find accomodation, food, and internet (to upload this and find out something about odessa, like where to find accomodation and food...). After that, we have to work out how to get to Moldova tomorrow!