LITMIR.BIZ

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are unpredictable problems for the future, and I am no longer a «young man». In addition, I have given my word and it obliges me to keep it. The next day I met my voyage companion. Oleg. Radio officer. All life at sea. Medium-sized brunette, thirty-five years old. Fifteen years of difference is too much for our like-minded relationship. Signed contracts. All. All bridges were burned back.

      Just a few seemingly ordinary pieces of paper completely change a person's status. A moment ago you were a free man and suddenly you became someone's property, you became a slave. According to the teachings of Karl Marx, there are two types of slavery – forced slavery (captivity, sale, etc.) and its highest degree – voluntary slavery. You give up this and that, and instead commit to doing whatever your master tells you to do. If you get sick – go home. The company only pays if you need to pull a tooth. Do not treat, but only snatch. And only if you are very «lucky» – you lose an arm or a leg, or die, then the company will shell out and make some payments, but only after you can prove in court that you did it through no fault of your own. Strange state after signing the contract – you understand everything, but there is nowhere to go. It feels like you have become a rag and wiped your feet. Probably the same feels a frog that goes to the mouth of a snake. And why are you doing all this? For the sake of the family. An ancient law – if a penny disappeared in one pocket, it increased in another. Nothing disappears anywhere. If I want a little more in my pocket, I have to give part of my life for it. I will spend the next nine months in an iron barrel in the middle of the ocean. There is a plus in the contract. This is an opportunity to travel around the planet and you get paid for it. You have the opportunity to compare life in your country and in others. You can also communicate with many people from different cultures, with different levels of development.

      The director of the agency shook our hands and said:

      – I'm sure you won't let me down, you guys have already been beaten.

      Mister Vlad will be the senior. He is an employee of the shipping office and knows the business. You are leaving today at 8 pm by minibus from the square near the Opera House to Kyiv. Seats are already paid. Here are the travel documents: a ship's application in four copies, a waybill with the phones of managers in Tel Aviv and a letter of guarantee from the company. Tickets have already been ordered in Boryspil for your names. Come with these documents to the box office number eight and get tickets. Departure to Vienna at eight thirty in the morning. Tickets in Vienna are also booked. Receive immediately upon arrival. Departure from Vienna at eleven forty. At three o'clock you will be in Tel Aviv. There you will be met and taken to the port of Haifa where the ship is. The ship is called «Ivannis». When you receive your tickets in Boryspil, call me immediately so that I know that everything is fine. Questions?

      – No. As usual.

      – Then do not waste time, you already have little. Good by.

      I took the papers, reviewed them, and put them in a folder with other documents. We left the company's premises.

      – Oleg, do you know the place where the bus leaves?

      – Yes, I already left here.

      – Then until the evening.

      I arrived home at three o'clock in the afternoon.

      – Well, are you leaving tomorrow?

      My wife greeted me with a question.

      – No, not tomorrow. Today at twenty.

      – As soon?

      A tear slowly crept down his wife's cheek.

      – Again one for a whole year. As if not married.

      – Why one? The guys will not be bored.

      – So. The younger one still listens, and the elder one doesn't get away with it.

      – He already has hands to go to. He is already a man, do not disturb him.

      – I do not interfere, but he does not have a job yet and I have to provide him.

      – He is an adult and will not be idle.

      – I hope so. So, collect already on the table?

      – Do not hurry, there is still some time.

      – I'm not going to see you off. It's too late.

      – You will do well.

      I myself do not like when a healthy man is followed by a whole caravan of relatives. Sometimes even grandparents. One of the guys will help bring the suitcase.

      I was already there at nine o'clock. Nearby was a handful of people with children, next to a pile of luggage. After a while Oleg and other passengers came. Then a bus pulled up and we loaded our suitcases. In addition to us, there were fourteen other passengers. Forty minutes later we took our seats on the bus and it slowly went upstairs, turned left and half an hour later we were already racing on the road to Kiev. The voyage began.

      At half past five in the morning the next day, the bus stopped in the square to the left of the airport building in Boryspil. We half-asleep disassembled our suitcases and went to the waiting room. They were a little nervous, because the ticket office opened at eight o'clock, and at eight-thirty it was already leaving. But it all worked out. The tickets were ready and after checking the documents we were handed them over.

      Then customs control, baggage claim, border control and we are on the second floor in the departure hall. From the air we look at the Dnieper and Kyiv below us and mentally say goodbye to our homeland. Vienna airport is familiar. I already had to be here and therefore there were no complications. Very meticulous control of the security service to passengers flying to Tel Aviv – The threat of a terrorist attack.

      – Give your documents.

      – Give your first and last name.

      – Why are you without luggage?

      – Take off your watch and put everything out of your pockets in this box.

      – Go through this passage.

      – Immediately back. You have metal items in your pockets!

      – What? A plate on a belt? Remove the belt.

      – Stand here. Come back.

      – Turn out the pockets. Good.

      – Go through this passage again.

      – Come through. And don't make such an unpleasant face. This is for your own safety.

      – Take your things. Happy flight.

      After such a procedure you need to calm down a bit. Indeed, this is for the safety of passengers, not just exhausting nerves. And still need to be very careful and attentive to prevent any incident in the air. A little more time and we are in the air. At the bottom were Austria, Turkey, the Mediterranean Sea and our plane landed at Ben Gurion Airport in the capital of the Promised Land – Tel Aviv.

      The plane stopped two hundred meters in front of the airport building and the passengers went to the building on foot. An interesting point. Then all services as at departure, only in reverse order: Border control, baggage retrieval, customs control. Then exit to the round hall where there is a crowd of greeters. Cheerful noise, joyful shouts, laughter. We look around to see a sign with the name of the ship. None. Passengers

      it turns out, the crowd of greeters decreases, and our greeter is not visible. Twenty minutes later we are two and a few more people. We pay attention to the man who holds over his head a piece of cardboard with some inscription. Let's go to him. Our names are written in Latin letters on the cardboard with a bad felt-tip pen. This is our driver who will take us by car to Haifa. Asked to show the city a bit. The driver reluctantly agreed, but warned that he had little time.

      Tel Aviv is a modern city with wide streets, quite green. There are many houses with interesting architecture. But Haifa was waiting for us and the driver got on the highway and ran towards Haifa. An hour and a half later we were in Haifa. The port is located at the foot of the hills, as in Odessa. Checking documents by armed guards and we went along the berths. At one of the ships the driver stopped and the driver said:

      – Everything, we have arrived.

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