A CUBAN man has spent 47 days stuck on a ferry after visa troubles
left him unable to disembark in his home city of St Petersburg in
Russia, The Moscow Times reports.
Luis Cespedes, 41, thought he was taking a routine trip back to his
adopted home when he left Helsinki aboard the Princess Maria on June 4.
But
in a story reminiscent of the Tom Hanks film "The Terminal", Russian
officials refused to let him off the ferry in St Petersburg because of
multiple visa infractions, the Times report said.
And when he
tried to return to Helsinki, Finnish officials would not let him off the
boat because his visa had expired while he was at sea.
He ended up sailing back and forth on the ferry 21 times before the Russian border guards finally took pity on him on Monday.
Mr
Cespedes, an architect and Latin dance teacher who had lived in Russia
for ten years, told Ekho Moskvy radio "I don't want to offend anybody,
but it was an idiotic situation."
"I never thought I couldn't get off the boat at St Petersburg," he told the BBC.
His
friends on shore helped pay for phone calls pleading his case, a friend
told the BBC, and the crew of the ferry took pity on him, giving him
free food and a cabbage. To express his gratitude he worked as an
on-board waiter.
He admitted previously overstaying his 30-day
tourist visa, but said appeals to the migration service and other
officials had fallen on deaf ears.
But other officials said it was Mr Cespedes' own fault.
Alexei Zlobin, a film director who is making a documentary about the trip, said Mr Cespedes is still troubled by the ordeal.
"He just cries and says nothing," he told Fontanka.ru. "Sometimes, however, he smiles and almost jumps with joy."
Mr Cespedes told the BBC "what I feel is a kind of happiness that cannot be described."
But
Mr Cespedes' visa troubles may not yet be over: now he has to submit
new papers to stay in Russia, and he also has to find his way back to
Cuba to avoid breaking that country's migration rules. More >>
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