Cuba - Monday, June 8, 2015

Monday, June 8, 2015: Havana, Cuba

I couldn't resist enjoying the Riviera's grand swimming pool in the morning. A young Belgian couple told me that they had come to Cuba to see the island before it all changed. They like lots of people I spoke to expected rapid changes once US-Cuban relations have been normalized, possibly in the very near future. I quite agree with this assessment.

The afternoon was filled with a visit to the impressive looking University of Havana. Two History students we met by chance showed us around. They proudly pointed out the tank exhibited in the middle of the university. It was one of the tanks used by Fidel and his fellow rebels during the revolutionary upheavals in Santa Clara in 1959. They explained that the police was not allowed to enter university grounds and that there was a basement hospital in the university used in the past by wounded students who had been protesting against the government, that is the Batista government, not the current regime.

The two students also expressed a great deal of skepticism about the regime and its 'family policy' with the designated new leader having married one of Raul Castro's daughters. Raul will retire in the course of this year, at least that is what he announced a short while ago. No elections will take place of course.

We went for a drink with the two students to a nearby student bar and soon friendship turned to business. We were clearly overcharged in the bar for the drinks we treated them to (with the two students surely making a nice cut) and somehow we allowed ourselves to be persuaded to buy a box of the best cirgars around for a special price apparently. The whole thing left a bit of an unpleasant aftertaste. But constant haggling and attempts to persuade you to buy something and being overcharged is a constant compagnion in Cuba, in particular in Havana but also elsewhere. It's quite understandable in view of the poverty of the population. 

The poverty clearly forces Cubans to live by their wits and use visiting foreigners as welcome milk cows. We tried to escape this fate as much as possible but didn't always succeed. Sometimes one didn't even realize what was happening before it was too late and one had paid much more than one ought to have done. In particular this often happened with regard to taxi rides that frequently would have been a lot cheaper for locals. At first one is happy to tolerate this, after a few days, however, one gets increasingly irritated by this understandable but this still annoying behavior of many of the locals.

In the course of the afternoon the great sunshine of the first half of the day turned into rain once again. We happened to be at the Square of the Revolution and fled to the Marti museum. This is a very modern and extremely well-designed museum of this famous Cuban thinker and poet and independence fighter (who was killed in the first battle against the Spaniards in the Cuban-Spanish war of 1898). The Marti monument, however, is rather overdone. It is quite impressive with a huge tower that overlooks the square and with Marti having been immortalized in the form of a huge white stone skulpture. But it is over-the-top; hero-worship at its worst.

The huge empty square is surrounded by a number of drab looking government ministries and by the huge face of Che and Fidel put up on two high-rise buildings. Did I mention hero-worship already? No one actually seems to know where Fidel and Raul reside and work.  Its kept secret for security reasons. This is not entirely unreasonable in view of the multiple assasination attempts on Fidel Castro's life. Still, it also seems to be a sign of great distrust regarding the Cuban people themselves. I am sure many must have a vague idea where the various residences of the countyr's main leaders are but no one we met ever admitted it.

The evening was spent wandering about in old Havana, which is confusingly large - its extremely difficult not to get lost and we managed to suceed doing so  repeatedly. Also many of the roads have been dug up to perhaps improve the sewage system. But no one then bothered to close the big holes again; instead the ruble is frequently left in the middle of the road to make life a little more challenging for the pedestrian trying to negotiate the old town.  I bought a couple of t.shirts and other souvenirs for my young daughters but I clearly lost the attempt to haggle down the price a bit with a very charming but also very determined shop assistant. She did not give an inch; so I did, lol. 

A nice meal with a couple of mochitos and a walk back to the hotel along the Malecon rounded off the evening.  We spent the last night at the Milba Habana, the nice hotel we stayed in a the beginning of the trip.  Unfortunately, the alarm clock needed to be set at 4am for an early flight back to Toronto the next day.

I will summarize my overall impressions of this most interesting trip to Cuba in the next and final posting.