98,99,100%

Today is a yet another big day in the name of democracy; an election in Syria will decide the next president. The interesting aspect is that there is only one single person running and that is the president who is already there (Bashar Assad). Now it will only be exciting to see if he will get 98%, 99% or maybe even 100%, a vote not for him is a direct ticket in jail.
I remember when I visited Syria and Damascus that everyone was very scared of talking, not even negative about the president, but just scared of talking about politics. At some point I saw a very silly statue where the president looked like a big Mickey Mouse balloon next to him and I was laughing, suddenly people just disappeared from the area I was.
Nevertheless, the West needs him to have a stabile area to send all the Iraqi refugees to, so I think he can keep his seat as president for quite a while, even though he will be guilty on the charges against him for the assassination of Rafik Hariri.
Tomorrow we will know, 98,99 or 100.

Better late than never

Sitting here in 25 degrees it seems a bit like Cuba, but then looking at my coke, my 200 TV channels, my fast internet and the 4 different kind of milk in the fridge I fast realize that I am back in Denmark.

I left Denmark with my parents and my brother without knowing how we were going to do, this was going to be the first time we left the Nordic region travelling together. Actually the first time in 7 years that we all travelled so closely together.

We arrived after almost 12 hours of travelling to Havana Airport, a bit jetlagged because of the six hours different between Denmark and Cuba, the first part of Cuba (the airport) was actually more effective and cleaner than I expected and apart from 5-6 stupid questions and a photo in the security we went through without problems.

We were going to stay the first two days at Hotel Deville, notorious for being the main gambling place for the mafia during the 50’s, however the atmosphere that had been there when Al Capone was playing black jack was as gone as gambling is today in Cuba.

Nevertheless, walking a few steps away from the hotel we could breath in the ocean wind and walk down the Malecon, the long beach promenade that the mafia built right when they arrived. The few cars there were on the road were either old big American cars (Chevrolet, Chrysler etc.) or old Russian fiats. It seems like everyone is leaving something behind when they leave Cuba, the Americans their big hotels and big cars, the Soviets left the “project” neighbourhoods and small white Fiat cars – I left a promise, a promise about going back there.

Not anyone can buy a car in cuba, hence most people take ekstra good care of the cars and people drive more safety than what I have seen in Latin America or Italy and France. To get a car you need a special permission that is difficult even to “buy illegally”.

Yunior had been so kind to put me in contact with a friend of a friend (later realized that is how everything works in Cuba), so we had a guide to show us around the second day. We were also going to stay in his house in the Vedado neighbourhood for some days. Julio was his name.

My other great guide during my stay was a “frequent traveller”, Mr. Lonely Planet. This book tells you everything you need and don’t need. It will tell you where to go to see the “hidden” spots that not even the cubanos know about, still it also difficult to get “off the beaten track” when everyone else also use L.P.

Julio is in his mid-thirties and is working primarily renting his house out and also guiding people around, businessmen and tourists. His father was the vice minister of foreign affair for over ten years and he travelled all over the world meeting presidents and ministers. I was so excited when I heard that he had been friends with both Che (do I have to say more?) and Fidel Castro. These two mass murders (?) Freedom fighters (?) are both very interesting historical characters.

Julio himself had studied economics in Hungary for five years so he was fluent in English and spoke a bit of Hungarian.

So, we moved into Julios house where he lived with his wife Martha. It is very normal to rent a room or two out to foreigners, in that way to get some foreign currency. Martha worked in a supermarket “special for tourists” as she said, that means that everything is so expensive and full of “luxury” that no cubano would ever go there. Other than that, she was also a great master chef, who managed to get a lot of tasty food out from almost no ingredients.

Cuba has 11 million citizen and more than 2 million of them live in Havana. Still the city seems small and it is easy to get around. The place where we lived was 15-20 min. outside the “Havana Cetro”, in the neighbourhood called Vedado. It was the old embassy area so many of the house are very big and pompous. However many people tend to forget that there are 2-3 generations living in every house. The reason is that it is not legal to buy, build or rent any houses in Cuba, so you will most likely live the same place the whole of your life.

One of the first nights at the house, Julio explained me the basic mentality of the Cubanos. I told him that I never saw anyone looking at their watch, checking their calendar or “stressing” somewhere when I walked in the streets. So, everyone has a job but no one seems to work.

He told me that most people had an “unspoken” agreement with the state: “You don’t do anything for us us, so we won’t work for you”.

So, even though Cuba is very much like the dictatorship I visited in Syria, most people talk very openly about the problems with communisme, Fidel and his friends. As Julio said, in the old days when there were problems in the country most people would say: “Fidel doesn’t know, if he knew, he would help us immediately”. Today people are more realistic and outspoken, however when in public, it has to be very subtle.

It was on one of the first days that I also met up with Yunior and Sandy, I don’t think that neither of them believed me when I at the college, told them that I was going to visit them. It was very surreal to sit here with two people from the college in a country like Cuba. UWC and Cuba can’t be more different.

When we walked on 23rd, the main club and bar street, they showed us ”La Coppeliaria” where we could get ”the best ice-cream in the world”. Here we could see a line longer than 800 meters full of Cuban macho guys and hot slim chicas waiting to get into a place where they could eat 2 litres of ice-cream.

When I some days later returned there, I realized that foreigners doesn’t have to stand in the line, but could just skip it and go to the special “non-cubano” citizen place where we could buy a little scoop of ice-cream, for ten times the price that the Cubans pay.

Most of the girls dress up with almost no close when they go out and here it is not because of the “commercials” and MTV (because it doesn’t exist), no here the girls dress up because they look hot and it is practical in the sun. There are basically no prostitution in Cuba, nevertheless being a blond blue eye guy from Europe, it would not be difficult to get a girl home….but maybe she would expect some money or clothes, but still, what is the difference between that and the girls who wants drinks in the bar in Denmark?

I was also very surprised to hear that corruption is very little compared to other countries where I have been travelling in like Bolivia or Peru. In Cuba you can always talk about things, but corruption with big cash is not there. That is even though that most of the poor people from the south goes to Havana and becomes policemen (to be educated as a policeman you just have to look honest and nice and then you will get the job after a couple of hours – in Denmark it takes four years!). You also see policemen on every single street corner where they would be standing talking and joking, not really know what to do.

In many ways the thought about communism is very beautiful, that everyone should be equal and few have too little and many have more, unfortunately it works differently in Cuba. Everyone is equal, but it seems like they are equal on the same low level. You don’t see people sleeping in the streets nor rich businessmen, nonetheless the doctors and lawyers are driving taxis and the houses are falling apart, so there is a problem somewhere.

Julio told me that Fidel always talks about how well they are doing “comparing to before the Great Revolution”, that means that in 2007, Fidel still compares the living standards with Cuba under the dictator Batista in the 50’s. Or he talks about how they have developed since the early 1990’s where there was a great famine in whole of Cuba for around 4 years.

If you are a doctor in Cuba you are not allow to leave the country at all, and other people would have to go through a lot of paperwork and costs to get a ticket abroad (around 400 dollars just in different papers is what you have to pay). The doctors would after their education have to work for free the first two years and after that they would get a ridiculously little salary.

The average salary in for example the whole “tourist sector” is $12 pr. Month, even if you are a waiter, a chef, or the hotel manager. Everyone is equal. That means that people live from the tips that the rich Canadians and Germans leave.

All Cubans also get a monthly “ration card” that just give enough food for one to survive, in that sense, no one I starving in Cuba.

Cuba has two economies, or actually three. The first two are official being the “Convertibles (CUC)” and “monedia nacional (peso)”. The last one is all the money that is coming illegally into the country from Cubans living abroad in for example Florida.

The CUC is the only currency that tourists can use is worth around the same at the euro, the peso is worth 1/25 of the CUC. If a Cuban wants to buy a new fridge, TV or other electronics he would have to get his hands on some CUC, because the peso is only for buying essentials.

One our last day we went out to Regla, a little place a bit outside Havana where you would have to take a little “boat” for ten minutes. To take this boat we had to go through a very strict security check because the boat has been hijacked two times before (for sailing to Florida). Regla is a small afro-cuban community where tourists rarely goes to, it is known for being the “working class” area in Cuba and even during the Batista time, people were trying to start a revolution here. It was also one of the first places in the world to get a memorial/statue with Lenin after his death.

For us it was like walking in a zoo, everyone looked at us while walking through the streets like we were some kind of animals and it was wonderful to walk around in a place with no street hustlers.

When being in Cuba you have to rent a car to really get to see the country, and as good well-trained tourists we rent a little cheap Toyota Yaris for 5 days. Getting around on Cuba by yourself is most or less impossible due to the lack of street signs, therefore we had to ask our way for every new road we met, but luckily Cuba is a paradise for hitchhikers, so it was never difficult to find someone to ask.

There were almost no other cars on the Autopistas, so we made u-turns, stopped the car, asked some people bicycling for the way (on the HIGHWAY!!), and we even met horse riders crossing the highway nice and slowly.

The roads and bridges are built, like most other things in Cuba, by the Soviets in the 80’s, but when the Soviet felt, so did the whole economy in Cuba. That means that you sometimes can from one second to another drive on a half built Autopista or see bridges and roads ending in the middle of nowhere.

After a million times asking “Disculpa, donde esta Playa Giron” we finally arrived on the other end of the island, at a place that gave Fidel his popularity in the 60’s. We arrived what first looked like a big camping area, however we later realized this was “playa Giron” – better known as “The Bay of Pigs”. We arrived just two days before the 45 years anniversary of the failed landing of 3000 exile Cubans, all supported with US military equipment and trained. Nevertheless, the place had turned into a big camping are, so we went on the road again to Cienfuegos.

Cienfuegos is rarely mention in the touristguides as a “place to go”, but it was one of the most undisturbed and beautiful towns that I saw in Cuba, nicely placed between the Caribbean Sea and the mountains. There we stayed with a private family a friend, of course a friend of a friend of Julio.

The next day we went to the town that everyone talks about in Cuba, a ”must-go” town that is famous for is old colonial buildings and UNESCO Heritage protected roads and churches. Trinidad is the name….

BUT, I would never ever recommend anyone to go to this tourist nightmare, every single house is a “casa particular” (private hotels) and everyone tries to get you to sleep at exactly their place. We found a nice house (of course recommended by Julio) in the centre of the city, but still very quiet in the huge backyard. The most sad view I saw in this town, was an old man sitting in his donkey, with his cowboy hat and big cigar, a beautiful photo….and he knew, because around his neck was a sign: “One photo, One CUC”. He was living just of tourists taking photos of him. He was not even that special, drive 10 min. outside Trinidad and you will see old men on horses with big cigars and lassos everywhere.

No, Trinidad was a nightmare; first people would get close to you, trying to talk with you like this. “Where are you from? Germany? You want to sleep? I have nice place? No? You want to eat? I cook good food? No, Okay, I am sick. Could you give me one CUC, my children are sick”.

We left Trinidad very fast and drove into the mountains, where the big “collective farms” were and the small closed trainstatios (Cuba actually got a railroad system BEFORE Spain)

We headed towards Santa Clara were we were going to see only one single tourist sight.

Less than ten years ago, some scientists found the remains of Ches body and his comrades that died with him in Bolivia. He was flown to Cuba where he is buried at a great memorial a bit outside Santa Clara (During the revolution, Che was the leader of an amazing attack on this highly important city).

It was an extremely wellkept place and for the first time in Cuba I saw people standing nicely in a line, being very quiet and paying respect to ONE person. The little museum had a lot of Che’s belongings, for example his mate cup. Only few people at the time were allowed to see the grave and we weren’t allowed to speak with eachother when we were in there.

To be conituned.

The next part will be about “Cuba Best Beaches”, a special capitalist place in Cuba only for tourist. Where Canadians spends 100 of dollars and the Cubans earns $12 a month.

Also about our last days in Havana.