Cuba: Havana

At first glance, Cuba is a dump. On second glance, it's still a dump. As an experienced traveler, you don't let that bother you and you think: give it a chance, don't let the first impression deceive you, but take a closer look at the country to form a more differentiated opinion.

After four weeks, we felt like we were in hell on earth. That sounds very pessimistic, it wasn't that bad, but we didn't actually like Cuba very much. Nevertheless, we did have some very nice moments, we saw a lot and learned a lot about the country and its people. We don't want to offend anyone, especially not those who raved about Cuba to us... we may not understand it, but tastes are known to be different and thankfully so.

But let's go step by step:

After arriving in Cuba, we spent some days in Havana. The general decay seems to fascinate many people. Whether the locals also appreciate this dubious charm is another question. We questioned this in particular when parts of a balcony suddenly collapsed and fell down when we were innocently passing by. The people who had just been sitting under the same balcony selling vegetables were fortunately able to escape unharmed. They didn't look very enthusiastic about the "shabby splendor" as it is advertised in the travel guide.

We visited some museums, including the Castillo de la Real Fuerza, which houses the Museo de Navegación, the Museo de la Revolución, and the Memorial a José Marti, from where you also had a nice view of the city (José Marti was a writer and a Cuban national hero as a great inspiration to Fidel Castro). It should be noted that the quality of the museums is not very good. Most of the time, you stand in front of the exhibits and wonder what exactly they are trying to tell you. It was expected that the labels, if there are any at all, would only be in Spanish, which is not a problem. But as I said, in some cases there were no labels or explanations at all, and there was no trace of chronology. If you value reasonably good museums, you should make the long journey to Santiago de Cuba, where they are significantly better. In terms of content, all the museums in Cuba tell you the same thing anyway, revolutionary propaganda from A to Z. In the Memorial a José Marti, Jörg also awarded his prize for the best job in Cuba to the lady who sat in her chair in the air-conditioned elevator and read the newspaper all day long, and nothing else than to briefly glance up from her newspaper to press the up and down button, see photo.

I really like the rum from Havana Club, so of course we went to the Museo del Ron (Rum Museum). The extremely unmotivated lady who guided our tour spoke English very well, but rattled off the explanations in an incredible monotony and at a crazy pace, leaving no doubt that she had better things to do today. When one of the other tourists dared to ask a question that had already been asked, the lady sighed loudly, rolled her eyes, and asked if someone else could answer this gentleman's question... um... I haven't heard anything like that since my teacher in school, and certainly not in a place where I just paid a few dollars for a guided tour... Este es Cuba... you will read this sentence a few more times and we will meet its creator later... finally, we enjoyed some mojitos in the attached bar, where live music was played and we also made friends with Dagoberto, a musician who has traveled quite a bit in Europe.

We also visited the other two Spanish fortresses on the other side of the bay, the Castillo de los Tres Santos Reyes Magnos del Morro and the Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña. That was quite nice, although they are not particularly different from the other Spanish forts we have already seen. But we will probably encounter such buildings on our journey anyway. In the evening, there was a Cañonazo ceremony in the fort, during which actors in military uniforms fired a cannon shot into the harbor every evening. It was quite nice, of course it was a pure tourist spectacle and it felt a bit strange that the young men put these white Spanish wigs on their black hair, after this country has fought so long for its independence.

In the evening, we also liked to stroll along the Malecon (the waterfront), where bridal couples had their photos taken and we also saw a large cruise ship pass by.

It was exciting to see how many tourists in Havana spend a lot of money just to take a short ride in an old American car. When you travel through the country for 4 weeks, you have no choice but to do that. We were sometimes driven around in boxes where the friendly official from the Aargau Road Traffic Office wouldn't know whether to laugh, cry, or run away screaming. So we hired a Taxi Collectivo (shared taxi) to take us to Rancho Luna, where we wanted to spend a few days at the beach to recover from all the pre-trip stress. It was an old American box, all the displays in the car including the speedometer had probably given up the ghost decades ago. It was a mystery to me how the driver knew how fast he was driving. But at least there was a built-in air conditioning and a built-in television. You just have to set priorities.