Love, hate, telephones

Last weekend we went up to Hamburg to see our friends Tom, Sonja, and their daughter Fiona. You might remember them from previous blog posts.

Fiona is 19 months old now and just starting to talk. She has her own cell phone to play with. It doesn't work any more, but she can dial it and have one-sided, unintelligible conversations with Grandma. I am not sure whether she's pretending to call her American Grandma or her German Oma, since it's not always clear whether she's speaking in English or in German, or just in baby talk.

Fiona's chatter made me think about my own love/hate relationship with the phone since we moved to Germany. When we first moved here, I became very afraid of the telephone. Whenever possible, I would avoid making calls. If it rang, I froze. Talking on the phone in a foreign language is way way harder than talking face-to-face. There is nothing to point at, no fingers to count on, nowhere to draw a picture, no way to give my helpless foreigner's smile and shrug that might keep the German-speaker from hating me. Getting a friend to call for me is a little demeaning, but I had to do it in the beginning. A few times I called Deutsche Bank myself, only to be told that no one was able to talk to me in English. At one of the biggest banks in the world. Really. But I have no right to be angry; I am living in Deutschland and it's their bank.

I wasn't afraid of the phone all the time. That's where the love part of the love-hate relationship comes in. One of the best things we did in those crazy few months of moving our lives across the ocean was to get a land line for the first time in years, and to sign up for a cheap international calling plan. Now we can pick up the phone and call home. It's a real one with buttons, not Skype or video chat. Second only to the internet, that phone plan has allowed us stay in touch with friends and family in the U.S.

A lot of those family and friends have Face Time and Whatsapp and all those things that people with smart phones have. Brian and I have dumb phones. When we moved here we got really cheap prepaid cell phones. We are not gadget people, we are certainly afraid of having to decipher a phone contract in German, and we didn't need it that much - there were only a handful of people who might call. Now, three and a half years later, there are two handfuls of people who might call. We still have the dumb phones.

About a year ago I started to order pizza over the phone. I realized this week - after I had called the hair salon, the doctor's office, the Deutsche Bahn, the airline and also the pizza place - that I wasn't afraid any more.

After a couple years of pretending, just like Fiona with her toy phone, I could communicate without holding up any fingers or smiling. And just like Fiona, I can call my Grandma on the phone. We always talk in English.

My first protest

On Monday I took part in my very first protest. I realize I am a bit of a late bloomer. I should have done this already, in college at least. I have never been political in the activist sense of the word - so this was my chance.

When I was in college, some of my fellow students set up a peace camp on the quad. They were protesting U.S. bombings of Iraq in 1999 (yes, that's how old I am). The peace campers posted their signs and pitched their tents that spring. It started as a curiosity, became a political statement, and eventually the tents in front of Old Main just became a fixture of the campus. The peace campers were out there, smelly and full of conviction, for 4 or 5 weeks. I didn't join them. Maybe I was lacking in conviction and I definitely did not own a tent. Mostly, I wasn't sure what they were going to accomplish, how they could influence world events by sleeping outdoors at a liberal arts college in the Upper Midwest.

Getting back to 2015... you may remember my post about Pegida. It's a German anti-Islam movement based in Dresden. They are the "Nazis in pinstripes," who are against the Islamization of the West. Now we have our very own chapter of Pegida in Hannover, called Hagida.

If there's anything I am "for" politically, it's immigration. I think immigration is a strength, not a weakness. I used to work for and with immigrants. And now I am an immigrant too. So when my (blond-haired, blue-eyed, German) friend Ulla invited me to come to the counter-demonstration against Hagida, I said yes. It was the anti-anti-Islamization march. Officially they called it the anti-racism march.

There were three marches that evening. First, there was the Hagida march, with 200 participants. There was a counter-protest of the Socialist Worker Youth party, with about 300 people. Then there was our demonstration, with 19,000 people. I guess that means we won.  Our demonstration, called 'Hannover says: lights out for racists', was backed by the city. Former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder spoke, as did the mayor and other important people. The lights at the opera house and the office buildings surrounding it were all turned off. Maybe they were trying to confuse the Hagida people into marching somewhere else.

I read that the Hagida marchers and the socialists got into some scuffles a few people were arrested. I didn't see anything like that. Our protest was very peaceful. It was so peaceful, in fact, that I forgot I was protesting and just felt like I was in a slow-moving line to get on an airplane or leave a sporting event. My 18,999 fellow protesters weren't chanting or throwing Molotov cocktails. Someone up ahead was beating a drum but otherwise it was very mellow.

A dark opera house

This sign says "with one another"

German demonstrations, as you might imagine, are very well organized. All groups involved have to apply for a permit first, so that streets can be closed and police can be available. Hagida now wants to demonstrate in Hannover, every Monday starting on the 26th of January. I imagine them all marking their calendars, or setting up a recurring appointment on their smart phones that says "Monday, 5pm, go protest against those low-down dirty Muslims taking over your country."

So back to the question I first raised about the peace camp: did our protest accomplish anything? Unlike the young socialists, we did not physically stop any Hagida people from marching. We may have created some peer pressure to show them that they are very much outnumbered, that the city of Hannover does not agree with their views. We made the international news, showing that Hannover is a city that will not tolerate intolerance. But did we change anyone's mind? Probably not - that takes a lot more work than just getting a bunch of Germans to walk together. It takes people getting to know those who are different from them, and figuring out that they are not really so different after all.
At least that's my opinion. But I do lack political conviction, and a permit, and a tent.

"Hannover remains open to the world and tolerant. There is no place here for Nazis and Fascists."

The Revolution continues

Throughout Cuba, the only type of advertising you'll see is propaganda.

This Revolution is the daughter of culture and ideas

Your example lives, your ideas endure

Our duty: to produce for the people!

It was common to see signs recognizing this year as the 56th year of the Revolution. I didn't realize Cuba is still fighting the Revolution. So the question is, are they winning?

As Americans we learn that Communism, if not evil, is at least backward and ineffective and unjust. After 12 days in Cuba, I'm not sure that's entirely true.

"With all and for the good of all"

We found that Cuba is a very safe country with no homeless people. It offers universal, quality health care and an educational system that sends good students go to university for free. Workers have guaranteed days off and job security, even if they get paid next to nothing. Cuba's sustainable agriculture is an example for the world.

We also found hard-working people with very little wealth, people who can't afford to travel within their own country, and a lot who are trying to get out. Homes are crowded. Because of the dual currency system, those with low-level jobs in the tourism industry can earn more than doctors and engineers. There is no right to freedom of speech and access to information is censored. Technology is 20 years behind that of the rest of the world.

Racial equality in Cuba appears to be more advanced than in the U.S. The black market lives on, despite the strength of the state. Private businesses - only legalised in the last 8 years - pop up everywhere.  Cubans are proud of Cuba, even though some of them would rather live somewhere else. People line up by the butcher shop on the day the ham comes in - it might not be there tomorrow.

As the sign says, only those who fight and resist will win. Cuba is certainly resisting capitalism and fighting the political forces that rule much of the world. Whether it's winning or not... I still can't tell.

"Only those who fight and resist will win"

Hotel Nacional

On our last night in Cuba, we stayed at Havana's Hotel Nacional.
I have never been in a hotel so grand.

It opened in 1930, overlooking the Malecon in Havana's ritziest neighborhood. The Nacional has hosted world leaders, movie stars, athletes,singers and writers. It has played a part in the coup of 1933 and the revolution in 1958. American gangsters Meyer Lanksy and Lucky Luciano used to run the casino and run their operations out of the hotel. It's built like a small city within the city - it has a post office, a few shops, several bars and restaurants and offices.

There could still be mafia at the Hotel Nacional, but mostly the guests looked like rich foreigners. Like all hotels in Cuba, it's run by the state. Tourism is a necessary evil in Cuba; the government charges high prices in CUCs for hotels but pays the employees in pesos. The government reaps the profits, which are (theoretically) redistributed to the people through public services and subsidies. So the communism survives in part by advocating the same kinds of inequalities the Revolution tried to eliminate.

We could only afford this kind of inequality for one night.

Since the Hotel Nacional staff are all state employees, the front desk staff are grumpy, the waiters disappear when you need them and the food is not very good. Imagine a 5 star hotel run by the people who work at the DMV.
I would guess that the mafia got better service than we did.

Not Trinidad

When we got in the taxi to leave Cienfuegos on New Year's Day, the driver asked if we had been to Trinidad. Every traveler we talked during our trip to was either coming from or going to Trinidad. It's supposed to be a beautiful, historical, colonial town. That's why I didn't want to go.

"I think there are more tourists in Trinidad than people who live there," the driver explained, as we leaned against the car, waiting for the 3rd passenger who would travel to Havana with us.

Surama, my Cuban friend, said in the course of one conversation,
"Trinidad is great, you should absolutely go," and
"you should try to see the authentic Cuba while you are there. There's nothing authentic about Trinidad."
I imagine it as a museum of a town, a Cuban colonial Williamsburg, or the tropical version of Bruges, Belgium.

There are places where you travel in order to see stuff: castles, museums, the Statue of Liberty, the Taj Mahal, the Corn Palace, the world's largest ball of twine, etc. Cuba, at least for Brian and me, is not one of those places. We came to Cuba to see how this place has shrugged off globalization, to see what it's like to live without advertising. We wanted to feel the sun and hear the music, to visit the place with (arguably) the purest form of Communism that still exists. Now the U.S., with some help from our friends Pope Francis and the Canadians, has agreed to crack open the door of the embargo. We look like geniuses because, as you'll recall, we beat Burger King.

Cienfuegos

No one is sure just what will change in Cuba, but everyone is sure that some changes are coming. Fred the farmer is concerned that agribusiness will bring in chemical fertilizers and bio-engineering. Rico the classic car driver can't wait for strong American cars to come back to Havana's streets (we didn't tell him they don't make cars quite like they did in the 50s). José Miguel thinks that when banking opens up, expat Cubans will buy up all the land. Nene the cigar salesman has wasted no time in bringing his Miami family down to visit.

And will Nene take his family to Trinidad? With more visitors in Cuba's future, will Trinidad become the next Wisconsin Dells? What we did instead of visit Trinidad was stay for 3 full days in Cienfuegos. There was plenty of time to put the guidebook away and sit on the rooftop, listening to the clip clop of horse carts and the beats of music playing down the street, the call of the bread man and the barking of street dogs. 

There weren't many famous sights in Cienfuegos to check off of a list. But that was ok with us.

This is Brian's iconic Cuba photo

New Year in Cuba

New Year's in Cuba is a big deal, and I was excited to ring in 2015 in a warm climate. The owners of our casa particular, Lourdes and Jose Miguel, invited us to come to a dinner at their daughter's house. She also rents out rooms in her home along the water - 6 rooms, in fact, so it was like a small hotel. There was big buffet dinner on the patio, with a mix of tourists and family taking part.

Cuban new year has the familiar ingredients of dancing, fancy food, drinking and kisses at midnight. Traditionally, Cubans roast a pig for the feast. We saw one being butchered out on the sidewalk in Cienfuegos. The other big tradition is to build a scarecrow out of old clothes and newspaper. This is the old man of the year that has passed, with a big 2014 written on his chest. What happens to him at midnight? They light him on fire, of course.

I also learned from Surama and her brother that people who want to travel walk out of the house with a suitcase on New Year's Eve. They take it around the block, or to the nearest bar. This is the way to welcome a new year that will take you places.

Getting around in Cuba

There are many ways to get around in Cuba:

Taxis: These include cars, horse carts, bike taxis and coco taxis.
No matter what sort of cab you are taking it's important to bargain with the driver and agree on a price before you get in. Most don't have meters.

Classic cars: They are everywhere. I knew I would see some in Cuba; I just didn't know there would be so many. A lot of the classic American cars are brightly painted and lovingly restored. There must be some good mechanics in Cuba, and these cars could possibly run forever with their engines chugging away under layers of chrome.

Ladas and Trabants: These are Soviet cars. They are small and boxy and you can take a tour in one if you go to East Berlin. When we took that agrotour in Viñales, our guide (Fred) told us that the Cuban government sold these cars very cheaply to people who had done important work for the government. Until Raul took over in 2008, the only cars that citizens could legally sell to each other were the old American cars.

La guagua: This is the Cuban word for bus. It's a fun word to say (wah wah). People pack the buses and the long-distance buses and tourism buses too. Most of the guaguas are Chinese made.

There are other cars too: Mercedes from the 70s and 80s, and newer Korean cars like Kias and Hyundais.
And plenty of people were riding bikes.

There are a lot of ways to get around in Cuba. Some of them, like the old cars, have been working for decades. Others, like the horses and carts, have been working for centuries.

Cuban food

A meal in Cuba is either:
1. A sandwich - grilled, usually ham and cheese, or
2. A dinner of rice/rice and beans, fish or meat, some veggies and something fried, like plantains or potatoes.

If you get really crazy, you could eat some eggs and fruit for breakfast.
If you want a big variety of cuisine, Cuba is not the place for you. Basic restaurants have more basic versions of dishes 1 and 2. The fancy restaurant where we ate on Christmas Eve had fancier rice and beans with juicier meat. Both of these meals are tasty. I didn't get tired of them until the last day or two.

At our casas in Viñales and Cienfuegos we could eat in. The owners of the house would cook breakfast, dinner, or both for their guests. We soon starting eating only breakfast and dinner, because that was enough. Dinner, with all of the above plus soup and dessert, cost $8-12 per person. There was enough food for about 5 people. When I apologized to Lourdes, the owner of our Cienfuegos house, for not being able to finish, she explained that Cubans like to eat a lot - a lot of rice, beans, meat and potatoes, but not a lot of vegetables. Knowing that Cubans buy much of their food with ration cards, I guessed that she was not telling me the whole story. I just hoped someone could enjoy my leftovers.

Restaurants in Cuba are less reliable than home-cooked meals at the casas. Most restaurants are state-owned and designed for tourists and the food is pretty bad. In the mid-1990s, privately owned restaurants or paladars were legalized. The food we ate at paladars was much better, and the portions were still huge. Cubans themselves don't eat out much. It's too expensive. They do buy food on the street, like pizzas, sandwiches and fast food.

Drinks are easy, because there are not many choices. There is one brand of national soda - cola, lemon-lime or orange, two kinds of beer - lighter and not as light, and a variety of juice boxes. The prices for drinks are the same almost anywhere you go.

Some foods are hard to find in Cuba: milk, apples, tea, whole wheat bread. But we get plenty of those in Germany. Please pass me the black beans and the plantains.

La perla del sur

With another beautiful casa particular to stay in, we spent a few days in Cienfuegos. Its nickname is "la perla del sur" - the pearl of the South. It is one of the few in Cuba that was founded by French colonists.  The city overlooks a bay, also named Cienfuegos. With just 150,000 residents, it's a lot smaller than Havana and we could see most of the town while wandering.

In both Havana and Cienfuegos, I liked walking around in the evening. With all the lights on, it was easy to peek into peoples' houses. In many of them, even though the stucco was crumbling and the gates were rusted, inside I saw brightly painted walls, beautiful sofas and blinking Christmas trees. People had put their money into the parts of the house they used rather than the parts that people passing by could see. On the night before New Year's Eve, it seemed like the TV was on in every house we passed. The more I peeked in, the more I could tell that everyone in Cienfuegos was watching the same TV show. There are only five stations in Cuba, so this must happen often. DVD players are allowed, but cable and satellite channels are not. Few people have internet access - about 25% can use government-approved websites via slow and expensive connections, and only 5% have totally open internet access. We got back to the house and found that Lourdes and Jose, the owners of our house, were watching the same channel also. It was the new year episode of a goofy variety show, which is probably very funny. I wouldn't know; with all of the characters talking in funny voices, I could barely understand any of the dialog. We did see them roasting a pig and burning a scarecrow, which I will explain later.

Customs house (aduana) at the port in Cienfuegos

On the way, we went to Estadio 5 de septiembre, the baseball stadium. It is named for the battle that occured on September 5, 1957, between the armed forces of Batista's government and revolutionaries loyal to Fidel Castro. The revolutionaries won, making Cienfuegos the first "free" Cuban city under their control.

The stadium is home to the Cienfuegos Elefantes. Even though there were no games because of the all-star break, we wanted to take a look. That was easier than I expected - a security guard waved us over and asked if we wanted to go inside and take some photos. Sí, señor. The stadium seats 20,000 fans and tickets cost 1 peso for Cubans, which is about 4 cents. Foreigners pay a little more (like 5 pesos). MLB stars Yasiel Puig (LA Dodgers) and José Abreu (White Sox) got their start as Elefantes in Cienfuegos. When the security guard took us down to the dugout (yes, we got to stand in the dugout), an Elefante pitcher who had been throwing a ball around with some kids came over to say hello to us. And I learned that the Spanish word for dugout is... dugout.

Me with the giant elefante

Outside of the stadium, we saw a donkey eating some grass outside. I asked the security guard if we could give him something for his help. He smiled and shrugged bashfully. We gave him a tip - enough to buy tickets to several baseball games - and we had given him something to do besides watch a donkey munch on the lawn.

5 stars

Cuba has a very low crime rate, a very high literacy rate, and some of the best trained doctors in the world. What it does not have, however, are great toilets.

During our trip, I determined that there are 5 elements of a good bathroom. They add up to a 5 star ranking system of toilets:

1. The toilet flushes
2. Toilet paper is provided
3. Soap and water (or at least water) are available
4. A hand dryer or paper towels are available
5. The toilet seat is intact

Cuba is the 3rd or 4th country I have been to where you are not supposed to flush your toilet paper, but put it in the trash instead. The reason is that their sewage system is not strong enough to deal with all the paper. Once you get used to this, it's actually not so gross any more.

While Americans enjoy the freedom to use a public toilet for free just about anywhere, in Europe you often have to pay. The money is collected by a bathroom gatekeeper/cleaner. In German train stations, you just pay a machine. I personally think the fee is unnecessary, especially in Germany where water is cheap because we actually have too much of it.

In Cuba, though, the attendant usually earns her keep. At the same Havana corner bar with the juke box, there was a lady collecting coins outside the bathroom. This was what you'd call a 2 star toilet: there was toilet paper and soap, but no seat and a broken hand dryer. What's more, the toilet did not flush. So after each person finished, the attendant lady had to fill up a bucket of water that she could pour in the tank in order to pull the chain and make the toilet flush. When I went to use this 2 star toilet, it was occupied. The attendant lady told me to pull up a chair so I could sit while I waited. We started chatting and I talked to her for ten minutes about where I am from, what we had seen in Cuba, her job, her friends and her days off. After leaving the bathroom, I threw some coins on her tray and she filled up the bucket. I felt a little bad, like I should have been doing that myself.

Once our trip was over, it was nice to get back to high-powered plumbing again. I don't need to stay in 5 star hotels while traveling, but I do appreciate a 5 star toilet.

Bus to Cienfuegos

I may have mentioned in earlier posts that living in Germany does not prepare you to go anywhere else in the world. In Germany, the dogs don't bark, people wait for red lights, trains run on time. It's easy to forget that things don't work this way in most countries. As we left Viñales by bus, I remembered.

We sat on the bus with the other tourists for about 45 minutes before rolling out of town. The driver made an announcement: one passenger on the bus was not showing up in the computer system. So as the 15 year old computers warmed up and someone inside the office called Havana, our driver smoked cigarettes and the passengers waited. Once the bus finally pulled out, the air conditioning came on. The Germans on board, and the French, and the Spanish did not know what to do. They were cold. They shivered. They pulled out the coats they hadn't worn since leaving the airport. A girl in front of us put on a stocking cap and wrapped a scarf up to her eyeballs.

After picking a few people up on the side of the highway, we had a stop in Havana. The driver announced it would take 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, he said that we would leave in 5 more minutes. 40 minutes and half a pack of cigarettes later, he fired up the bus again and the Europeans pulled out their ski wear. We arrived in Cienfuegos 2 hours later than scheduled.

This was not Cuba's fault. Cuba works this way, and so do many other places in the world. It was Germany's fault, for giving me high expectations for punctuality and logistics (and quiet dogs). Thank you, USA, for at least preparing me for the air conditioning.

From the bus window: Socialism or death

Agrotour Viñales

We took a tour on horseback of the Valle del Silencio (Valley of Silence) outside the town of Viñales. Our tour guide is a friend of the couple who own the house we were staying in - the one with a balcony and great food. I cannot remember his name, but it started with an F so I will just call him Fred.

Fred is a farmer whose family has lived in the valley for generations. He told us that, before the Revolution began in 1959, the whole valley was owned by one man. All the farmers had to pay him high rents every year. After the Revolution, Castro imposed agrarian reforms, granting farm lands to those people who worked them. Fred's grandparents and aunts and uncles went from being share croppers to land owners almost overnight.

The crop most commonly grown in the valley is tobacco, the kind that is used to make the famous Cuban cigars. We stopped at a secador, a barn where the tobacco leaves are dried. The building has walls made of palm leaves, topped with a tin roof. If Cuban tobacco has an ad campaign, the man rolling cigars inside this secador would be the spokesman. He was like the Marlboro man of Cuba.

I know he is a man of few words, but in this case I would be the Marlboro man's interpreter.
He explained the process in Spanish and then I explained in English to Brian and the French couple sitting with us. Cuban Marlboro man told us about how the farmer starts the seedlings and selects the healthiest ones to plant in the field. Once he picks the leaves, he lets them dry in the secador, then sprays them with a mixture of honey, vanilla, cinnamon and rum and lets them ferment in a palm leaf box. Since tobacco is a cash crop, the farmers are required to sell 90% of their harvest to the government. The other 10% they can sell privately or keep for their own use.

Part of the reason Cuban tobacco is special is that it is organically grown. And not just tobacco - no chemical fertilizers or pesticides are used in Cuban farming at all. It's not because Cubans are on a health kick or trying to be more green. They didn't have a choice. When the USSR collapsed in the early 90s, Cuba lost most of its access to fertilizer, animal feed and pesticides. The Cuban scientists and academics went back in time, promoting traditional and sustainable methods of farming that had been effective long before chemicals were used. The effort has been a success, and is considered a model for sustainable agriculture on a large scale.

While the traditional ways of making fertilizer and pesticides are still effective, the traditional ways or working the land are not. Only the big, government-run farms have machinery. Small farmers still use hand-operated plows drawn by 2 oxen. We stopped to watch a farmer working his field. "With a tractor," Fred told us, "that would take 20 minutes. With a plow and oxen it takes 3 days."

He explained that the agriculture ministry has launched new programs to support farmers. In the past, they mostly cared about the cash crops - tobacco, sugar cane and coffee - grown on large farms. But since Cuba imports 60% of its food, the government has decided it's more cost-effective to support farmers growing foods like beans, corn and vegetables than to ship them in from somewhere else. Fred hopes that this government support will lead to more machinery like tractors for himself and his neighbors, Marlboro man included.

To Viñales

The day after Christmas, Brian and I headed to the bus terminal. We weren't going to catch a bus - we knew it was already full - but to take a taxi to Viñales. It still seems crazy to take a 100 mile taxi ride, but in Cuba it's easily done. It wasn't like a yellow cab with a ticking meter. Our taxi was a 10 year old Datsun with a cracked windshield, a wooden doorknob for a gear shift handle, and no seatbelts in the back. A pair of fuzzy dice would have made it just perfect.

The casa particular we had in Viñales was like the boutique hotel of casas. It was a new house with a big balcony, rooftop deck and gourmet meals.

Viñales is a little tourist town in a valley in the westernmost province of Cuba, Pinar del Rio. This area produces more tobacco than any other single region in the world, and the best of it, at least according to people who live there, is grown in Viñales. There are no big hotels here, but every other house rents out rooms to visitors who come to enjoy the outdoors. Tourists and locals don't really interact in Viñales, but seem to happily coexist. 

We thought we'd enjoy a quiet stop after Havana, but the street was full of horse carts, classic cars, farmers towing vegetables on their bikes, huge tour buses and women walking under umbrellas to stay out of the sun. And there were taxis, too, in various states of repair. Maybe some had fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror.

No hay

In Cuba, sometimes things just run out. It's not like in Germany, where the nearest supermarket runs out of canned tomatoes so you just find them somewhere else. In Cuba, maybe there just isn't any.

In Spanish, you say "no hay." It means, "there isn't." It's not 'no hay' for today, or 'no hay' at this location, please try one of our other branches. It's just 'no hay.

I first learned this concept from my Cuban friend Surama. She told me that Christmas Eve dinner in Cuba is usually made with pork if there is any, and when there isn't any pork, then with eggs instead. When we gave Surama's mom a huge jar of Nutella, she explained that Nutella is hard to find and expensive in Cuba. She also said that at the moment, there just isn't any. We stopped at a restaurant in Vedado, Havana,  to hear some music and rest our feet. I read the 3 page menu and tried to order an omelette. No hay. How about french fries? No hay.
"Ok," I told the waitress, "what do you have?" Sandwiches, she said. So I ordered a cheese sandwich.

In Viñales, our house had a rooftop patio with a view of the mountains. It was the perfect place to watch the sunset and drink a beer. I went to buy some in town. I asked at the grocery store, the bar, the other bar, and at the convenience store.  In every place, I got the same answer: "No hay." The whole town was out of beer, until the distributor's truck came by again. I am from the country of "whatever you want you can get it, in mega-economy size, probably 24 hours a day, possibly delivered to your door". This 'no hay' concept was foreign to me.

Cubans receive ration cards that allow them to buy certain amounts of certain foods at low, subsidized prices. People can also purchase food in addition of these ration amounts, at different prices. Several times during our trip, I saw people lining up at the butcher shop; the ham had just come in. Of course, products are also available on the black market and in stores with prices in CUCs.
But sometimes, no matter where you try to buy something, 'no hay'.

There's money, and then there's money

Cuba has two currencies: the Cuban, or national, peso, and the convertible peso, which is commonly called the CUC.

Why two currencies? After the Soviet Union fell, Cuba was short on hard currency. I am not an economist but I think "hard" currency translates as money that is worth anything, especially for international trade. That led Fidel Castro, in 1993, to legalize us of the U.S. dollar as currency in Cuba. About a year later, the dollar was replaced by a new kind of money: the CUC. The ultimate plan is get back to a single currency in the future, but that's complicated. Imagine working at a bank in Cuba.
If you are interested in the financial issues, this article from The Economist is worth a read.

What the two-money system means is that Cubans who work for the state, which is most people, are paid in pesos. Imported items and consumer goods are bought with CUCs. There are about 24 pesos to 1 CUC, which is worth almost exactly 1 US dollar. Consequently, people who don't work for the state, like taxi drivers and waiters, earn CUCs make a lot more money than various professionals. The average monthly wage is Cuba is about $22. We spent more than that on dinner. Doctors' salaries were recently raised to $67 per month. Gas, on the other hand, cost about $1 per liter (roughly $4/gallon).

Since hotels, restaurants and taxis all take CUCs, that's the money that tourists use. It creates kind of an economic segregation, since there are places where you just can't buy things - you can't take the local bus, can't buy from certain stores, etc. There are places that take both pesos and CUCs, more and more of them, I learned, as Cuba works toward a single currency.  I had two experiences with this. The first was at the coffee shop in a Havana hotel where we stopped for breakfast. The prices on the sign were in pesos, but since we didn't have any, I asked if they would also accept CUCs. They did, and the cashier dug out her calculator to convert a precise exchange rate of 24 to 1. Our pastries, juices and a sandwich added up to just over $2. The other experience was buying pizza on the street in Viñales. A pizza priced, in pesos, at the equivalent of 75 cents ended up costing about $5 in CUCs. This is what you'd call the dirty tourist inflation rate.

This system has the benefit of protecting Cubans from running out of stuff. As you'll read in my next post, products are often not available in Cuba. Imagine if some tourist, or a Cuban expat, were to walk into the pharmacy and use CUCs to buy up all the cheap medicine. The ones we passed all had 2 or 3 bottles of everything, securely displayed behind the counter. What if some foreigner bought up all the cheap shoes or all the available tools at the hardware store?

I didn't like being excluded from buying whatever I wanted, wherever I wanted to buy it. I grew up in capitalism, and therefore have a right to purchasing power. We could have converted some CUCs to pesos and rode around on the city bus or bought a cheaper pizza. But what would that have accomplished? Would it have satisfied our desire to be morally superior tourists? Maybe we weren't riding around on a tour bus with an English-speaking guide, but we were just as foreign as the rest of them. Getting a few pesos in my pocket wasn't going to change that. And even with the dirty tourist inflation rate, nothing in Cuba was very expensive for us.

Last night in Havana

Havana sounds like a woman's name. She is beautiful, but past her prime. There are wrinkles around her red lipstick smile, and her tight dress is a little faded. She still can dance the salsa.


We had a good last night in Havana. We had wandered into Vedado, which used to be the fanciest neighborhood in the city and even after the Revolution is home to its swankiest hotels. While much of Havana is stuck in the 1860s, Vedado is stuck in the 1960s.

This looks like it should be the sign for a roller rink

 We found a live band playing at a restaurant with more staff than customers, and stopped there for a while. As the sun was going down, we caught a taxi back to the city center and walked into a little bar we'd spotted on the corner. It had a juke box inside. I still don't know what the bar was called, but we sat for a while spotting all the classic cars passing by. 


We also watched a slide show playing inside the bar, of old photos of Havana from the 20s and 30s. She was beautiful then. Her buildings sparkled, as shiny cars and streetcars and men in white hats filled the streets. There were big department stores and ads for Walworth's and Coca-Cola. All of that is gone now.


Then we had dinner at a paladar, one of those private restaurants that are part of someone's home. This one was all colorful and lit up for Christmas. The family was playing a board game in a room behind the kitchen.

With help from the Pope and the Canadians, Obama and Castro are starting to repair their countries' relationship and allow more commerce. I wonder how Havana will change. While people around Cuba wanted to talk about it as soon as they heard we were from the U.S., I got the most honest answer from the waiter at that corner bar. "How is it going to be?" I asked, "better or worse?" "We don't know yet," he said.


More tourists could come to his bar, paying higher prices and leaving bigger tips. Or the corner bar, the paladar restaurant and other tiny private businesses could be choked out by Starbucks and McDonald's. Or maybe the new American tourists will stay in their hotels and resorts and not even come to this part of town. It all depends on what the Cuban government allows to happen.


Will Havana get a makeover? Or will she fade away?

Puros

Cigars, puros, tabaco, habanos... they all mean the same thing. And Cuba is famous for them. In Havana we cut a deal with a man selling cigars. He found us near the cathedral in the old town, and wanted us to come to his restaurant. When I said we'd already eaten, he dropped his voice to a whisper and asked if we'd like to buy some cigars. It wasn't the first offer we'd gotten. But we were trying to play it cool, to not buy them from just anyone, to show these guys we were savvy. I speak Spanish and my husband knows about cigars. As a team, we couldn't be beat. At least we felt that way as the guy from the restaurant, whose name is Nene, led us down the street and around the corner to his cousin's apartment. The cousin took us into the bedroom where he pulled out a crate full of high-end cigars and laid each box out on the bed. Brian sniffed them, Nene described them, I interpreted, we all talked in soft voices and I tried to play it cool. Which I'm sure I didn't. Playing it cool is not my strong suit. But it worked, anyway. Brian got a small box to take on our travels and we agreed on a price and a date to come back and buy more before we returned to Germany.


The cigars were most likely stolen, though we heard stories too about certain days of the year when tobacco factory workers could buy them cheap, or that they got coupons to cash in for boxes for personal use. Either way, we got the cigars at rock-bottom prices while Nene and the guy selling them made some decent money. I guess the government lost out. As we stuffed the cigar box into a bag which I shoved in my purse, I felt like we'd had a very Cuban experience. In a place where the black market thrives, buying the cigars from a store would just be... inauthentic.

Noche Buena

I have spent Christmas Eves in different ways. Until this year, I have never spent it at a communist monument in a rainstorm and waiting in line for a bus ticket.

We visited Plaza de la Revolucion. This is the place where Fidel Castro used to speak to the masses. He could look at his own larger-than-life image while he spoke to crowds on the big parking lot below. Now Fidel's brother Raul does the talking, from the same perch on the José Martí monument. Martí was not only a politician but also a poet, intellectual, exile and author. He led the charge to Cuban independence from Spain in the late 1800s. We headed to the Martí museum to escape the thunderstorm, and only afterward learned that we were supposed to pay to get in.

Fidel, looking a little like Jesus

Brian and Che

José Martí monument

Next we went to the bus terminal to book tickets in advance on Viazul. There are actually two long distance bus companies in Cuba, but the other one is for Cubans only. That means Viazul is for tourists. We had planned to take it to our next destinations in Cuba. Instead, Cuba happened to us.

The line for tickets began at a small desk with one cashier, and it stretched across the room and curled around the corner. In the one hour and 45 minutes that I waited, I had time to make a few observations. The single cashier, a big woman with a mustache and a sparkly headband, grunted a little as she typed travel details into the computer. Meanwhile, two ladies sat at the information desk, talking on the phone or just looking bored. Off to the side, another Viazul employee sat at a desk with customer s for ages and ages, doing something complex, like booking VIP bus tickets maybe, or doing their taxes. After standing there about an hour, I learned that the first bus we wanted to take, the one to Viñales, was sold out. But I had waited long enough and Viazul would not defeat me. I could see the glitter on the cashier's headband in the distance, and we still needed tickets for the second leg of the trip. I hadn't eaten or drank anything all day but I would wait out the Germans, the Russians and Argentines and make it to the front of the line. When I got there, the cashier made a few grunts and fired up her 1993-era printer until I got what I came for.

While communism rules inside Viazul, free enterprise was at work outside the terminal. A throng of taxi drivers offered to take us anywhere we liked, including the two and a half hour drive to Viñales. We'd be back to see them in a couple of days.

We wrapped up the day with dinner at the restaurant where Uncle Tony's band was playing. It is a private restaurant, as opposed to a state-owned restaurant. The private restaurants, only legal within the last 10 years, are called paladars and are often built into peoples' homes. This one was on a dark, narrow street in Old Havana, with crumbled pavement and huge puddles from that morning's storm. Inside there were white tablecloths and candle light and gourmet food. And there was Tony's band to play for us.

We wrapped up Christmas Eve with 11pm mass at the cathedral. Christmas was officially abolished in Cuba for 30 years. Fidel, a Carribean Grinch, declared that it would be banned in 1969 because the day off interfered with the sugar cane harvest (you could also speculate on what Castro's attitude toward the Church had to do with it). It was reinstated in 1998. On Christmas Eve, Noche Buena, people had parties. Music played, kids were out in the streets, people walked home carefully holding big fancy cakes. At the cathedral, we expected some tourists and a few old ladies who could remember Christmas from before the Revolution. What we found was as a spectacle, a free-for-all, a circus. Throngs of locals, tourists, people in fancy dresses and people in tattered jeans, all coming and going and taking photos. They got up in the middle of mass, switched seats, had conversations, walked out. We were all sweating in the stifling air of the church as the choir sang "Walking in a Winter Wonderland." There were flashing, traveling Christmas lights on the trees beside the altar. The bishop said mass, and his entourage of priests and altar boys were oblivious, cooled by a fan on the altar and veiled by a cloud of incense smoke. Going up to communion felt like running for a life boat. There was shoving and weaving and stepping on toes. After about 90 minutes, the bishop processed out holding a statue of baby Jesus to place in the manger outside, under a few strings of flashing lights. Everyone cheered.

On Christmas Day, stores were open and people were out. It felt like a Sunday. The bread man took the day off. The rooster did not. Was Fidel or anyone in the Castro family celebrating? Who knows.