Once again I decided to go with a group of young adults (24-35) on a round trip to explore a country. Though one group member somehow "mixed up" the age limit and turned out to be 52. Remember how cool it was to go on holidays with your parents? Yeah...
None the less the group was pretty fun. Especially since 4 of them had the same idea of bringing a bluetooth box to Cuba which allowed us to basically party everywhere. And boy did we take advantage of that. Even while waiting for boarding of our return flight to Germany we were listening to some German party music (Ballermann... sic!). That made the co-pilot come over to us and ask us to please also play that in the airplane. Some alcohol may have been involved in this story... hopefully only on our side. Other great locations to have a party at included hotel pools, beaches, the bus and definitely any kind of elevator.
The good thing about bluetooth boxes is that they are independent of the public electricity grid which in Cuba is... as reliable as... promises from Donald Trump? For the first time in my life I had a blackout in a club. No, I'm not referring to me getting drunk. Fun fact: The club was within a cave which made for a great atmosphere. Based on the statements of the Cubans this was the first time this happened in yeeeeeaaaaaaars. Let's say it wasn't the only outage I experienced within the two weeks. One of them came at a particular inopportune timing. It was the night my stomach decided to go full Cuban on me and due to the lack of electricity there wasn't any running water either. Let's skip the details.
Talking about the group there are some people that need to be singled out. For one there was this kinda crazy girl that was loud, always wanted to dance, couldn't sing but sang along, stepped into every pile of poo and didn't know what a camel toe is. As marrying is free in Cuba and birds of a feather flock together we obviously got married. Luckily divorces are also only 50 cents so we could afford to part at the end of the vacation. (For those of you who don't know my humor... no, I didn't get married.)
Another person to single out was our guide. A former swimsuit model who still is reluctant to wearing anything else than a speedo for sunbathing/swimming. That's for the girls to judge. Especially the Brazilian speedo always caught a lot of attention. But being the center of attention must have been his goal. Why else would he made me study a dance choreography at the hotel pool in front of everyone? Let's face it... I'm missing the extra vertebra the latinos have in their spine to move their hips that way. Still some tourists took pictures/videos.
His German was very decent and he loved to learn new idioms so we thought him important things like detecting fake praise (ganz nett) and "getting one off" (einen von der Palme wedeln). He was actually able to use those along the trip...
Getting back to dancing the tour organizer had a very specific plan. Make the Germans have a salsa class at the beginning of the trip so they can use their skills throughout the journey. That didn't work.... go figure! I think most of us learned to never try salsa again. Personally I also experienced that mastery of salsa is reached if you manage to dance and pull down your skirt every 60-90 seconds without missing a beat. From an engineering perspective it might not have been an appropriate dress for the activity. From a different angle it might have been just perfect.
But let's talk a little more Cuba. By that I mean let's talk about Socialism. It's a well known fact that Cuba isn't the place for foodies or food journeys. Following Ford's idea that you can have your car in any color as long as the color is black you can eat whatever you want in Cuba as long as it is made of pork, rice and beans. Our guide made it a habit to ask the waitress what's available rather than looking at the menu. Due to the situation in Venezuela especially chicken seemed to be hard to get. At least you saw long queues in front of supermarkets that actually offered chicken from time to time. In general the selection in some supermarkets was quite limited. Think of the German Democratic Republic but with tropical fruits.
The one thing they always had enough of is vitamin R (as in rum). No matter how cracked up the tiles on the floor, how broken the air condition, how empty the shelfs.... the rum section was bursting with Havanna Club. Hey... I'm not complaining! As a wise man once said "drinking rum before 10am makes you a pirate not an alcoholic".
The one place I recognized true Socialism in Cuba was the motorways. You can meet anyone and anything on a freeway: Trucks, busses, cars, bicycles, horses and even pedestrians. Everyone and everything is the same out there. For some odd reason the speed limit is lower than the one in Germany though...
Other areas Cuba exceeded in are night guards. While you can't get anyone to order a drink in a bar the night guard shows up as soon as you go skinny dipping in the pool after midnight. Anyways the definition of skinny dipping within the group included underwear which doesn't make much sense as the German translation actually involves the word "nude". But who am I to judge what nude means?
But next to all the other things I have mentioned so far and next to rum&cigars Cuba is mainly about one thing: The revolutions. They did no have one, they did no have two... no, they did have three of them and they like to remind everyone of that. But let's skip the revolutions against the Spanish occupation and jump directly to Fidel and Che.
It was one of Adidas' best marketing moves to win Fidel as an influencer because although there are very little brand stores in Cuba you could find an Adidas outlet in almost every city. Imagine... all that happened without Instagram! All it took was getting Fidel some Adidas training gear for his TV appearances.
Che wasn't that much into marketing so it's even more surprising that he got his own mausoleum while Fidel is buried beneath a (hand-picked!) stone. It is one of the coldest places in Cuba (referring to the temperature) and also one of the most serious. While the whole island is about music, dancing, rum and good vibes at this place they even "shhhhhht" you for talking just a hint too loud for their taste. We almost didn't go there because one thing is even more important in Cuba than the revolution: Not working during or after rain! We're talking about a building with a roof being closed because it rained an hour before...
One more story to prove how peaceful Cuba is. Two girls of our group were dancing with some Cuban guys and felt a little annoyed by a stalker from our group. So they asked their guys to do something about it. While in Germany this could end up in a confrontation and a bar fight they had a way more peaceful solution. Finding a hooker and asking her to take care of the stalker. Classic win-win.
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