But it’s time to begin. I stayed there for nine days, and traveled there legally as a journalist. I’m working on an article or two that I’ll link to here once they’re online, but for now I’m posting some of my thoughts on Cuba, her people, infrastructure, services, and state of life.

The following is part basic impressions, part blow-by-blow description, and part diary.

The Capitolio was built in the 1920s, modeled after the U.S. Capitol, and housed the Cuban Senate and House of Representatives.

Havana

You’ll find plenty of neo-classical and art deco architecture in the capital city, and much of the city’s design is Spanish-influenced. Like much of the island, Havana has seen better days. For every building in decent repair, there are five more in very poor shape. You’ll find yourself amidst mediocre main road ways, poor alleys, dysfunctional sidewalks (often with open pipe holes, or large chunks of concrete missing), all surrounded by a generally crumbling city.

Much is made of various restoration projects going on in Havana, some funded by outside entities or governments, like the European Union. But one gets the sense of a band-aid being applied to a gunshot wound.

What I found striking about Havana was that the material poverty of the Cuban people seemed somehow more heinous here — thanks to the shadow of a once functioning city — than I imagine it feeling in a nation that has never known proper civilization.

The average Cuban earns between $15-20 per month, which is worse than many African nations. But the city is evidence of a nation that once commanded industry and wealth — little of its architecture or infrastructure would have otherwise been built — and so Havana is in many ways a bittersweet experience, for the Cuban people are truly a Christian people, but the opportunity possible for them is … limited.

Havana is home to some 2.5 million, but lacking in even a single hardware store. I don’t mean to convey a sense of the city as anything other than grand, surreal, and humbling, but the lasting impression of Havana to me is a place of great potential, a once great past, and of extreme present dysfunction.

Santa Clara

Santa Clara was the place that felt most like home, and was the place where I felt most content, during the trip. The city itself is a pleasant one, if not terribly remarkable, other than for being the site of a pivotal battle against Batista’s military during the revolution (Che and a crew of boys derailed a train), and later a home to Guevara’s mausoleum.

The “home” factor: it was here that we met up with two friends from home who were traveling across Cuba, and who spent more than six weeks there from June-August. Knowing no Spanish ourselves, being with the girls was a God-send (they spoke it fluently).

We stayed with them in the casa they were renting (for $25/night total), and so got our first taste of the “real” Cuba: living with a family, speaking (via interpreter) to a casa owner with whom we developed bonds of affection after wide-ranging and candid conversation on everything from the future of the Revolution, his hopes for his children, gays and transsexuals in Cuba, and medical care and education.

We were here partly to meet up with the girls and partly to experience Revolution Day (more on this below), but it was here that I became closest to Cuba.

A map of the three cities we visited.

Trinidad

We traveled by vintage, and well maintained Chevrolet from Santa Clara to Trinidad. Traveling from the north to south gave us a beautiful sense of the island’s rolling hills and valleys, and its people (many of whom walked along the “highways”). Our drivers spoke only Spanish (like most), making our ride pleasantly silent, excepting the roar of the elderly engine.

Our casa friend from Santa Clara had arranged us a place in Trinidad in the heart of the old, cobblestone town. Trinidad was starkly different from Havana and Santa Clara, due partly to its much smaller size (approx. 70,000). After a few days with the girls, being able to carry on in English and enjoy time with familiar faces, Trinidad represented a step back to our naturally disabled social abilities.

Communicating with our casa owner was a challenge, as she spoke no English. Hand motions helped win us three delicious meals, and in paying our bill ($109 total for three nights, three meals, and two beds).

In Trinidad we saw more of the rural and agrarian soul of Cuba, spending many hours on horseback, riding through jungle conditions across mountains, through a valley, and to a swimming hole. We spent a night with Europeans and some Cubans at Disco Ayala, a bar/club located underground, in an ancient cave. ($3 cover charge.)

We toured a church that, fittingly for Castro, had been converted to another use: military museum. It housed the shell of the engine of the U-2 spy plane shot down in the ’60s, precipitating the Cuban missile crisis. There was no protective glass. To run my hands along the blue-and-white painted metal was humbling. (I could have even broken a piece off to take home — there were no guards.)

But Trinidad, despite its pleasures, was also the most troublesome. Its cobblestone streets made days here worse than trekking through excavated Pompeii. The slum-conditions of many of the people here was more pronounced than elsewhere, though walking amongst them even past midnight rarely warranted a sense of unease.

Money

For a decade now, Cuba has maintained two separate and distinct currencies. The national currency, created for use by Cubans themselves, is debased. Cuban Convertible Pesos (CUC, pronounced “kooks”) is the tourist/foreign currency, and it’s pegged to the U.S. dollar.

The rate of exchange is 1 CUC for 24 Cuban national pesos. As such, the economy has been fractured, and in essence has resulted in a de facto economic apartheid for Cubans. Due to the demand for CUCs by Cubans is great, and tips are frequently sought. Outright begging is very rare — only seen once in nine days. Cubans have retained a certain pride despite their poverty.

A Viazul tourist bus in Trinidad. These are made in China.

Transportation

Tourism is still a relatively new concept for Cubans, and the idea that transportation should be readily available remains foreign. Part of this is due to a physical lack of buses. Cuban buses are different from tourist buses, and much cheaper. Cuban buses are jam packed, always, and not air conditioned.

Viazul, the company that runs tourist buses, does a better job, with air conditioned coaches mainly from China. Trips themselves are cheaper than Greyhound, but every trip takes hours longer than expected, partly due to a lack of a real highway system, and partly because bus drives tend to stop frequently to chat with friends by the road, haggle for roadside fruits, and generally ease their feet.

Private cars (illegal) and taxis can be rented for long-distance travel. We traveled from Havana to Santa Clara, and then on to Trinidad, by taxi ($189 for 2-3 hour trip on Soviet-built highway), and then by private car ($50 for a 4 hour trip in a beautifully maintained 1950s Chevrolet).

Cuba also has a train, built by Milton Hershey in the early part of the 20th century to facilitate his sugar business. We tried to take the train, but were actively dissuaded by more than one person, and turned away at the train station in Havana.

It’s the only island in the Caribbean to have a train, largely due to its enormous size (the equivalent of Philadelphia to Saint Louis from east to west.)

Tourism

I’ve touched on this a bit, but one of the outcomes of foreigners in the country with significantly more cash than Cubans are used to is a high presence of hustlers, known as jinetaros. Jinetaros are relentless, and worse than anything you’ve had to deal with, probably ever before, in terms of street hustlers. They will follow you sometimes for multiple blocks, beginning typically with, “My fren, my fren, where you from?” Their goal is to get you to stop, and once you do, only the most iron willed will typically be able to extract themselves. They’ll want to refer you to a restaurant, a cigar dealer, girls (either at clubs or prostitutes), and any variety of services. They’ll take a cut of whatever (very inflated) prices you’ll end up paying at your destination.

Aside from this hazard, which quickly becomes one of the most depressing and infuriating aspects of life in Cuba for a foreigner, there are 1-2 tourism agencies (at least one foreign owned) to assist with travel, sightsee, horseback ride, etc. Our experiences were mixed. One really great woman, know spoke English fluently (only person in nine days), but others knew very little, or were not able to provide services quickly and efficiently. We walked out of at least one place as a result of tedious delays.

Europeans

Europeans were everywhere. Americans, of course, cannot travel to Cuba thanks to the economic embargo on the Communist island (though about 100,000 travel there illegally each year anyway). Europeans represented probably above 95% of the tourists we saw there, and most of them seemed to be having a genuinely good time. I resented them, in a sense, for the lack of attendant political-social baggage in their experience of Cuba.

Revolution Day

We were fortunate to be in Cuba for Revolution Day, the Cuban equivalent of our Fourth of July. “26 Julio” flags hung from hundreds of windows, on homes, an along thoroughfares in Havana and Santa Clara. I speculated that most of the flags were probably placed on government buildings or homes with citizens on government payroll.

We stayed in one of Santa Clara’s “casas particulares”, private homes licensed by the government as bed and breakfasts for tourists. Casas owners represent a middle class, and while they benefit from the hard currency tourists bring, they also must pay a monthly tax (of, I believe, roughly $300) to the government. We awoke at 3am on the morning of July 26, heading out in order to get prime standing spots for the speeches.

The events themselves, which began around 7am, were surreal. Things opened with a martial and Soviet-reminiscent series of marches and parading on a raised platform where speeches would take place, on Che Guevara’s mausoleum site, with his AK-47 brandishing statue towering over the crowd of some 20,000.

Raul Castro did not speak (I was told this was the first time since the Revolution that neither Castro brother delivered remarks), but other government functionaries — as well as an interloper from Venezuela — spoke at great length.

They focused their remarks on the accomplishments of Cuban Socialist-Communism (cited mainly as health care and education/literacy), the need to persevere in their socialist project, and the evils of the global American empire (in this respect, adventurism in Vietnam and lust for Iraq were two examples cited). The Venezuelan guest speaker spoke of his people being undying “brothers” with Cubans, focusing on the importance of forging an alternate path to the future, and resisting “imperial Yanqui” dominance.

(A joke I’ve heard: “Revolution Day: A celebration of the day Cuba went from one of the richest nations in Latin America to one of the poorest.”)

Afterward, we walked up and saw Guevara’s mausoleum site close-up, though the crypt itself was sealed over security concerns. We had been standing for some 5-6 hours straight in what was the tightest crowd I had ever experienced, and after we arrived back at our casa, we slept, exhausted, for many hours.

I’ll say this about Revolution Day: despite the crowd turnout and despite the speeches, “tepid” characterizes the overall atmosphere. It seemed most were interested in seeing their leaders, and simply in escaping the norm. In between the frequent cheers of “Viva Fidel” (as well as other “vivas” for Raul, Cuba, Socialism, etc.), applause was somewhere between that of an American baseball match, but certainly below a football stadium.

What this says about the health of the Revolution, and the enduring spirit of its principles in the hearts of the Cuban people, if anything, is worth pondering.

Technology

Cubans have only recently been allowed to own cell phones, though the cost (about $100, not including service) remains impossibly prohibitive. Internet costs about $10 per hour, making this also a great luxury, the equivalent of a month’s salary for some. Basic landlines telephones exist in some homes, and public telephones can be found more readily than in America.

There are no digital billboards (no billboards, period) and very little automation (our British-owned Hotel Saratoga in Havana was using very old single laptops to manage customers). In most of the cars we rode in, speedometers failed to function. I saw no one else with an iPhone — let alone a smartphone — in nine days.

Despite trade and tourism with most of the world, this was the only ATM I saw in nine days.

U.S. Embargo

One’s regard for America’s economic embargo is typically intellectual, political, or visceral. Going in, I was swayed by competing persuasions. Having traveled there, I maintain, primarily, a visceral sense of the injustice of a people strangled by their own inability to engage in free enterprise amongst themselves.

The embargo, in terms of its primary aim — to isolate and asphyxiate the Communist regime — has been an unqualified failure. In this sense, the embargo should be re-examined. And yet Cuba has survived despite lack of U.S. trade, which represented some 80% of all trade before 1960. (The Soviet Union replaced us, with Cuban-Soviet trade hovering around a similar 75%.)

My beach chair in Trinidad was made in Spain. The bus we rode on in China. The 1950s Chevy, of course, in America. The hotel repaired with British wealth, and another thanks to the French. The EU was redeveloping buildings. France has donated train cars.

And yet Cuba remains mired in dysfunction and chaos, because its underlying political premise — central economic control and management by a self-appointed oligarchy — distorts and defeats the limited enterprise allowed there.

Perhaps a flood of U.S. trade would change things. But the risk of it serving to ensure the continued reign of the Communist apparatus would represent a social evil so great as to make taking the chance not worth the cost.

Without concrete economic concessions, it’s difficult to imagine a way to ease or life our embargo without guaranteeing money and support for the regime, despite the marginal improvements Cubans themselves might experience.

If existing trade with the rest of the world has not resulted in a decent life for Cuba’s people after the collapse of the “socialist market” (Soviet Union), it’s difficult to imagine additional U.S. trade serving as a tipping point.

What can be done so long as Fidel remains intractable?

State of Life

I am severely under-qualified to speak authoritatively on the state of life for contemporary Cubans. I do not speak their language, and I lived among them only briefly. I’ll do my best to speak to what I witnessed.

Cubans make do. One of the enduring mental images is of Cubans passing time in their front rooms, TVs on, state-run news rolling, impassive glances toward me passing by on the street.

I picked up a book in Trinidad, published in Havana, called, “Cuba in the 21st Century: Realities and Perspectives” that talks about Castro’s success in eradicating unemployment. Employment might be universal, but only if dabbler and dilettante are considered professions.

Cubans waiting to receive their rationed goods. Shelves are not well stocked.

Two things I liked in Cuba were digital clocks on stop lights that counted down the time until the light turned, and signs on roadways warning of upcoming police speed checks. (While the latter seems to defeat the purpose, it’s safe to assume the police aren’t losing commissions.)

Cigarettes in Cuba were one of the more shocking differences from America. Cuba has no sin taxes on its tobacco, so the packs averaged 90 cents. Legal liability culture has not yet infected the nation, which made daily life feel much more human than is often felt in the U.S.

For instance: Hotel windows opened (you could feel a breeze and hear the city as you worked). Vehicle emissions are unregulated, meaning a more varied smell. Food had distinct — distinct — tastes. (No FDA.) Horses could be ridden for hours for only $20. Stray dogs roamed streets freely in every city, and only rarely got into fights with one another. (Downside: most were starving, some dead on sidewalks.)

Service was poor, almost universally. Long delays, followed by glacially paced response times for basic requests like currency exchange or bus trips.

The people, on the whole, lived aware, on some level, of what they’re being excluded from in the wider world (a Cuban must obtain a “white card” to travel abroad). Others seemed to get most of their news from state-run sources with questionable integrity.

Once, upon hearing we were from New York (for fun, we came up with various home cities, including Toronto, Miami, and Detriot), one jinetaro joked about walking down streets and worrying about, “bang, bang!” as he put it. Others praised Obama, asking if we agreed (what could be said?).

Cuban culture is rich across the board, from cuisine to poetry, painting to music, and the spirit that gives rise to that culture remains strong, albeit repressed. We heard of parents expressing hope for change so that their children might have a chance at a life outside Cuba.

For most Cubans, it seems like the challenge is how to plod on in an existence based on rationing and restriction. Monthly rations are pitiable (a few pounds of meat, a dozen eggs, etc.), and ration centers were chronically understocked.

Che Guevara was everywhere. Almost literally everywhere. From brick wall murals to government billboards and t-shirts to monuments, his image was impossible to escape. One can’t help but think how fortuitous his martyr’s death in Bolivia has been to Fidel Castro’s propaganda machine.

Final Thoughts

I first began seriously considering a trip to Cuba last fall. After considerable research into the logistics and legality of a U.S. citizen visiting the embargoed Communist holdout, the trip became a must-do.

To travel, experience, and interact with a people who have lived a very different way of life from their neighbors 90 miles to the north was an attractive adventure.

Near the Malecón in Havana, twilight approaches.

And with Fidel Castro and his Communist-Socialist experiment still in place (despite his brother’s rumored efforts at a glasnost and pestroika of his own), feeling Cuba before its (let us pray) re-emergence as a first-world nation became a priority.

Cuba is a complicated nation, and no denunciations of the ills of Communism or socialism can adequately convey the peculiarities of the island nation in 2010. It’s said that the first question a Cuban asks himself in the morning is, “What will I eat today?”

For a young American, used to a much more automated, mechanized, service-oriented (and thus comfortable) way of life, nine days in Castro’s Cuba are physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally exhausting. The Christian will find he must accept a perverse standard as default, and witness a people without concrete expectation for anything better than an almost total cultural ghettoization.

Cuba is a nation stuck between eras. Despite the enormous social evil of a people unable to engage in even basic rights of speech, property, and movement, there remains great tenderness and spirit.

I think of my time there daily, and recall the faces of tan-faced children peering tentatively out barred-up windows, waiting for a rain shower to pass. Of packs of jinetaros waiting for the latest unsuspecting traveler. Of Alejandra, a casa owner, single with four children. Of a broken people who retain pride enough amidst shared want to forgo outright begging.

Of a bent old man pushing through Havana, twilight’s glow fading to black, struggling silently with his canine companion and a single candle, Diogenes-like, searching, perhaps, for signs of a more righteous future for his people.

N.B. — I took approximately 2,000 photos and a few dozen videos in Cuba, most of which are available at my Flickr gallery. There are specific albums for Havana, Santa Clara, and Trinidad, as well as a “Cuba At A Glance” album, featuring 35 selected photos and 10 short videos.

these are the sentiments you are supposed to experience when you come back from africa. reverse culture shock: economic shock. the change from poverty to wealth, i was told, is harder than the other way around, than adjusting to the difficulties and trials of life in africa. you return only to feel the people you left behind are somehow more real, more deserving of the good things we have than we are, we who so thoughtlessly have them each day and night.

that’s what you feel when you come back from africa. reverse culture shock. do i? no.

…

in part it’s been like winters in south dakota, winters where no one wants to be outdoors, out of heating, but at times you must. and at those times no matter how much you bundle up, you are going to get cold. and you are going to curse the cold and wish you were back inside and generally be fairly uncomfortable for a time. and then, at some point, you’ll have been cold for so long that it becomes the normal state of being, and while it’s still deplorable, it’s not really on the front burner of your mind, and you go on doing the rest of whatever it is you need to do outside, still remembering somewhere how nice it will be to go indoors.

and then you do, and that’s what coming back from africa has been like for me. not a culture shock–this is where i grew up, after all, and being from somewhere is a little like riding a bicycle, though if you spend long enough away it’s bound to be a little unfamiliar. you don’t forget your home. what you do forget–or what you maybe never noticed–is how nice it is to be home, like you notice it coming indoors after a half hour or more outside in the snow and wind: how nice it is to take off your coat, your shoes, shiver a little bit as the cold air shakes out of your hair and you get warm again, comfortable.

coming back to america has been a little like that for me.

For the ardent traveler, the book constitutes required reading. The following is an excerpted passage that crystallizes beautifully and viscerally the joys of shared kinship; that bonhomie, that sort of adventurist ecstasy that one feels upon the start of a new journey.

For full effect, enjoy this slowly and delicately.

The wine was poured, we were on course. The wind was from the east at about twelve knots. The sun was sinking, over there to the left, in the general direction of Puerto Rico. Suddenly the babbling stopped, almost as if we had all been following the instructions of an orchestra leader; we heard only the lap-lap of the waves, patting firmly the headstrong hull of our ketch, white-gold in the falling light, the surrounding water turned now a viridian blue, oddly diaphanous, St. Thomas receding astern. No one spoke.

It is a period, I have found, that almost always comes, choosing its own rhythmic moment – the moment when, collectively, everyone on board recognizes that a journey has truly begun. Up there, toward which we are pointing, a thousand miles away, is a tiny little coral island. The object is to reach it, to arrive there without injury to ourselves or to our vessel. No one formally proposed a toast, but looking about – at Tony, with his floppy white hat so carefully tilted to shield his sun-sensitive face from those final ultraviolet shafts; at Dick with his jaunty captain’s hat, reluctantly putting on his shirt as he yielded to the demands of lowering temperature; Van, hatless, with his light blue crew-necked sweater, squinting at that morning’s New York Times, glass in hand; Reggie carefully screwing back the holding flange on the speedometer; Christopher, snapping away with an anfractuous photographic apparatus at the setting sun – I guess that we were all thinking related thoughts.

….

Related: While aboard that voyage on the ketch Sealestial in 1979, WFB wrote for Esquire a piece on Heaven, which is both refreshing and witty. Unfortunately, it seems to have never made the transition online. You can find the essay on p. 123 of Atlantic High.

I’ve been to Washington many times before, and seen all the major sights from the White House to the Lincoln Memorial. This visit, though, was a special one for me. It was the first time I’ve spent any significant time in Georgetown, which is an historic and gorgeous part of the city that I’ve come to adore.

Georgetown is what I consider the “classical America” area of the district with more high end shops and boutiques than you can count, but it’s charm is evident in block after block of historic buildings and colonial homes. (In fact, during a previous visit two years ago, I visited the Old Stone House. Built in 1765, it’s the oldest standing building in the district.)

We arrived late on Friday any enjoyed the pleasant but muggy weather, heading out after lunch on Saturday and heading to the heart of the city. I was moved by a massive community effort by a local service organization to provide food, shelter and bathroom facilities to the homeless population. It’s a humbling reminder that the capital of the greatest nation in the history of mankind still struggles with very human problems of destitution.

Later we attending an early Mass at Holy Trinity Church, the same one attended by President John F. Kennedy and recently in the news for Tim Russert’s funeral Mass. The church takes up about an entire city block with the modern church and original chapel, along with gardens and a recreation area.

Above the entrance to the chapel is a beautiful stained glass representation of the nature of the Holy Trinity — the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit or Pater, Filius and Spiritus Sanctus. The Mass itself was exceptional with a thoughtful Homily delivered by, I believe, Fr. Gregory A. Schenden, S.J.

He referenced a passage by Fr. Ron Rolheiser on the reality that, too often, “the pious are not liberal” in and “the liberal are not pious.” The challenge, he asserted, was to strive for a life that successfully blends the two.

I captured the last portion of the closing organ music on video, as has become a habit when visiting other churches. After Mass we were struck by a sign affixed to the door of the church as we left with a cross that said simply, “For The Greater Glory of God.”

Afterward we ate at The Tombs, which I was impressed to learn was named after a line in Bustopher Jones, a poem by T.S. Elliot. The meal — pork BBQ with french fries and, for desert, blackberry pie — hit the spot.

On Sunday we rose early for what was my first professional soccer match between D.C. United and the LA Galaxy. Since watching my high school soccer team compete, I have been a mild fan of soccer, but seeing it played professionally in RFK Stadium gave me an entirely new appreciation. I’ll definitely be back.

A whirlwind weekend in Georgetown — I couldn’t have asked for more.