Bella arte

Havana has many exciting places to enjoy and interesting historic sites to visit. There are monu
ments, government buildings, museums and of course lots of music. The Musuo Nacional de Belle Artes is an unexpected surprise. If you like modern art, I highly recommend this museum.

The collocation is dedicated solely to modern art by Cuban artists. The art is chock full of symbolic themes: sex, family, death, political, to name a few. The first gallery presents works that could have been made by Picasso or cubist artist. There is a sizable collection of sculpture and mixed media arts. Little to no photography. Most of photography is found as elements in larger works.

Photography is prohibited in the museum. I could not resist and sneaked this photo. There were so many pieves of art work that I wanted to photograph, but didn't want to get kicked out  of the museum...

These sculptures are installed in front of the museum.

I love this group of sculptures, a celebration of various screw driver bits -- in brick! How cool is that.

Captain Ludwig on Land and the Money Exchange Game

Captain Ludwig had anchored in Cienfuegos a few days earlier and drove to Havana where his wife Elisa and baby daughter had flown in from Cartagena. We met at at the famous Coppelia for ice cream. 

(Wikipedia photo)

Cuban nationals pay 15 National Pesos (~$.75) for a large serving of ice cream and tourist sit in a separate area where they paid considerably more, about $3.00 USD.

In Cartagena I offered to take photos of Ludwig’s family, but there wasn’t enough time. My Nikon battery charger had gone missing in Jamaica leaving only the iPhone to take pictures. Fortunately Ludwig had a camera, so I took a series of pictures of the baby and the proud parents. When I saw Ludwig a few weeks later in Centrifuges I asked him to send me a copy of the favorite photo that I took. It would never happen. In Havana he lost a backpack in a taxi that mostly contained clothes, but also had the digital camera.

[Update: I just heard from Captain Ludwig and learned that his wife, Elisa, had download the photos to her laptop before that camera was lost in a taxi! Below find the photo they shared with me.]

In need of CUCs, the “convertible currency” I headed to Western Union, a short walk from the ice cream plaza. Of the money I needed to exchange, a 100 Euro bill had a half an inch tear. Western Union would not exchange the torn bill, so I was forced to seek out an international bank, Bano Financial International (BFI.) It was too late in the day to find an open BFI bank. The next day I would find one near my casa particular. The bank exchanged the torn bill, but charged a 1 CUC "commission", roughly $1.00 USD. Later in the trip another branch would charge one half a CUC per bill to exchange two $20.00 USD bills with small tears and to my surprise, they agreed to exchange a $20.00 USD bill that looked like a mouse had chewed a hole in the middle.

It is impossible to withdraw money from a US bank account using a Cuban ATM or get a cash  advance from a US based credit card. US citizens have to take stack of cash with them into Cuba. It is best to take Euros into the country, because the Cuban banks take off an additional 10% to exchange USD. Ouch. If you have an account for a Canadian, European, or any bank outside of the USA, then getting cash from an ATM is not a problem...

Our Man in Havana

May 1st is International Worker’s Day, a huge day on the socialist calendar. My Swedish friends from the Stahlratte, Aba and Eric, were planning to be in Havana to hear President Raul Castro speak. I made plans to meet them, the day before or at a specific spot in the Plaza de la Revolution.
I arrived in Havana the night before the big event and stopped at a hotel were they were to leave their address. No luck after multiple times visiting the hotel. Either I got the hotel wrong or they didn’t make it to Havana as planned. Plan B, look for them during the rally under the “statue of Che”, but again no luck. In fact the portrait of Che attached to the side of a building was blocked off, so no one could actually wait there.
President Raul Castro would be speaking very early, perhaps at 7:00 AM. I left my hotel at 6:15 AM and followed the crowd to the plaza. Unfortunately the mass of people that I was with was held on a side street until it was time for that group to parade in front of the monument, so I missed Raul’s speech.  I wouldn’t have understood it anyway. The idea was to simply be in the crowd and feel the energy. After waiting for 30 minutes I walked out of the crowded street that I squeezed through earlier and went two blocks further west to get into the main thoroughfare that was moving. Of course when I got to the street that was held by guards, it was released and moving along the parade route…
All the big names of Cuban socialism were championed: Che, Fidel, Raul, even Hugo Chaves. 


The crowd became increasingly more excited at we neared the monument to Marti and President Raul Castro’s position.

  

 

 Raul is that tiny speck directly under Marti’s head. I waived to Raul and I am pretty sure me waived back to me.  =)

The parade ended with military and civic groups carrying large flags and fields flags.