railroad to guantanamo

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pictures coming!!!

Next day, after solving out that it's almost impossible to fulfil all
Friedemanns travel plans, we try to catch train tickets to Guantanamo.
Apparently this journey is only available for the other day, so we prolong
our stay in Havana for another day. The need to find a bank leads us also to
a nice trip through the city centre. The day ends with a dive in the ocean
from the Malecon.

After some stress trying to find some food and drinks for the trip, we are
comfortably seated, as a result of some replacements, each of us next to a
beautiful young Cuban woman. Soon we have interesting conversations,
sometimes with the help of dictionaries. We find out that we're in company
of a nurse, a teacher and a computer engineer. Except for Christopher, who
is seriously handicapped because he doesn't speak a word of Spanish, we have
very interesting conversations. The girls are really very charming. The girl
next to me, Katia, has visited her cousin in a hospital in Havana and is now
returning to Camaguey. She appears to be very religious, which doesn't
prevent her from seducing me. Also Christopher is being seduced by his
neighbour Elianne, something which he will regret afterwards. The
conversation between Friedemann and Francis is more on a practical level,
with Friedemann hearing out Francis on all kind of practical matters. It
turns out that both Francis and Elianne are heading to Guantanamo as well.
Francis offers to help us find rooms in Guantanamo, which offer we
thankfully accept.

As a consequence of all the excitement and the resulting lack of sleep, as
well as our shortage on food and drinks, we arrive exhausted in the
afternoon of the next day. With the help of Francis we find soon some rooms
in the centre. The fact that we spend some money for a horse carriage while
we end up just one block from the station strengthens Friedemann in his
complaint about the laziness of his company. Anyway, we deserve some sleep,
after which it's time for some serious work. In the late afternoon sun we
walk to the outskirts of the town to inform us about the possibilities of
visiting Guantanamo Bay. This seems to be practically impossible, because it
appears to be military defense zone for preventing an imperialist attack. It
appears to be impossible to even approach the bay. Friedemann is not
satisfied with this information and breeds on alternative approaches. Near
the information centre we are trying to photograph ourselves in front of a
building of the communist party, which is being prevented by some party
officials. We decide to play the membership card from Christopher, who is a
party member of the German socialist party. Although the officials are not
convinced to allow us to make pictures, they instead give us the address of
the centre for the friendship of the people, which appears to be near. A
visit to this centre seems us to be a good idea, which leads us about 20
minutes later to a nice conversation with a charming women from East
Germany, spending her pension half yearly in Cuba, organizing this centre
and a lot of its activities. The conversation is so nice, that we almost
forget our appointment with Francis, for which we have to hurry a lot and
arrive half an hour late. With Francis we go in town to find some food, and
to our surprise, but maybe not theirs, there we meet also Elianne, as well
as a friend of her named Daemi. With the six of us we go to a vegetarian
restaurant, one of the three existing in Cuba, from which two in Havana. We
repeat our trick from ordering all the side dishes and everyone enjoys a
lot, a bit to our surprise also the Cuban girls, who we expected to be very
used to eat meat. After the meal we visit one of the Casas de la Trova. Here
we fall into some cabaret show, in which as foreigners we are invited to
play some part, which due to our language skills becomes very funny. After
closing time we're escorted back home to secure a new appointment.

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