In Cuba, things fall from the sky

My new friends and I were walking somewhere in Centro Habana taking in the street sights and smells, when Parko felt something drop right next to his left ear. It was a small wallet. You know, the kind your grandmother or mother has to hold coins. He looked up and saw a woman waving and yelling. Bas said, oh she dropped her wallet, 3 storeys high. We craned our necks for a while, waiting to see what happens now. She proceeded to lower a bag (using a rope) from the 3rd floor of the building and motioned to him to put the wallet in there. So Bas did, deliberately as if to fully take in the humor of the situation, but only after he handed me his camera and asked me to take pictures of this event. Sorry, you will have to wait until he posts them up and I will link to his blog.

That was not the first time either.

We saw people yell from the street toward the balcony. Everyone seems to have balconies. Someone would answer by throwing a bunch of keys from the 2nd or 3rd floor so the yeller can let himself in. Other times the lady of the house would make household purchases from her balcony: puts money in the bag, lowers the bag with the rope, the merchant takes the payment and replaces it with bread which then the lady hoists up.

Simplicity. Genius.

Habana is everything you expected and more. More touristy. More beautiful. More hassle. More expensive. More intoxicating. More police presence. More surprising. I am sure I am not the first to say that going there is like traveling back through time. This is a society dying to hang on to its past. It shows. You see it in the grand Spanish buildings and vast plazas as they flank dilapidated residences that cannot even afford a paint job to recover the glory they once had.

And I don´t know how I feel about all that. As tourists it is almost impossible to understand what Cubans understand. I´m most struck by the gap between us. Like I mentioned earlier, I struggle to find the words. Thankfully, there is a digital camera. Enjoy.