Footloose Scot (25 page)

In Cancun I stayed at a modest clean place in the old town, and soon recovered from the two long bus rides. Now the trip was about to begin. The next morning with some difficulty I found a public bus to the airport. There's always going to be a public bus to a city airport, how else do the airport workers get there? At the airport, I checked in at Cubana Airlines desk, and was then directed to a young man standing to one side. He filled out my passport details on a loose sheet, stamped it and handed it to me. This was my visa. It was that easy.

The one-hour flight to Havana was in an old Soviet Yak plane with worn fittings. The on-board snack was a sandwich with fatty meat inside. Still, there was a good camaraderie among the passengers, some excitement among the first timers and a sense of togetherness from several musicians who were clearly not on their first visit. The passengers were a mix of Cuban and Mexican businessmen and gringos carrying guitars or with backpacks. The music scene in Cuba is strong, and U.S. musicians are welcome.

At Havana airport I gave one dollar to the attendant in the men's room and was effusively thanked. Immigration and customs were speedy. I knew from reading a guidebook that I would have to shell out for an expensive taxi ride to the city center so when I came out of the terminal building I was not surprised to see a line of modern cars which served as taxis. Since there was no alternative, I agreed to twenty-five dollars for the eight mile ride with good grace and took a photo of the happy driver before we set off.

There was little traffic on the bumpy road into town. Some work trucks, with people standing in the back, passed by as well as a few 1950s-era U.S. automobiles and small Soviet Ladas. Occasional billboards of Che Guevara with socialist slogans shared space with palm trees along the route. Knots of people hung around street corners waiting for rides. The outskirts of Havana seemed run-down and shabby; I hoped the downtown area was not so depressing.

The driver dropped me off at a tourist-approved hotel near the city center which I had booked on the web. Nondescript, vaguely Soviet in style, it suited me since it was central and cheap. As soon as I had settled in, I made a phone call at the front desk to a contact, a local teacher whose name I had been given by a writer friend from Kansas City who had met her when he visited Havana a few years earlier.

This was Lucy Peralta, self-styled Professor of English, a personable and attractive young woman in her late twenties, with adequate English. She was at home, and I suggested she come to the hotel. Not possible, she said, Cubans were not allowed in tourist hotels. So we agreed to meet in a nearby coffee shop.

With Lucy and her friend I visited Morro Castle, guarding the entrance to Havana Bay.

She told me about her life which was difficult because of the dire economic situation. But, she acknowledged that it was better than that of many Cubans since she had had an education and could speak English. I soon felt comfortable enough with her to touch on political matters. She reflected a point of view shared by many Cubans who desperately wished for a better lifestyle in a free market economy, like that of the U.S.A. yet still felt some feelings of loyalty to Castro whose political credo was the cause of the economic mess because he had defied the big bully to the north.

Most of the tourists to Cuba stay at Varadero, a coastal strip of resort hotels 40 miles away. Here they enjoy clean beaches and western-style hotels. A few come to Old Havana, a World Heritage site, where many of the fine old pre-Revolutionary buildings have been beautifully restored. Very few tourists indeed travel elsewhere in Cuba, partly because the tourist infrastructure is not in place and the difficulty in getting around.

With only four days available, I stuck to Havana except for one guided tour into the nearby countryside to Vinales National Park which features jungle vegetation at lower elevations and unusual geologic formations in the limestone uplands. In Havana I walked along the famous Malecon, the seafront drive, visited the cathedral and Plaza de Armas, and ambled around the old city.

Fifties-era American automobiles were quite common. More bizarre were the city buses called
camelos
(camels), long truck-pulled passenger cars that provided urban transportation. Otherwise I walked, dropped into one or two old hotels famous for their previous mafia connections, observed a new medical building where Cuban doctors provided cut price operations to foreigners and visited the Museum of the Revolution which sorely needed a professional hand to display Cuba's powerful story.

With Lucy's help I moved out of my hotel into an apartment for not much more money. Renting to foreigners was now legal, part of a gradual move towards a free market economy. I also ate lobster in a private home, turned restaurant. This liberalization of the tourism development was introduced to boost tourism after the departure of the Soviets in the early nineties resulted in a freefall of the Cuban economy.

There were plenty of foreign tourists in the Old City where sex tourism was on full display. It was a common sight to see older European tourists escorting young Cuban women in bars and restaurants. "We don't think of this as payment for sex", Lucy said, "You should think of the payment as a gift". The whole prostitution scene made me uncomfortable and I pursued my own agenda: riding a bici-taxi, smoking some cigars. and talking with my apartment neighbors.

Lucy invited me to dinner at her house to meet her family. This meant I would buy chicken and other food which they would cook and we would all eat. Her parents lived in a spacious apartment in a downtown house. The previous owners had fled after Castro came to power, and the state had confiscated the house and given it to Lucy's family. It is going to be a tricky situation when Cuba joins the rest of the world, and former residents come back to claim their property. We didn't mention this matter over supper, which was a good natured and loud event.

The people on the streets seemed to keep busy just getting by. In the decaying section of central Havana dogs scavenged in the streets, families sat outside their homes enjoying the breeze and music poured from bars - the only uninhibited aspect of today's Cuba. Cubans are naturally sociable and talkative with a great love for music and sense of rhythm. There is no resentment against individual Americans. The older generation takes pride in Cuba's independence; the younger people wish there was the opportunity to earn a decent wage and to be able to travel abroad.

It was thought that the accession to the presidency of Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother, might lead to more freeing up of the economy and even more individual rights. This does not seem to be happening. Cuba continues to suffer.

KOBARID, SLOVENIA

"It was a little white town with a campanile in a valley" Hemingway wrote, "A clean little town with a fine fountain in a square." The name of the town in those days (1916) was Caporetto, which the literary giant described in
"A Farewell to Arms",
published in 1929.

Hemingway's experience was autobiographical; he was an ambulance driver for the Italian forces during the First World War who were fighting the Austro/German armies in the Julian Alps which form the frontier here. The little remembered campaign was a sideshow to the fighting on the Western Front. Yet, in the space of two years, the campaign resulted in a casualty list of close to three quarters of a million dead and wounded, blasted by cannon fire, frozen on the mountain tops, or gassed to death beyond recognition. I came to Caporetto, renamed Kobarid when the border was redrawn after nineteen forty-five, to visit a new museum which commemorates the campaign.

I had visited this corner of Europe before. In 1958, trying to hitchhike to Greece, I had stood at the top of one of the passes between Austria and what was then Yugoslavia. Now Yugoslavia no longer existed, and Slovenia was an independent nation. I had just read
"After Yugoslavia"
by the Welsh writer Zoe Bran, an account of a recent trip to Slovenia that won a book award in England.

I flew to Vienna, and rented a car. A four-hour drive brought me to Klagenfurt near the Slovenian border. Entering Slovenia over a mountain pass was a cursory matter; Slovenia will be the first country from the former Yugoslavia to join the European Union and they are anxious to show that they are efficient and ready to be a new member.

In the northeastern part of Slovenia, close to Italy and Austria, the terrain is alpine. Mountains are covered by forested slopes, rise to 12,000 feet and are drained by rushing streams of turquoise water. In the villages, flower pots adorn every windowsill. The towns and villages are well maintained and connected by good roads.

Kobarid (population 1,460) lies in the valley of the Soca River, a fast-flowing stream popular with white-water enthusiasts. The Kobarid Museum, a plain three-story building, opened in 1990 and won several awards. Entering the building one notices on the left wall close-up photographs of 36 combatants facing crosses on the wall opposite. On the cobblestones between is the nose cone of a gas shell.

The Austro-German campaign of World War I on the Slovenian front involved 5,900 canons, the use of poisonous gas, and blitzkrieg methods of assault sometimes at altitudes of 12,000 feet. After eleven failed attempts from the Italian side, the Austro-German Army launched one surprise attack that effectively won the war. A young officer in the German Army, Captain Rommel, distinguished himself in this battle. The Italians lost but at The Treaty of Versailles were awarded, for being on the side of the western Allies, large tracts of land in Austria and Slovenia, including this part where Kobarid is located.

On the stairs to the upper floors of the museum, a large photograph shows a crowded trench filled with apprehensive troops just prior to an attack. Of the eighteen rooms in the museum, the Black Room portrays in photographs and tableaus the horror of trench life: faces frozen in the rictus of death, severed legs protruding from a trench wall, dead bodies hanging on barbed wire and the deformed faces of victims of canon fire. The White Room describes the harsh conditions of fog and snow at high altitudes. Displays are described in English, and there is .a slide show with commentary.

Not far from Kobarid is a different sort of memorial from a different war. This is the Franja Partisan Hospital of World War II. Deep in a canyon three miles from the town of Cemko are thirteen perfectly preserved buildings, including an operating theater and X-ray room, where wounded partisans fighting against the Germans were treated.

Rough bunk beds with coarse sheets fill some of the smaller cabins, primitive pieces of medical equipment stand idle unused for fifty years, and photographs of hospital doctors (the chief surgeon was a woman) hang on bare wood walls. Further up the canyon is a generating plant, powered by the roaring water which concealed any noise from the hospital. This is Slovenia's most popular museum

One hour's drive southeast from the Franja Partisan Hospital is picturesque Predjama Castle. Built into a cleft in a 350-foot cliff is a four story castle, dating to the 13
^th
Century, complete with drawbridge, hidden passageway and a dungeon. Hollywood could not have improved upon the castle's site or history.

Its near impregnable location, high on the cliff face, made this fortress popular with robber barons at odds with the Austrian Empire. The only part of the castle vulnerable to attack however was the toilet which was located on the top floor facing the valley. In 1484 the castle, occupied at that time by a rebellious knight called Erazem, was under assault by the forces of the Habsburg monarch Frederick III. Erazem had been eating cherries and drinking wine and, when he retired to the upstairs toilet, an informer gave a signal to the attacking force and a single cannon ball blasted him off the toilet and took his life.

LORIENT, FRANCE

"It's a pity about the weather, the costumes will get wet", said the waitress as she served croissants and coffee. She was referring to the threatening rain and to the parade of Celtics that was due to take place in an hour's time.

This was my third visit to the Interceltique Festival in Lorient, France, a port on the south coast of Brittany. I personally didn't feel that a drop of rain would spoil the parade for the hardy Celts. They were driven out of Central Europe in the first millennium to the wet western edge of Europe, and were used to rain. The festival was about to start, and musicians and dancers from the seven Celtic nations - Scotland, Isle of Man, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Asturias/Galicia (Spain) as well as the hosts, Brittany, were getting ready for The Grande Parade.

Sure enough, despite rain showers, close to 1,000 performers marched through the streets of Lorient with banners flying, drums beating, bagpipes and flutes playing, to the enthusiastic applause of the spectators. Upwards of half a million visitors were expected to attend the ten-day festival, now it its thirty-first year.

First in the procession, immediately after the flag bearers were the Bretons. A French navy band, wearing striped shirts and red-and-blue berets, marched briskly along playing small bagpipes and flutes to the wild cheers of the local crowd. The Breton bagpipe is a variation of the great Highland bagpipe, smaller in size and with only two drones.

Next came a group of dancers from Asturias in northern Spain. The men wore knee-length britches and clogs on their feet while the women, who carried baskets of flowers, were dressed in ankle-length black dresses and wide-brimmed straw hats, a rustic scene from old Europe.

Then, as the skies temporarily cleared, a new sound could be heard above the crowd's chatter: a military drum beat and the drone and skirl of a pipe band now filled the air. This was the Queensland Highlanders pipe band from Australia, special guests of this year's festival. The proud Aussies, eight abreast, filled the narrow street to capacity, forcing the onlookers back on to the sidewalk. For the next three hours, as the umbrellas of the crowd went up and came down according to the rain showers, all ages and nationalities of Celts paraded through the town, finishing the two-mile route at the harbor in front of the Festival concert hall.