Anti-advertising / personal experience.
Anti-advertising / personal experience.
Habana Club with five stars.
On XIV World festival of youth and students on Cuba has gone and
The correspondent of the publishing house "Kommersant" RUSTAM ARIFDZHANOV. But not in
Quality of the delegate, and as Intourist.
I have given last fifteen dollars for a start from the Havana airport.
Could and save.
-- Festival? - The employee has asked a rack unifitsirovanno obrityj
Registration. I have nodded and have added: "the Journalist from Russia". But it has appeared, that
Delegates of XIV are released from payment aeroportovskogo gathering World only
Festival of youth and students. And journalists are equated to tourists and
Other driving off. So - in cash desk.
Money after that does not remain cent. Peso I for all week on Cuba and
At all never in hands held. Hated to fighters for freedom the American
The currency goes on island at all on a level with national peso, let and with
Che Guevara's portrait, and is much more confident. Only for dollars here it is possible
To buy the good goods and to receive qualitative service; the peso presses close to
To thin shops where under the special book to the population stands out on 80
Bread grammes a day, 100 grammes of sausage a week, on 3 kilogrammes of sugar and rice
And 400 grammes of a string bean a month, 300 grammes of beef a quarter. All set
Keeps within 40 peso, that is it is less than in two dollars, but not always
Happens in shops. Cubans habitually sigh: "Blockade".
I, the foreigner, nevziraja on any blockade, ate lobsters for 15
Dollars, huge pieces "lomo" - stewed pork on 10, drank beer for two with
Half and the well-known cocktail "dajkiri" on five. A single room in
Five-stars hotel managed to me in one hundred day, and daily everyone there
Expenditure turned round a mark in the American fifty-kopeck piece.
Every week foreign tourists leave on Cuba about 25 million
Dollars. Tourism, as well as in pre-revolutionary fiftieth years, supersedes
Cultivation of a reed and tobacco cultivation. Now it is the second after
Processings of sugar article of incomes of Cuba.
But it it seems to Cuba a little. Permanent Cuban leader Fidel Castro
Has set the task the next years to pull out from a pocket of foreigners for
The sun and waves of Island of freedom is not less 200 million a week. For this purpose
Only it is necessary, that quantity visited for a year on Cuba having a rest
Has come nearer on number to the island population. And still it is necessary to construct in
Ten times more hotels and to involve in tourist business, in which already
Are now occupied 60 thousand persons, yet less a half-million of citizens
The only thing in America the socialist state.
It will definitively divide the Cuban society on two parts - having
Though any relation to tourism and dollars and not having any. The first
The second use toilet soap from Mexico and a tooth-paste "Pepsodent",
Receive in a year 4 pieces bannogo soaps and 7 tubes of paste.
However, 12 thousand delegates of the Havana festival from 136 countries of the world,
Which organizers have settled on the Havana families, all it could not
To notice and not to feel. To arrival of visitors families accepting them have received
The strengthened grocery ration and hygiene means. But these expenses quite
Have paid off: for 12 days of stay at festival each delegate has paid on
250 dollars, that in one and a half time exceeds the annual salary of the private soldier
The Cuban so only on it Cuba has earned about 3 million dollars.
Plus the inflow which has considerably amplified in this week of the tourists not so indulging
Island during an adverse season of rains.
The festival has not too pleased the Havana taxi drivers - their services
Tourists use more richly, and delegates carried by buses. And for
Independent sorties delegates preferred to take private traders. For 3-5
Dollars - in any end of rather big Havana. And it is at the wheel frequent
There were interesting enough interlocutors - the former attache on a science and
To the technician in Poland, for example, or the chief engineer strojupravlenija, or even
The physicist-jadershchik.
-- Here I carry you on the Cathedral area for three dollars, - explained
To me Alberto, the former engineer. - but the dollar has already given to the boy, which
Has found you, the foreign client. And earn hinetero.
Alberto, despite the deserved biography, now in general too
hinetero, that is the person earning on foreigners. But more often
hineterami name the Havana prostitutes catching at hotels
Tourists with money.
Tourism is always dangerous to morals of the poor country. Two thirds
Visitors here on rest of Italians and Spaniards - namely they together with
Canadians also make the main tourist contingent - use
Paid ladies. The prices for love fluctuate from 20 to 50 dollars. Plus the twenty
For a room with the conditioner, removed at two-three o'clock. Without a room in any way,
Because on Cuba tourist aparteid. That is in hotels for Intourists
(And the more so to Cubans) the input is forbidden ordinary Cubans.
Castro like would struggle with prostitution. So, before festival it has moved
From Havana some thousand nonresident prostitutes. And since September, 1st enter
Owing to the criminal code article, directed against a human trafic, as
Local lawyers have decided to call prostitution. The big terms threaten not only
To souteneurs, but also all assisting paid love. There is article and
Against foreigners - for sexual harassment. But here it hardly
Will operate. The first criminal case will frighten off the cheerful
Lady's men from hot island.
Fidel dreaming of 10-15 billion of dollars annually, hardly on it
Will go. Let kiss. And there is no at it other exit. Appeared after
Disintegration of the USSR without the traditional creditor and the buyer, held down
The become tougher American blockade, Cuba comes back to the habitual
To pre-revolutionary shape, turning to beach republic with beauties,
Adding to rest of a profitable piquancy. It washes away the socialist
Foundations. However, Cuba still continues to scan "socialism or death",
But on the sly, not changing rhetoric, diminishes socialism not to die with
Hunger on the North Korean sample.
But all the same it is interesting, where my fifteen dollars left will go
Before flying away, - on reconstruction of a building of the international airport or on
Installation of a new big portrait of Che Guevara on its pediment?
//* an information Source: the Businessman (weekly journal), 19.08.97
//* Reg. Nom. - 6070800141.20-------------------------------------------
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