On the 5th of May I had taken the train from Birmingham Moor Street to London Marylebone and arrived there fairly late. Twenty-four hours before I had landed in Birmingham International from a short trip to Barcelona. Before that I had been in Portugal for a week after finally submitting the thesis. This entangled series of events forbade me to realise that the Cuba trip was really going to happen. In Birmingham I had just enough time to throw the dirty laundry in the basket, grab a couple of clean t-shirts and underwear and head down to London.
Besides my backpack I also carried a three-person tent as requested by the others in our long series of email exchanges (make a mental note of this omnipresent piece of luggage, a 4 kg cylindrical bag).
So, on the 6th of May, I woke up at my friend's place in Hammersmith, left the house and met Rui outside Holborne tube station. From there we headed to the Cuban Embassy to buy our Tourist Cards (the homologue to a Visa, I guess). On the way there we became aware of our feeling of unpreparedness. Rui didn't even had a pair of shorts to bring.
Fortunately, Google Street View didn't lie and the Embassy was right where promised. We walked straight to the main door in High Holborne and rang the bell. Almost instantly a Cuban looking man who was just hovering nearby approached us and said, in a very Hispanic accent, that for Tourist Cards we needed to go to the door in the nearby alley (Grape street). This mixture of creepiness and helpfulness, a trademark of the Cubans, would soon become trivial to us but at that time the situation created some comedy effect.
We entered the Embassy, a small cramped room with four or five people inside, and waited for our turn. Proof of a booked return flight, proof of booked accommodation, a valid passport and £15- "all good but we only take cash". After a trip to the ATM we returned to the Embassy only to find that we had been overtaken by another person.
This woman, a British blonde middle-aged woman, was loudly sharing her passion for Cuba with the two ladies behind the counter. She would go into intricate personal details to explain her love for Havana, how she wanted to live and die in Cuba and so much more, to great boredom of the two ladies and the remaining costumers. At some point she mentioned being married to a Cuban man, that eventually got arrested and from whom later she got a divorce. Her only comment to this was a protest on how difficult it is for anyone to become a Cuban citizen. "I'm sure there are Cubans who would love to exchange lives with her", I whispered to Rui. The woman went on yapping and yapping.
One of the ladies behind the counter asked if she wanted her ashes to be spread across the Malecon. I think this was her subtle way of wishing her to die. It certainly was mine.
Eventually the woman left (and went on to find another Cuban husband, probably) and we managed to get our Tourist Cards. These are separate sheets of paper so that you do not get a stamp saying CUBA on your passport. This is particularly important for those, like myself, who plan to move to the US.
Rui and I parted ways. He returned to his flat in south London, I went to Shepherds Bush Market to buy groceries and later cooked dinner for my friends in Hammersmith. Rocha and Joana would meet us the following day, flying from Berlin to London Stansted. From there we would go to Gatwick. Then Madrid. Then Havana.
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