Recently my husband and I caught a train to visit the Brisbane EKKA (exhibition). It was nice to sit in cushion seats in air conditioning. The train traveled fast.
Once in a small town in Cuba my husband asked his friend what was wrong with getting the train? So my husbands friend laughed on his way up to the nearest train to show him what a Cuban train looks like inside.
For a Cuban to imagine my Australian husband hopping on a Cuban train is hilarious. I imagine him sweating heavily walking elbow to elbow amongst Cubans carrying sacks of rice, beans or fish on their backs.
Actually, if you compare traveling by train, they are not as terrible as buses, their disadvantage is that they are too slow, like doing a 50 km journey can take 3 hours. But you can have your seat and do not have to argue with anybody for it, the seat would be very hard anyway.
In this sort of trip you can see the real Cuba, a Cuba that is not glamorous at all. People will be selling goods and if you forget about the hard seat and the slow trip you can have fun watching and listening to the Cubans selling things like sweet cookies or roast peanut. People in the train, unless they are students, look pretty poor but are friendly.
I experienced the train one summer from Havana to Sancti Spiritus and it was almost unbelievable that I survived the heat; generally a Cuban train does not have air conditioning. Warning: Do not dare to go to the toilet.
On my trips to school or to Havana in 2001 I was never lucky enough to see any fast trains in Cuba .I thought it was a myth, everybody mentions it but nobody has seen one.
One night the train to Havana was cancelled and a friend and I slept in the train station holding our luggage as we could between our legs so nobody would rob us of our most precious possessions. Any possession for a Cuban is precious. As a student our worst nightmare was to be robbed.
Some days we were lucky we could buy a ticket paying around 3 dollars to the inspectors, but that night there was no train running so we could not travel either with the extra cash.
In 1837 Cuba was one of the first countries to have railway in Latin America and the Iberian world.
Once in a small town in Cuba my husband asked his friend what was wrong with getting the train? So my husbands friend laughed on his way up to the nearest train to show him what a Cuban train looks like inside.
For a Cuban to imagine my Australian husband hopping on a Cuban train is hilarious. I imagine him sweating heavily walking elbow to elbow amongst Cubans carrying sacks of rice, beans or fish on their backs.
Actually, if you compare traveling by train, they are not as terrible as buses, their disadvantage is that they are too slow, like doing a 50 km journey can take 3 hours. But you can have your seat and do not have to argue with anybody for it, the seat would be very hard anyway.
In this sort of trip you can see the real Cuba, a Cuba that is not glamorous at all. People will be selling goods and if you forget about the hard seat and the slow trip you can have fun watching and listening to the Cubans selling things like sweet cookies or roast peanut. People in the train, unless they are students, look pretty poor but are friendly.
I experienced the train one summer from Havana to Sancti Spiritus and it was almost unbelievable that I survived the heat; generally a Cuban train does not have air conditioning. Warning: Do not dare to go to the toilet.
On my trips to school or to Havana in 2001 I was never lucky enough to see any fast trains in Cuba .I thought it was a myth, everybody mentions it but nobody has seen one.
One night the train to Havana was cancelled and a friend and I slept in the train station holding our luggage as we could between our legs so nobody would rob us of our most precious possessions. Any possession for a Cuban is precious. As a student our worst nightmare was to be robbed.
Some days we were lucky we could buy a ticket paying around 3 dollars to the inspectors, but that night there was no train running so we could not travel either with the extra cash.
In 1837 Cuba was one of the first countries to have railway in Latin America and the Iberian world.
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