I flew Iberia to Havana, so my first encounter Cubans en-masse was in Madrid airport as they boarded our plane. One man had a cat on a leash, others toted mountains of packaged electronics as carry-on luggage and I noticed more than usual amounts of lycra as outwear. I’ve been in untouristy, unsexy parts of Spain, and these people weren’t Spaniards.

On the plane, they crammed their carry-on luggage overhead, sat down and began talking to each other in fast, energetic Spanish. Soon the toilet smelled distinctly of cigarette smoke. They stopped talking only to walk to that mini-kitchen between cabins and return with cans of beer. They stopped again only at the end of the flight, to applaud the smooth landing.

Well, after three years of regular travelling to foreign countries, I’d finally done it. I’d come somewhere that a safe landing was worthy of a small impromptu celebration. I was finally somewhere really fucking foreign.

Havana
Havana really meets its stereotype. Colonial Spanish buildings decay everywhere. Along the grand seaside promenade, the Malecón, they gracefully rot often propped up by wooden supports on more than one side. Despite the government’s touting of the Malecón as a UNESCO-protected World Heritage site, I didn’t immediately understand the purpose of the supports – whether they were there to enable safe repairs and restoration of these beautiful buildings, or to support a careful demolition of doomed hazardous structures? Then I saw the supports around a single wall where the rest of the building had fell in on itself, perhaps recently judging from the amount of rubble still beneath it: these supports at least had been the sole attempt to stabilise the building while people continued to live there. Until it collapsed. Later I saw young kids playing on the scaffolding outside their window, three stories above the ground.

Those classic American cars really are on the road. Some are beautifully maintained, freshly polished, but most have regular dents and cracked windscreens. Even the perfect ones sometimes belch out black smoke or somehow shudder sideways when they’re idling. Many cars were being maintained on the side of the streets, tyres absent, the hood up and at least two Cuban men puzzling over the interior. It seemed like a social activity as much as a source of enterprise. But I guess retooling Russian tractors to fit a 1958 Chevy requires an inventiveness that is supported by second opinions.

All this decay is somehow beautiful to my romantic western eyes. Decay takes away so much from buildings and cars, and streets and people and everything, but leaves them enriched. They’ve aged, and not necessarily gracefully, but I felt respect for these artefacts that have survived the years, and a longing for this authenticity that long ago fled London.

But all this must seem incredibly naïve to any Cuban. I caught myself gazing into a gap between the colonial buildings, at a small community living in shelters no larger or more sturdy than car garages. Several houses had their washing out, and an old lady rocked gently on her porch. In any other town, I’d consider this a slum. In Havana, I allowed a small part of myself to feel jealous at this embrace of the simple life. I took a photo, felt a pang of voyeurism and walked on.

Later in the evening, I had some rum and briefly channelled Carrie Bradshaw. Where was the line, I thought aloud, between this gentle degradation which was undoubtedly awful for its inhabitants and the sense of the exotic that tourists like myself long for? When does decay become picturesque?

Here’s my take.
Ruined roman amphitheatres: picturesque
Japanese shrines: picturesque
Potholes: not picturesque
Colonial Spanish houses, any condition: picturesque
Houses built after about the 1930s: only very rarely picturesque
Distinct but unnameable gross smell perhaps a little like sewerage: not picturesque

And now some word association.
Streets in Havana: rustic, peaceful
Streets in Manhattan: over-crowded, disgraceful
Crumbling hospital front in Havana: those stoic Cubans!
… with cat restlessly prowling for its lunch: inclusiveness to the animal kingdom! Nature’s pest control!
Crumbling hospital front in rural England: national disgrace!
… with anything carrying more hair than me: unhygienic! Revolting!
Classic American cars that screech when braking (Havana): Oh, look! Is it a taxi? No. Can we get in anyway??
My Hyundai rental car (Havana): Oh, look! Check out those dents! What do you mean there’s no antenna? And is that barbed wire keeping the bumper attached? Are there all four tyres??