By Veronica Vega
HAVANA TIMES – I don’t know why these days I remember that trip to Varadero in 2016 so much. It wasn’t really for pleasure; we were just going to pick up a tablet that a foreigner was donating to my son for collaborating with Havana Times.
My husband bought the tickets, and in that large bus where we could see the landscape through the front glass like the driver, I felt like a tourist from the first world. So, that’s the remnant that nostalgia brings out, like a flag of triumph: “remember the happiness, the freedom…”
However, the truth is that everything seemed very different from what I remembered of Varadero in the 1980s. Back then, it was so welcoming with its rustic cafes and restaurants, and that intimate, familiar atmosphere. I didn’t recognize anything; the streets seemed inhospitable without the presence of portals and with that scorching sun, plus the powerlessness of seeing horse-drawn carriages and the dejection in the eyes of those powerful animals subdued by a lucrative tradition.
The foreign donor was extremely brief during the encounter, which took place on the street. He limited himself to instructing my son on how to use the tablet and then immediately left.
We then walked around looking for a place to have lunch, but everything was extremely expensive. We finally managed to eat some pizzas whose taste I don’t even remember in a kind of enclosed place with glass where I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable even though I smiled as we took some photos. We also posed later in front of a bar restaurant with designs related to the Beatles, only thinking of my friend and colleague Irina Pino. The dream, yes, of functionality and comfort as a standard of life, trusting, as before, that this scene will be systematized, be
