Greetings friends of Weekend Experiences, I want to make my entry into this week's engagement with a tour I took today through old Havana, specifically the historic quarter that was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
We made this tour as a way to close a summer course that is held every year by the University of Leipzig in Germany and the University of Havana, with the support of the DAAD.
One of the objectives of the course is to maintain the bonds of friendship and fraternity between Cuban alumni graduated from German universities and other training centers.
Well, I can't tell you how many times I have walked through Old Havana for years, in fact it is one of my favorite walks, however today I learned things that I did not know and that make me love my city more.
We started the tour of the Old Square, the guide of the group who was an official of the German embassy Roxy for all, told us first of all jokingly that both Germans and Cubans like beer and playing cards, precisely the recipes of the brewery that is located in the old square comes from Germany because they were the originators of such precious liquid and the museum of playing Cards that is in the square has a collection of German playing cards, game that also boast of being the inventors.
Later we passed through an area that was a Jewish settlement, precisely where the Automobile Museum and the Rachel hostel is located, which shows a painting painted by Victor Manuel, which tells the story of the tragedy suffered by Jews who came on a boat from Hamburg and the Cuban authorities did not allow him to disembark, so they turned to Europe and were taken to concentration camps.
We passed by the Cuban Academy of Sciences, where we stopped to talk about the cooperation in the scientific field that both countries have had, I learned that the patent of the Suma equipment to measure blood glucose was donated by a German.
We continued our walk and to my surprise Roxy showed off her knowledge of the German traces, in the Armaments Museum where there are samples of German weapons used by both the Cuban and Spanish Mambises in our independence struggles, the Cathedral Church and so many other buildings of the country were restored in collaboration with Germany.
I am not going to exhaust you, I will just tell you that culminating the Tour in the Museum of Alexander Humbolt, a German considered the second discoverer of Cuba for all his apiraports in the study of its nature, his studies have served as a basis for knowledge of its geology, its physical and economic geography, its fauna etc.
Everyone was happy and very satisfied with our tour, we finished where we started, enjoying a beer and the magic of our architecture.
Thank you very much for reading and the opportunity to share my experience.The pictures were taken with my Samsung Note 8 cell phone.Use the Yandex translator