It was our second week in Havana and we had spent two thirds of the money we had for a month, so that was the day when we started panicking. The plan for that evening was to take one cuc ($1) and a bottle of rum (Havana Club in Cuba costs $6 per 1 liter bottle, we could afford that), go to Malecon (that’s the name of the embankment), stare at the sunset, get drunk and stumble home.
The evening was cool; people, both locals and foreigners were lazily walking to and fro, frequently bothered by street vendors and beggars. Some guys were out in the sea fishing from huge pieces of Styrofoam (only few can afford boats. Or fishing rods. Or anything, actually).
We had just opened the bottle when three street musicians came and started playing. We told them (in Spanish) that we had no money, so although their music was wonderful, we couldn’t pay for it anyway. They asked to give them our flip-flops in return. “How on earth are we gonna walk home?!”, we wondered. That seemed legit to them, but they still asked where we were from. When they heard Russia, they obviously started playing Katusha. I said,”OK, if you won’t leave, let’s at least do that together. You play – I sing”.
So here I go, sitting on the pavement in the opposite side of the world, singing a Russian war song, accompanied by three Cubans and… getting money from Iranian and – wait for it – German tourists. We earned alright, about $15, poured rum in everybody’s glasses (and yes, the three of them had glasses attached to the instruments), and these guys just stayed with us all night! We danced, sang Katusha again (3 times), Comandante Che Guevara (4 times), Chan Chan (2 times and partly humming for no one knew the lyrics), a couple of Russian songs about the frost and the snow the Cubans had obviously never seen and hardly believed it existed in such quantities.
The two of our friends, Fidel and his son Leonel, were enjoying themselves, dancing and drinking rum, while the third one, Jesus, was gloomy all the time and had a rather scornful look on his face. “What’s wrong, Jesus?” we kept on asking, but he only said he had been planning to work that evening, not to party. Then I suddenly got it. “How many kids have you got, Jesus?” “Eight”, he answered in a tragic voice. We took a cab, rushed home, withdrew 10 more bucks and returned to Malecon with cash. It was a relief to see how Jesus cheered up. He said his wife would have killed him otherwise. If you, guys, go to Havana and see these three on the embankment, don’t hesitate to hang out with them!