Today I went to see the Che Guevara museum, monument and mausoleum (yes, they really do adore him here in Cuba).
The monument is a huge plaza with a gigantic Che statue and several big stone slabs relating Che's values and visions in words and chiseled images.
Socialist architecture really seems to have a thing for huge oversized plazas, doesn't it?
The museum has various items relating to Che's life, such as his guns, some shirts, peso bills bearing his signature (issued when he was heading Cuba's central bank), a couple of educational certificates, his water bottle, etc. It also has tons of pictures showing Che in all stages of his life. I actually found these far more interesting than most of the exhibits because they conveyed a much more vivid image of the guy than all of his water bottles ever could ;-) It was also very interesting to see where all these photographs were taken. With the exception of Europe, he seemed to have been pretty much everywhere - in just the last 10 years of his life.
Finally, the mausoleum holds his ashes, and those of 38 other revolutionaries. As you might know, Che was shot in Bolivia in the 1960s - by government officials, under the watchful eye of US observers. His ashes were only returned to Cuba in the nineties, so the mausoleum is a fairly recent thing. It is a pretty small room, the ceiling is made of wooden blocks, and in the stone wall there are 39 niches each sealed with a stone telling the name of the person buried here, and decorated with a flower. No photography allowed inside, though - but I guess you can find plenty of images on the net. It's a really atmospheric place!
In the evening, on my way to Varadero, I had the opportunity to see another piece of socialist architecture: the autopista nacional.
The image shows only half of it - there are as many lanes again going in the other direction. The autopista was supposed to connect Santiago to Havana - basically provide a fast east-west connection throughout Cuba - but unfortunately they ran out of money at about half way. But as you can see, even the part they built is way oversized for the current amount of traffic. From a German point of view (with our constantly full highways), it is very funny to see how traffic entering or leaving the autopista - even for fuel or snack breaks - often has to cross over the entire highway, including the lanes running in the opposite direction...
The monument is a huge plaza with a gigantic Che statue and several big stone slabs relating Che's values and visions in words and chiseled images.
Socialist architecture really seems to have a thing for huge oversized plazas, doesn't it?
The museum has various items relating to Che's life, such as his guns, some shirts, peso bills bearing his signature (issued when he was heading Cuba's central bank), a couple of educational certificates, his water bottle, etc. It also has tons of pictures showing Che in all stages of his life. I actually found these far more interesting than most of the exhibits because they conveyed a much more vivid image of the guy than all of his water bottles ever could ;-) It was also very interesting to see where all these photographs were taken. With the exception of Europe, he seemed to have been pretty much everywhere - in just the last 10 years of his life.
Finally, the mausoleum holds his ashes, and those of 38 other revolutionaries. As you might know, Che was shot in Bolivia in the 1960s - by government officials, under the watchful eye of US observers. His ashes were only returned to Cuba in the nineties, so the mausoleum is a fairly recent thing. It is a pretty small room, the ceiling is made of wooden blocks, and in the stone wall there are 39 niches each sealed with a stone telling the name of the person buried here, and decorated with a flower. No photography allowed inside, though - but I guess you can find plenty of images on the net. It's a really atmospheric place!
In the evening, on my way to Varadero, I had the opportunity to see another piece of socialist architecture: the autopista nacional.
The image shows only half of it - there are as many lanes again going in the other direction. The autopista was supposed to connect Santiago to Havana - basically provide a fast east-west connection throughout Cuba - but unfortunately they ran out of money at about half way. But as you can see, even the part they built is way oversized for the current amount of traffic. From a German point of view (with our constantly full highways), it is very funny to see how traffic entering or leaving the autopista - even for fuel or snack breaks - often has to cross over the entire highway, including the lanes running in the opposite direction...
