On the peak of holidays at the edge of Europe

Reaching Sarandë marked the middle of our holidays. A peak moment. There were eight of us on that trip and it’s very unlikely the same eight of us will go on another trip together ever again. Sometimes you can feel it in the air, even though you’re still enjoying each other’s company. The calm before the storm.

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On that night in Sarandë it was quite literal. The air was charged, lightning bolts already visible in the distance across the bay. I tried counting. It was coming closer, I think. But for now, we could enjoy sitting on our massive roof terrace, looking at a curved shoreline punctuated with the lights from the city, delineated by the darkness of the sea.

There were eight of us, sitting like proverbial ducks in a row, facing the sea, the bottle of wine passing from hands to hands. Horrible, horrible wine. Was it the Albanian finest we got somewhere in town or still some leftovers from a Serbian vineyard? One swig each, then pass it along. No skipping, double swigs allowed, this time. I wetted my lips, barely enough to even swallow. Too sour, with this hint of home-brewed amber-coloured alcohols that we’d encountered all over Eastern Europe. But the other end of the row was growing fond of it, fonder with every passing minute. We had two more bottles of that stuff left.

Quality of wine notwithstanding, all was well. Life was in order. All things as expected. Holiday mood kicked in. The peak moment. We’d be staying in Sarandë for a bit longer, so we didn’t have to pack the next day to travel to another place. And we’d achieved the stasis that happens, sometimes, when somehow we manage to convert a holiday rental into something that feels like home, with its rules and its rhythms and routines binding us together.

This stasis feels like reaching a peaceful plateau. We can feel we’ve escaped work and life admin and the trappings of our everyday selves. Then can just be rather than do, be with others and with ourselves with ease; the only important task of the day to find food and make sure there is enough alcohol to get us through the night.

sarande-3 — An improvised breakfast in our holiday home

But, if you’re as neurotic as I am, you feel ill at ease with ease. You feel the lurking awareness that this plateau undoubtedly leads to the valley of doubt, where sea gazing suddenly morphs into life appraising, with all this water making you wonder about things equally vast and deep and terrifying – the state of your career, the state of your relationship and the state of affairs, both these worldly and of the romantic kind. Noon cocktails in the sun whisper to you that maybe you’re not going in the right direction in life, that maybe you’re left high and dry on a proverbial balcony in the middle of nowhere. Maybe this stillness you are now enjoying means you’ve been where you are for too long, whereas others had long ago moved on to seek new vistas and new challenges.

A change of scenery can give you perspective. But panoramic views can also give you panoramic worries. Especially when the majestic forces of the sea and the sky converge to deliver a night storm on the seashore. Many a philosopher and meditation app has dwelled on the comparison of life turbulences to the ever-changing sea or sky so I will spare you. For now, the air is balmy but I can feel it coming, and let’s leave it there.

Perhaps those ruminations have nothing to do with meteorology or travel itinerary. Perhaps it’s geography, that’s what it is. I’m literally facing the end of the world. Fine – the edge of Europe. Kind of. It’s true that if you travelled along the coast, you could go a bit further South, to Greece. But you don’t have to know that. Sarandë feels like the end of Europe, the place where the West loses its hold, where the East is toying with becoming European.

sarande — Panoramic views from our roof terrace in Sarandë

Somehow Albania, wedged between Italy and Greece, and at different points in history under Greek and Italian control, managed to escape the forceps of classical Europe. In fact, if you were to continue further South to Greece, you’d be getting closer to the heart of Europe; with its Euro, marble Gods and Ryanair flights. But for now Albanian Sarandë seems to be satisfied with serving as Southern Europe in Eastern European prices for those whose post-soviet salaries might have been swallowed whole in Italy or Greece. As far as sun and palms are concerned, Sarandë has it covered. Calamari included.

But maybe it’s neither meteorology nor geography responsible for my edgy ruminations about the end of things and impending doom. Maybe it’s history. Maybe it’s facing the realisation that post-soviet dreams of paradise consist of covering what looks like an actual paradise in concrete. Sarandë is this dream made real. Nothing ancient or classical about this place – until around 1913 there were no permanent residents here. After communism fell, tourism raised its head, and Sarandë has become the Albanian riviera. Construction boom followed, greeting us with rebars poking out of half-finished concrete structures lining up the raised shoreline like a post-soviet imitation of ancient ruins.

But from my perch on the terrace, all of the architecture, the history and geography was hidden in the darkness, and Sarandë felt timeless, primal even. The night smoothing out the edgy landscape, with its protruding reinforced steel, the sour wine soothing the edgy mind and its protruding worries.

El.

Inspired by a 2017 road trip in the Balkans

On how Krakow tries to unforget Jewish culture every hot summer

The Jewish district is a place unreal and unforgotten. It awakens for one week in the middle of each summer. It awakens to remember and celebrate that what’s been silenced for decades.

It’s a place that enchants naïve travellers who come here looking for something that doesn’t exist anymore. They’re looking for the land of their grandfathers, they’re looking for Galicia[1] – a half-mythical fatherland of Jews who long ago emigrated from Poland and Ukraine to the USA, to Britain, to Israel.

kazimierz-4

The streets are empty, dormant; cobblestones parched by extreme heat, the air shimmering. Even the ever-vigilant pigeons took cover. Yet shadows linger in the white glare of sunlight reflected in windows and pastel walls. This place is known internationally as a location near Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps. The city forgot about that a long time ago. But the world remembers.

How to describe a place like that? If you were here, you could ‘do’ Auschwitz in the afternoon and come back to Krakow for the evening concert of Jewish music. Many do that. You could come here and never see one Jew. I hadn’t for years. Or you could take part in one of the biggest Jewish culture festivals[2] in the world, as I did that summer. Or maybe even the biggest, who knows. If you are one of those people who give a damn about local culture and the history of a place, who want to feel its spirit, then coming to the Jewish district in Krakow, you’d want a taste of its genuine Jewish life. As a tourist, you would probably start with ‘traditional’ Jewish restaurants and all their variations on the pascha dessert[3]. Then, you would visit synagogues transformed into museums, into bookshops, into cultural centres. There’s a good chance that on your way to the next one, you’d be offended by some anti-Semitic graffiti, which most probably did not refer to the Jews at all. If you’re lucky, you could even spot a group of real Hassidic Jews on a trip from Israel. And you could pass by so many other Jewish people, never recognising them. Let me take you to this place.

You are walking Szeroka Street, the main street of the Jewish district of Kazimierz[4]. Suddenly, you hear the ephemeral sounds of clarinet. Nothing unusual there – a Klezmer[5] band plays here live every Sunday, so that restaurant guests can have an authentic experience of Jewish culture while eating their cholent[6] or maybe pascha underneath a metal menorah on the facade of the Ariel restaurant. Or is it Esther restaurant? There are so many of them. Are you not interested? You want a real taste of Jewish heritage?

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Keep going then; right behind the bold facades of restaurants, obscured by the sea of gigantic garden umbrellas, there is an entrance to a synagogue that still remains a synagogue. You just need to pass the stand with Jewish souvenirs, cross the car park that encircles this little green square… what is this plaque, you ask? It commemorates local victims of the Holocaust. There used to be a Jewish cemetery here too… but keep going. Now you just need to survive the attack of tour guides who know best what such a tourist like you needs to see on their Jewish heritage quest. Yes, that’s the synagogue entrance. I know — quite easy to miss compared to the flamboyant facade of the Szara restaurant on its left. But you’re in the right place: the Remuh synagogue. What’s that? Currently in renovation? Don’t worry, you can still go in. It’s only 5 PLN for entrance, so for more or less 1 Euro you will see a genuine, although somewhat bare, interior of an authentic community synagogue. Oh, and the cemetery is included in the price too. Yeah, you can take some pictures of the cemetery – you know; crumbling tombstones, dilapidated stars of David hidden in unkempt grass. You can really feel the decay, the loss, all this unremembering. No need even to make the photos black and white. The absence of caring.

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But I couldn’t care less. It’s still before 10 am, and it’s already unbearably hot. The dress I’m wearing is lightweight silk, and I can barely feel it on my skin, but it almost makes it worse – there is no barrier between myself and the enveloping heat. I’m, as usual, hungover; it’s bloody impossible to stay sober when visiting this city. I really need coffee, but I can’t bear the thought of drinking anything hot. Oh why did I think it was a good idea to combine holidays with an ethnographic fieldwork?! I’m not exactly looking forward to another 14 hours of workshops, interviews, photograph taking, sketching, writing, and getting progressively more drunk today.

The first meeting is about to start in 10 minutes. I am of course late, and I’m supposed to help to organise the thing. I barely manage to arrange all the clunky folded chairs in the circle of the meeting room on time. We’re in the back of the Galicia Jewish Museum, where the meetings will be held for five consecutive days. I put the flowers in the centre of the circle, next to the altar-like centrepiece created by one of the meeting leaders. I play the first track from the CD. Serene meditative music fills the space and we wait, chatting. I don’t expect more than five people to come – come on; it’s too early in the morning, the location is hidden in the backyard of a shabby museum building on a quiet street, and it just happens to be the hottest day of the year (36°C). And frankly, there seem to be many more interesting festival events at the same time every day.

But I was wrong. More than 40 people show up for the first meeting, and more will come every day, making it really difficult to squeeze them in here so that everyone can sit in this bloody self-help meeting kind of circle. People of different ages. Couples and families. Poles. Polish Jews. Americans, Australians and Germans. With or without Jewish roots. Some of them came by accident, some were just curious, while others attend these meetings every year. They come to share their stories.

kazimierz

But I am not here to share anything. I’m just another ghost – barely there, barely visible at all. My Kazimierz is an impression created during this one unbearably hot and sunny summer, when I was invited to become part of it; walking its ancient parched streets from dawn to dusk, resting in its cafes, shady gardens and cold dark tea rooms shielded from the heat and modernity by their thick medieval walls. Spending the nights drinking in its damp cellars filled with smoke, filled with haunting music and the stink of beer and vodka. This place exists only in my eyes, in the eyes of someone local and yet so foreign now. In the eyes of someone who does not belong but yet fits in. A girl who cannot escape the fact that she was created in the culture that does not know how to speak of its past, does not know how to remember, or forget either. She was born in the place that yearns to look into the future and that consciously tries to invent it from the absences and silences that scream only about the past.

My Kazimierz is a place of encounters, a place where you know the faces you pass on the streets; the faces of experts, mourners, searchers, artists, and the locals. The place where people walk pregnant with stories. And I am here to listen to their silences, to their omissions, to their questions rather than answers. I’m here to collect them all.

Inspired by an ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Krakow in the summer of 2012. First written as a vignette for my academic work, then adapted (boring theory bits removed) in 2016.

El.

On familiar smells in exotic places

Perhaps one of the main allures of travel is to put oneself in places we have no memories of. In places untouched by our everyday existence and disentangled from our identity. Cuba was supposed to be such a place; exotic, distant, with still only one eye open to the ubiquitous capitalism. I expected Cuba to jolt my senses with its unique sensations; rhythmic beats of salsa, moreish sweetness of pineapple, fresh scent of bashed mint. I was ready for the heady kick of generous measures of the Havana Club finest, for the walls and cars putting Pantone shades to shame, for the curvaceous shapes of tropical plants with their huge leaves resembling intricate paper-cuts.

I wasn’t ready for how much Cuba reminded me of my childhood.

lada

First of all, it hit us with the hard to describe feeling of the communist-era purgatory; where insignificant individuals queue in brown-beige spaces to get a stamp of approval from the all-seeing but uncaring eye of the system. I almost lost my visa right after crossing the Cuban border control. It is a dangerous thing to be without those little slips of paper that justify your existence in the eyes of the almighty bureaucracy. I experienced that first-hand when crossing the Ukrainian border, where our paperwork, and thus existence, was found lacking. And then again at Odessa airport, trying to explain to a glaring border control official why I had entered Ukraine twice on one day but never left. Long story for another day, for another post. Fortunately, this time the patron saint of idiots was smiling on me; a middle-aged Argentinian couple noticed the visa slipping from my passport and handed it back to me.

So. I had all the inconspicuous but terribly important slips of paper in order and I wasn’t smuggling any firearms or pornography. But still I felt inadequate when I finally faced the judgement of the Valkyries of socialism – the clerk ladies, looking at you from their counters without a shred of sympathy. Always middle-aged, always with their hair permed or bleached, or both, with heavy make-up or heavy jewellery, or both, always with a frown or bored expression, or both. There is even a unique name for them in Polish – pani w okienku, which translates as ‘the lady in the window’, referring to the glass pane that shields her from queuing supplicants.

But this time the Valkyrie, well, not exactly smiled, but stamped my passport and waved me through. The almighty bureaucratic system of the Republic of Cuba opened her sweaty arms to welcome me in.

Our flight had been delayed and we arrived later than expected. The sun was already setting. The arrival lounge of the airport was full of middle-aged taxi drivers holding placards with international surnames. Eduardo was not there, so we wandered off to find a currency exchange. And another oddly familiar detail disrupted the Caribbean exoticism. The second level of the arrival lounge, quiet and empty, turned out to be a perfect example of the soviet approach to interior design that always somehow manages to look both grandiose and shabby. There were acres of polished floors and mosaic ceilings crisscrossed with elegant stone pillars. But there were also ugly concrete installations and cheap plastic fittings showing signature signs of the creativity of amateur plumbers and electricians that will look instantly familiar to anyone who grew up in the blocks of flats designed with a soviet flair and executed with blasé nonchalance. Even the smell was right. The trademark scent of Lizol that was used to disinfect the floors of public buildings. As in Poland, the wind of change might sound like the rustle of green American dollars, but it smelled of disinfected terrazzo.

We finally found the right Eduardo, and Eduardo, after a false start of putting another tourist into his car, found us. We were ready to be whisked away to our exotic destination in a candy-pink retired Chevrolet. But the Soviet goddess of lacklustre charm once again asserted her dominance over the American demigod of grandiose glamour. It turned out Eduardo was a proud owner of a beige Lada Sputnik[1] that looked like it remembered better days, and frankly, better decades. The feel of faux-leather upholstery sticking to my bare legs, the sounds of an engine with tuberculosis, the whiff of leaded petrol from open windows were all familiar. As a child I spent many summers with my dad’s side of the family and made many a trip in a similar beige Lada owned by my uncle, watching him navigate the potholes of rural roads, breathing in the clouds of petrol dust through open windows; a fair price to pay for the cool breeze that lifted the oppressive heat from the confines of that metal tin.

On our way from the airport to Havana, I was trying to revive the contentment of those childhood rides and my blissful lack of awareness of the need for seat belts for passengers. And I was trying to ignore the fact that Eduardo seemed to have to rely on the eyesight of his brother Antonio who was sitting shotgun and doing his best to point out lanes, cars and pedestrians in near total darkness that had fallen over us. I desperately tried to catch any glimpses of the scenery, but it was too dark; only the unfamiliar shapes of palms and cacti flickering in the headlights. For now, the tropical green and Caribbean blue were to be left to my imagination, and at the moment my imagination couldn’t help but paint this initial glimpse of Cuba in fifty shades of soviet beige.

Inspired by a trip to Cuba in 2018/19

El.

On tasting Eastern European history

I find museums overwhelming. How long should I stare at an item, how bad should I feel about pretending I’m reading the labels when in fact I’m thinking about what to have for dinner? Which direction should I go to maximise the experience of immersing myself in a meticulously arranged procession of dead people’s stuff? How to simultaneously appear genuinely engaged, immensely impressed, slightly apologetic and convincingly innocent to the stewards observing me from the corner of the room, ready to pounce once I come too close to a roped-off object?

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But I found the two castle museums near Kamianets-Podilskyi[1] surprisingly enjoyable. Now both museums merged into one in my memory, but perhaps that only reflects the similarities, reflects the way they made me feel when I was walking through them. The fact I didn’t feel guilty about my limited engagement with the history presented there. Mostly because the museums made no serious attempt at presenting history as something that could be understood.

So instead of watching the objects held in the castle, I’m beginning to watch my friends wandering through the courtyards, corridors and caverns:

There was O. taking a photo of a portrait of a sombre looking Sarmatian[2] and adding a bunny ears filter to it because why not.
A. delicately touching a dusty garment because no one was looking.
M.W. curiously poking a trebuchet because one could.
M.C. determinately staring at a poster written in Cyrillic because one kind of should.

How to engage with a display of history that evades understanding? Actually, how does one engage with history? Deep question, this.

I think about the people behind the objects. Not their long-dead owners but their custodians. Anthropologists who write love poems about seal fur mittens, historians who develop an intimate relationship with Latin texts stored in cathedral vaults, curators reviving communities through workshops that worship ceremonial shirts.

And then I think about the custodians of time, the heirs of history. About the men who wrote it all down because history was the by-product of their actions, the mark they left on time and space. I can easily imagine the face of a man who can feel that history is his story; his face is all over history books, museums and documentaries. His claims and deeds written down in claims and deeds. The ownership of time and space passed down along long lines of sons of his sons.

This man has a room dedicated to the storage of time, with leather armchairs and family trees on the walls. He understands history like a general understands a battlefield. He takes a sweeping look through the ages and cultures and distils them into accounts, to be perused at his leisure. He is the rightful heir of the past, and history is something he uses to sign his signature on the flow of time, to solidify it into his authored story. When he’s not only the story teller, he’s the accountant, the librarian, the book keeper. The textuality of it all is inescapable.

What about all the stuff then, I wonder wandering through the empty rooms of the castle. What about the dusty souvenirs of history?

I think about another type of time custodian, imagining her sneaking into a museum after hours to get a moment alone with her object. Her fingers know every inch of its surface, lovingly tracing the signs of age and wear and tear, accepting its scars. She’s the carer of the stories stored in those intimate details, even though she knows she will never be able to piece together the History with the capital H. But still she reveres the encounter, caressing the layers of the amber of time while trying not to leave her own mark. A personal affair conducted in the privacy of musty storage rooms and cold archives. Her tactile encounters with history also turn into texts; I think about the PhDs, books and articles begotten during long evenings spent in secluded locations, worshipping the artefacts of us.

The objects I’m looking at in one of the rooms of the castle museum don’t look cared for, let alone worshipped. I’m not sure what stories they tell. If history is what is displayed here, then it is neither intelligible nor tangible. It’s hidden behind floor to ceiling class cases. The first encases an old credenza, black and white photographs of starving children and some sort of kitchen utensils, I think. Another has a few military garments from radically different time periods. Inside the next glass cube there is a chair, maybe a throne even – who knows – surrounded by old photographs, some documents and a porcelain dinner set. The glass case standing by the door looks more like an attempt at displaying history rather than burying it in random heaps of stuff. But the TV that was supposed to do the task is off, maybe broken. Instead, there are more old documents, photographs and maps, hanging limply around the screen.

There is even a glass pane in the floor; beneath it a heap of broken-off heads and chipped busts of dictatorial-looking men. There is something symbolic in that, perhaps.

Perhaps not. I don’t have more time to try to find meaning in chaos, as we’re supposed to be back on the road again. The rest of the crew are done with exploring the castle. They’re now sitting huddled in a patch of shade outside the glass-cases room I’m in. I stop in the doorway, observing them without being seen. They apparently managed to hunt some Wi-Fi after a day of being trapped in the past; first spending the night in the medieval Dominican monastery and then the morning exploring the ruins of the castle. It gets to you, living in the past.

But is history in the past? Is it what’s kept in museums and libraries? Somehow, it doesn’t feel like history stays in the past in this country. Rather, it soaks through everyday life. Various people have tried to contain this fluctuant nature, this sprawling tendency of history in various words:

“There are quite a few different metaphors that have been used to characterize history: a river, a tree, a labyrinth, an ocean, a landscape. Several are particularly worth unpacking, but the metaphor that I prefer is “pathway.””[3]

There is some sense in all of them. But later that day, staring into my plate in yet another traditional Ukrainian restaurant, I decide I would go for borscht[4]. History is like borscht. As anyone familiar with Eastern Europe knows, borscht can be light and clear or heavy and opaque. It can be sweetened or soured to individual taste. It stains your fingers red.

As we immerse ourselves deeper into Ukrainian landscape and life-way, I begin to think that a museum is an odd way to store history. I convince myself that history has less to do with dusty stuff stuffed behind glass and more with sustenance; produced from local ingredients following a traditional recipe of always doing things that way. Such a history borscht can be a source of strength or something you can choke on.

castles

On waiting, stillness and the pace of change

It feels odd not to be in motion after a whole day of driving. OK, there is something comforting about sitting around a table and waiting for food to be brought in. But still, restlessness creeps in. I try to relax by looking around. The restaurant’s courtyard is quiet, sleepy and half empty in the last hour of daylight. Food is the only element that moves in this still life picture we’re sitting in. Another dish emerges from the kitchen and disappears in another room. In the alcove next to us someone is banging a piece of hard bread against the wooden table top. The sound is formidable. The bread goes back to the kitchen and outraged guests return to waiting. Maybe there is something natural about sitting at a table, but I’m not used to being still. It’s like I’m always trying to get somewhere where I’m currently not. Stillness is unsettling.

kamieniec podolski

But since we arrived in Ukraine, we’ve only moved to settle; at another table, in front of new dishes, facing a different view. And the view here is rather splendid. The panorama of old castle walls and turrets bathed in a cascade of fluorescent lights, framed by the vines surrounding the restaurant terrace. The scenery is completely static and the air is motionless. It’s been eons since a waiter emerged from the gateway leading to the kitchens. Time stands still, the service stands still. On this evening, it feels like history is moving faster than reality. The new is coming.

We are sat underneath ancient town gates; the restaurant is nestled within the defensive wall. We’ve come to this historic town to touch the past, but the presence of the future is more acute at the moment. The new is coming. Or, more precisely, calling. S.’s phone. Again. He says, again, he has to take it. There are matters of the state, or at least our home town, to be discussed. New times are coming and, this time, his time has come. Favours are being asked, lists decided, names removed and replaced. Local elections; a little bit of something new is coming to Poland, not Ukraine. Nothing new there then.

S. counts the places on the lists. S.’s girlfriend counts roaming costs. Minutes are ticking, politics are being made. Democracy, in its youth eager enough to transcend the borders and working hours, manages to find us hidden in the vines underneath the medieval walls in the town on the fringes of Europe. These town gates must have seen a fair share of history. Would they recognise the vibration of a mobile phone for the sound of history being made? Not the horns, not the roar of cannons, not the chanting of the victorious religious. Or is this chapter of local history insignificant enough to be just a story?

We’re waiting and listening to political favours being traded, ranks pulled, loyalties nudged. S. has been waiting a long time for a better position in the pecking order. This might be the breakthrough event in his career. Both politics and history seem to involve a lot of waiting; waiting that is subsequently forgotten, with only breakthrough events remembered. But what makes a political event into a historical event? One thing they seem to share is the paradox of being all about change on the one hand and same old, same old on the other.

I think of the billboards of Tymoshenko³ we saw hovering over the roads on our way here. She’s experienced a fair share of waiting, hasn’t she? Is the new coming this time? This election? Was that how change was heralded? By replacing a traditional crown braid with a sleek boardroom-appropriate ponytail? She promises a new course for the country. I wonder if Ukraine is interested in walking along this new course. Or perhaps Yulia had a maritime metaphor in mind? In which case, does the country want to edge forward¹ in this new direction?

A new course for the country. It seems that change has always been associated with movement. I’m allowing myself to get carried away by the metaphor. What if this ship has sailed and Ukrainians didn’t even attempt to get on board, knowing better than that. Choosing to watch history under way² from a distance. Waiting. Staying put until the restlessness cannot be contained anymore and spills over. Over the streets and squares, etching a new course with rivulets of red.

Now, bored out of my senses by waiting for food and deprived of any Internet connection, I’m trying to imagine the pace of Ukrainian history. On the one hand, it would be fitting for it to be glacial; reflecting what any old Eastern European sage would tell you – that nothing ever changes. Same old, same old. The breeze of change unable to shift the layers upon layers of historical and cultural sediment. On the other, the country is young and the pace of its history rapid and turbulent, with wars and revolutions never ceasing. After stopping in this sleepy town tucked away in Western Ukraine, it’s hard to imagine that at the moment this country is being ripped apart. It seems the land is vast enough to hold it all; the disruption of war and peaceful stillness, revolutions and nothing ever changing. It’s ancient enough to have seen it all.

The sun is setting over the castle and the wind picks up, bringing the promise of our food finally emerging from the kitchens. The tables around us are now filled with hungry guests, waiting, talking, resting. I have a weird thought that if the new was to come, unaccompanied by marching armies or unannounced by demonstrations, we would miss it. I’m sure we already have.

kamieniec podolski-2

Inspired by: a trip to Western Ukraine in 2018

On coming from somewhere

There are just four rooms in our casa particulares in Varadero. At the moment one of them is occupied by a Russian family with two girls and another by an Australian couple on their honeymoon. At breakfast, the head of the Russian family, being Russian, was teaching the Australian couple how to eat caviar. He brought the caviar with him, apparently not being completely satisfied with the Cuban approach to breakfast, which relies heavily on fresh fruit, coffee and eggs. The Australians, being Australian, or maybe newlywed, were super excited and super friendly. Before they disappeared in their taxi colectivo, which will take them to Havana (and then they’ll be off to Bahamas and Miami to continue the grandest trip of their lives) we talked about snorkelling, salsa, Crocodiles, and the weather. As one does. The conversation, however, started with a ritual greeting of ‘where are you from?’

On the road everyone is expected to be from somewhere. Everyone whose appearance screams ‘a tourist’ at least. The question is asked by the locals who try to sell you something, by fellow travellers, by hosts and by guides, and by more locals who try to sell you something entirely different this time.

On the road we seem to be quite literally defined by where we come from (Poland), where we’ve been to (Havana then Viñales) and where we’re going (from Varadero to Havana and then flying back to London). On the road our human condition is stripped from other layers of identity and reduced to the archetype of a nomad. Our life, with its achievements, goals and accumulated things left in the distant everyday, reduced to the motif of journey.

Where are you from? Being a migrant, I got used to this probing enquiry following any utterance I make in my clearly non-British British English. But this is not a usual opening line that those who do not look or sound as being from somewhere else hear. Those who appear to have always belonged rather than have recently come are usually greeted by more static questions. It could be:

What’s your name? – a label, which tends to stay the same as we go through life.

How are you? – which is all about being in the present moment.

Or, in London at least, one is likely to be faced with: What do you do? – the account of where we’ve got to in life, a label describing our place in the structure of things.

I am yet to discover what those who give all the right signs of being Cubanos are asked by the strangers from their own country. I like to think this greeting, which no gringo will receive, entails a recognition of shared hardship, a promise of a better tomorrow and an invitation that smells like tobacco and roasted pig and sounds like laughter punctuated by the arrhythmic heartbeat of salsa.

Inspired by: a trip to Cuba in 2018/19