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Italiano (Italian)
Although I talk about travel, this article is a small manual on how to become famous, although I do not recommend it.
We returned to Cienfuegos, which had seemed like a marvel. But after doing a bit of math and realizing that, even after deducting what we spent on the unnecessary return to the capital (4 hours by bus each way), with the money left over we were going nowhere, we began to get a bit despondent.
Getting rich again
The next morning my friend got the idea to try if the ATM there worked. Super skeptical I told him it was impossible, since, as we had been told at the embassy, we had already tried it at the counter in Havana.
I let him go into the bank alone, which was open at that hour, and remained with all the defeatism I could muster sitting on a bench.
He came out beaming and waving bills, it was like getting rich again. Only later did I go and read the paper guide properly, where it was written that ATMs in Cuba did not work outside of bank opening hours. So, it would have been enough to make the withdrawal 10 minutes later and many of our anxieties would not have been experienced.
At that point, however, there were only a few days left. I was unmotivated and all looking forward to going home to make a video call, so we decided to head back toward Havana and have two days at the beach relaxing. We went back to the first office, where we also found though very taxed, the money my brother had sent us. We also lost further value because we had to reciprocate them in dollars. It seemed the final hoax, but there were more!
During the last walk downtown, I felt myself being taken by the hand. She was a beautiful smiling little girl, I did not have time to tell my friend luck that there are still children in the world who give hope for the future with their purity. Out popped the mother who asked for a dollar to take a picture together with her daughter.
On the way to the airport the taxi driver, hearing us Italian, wanted us to absolutely play a cassette of Eros Ramazzotti, whom we both detest. That was the last hoax on Cuban soil.
In conclusion, going to the newspaper and being sneered at by everyone
Upon returning to Italy, aside from the surprise of the phone bill that came to us the next month, there was another big one.
In the past I had had some success in exposing injustices by writing to newspapers. Following the scam related to my work experience in the U.K., in addition to being published in several national newspapers, I was a guest on the famous television program Mi manda Rai 3. While following a misunderstanding over a hospital visit, I even received an apology from Ausl, in the same local newspaper.
Becoming famous is not always good
Convinced of our reasons, we wrote a letter in which we intended to tell about the lack of humanity of the bank that had been unwilling to let my brother make the transfer, and the inefficiency of the Italian Embassy. Appearing in the newspaper seemed to us a good thing and the best way to expose our wrongs.
Instead, the local newspaper wrote an article making us look like naïve whoremongers, and we even found ourselves newsstand posters with the headline 2 Cervesi scammed in Cuba. In addition, that article was also picked up by a site talking about vacations in Cuba, and we were sneered at there as well.
Home travel How to do it without money on a trip to Cuba, real adventure
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Trips taken, travel stories divided by continent
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