Tonight was the last night this "club" was opened in La Havana. It was closing for a month in order to prepare for the new season. Everyone at the hostel was talking about it so I thought I would check it out with them. It seemed famous, and indeed, after taking a minivan-bus with 11 other people from the hostel, we arrive at this old factory with a huge line in front. A big poster was displayed at the entrance that confirmed to me the importance of this place.

We therefore enter, with Fadi (Toronto), Marine (Switzerland) and — (Spain). — told me her name 3 times and even spelled it a couple of times, without success for me to understand and even less to remember. The concept of this club is very nice and I had heard of something similar in Ottawa: A large museum they turn into a night club, sort of. What was so special about this place, explained a german girl from our group, is that it is one of the few places in Cuba where you can have politically engaged art pieces. Freedom of Speech is a problem here as I have been told. There was a main gallery displayed works from the collaboration of two Cuban artists: a painter and a photographer. Their work included a lot of ~modern / ~absurd pieces:

• man covered in white eggs in a bathtub with a cracked egg in his hand,
• man with an absurdly big necklace of sausages,
• naked man amongst pigs,

to cite only a few. A second minor exposition was towards non-toxic masculinity and a dozen pictures of men wearing a flower on their ear were displayed. As it is a cause I deeply respect I got pictures taken of me with a flower as well, and one with Fadi.

There was a little more art displayed but I don't really have anything to say about it, except that some of it was the cliché of men stuck on their phones / social media machines — which I have seen again and again (take a look at r/phonesarebad). Now for the music, there were 3 different stages with a band / DJ's on each. I was able to listen to the end of a Rock band that played covers, it was good. I then went to the more techno / electronic music. This one was especially nice because I feltlike there were more local people. I was dancing on Cuban techno with 50 years old Cuban moms on my birthday. That made me smile a lot. I then went back where the Rock band was playing to find a DJ that took his place. It was deffinitely not something exceptional (in quality): the guy played a ton of famous songs, the transitions were quite awful, if there were any, but the location and the whole experience was something really marvellous. All this dancing made me quite thirtsy (it was also quite warm inside), and there were multiple bars inside that would give you drinks and note down the cost of them on a little cardboard sheet they gave us at the entrance, you paid at the end while leaving. However, I had brought exactly enough cash for the taxi and the entrance (2x600CUP taxi and 250CUP entrance ⁽¹⁾ ), no drinks for me that night... I am not disappointed though, I don't think I would have been very confortable being drunk in a place I didn't know. We were able to leave the venue, after waiting for about 30 minutes (to pay for the drinks of the other people), and get our taxi back to the hostel. After taking a quick shower, I went to bed at 3:20am, alarm set to 5:30am, nice.

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Notes

1. 1450CUP ≈ 14CAD