Area with parking attendant

Recently on “Let me tell you,” my favorite Cuban television program, they were talking about parking attendants. I laughed a great deal over the description of the parking rates, directly proportional to the quality of the car and the nationality of the driver of course.

But most amazing of all is the break a driver feels when he goes to park and sees the parking attendant in the far distance; if he’s not there the chance of just running off is high. Are there parking lots without attendants in Cuba? Because the truth is I don’t know, the parking spaces have slowly been taken over by these workers. The funny thing is you can’t park any more without them, because if you do the car runs the risk of cruel and multiple amputations. It’s completely normal to see drivers with their CD players walking down the street, it wouldn’t occur to anyone to leave the player in the car.

The other day they tried to steal my neighbor’s car at two in the afternoon. He parks quite far from the house because that’s what he could “get,” so during the day he leaves the car in an “unprotected area” in front of the building. Some guys in a Lada stopped right in front of it and one of them jumped out and tried to force the door. At that one of the neighbors saw him and raised the alarm, so they ran off and couldn’t take anything.

It turned out the license plate was blue, meaning the car belonged to a State ministry or institution and later, after going to the police, he learned that it belonged to the Union of Young Communists headquarters. My neighbor made several attempts with the police but nothing came of it; one of the investigators in charge of the case said:

“Look buddy, here’s what I’d advise if you want to resolve this, take a month’s vacation from work so you can take care of the investigation and the interviews.”

My neighbor of course gave up going after the culprits… after all, in the end they didn’t take anything.