Our Man in Havana 1: the Hershey Train

Dear Readers, this will the first of a series of articles about Cuba. This is a fascinating travel destination in every way - culture, music, architecture, nature and bird life, and art. And the people are friendly, gracious, and welcoming.

I borrowed the my title from Graham Green's 1958 novel, Our Man In Havana, which was set in Cuba before the 1959 Revolution. It is about a vacuum cleaner salesman, who may be a Mi6 British spy, or maybe he isn't. Who can be sure? It's a great read, like most of Graham Green's novels.

The Hershey Train was built in 1922 by the US Hershey Corporation to service its sugar mills and farms in central Cuba. The line runs from the east side of Havana Harbour, the area known as Casa Blanca, to the city of Matanzas, about 57 mi to the east. This is the only electric line in Cuba and now mostly serves commuters. According the the World Tram and Trolleybus web page, The Hershey train is one of the few interurban rail systems still in operation.

Because of Cuba's lack of infrastructure investment since the Revolution almost 6 decades ago, the line is essentially unchanged since it opened in 1922. The current rolling stock may be Spanish, replacing the 1920s American Brill electric cars. According to Lonely Planet, all rail service in Cuba is erratic because of frequent breakdowns and track bed failures. The trip to Matanzas takes at least four hours, and the return may or may not be possible on the same day. The day this picture was taken, January 21, 2017, this author was pleased to see the green car slowly trundle out of the Casa Blanca station, with chickens and pedestrians slowly moving off the track to make way.

The Casa Blanca Station is located on the east side of the harbor channel, not in Havana Vieja (Old Town Havana). It can be accessed by the harbor ferry. The Hershey train did not run into the main part of Havana because United Railways, the British company that ran Cuba's trains in the first part of the 20th century, did not allow the Hershey train to use its rails into the city. The ferry boat is a fun ride across the harbor. Two tickets cost only 0.50 CUC, or about 50 cents US. There was surprising security presence and X-ray inspection because many years ago, someone commandeered the ferry and tried to sail it to Florida. We saw the local bicycle club in the waiting area.

This is the view of the east or Casa Blanca side of the harbor channel.

Photographs taken with a Fuji X-E1 digital camera.

Escape from Berlin, 1945: a Family Journey

Dear Readers, this article is different than my normal Urban Decay topics. Still, it is a story of decay - of the catastrophic collapse of an evil government and the fate of some of its innocent victims. This is the story of how my family escaped from Berlin in April of 1945 during the chaotic final days of the Second World War in Europe, when the Soviet armies were entering Berlin.

My family came from Greece and moved to Germany in 1938, when my grandfather got a job in Berlin. He was a highway engineer. At this time, the Germans were building the autobahns and were at the forefront of highway technology. My grandfather (Opa) and mother were Greek-born, while my grandmother (Oma) and Aunt Hellas were German-born. Needless to say, moving to Germany in 1938 was a terrible strategic decision.

The family moved to a flat in the Charlottenberg area of Berlin, near the Neu-Westend U-Bahn station and near the 1936 Olympic stadium complex. My mother remembers that they lived on the second floor at the corner of Ratzeburger Allee and Ebereschenallee. These buildings survived the war with little damage, and the area is still a quiet residential district. Some of the apartment blocks are rather severe. I have seen similar apartments in Polish cities.

My mother was a young girl then and did not remember the exact the address of the flat. But when I showed her this picture of the door with twin portholes, she immediately recognized it (you can see it in Photograph 1 behind the yellow car). She said when you entered, one flight of steps led up and another led down to the basement, which was very frightening.

This is Steubenplatz today, with Ebereschenallee coming in from the right. My mother remembers that one store facing the platz in the 1940s was a pharmacy.

This is the Neu-Westend U-Bahn station. The location and shape is likely the same as in the 1940s, and the vertical beams with rivets may be pre-war.

My mother and Hellas went to school. My mother remembers that girls and boys were separated by a barbed wire fence. The teachers were very strict, and everyone had to rise and say, "Heil Hitler." She also remembered seeing Jewish people wearing the large yellow stars on their clothes. A correspondent from Germany wrote that jews in the Reich were forced to wear the yellow star as late as September 1941 (I thought it was much earlier). Jews of German origin were first deported in October of 1940 in south Germany, and mass deportations continued as late as October 1941. 

School class portrait, 1942? Mobile phone scan from paper print in album.

After the war started, the family applied to leave Germany, but because my grandmother and Hellas were German-born, they were not allowed to leave. The family was not in a wealth category in which they could buy an exit permit by turning over valuable assets (such as art) or properties.

Opa in his office, 1943 (photographer and exact location unknown)

As the war progressed, my grandfather lost his job. Oma's Uncle Max and his wife took over the apartment so that it would appear to be leased to a German family. Opa had to remain hidden in one room in the flat for fear that he might be arrested. My mother said that other residents surely knew that a Greek family was in the flat, but no one ever turned them in to the police. The ladies were blond and spoke fluent German, so they could leave the flat and move about. The family sold possessions to raise money for food. They had only two food vouchers, for the two German-born  members of the household. I assume Max and his wife shared their food.

For 18 months, the Allies bombed Berlin day and night, and for most nights, residents had to shelter in the cellars. But Opa had to remain hidden upstairs even during the bombings. One day, a bomb fell through the bathrooms and the tub from above crashed through the ceiling. Luckily, the bomb did not explode. She remembers Opa listening to the BBC on a wireless receiver with a blanket over his head to muffle the sound. Listening to foreign radio was an offense that would lead to execution.

Late in the war, the authorities evacuated Aunt Hellas and other school-age girls to the woods of Prussia to escape the bombing. But she and a young actress or opera singer knew someone important in the Goebbels propaganda organization, and they secured travel permits to return to Berlin.

My mother said one day she and Oma were out shopping for vegetables and heard noises of gunfire. The civilian population had been so thoroughly insulated from real news by the government's propaganda, they had no idea the Soviet army was entering the city. Today, we find this hard to believe. But totalitarian governments know that control of the media means they can dominate the populace. 

This is a map of Soviet advance from:
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/rkkaww2/maps/1945W/1BF/Berlin/1BF_1UF_Berlin_Apr19-28_45.jpg

They rushed home, grabbed a few possessions, and went to the train station. Prior to this, residents were not allowed to leave Berlin, but all order must have broken down. Amazingly, even as the Nazi government was collapsing, trains were still running. I assume they went to the Westend Bahnhof. My mother and Oma went one day, while Opa and Hellas followed a day later. 

The 1946 photograph above shows a tank graveyard near Westend Bahnhof, from :
https://www.stadtmuseum.de/sites/default/files/styles/mfp_popup/public/mediapool/gallerie/berlin-1945-panzerfriedhof-gueterbahnhof-westend.jpg.

Their destination was a small town in the Schwarzwald (southwest Germany) named Reichental, where the family had vacationed before the war. Everyone with any sense tried to flee to the west, away from the Soviets. The train ride was terrible. When allied planes flew overhead, everyone got off and sheltered in ditches or fled into fields because the planes strafed the trains. People were packed tight into cattle cars. 

Oma had a brother, Kurt, who had died near Kursk (Russia). His wife was on the train with two children. The baby died, and my mother said they threw the baby out because there was no room. It is hard to believe horrors like this. I do not know if the family was ever in touch with Kurt's wife after the war and do not know what happened to Max and his wife. 

My mother, Hellas, Oma, and Opa spent a few months in Reichental and then moved to a United Nations refugee camp. Three of them briefly returned to the apartment in Berlin, I assume to recover documents and possibly some possessions. But essentially they had lost everything. They eventually made it back to Greece in the late-1940s. They had endured a decade of war, tragedy, and turmoil. 

Dear Readers, this was only 72 years ago, in what had been one of the most urbane, educated, and developed countries in the world. So many millions of innocent people suffered and died. But despite the lessons of history, many people are still susceptible to the hollow promises of demagogues and frauds. Consider the 2016 election in the USA and the scammer who entered the White House. Note how he adopted the classic techniques of fascists to ferment discord within the nation, feign victimization of a particular demographic, manufacture enemies, and then make hollow promises that only he can save the nation. 

Be eternally grateful that we still have an open press free of government censorship in USA. Beware of propaganda tools that parrot the party line and manufacture an alternative fantasy (i.e., Fox News). And beware of banning books in schools and libraries to control the narrative of history and deceive the populace. These are classic tools of totalitarian and fascist governments.

Remain vigilant and never let a war like this happen again.

Cement Silos of Redwood with Fomapan 100 Film

In 2010, I wrote about the deserted cement silos in Redwood, Mississippi. They are still abandoned and loom up above Hwy. 3 in all their concrete ugliness. It is a good site to test film, and I returned to test Fomapan 100 Classic film in my Fuji GW690II medium format camera. The tracks lead to the International Paper mill just to the north.

The brush is pretty thick and it is hard to reach the silos from the former work yard on the west. This photo is not completely sharp because of camera motion.

A hulking ruined concrete mass is in the work yard. Did they pour unwanted concrete into some sort of bin?

This is a loading dock on the railroad side of the main building. Being winter, there were no obvious snakes, bats, or poison ivy present.

This is one of the chutes that would dispense powder into trucks. This was a 4 min. exposure at ƒ/11. The light meter indicated 30 sec. at ƒ/11, but I knew that to adjust for the film's reciprocity, I should use 8 times the metered exposure. Reciprocity failure means that in dim light, film no longer responds in a linear fashion to increasing exposure time. Most film is linear in the range of 1 sec. to 1/1000 sec., but if you are in the range of many seconds or minutes exposure, you need to multiply the light meter setting many times. A Wikipedia article describes the phenomena, or contact me if you want to do some film photography and I would be glad to help.

Film: Fomapan 100 Classic.
Camera: Fuji GW690II with 90mm lens.
Development: Xtol by Praus Productions, Rochester, NY
Scanning: Minolta Scan Multi using SilverFast Ai software, 2820 dpi.
Resize for web display: ACDSee Pro 2.5.

Vicksburg Decay 2016 with Fomapan 100 Film

Mercy Hospital, Vicksburg (currently unused)

This is a three-part experiment: a new film, a commercial laboratory I had not tried before, and new scanner software (I know, I know, too many degrees of freedom).

Experiment 1: A few months ago, I read some highly positive reviews of Adox CHS 100 film, a classical fine-grain black and white film. While in Berlin last September, I stopped at Fotoimpex (a real film store) to buy some, but they were out of stock. The sales agent suggested I try Fomapan 100 Classic, a similar film made in the Czech Republic. Fomapan was established in 1921, so it has a long history of making sensitized materials for the photographic industry.

In December here in Vicksburg, during some overcast days with soft light, I tried a couple of rolls of the Fomapan in my big Fuji GW690II camera (this is a medium format rangefinder camera that takes eight 6×9 frames on a roll of 120 film). I like days with soft light when an exposure will reveal details in the shadows, such as under porch roofs. My usual practice is to overexpose and underdevelop to soften the contrast, so I exposed the Fomapan at EI (exposure index) 64.

Experiment 2: I did not have time to develop the film at home, so I sent it to Praus Productions in Rochester, New York. Praus developed the film in Xtol developer at N-1 (pull one stop), as I specified. The negatives looked pretty good, a bit dense but with full exposure range. Next time I will try EI 80 or 100 to just slightly reduce exposure.

Experiment 3. The Minolta scanning software that came with my "antique" Minolta Scan Multi scanner was pretty kludgy and was low resolution on a modern big monitor. Surprisingly, the German company Lasersoft Imaging still sells a version of their Silverfast Ai software for the Scan Multi. I thought the price was outrageous, but a Christmas 25% sale made it a bit more palatable, so I bought a license for Ai. It runs on my Windows 7 computer and correctly controls the scanner. Result: major improvement over the Minolta software with far more options for film profiles. Note: many photographers use Vuscan software, but I could never get it to work.

Zollinger's Hill Road

Results: Well, I am pleased. These are beautiful full-tone negatives. They have similar grain to Kodak Tri-X, which this reinforces the classical B&W look (which can't be simulated with software). The photograph above of Zollinger's Hill Road almost looks like the bushes are covered with frost, sort of a hidden garden. Click any picture to enlarge it and see the texture.

This is Marcus Street near where it intersects Confederate Avenue. The house is no. 1620. This was a 1/2 sec exposure at f/22, with fill flash to add some light on the tree trunk.

This cottage at 1630 Marcus Street is empty.

These steps are next to 1630 and lead down to Ethel Street. During summer, the jungle mostly engulfs the steps.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Blvd. is the former Openwood Street, leading from downtown east to the Vicksburg Military National Park. It is one of Vicksburg's older streets and is lined with historic cottages.

The cottage at 1900 MLK, Jr., Blvd. suffered a fire.

No. 1826 MLK, Jr., Blvd. is a 1920s or 1930s cottage, now empty.

No. 1832 is a duplex partly sheathed with the concrete material shaped to look like limestone blocks.

In the future, you will see more examples of this Fomapan film as well as the ever-dependable Kodak Tri-X. In the USA, you can order Foma products from Freestyle Photographic Supplies in Los Angeles. Support companies that sell film, and take pictures with film. Really, it will make you a better photographer.

Historic Foma posters are courtesy of Freestyle Photographic Supplies, Los Angeles, California. 

Travels on the Mother Road, Route 66 - Part 8, Western New Mexico

Let's continue our drive along The Mother Road, Route 66, into New Mexico, the "Land of Enchantment." Crossing the border from Arizona to New Mexico, I was running short on time and could not follow all sections of old 66. In many areas, 66 followed the frontage road paralleling Interstate 40 - I think the original pavement is gone. I headed to Gallup to find a hotel.

The famous El Rancho Hotel is still in business. The western motif is possibly a bit over-the-top, but this is Route 66, and the El Rancho really does ooze the ambiance of the old west, glamour, and movie stars. Numerous stars stayed here while filming classic westerns during the 1930s and 1940s, and guest rooms are labeled with their names rather than numbers. Today, European and Asian tourists love the place.

It would be hard to find a more exuberant lobby than this amazing timber and portrait-filled space with two stately curving wood stairs leading up to the rooms. There is a tiny elevator off to one side, and the desk clerk needs to operate it with a manual lever. I wonder if they once had a fellow dressed as an Indian Chief run the lift?

They assigned me to the Lorraine Day room, which was cosy. The compact bathroom had a tub and plumbing fittings similar to the ones in our 1920s house. The restaurant in the El Rancho is not very inspiring.

Unfortunately, the rest of Gallup is uninspiring, as well. Other than the El Rancho, the other lodgings looked rough. In the morning, I packed up and departed.

I had to push on and continued east. Wow, many people drive 90 mph along Interstate 40. At high altitude, I had to push the old Volvo hard - pedal to the metal. Fortunately, I was able to find gasoline stations with 100% gasoline (meaning no ethanol), which runs better in European cars that predate the ethanol boondogle.

The "top of the world" is the North American Continental Divide, here at an elevation of 7,245 ft (2,208 m).

This map shows the western continental divide, generated from various data sources at ArcGIS.com (hosted by Esri  (a.k.a. Environmental Systems Research Institute)). West of this dividing line, rainfall flows to the Gulf of California or Pacific Ocean, while rainfall to the east makes its way into the Mississippi River basin and, eventually, to the Gulf of Mexico. In Arizona and west New Mexico, although water flows into the Colorado River, very little reaches the Gulf of California because most is diverted along the way for agriculture and urban use.

Continuing east, I reached Grants, a town in Cibola County, about 80 miles west of Albuquerque. The old Swap Meet had not been swapping for many years.

The pawn shop was a bit more active, with plenty of "old-fashioned" stuff to give it the antique look. The Continental Divide Trail passes near here, and many through hikers pick up supplies or rest in Grants.

The historic Rio Puerco bridge, crossing the Rio Puerco, was built in the 1930s under a program funded by President Roosevelt's administration. It is a Parker truss design bridge, common in the 1920s and 1930s. Interstate 40 now carries traffic across the valley, and this old bridge is for pedestrian use only.

Next stop: Albuquerque.

Photographs taken with a Fuji X-E1 digital camera with various lenses. I broke my Fuji film camera earlier in the trip and therefore could not take real photographs with black and white film.

End of 2016 Note

Elvis and Marilyn wishe you a Happy New Year 

Dear Readers,

2016 has come to an end, and I want to thank all of you for visiting Urban Decay. Decay's total visits has exceeded 500,000, with the largest numbers of readers (or visits) from the United States, followed by Russia, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Some of my blog goals for 2017:

1. I want to finish up some short posts on central Europe and complete my 2016 trip on Route 66.
2. The Mississippi Delta always beckons with interesting subject matter.
3. I have a huge backlog of film negatives and positives to review and partly scan. In particular, photographs from Greece, central America, and the Vicksburg area should be of interest.
4. You will see an increasing proportion of photos based on traditional film. Digital is so perfect and convenient - exposures are usually correct, colors are crisp and clean, and most scenes are correctly focused. And many of the billion digital pictures taken every day look alike. Black and white silver gelatin emulsion (film) simply looks different. I won't say it is superior, but it has an different emotional impact.

Upcoming projects:

1. Cuba.
2. Drive the central portion of Route 66.

Happy New Year, stay tuned, and please come back. All comments and suggestions are welcome. Let me know if you would like to contribute an article or photographs.

Nowa Huta, a Planned Communist Town - and it Looks Great (Krakow, Poland)

After the Soviets liberated (= conquered) Poland in 1944 and 1945, Stalin imposed rigorous communism on the country. The Soviets knew that the Polish people were deeply Catholic and unlikely to embrace collectivism and forced central planning. Therefore, the new overlords had to get industry operating again, rebuild a war-ravaged country, and demonstrate to the people that communism could make their lives better.

One example of this central planning was the construction of the immense Huta Im. W. I. Lenina steelworks east of Krakow. But to house thousands of workers, a new town was needed. As written in the Nowa Huta District Guide, "Nowa Huta - once an autonomous town, presently a Krakow neighborhood - arose in the 1950s, and represents the fullest, most interesting realization of the socialist realism architectural ethos. The unique urban layout of Nowa Huta - surprisingly monumental and symmetrical - has been given the status of Krakow's historical monuments."

"Its wide streets and well-furnished houses were foreseen as the birthplace of a new socialist society planned by the Communist Party leaders." Today, the wide streets, mature trees, and neat apartments give the community a gracious and well-ordered look. Compared to the rows of nasty high-rise people's housing I have seen in Moscow, Bogota, south Chicago, and Rockaway Beach, Nowa Huta looks pretty good.

The central square where the main roads converge is now known as Plac Centralny im. Ronalda Reagana. Never in their wildest capitalist nightmares could the original designers have dreamed that a main boulevard of their planned socialist reality community would be renamed aleja Solidarności, after a political movement that eventually freed Poland from communism. And even more amazing, the main plaza was renamed after the American president who contributed greatly to the downfall of the Soviet Union and its corrupt puppet states in Eastern Europe.

My wife and I only had a few hours to walk around during a walking tour of Nowa Huta, but we were surprised at the high quality of construction in the older neighborhoods. The photograph above is in the Centrum C area. The arches and wide sidewalks have almost a Parisian flavor. Our guide told us that part of this design was for military purposes: in case the locals revolted, soldiers would have straight firing lines (just as Washington, D.C, with its wide boulevards). As stated in the Nowa Huta District Guide, "In the Stalinist era, Nowa Huta was constructed as a kind of fortified camp prepared for potential wartime activity. Its different areas resemble medieval strongholds equipped with an intricate system of passages and security devices. For those who do not know the quarter, the area is an incomprehensible labyrinth, in which even the entrances to the different settlements are hidden behind wall curvatures, being invisible from the sides."

The earliest houses, starting in 1949, were built by teams of young laborers who lived in temporary camps. They had contests on who could lay the most bricks and demonstrate true communist fervor in building a new world. Considering the carnage and devastation of the Second World War, there probably was genuine fervor in rebuilding the nation. I am not sure if the workers were forced labor, but I suspect they could not quit if they did not like the work conditions. But they were fed and received medical care, so conditions may have been similar to work camps of our Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. Consider that for many of the first inhabitants of these housing estates in the 1950s, this was the first time they experienced indoor plumbing, central heat, and, possibly, dependable electricity. Before the war, Poland was largely rural and very poor, and the war destroyed thousands of towns and villages.

We saw many older folks who have probably lived in Nowa Huta for decades. They had access to clinics, dentists, child care centers, cinemas, concert halls, and other amenities. They also could eat inexpensive meals at bar mleczny, or milk bars. These were state-subsidized and served dairy and egg, cereal, and flour-based meals such as pierogi. We stepped into one, still in business. Many closed after the fall of the communist government, but recently they have made a comeback, in response to welfare state nostalgia and the fact that they provide decent quality food and customer service at low prices.

The buildings are severe, but moderated by the tall trees and grassy plazas. Windows have been replaced with modern energy-efficient units. Our guide told us that apartments were allocated to residents based on family size (and political connections?). I don't recall if residents bought their units or how ownership is now titled or deeded.

Thousands of residents still live in Nowa Huta, including many young people who never knew it under communism. Our guide told us about how there was an informal information network to inform residents when shipments of food, furniture, clothing, or other goods were due to arrive at the official shops. The residents would be ready to line up at any time of the day or night for these rare commodities. We saw lines like this in the Soviet Union during a 1978 visit.

We also had snacks and coffee in a cultural center, sort of a 1960s-themed restaurant/club. This may have been the Janusz Korezak Youth Kultury Center. Nostalgia for some aspects of the good old communist days may be on the rise, but I suspect few Poles really would want to return to that grim lifestyle and political system. Regardless, Nowa Huta is an interesting example of a planned community, and it has weathered the changing times well. I highly recommend a visit. Poland is a fantastic destination, and the people are really nice.

I took these photographs with a Rolleiflex 3.5E twin-lens camera with 75mm ƒ/3.5 Xenotar lens on Kodak Tri-X 400 film. Film looks right for historical topics like this.