Americans, whose views of communist societies these days may be drawn mainly from movies, decades-old wars and personal experience with surly Eastern bloc waitresses before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, never seem quite prepared for Cuba. The island, for all its pervasive poverty, does not reek of misery, like so many Latin American countries. Streets are relatively clean. Passersby bumming dollars often speak two languages. Children are in school.
Doctors make house calls.
And families occasionally go to the beach for the weekend, drink rum and eat ice cream. No hard feelings Most important, to the surprise of American visitors, Cubans show no hint of bad feelings toward their neighbors to the north. The two governments may be at odds, but the two peoples, for the most part, see no reason to get caught up in it. Relations are warm. That impressive warmth can, however, lead visiting Americans to take home an incomplete view of Cuba.