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Adventures on a tiny island...
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Ryanair, "The On Time Airline", began its relationship with us by pushing back the time of our flight an hour and a half in fifteen minute increments, all with no comment on what was happening from the gate crew. Actually, they really began our new friendship by tacking on the insurance I'd refused to my purchase anyway, overcharging me by 28 Euros. I noticed this a day before we headed to the airport, and we've since found that Ryanair is dedicated to one thing... never giving any money back to its customers no matter what. Every Ryanair person we talk to in Pisa insists they can have nothing to do with customer service and that we have to fax our claim to some number.
We used the extra time at the gate to make friends with a Maltese couple, who evidently liked us well enough, because once on the island, they let us use their cellphone to call Theresa, our new host, and then offered to drive us to her house. We happily accepted, and although their car was a tiny Peugeot, we somehow managed to stuff ourselves and our baggage in their backseat. Theresa turned out to be a very nice college student, and we had a great evening together, cooking up some rabbit (a Maltese specialty) and drinking a bottle and a half of wine. Theresa's Mom and sister were planning on arrival at 3 am (their flight was delayed as well), and we couldn't quite manage to stay up and greet them.
The next day we awoke late, and Cierra was hungry before we had wandered very far, so we stopped in the Wild Wild West Cafe and met Mario, a Maltese man with a deep affection for Americans and most especially American Country Music. Indian art and pictures of country stars were slapped all over the wall. Blaring the country music, Mario treated us like family and was so excited to show us the things that other Americans had sent back to him that we could barely eat our lunch. He was more than kind, however, sending out some peppered goat cheese for us to try (another Maltese specialty, from its smaller island Gozo), and complimentary glasses of wine. He also invited us to come to their Christmas Eve dinner, saying he would be honored to have us as guests. What a nice guy!
On to what we spent our day on. Here's a tip. When you go to a country that is surrounded by water and has a currency conversion that's against you by 3 to 1, don't book a one-way ticket. Seems like common sense, right? We did this knowing that we had to get to Tunis for our next booked flight, and believing that there would be ferry service for us to get there. Sadly, it was not so, and the flight for next week has cost us dearly. We spent most of our first day in Malta trying to arrange alternate travel, including talking to an affable Australian fellow with a yacht, but no dice. Al the other ways would cost even more and take way more time, so we had to drag ourselves out to the airport again, buy the tickets, and bus back to Valletta. First time I've ever paid for airplane tickets with a wad of cash, counted out several times to make sure it was right. 154.88 in Liri, which is around $450, for a tiny hop across around 200 km of water. Sigh. Well, at least we got the tickets and there won't be any major disruptions in our travel plans.
We got back to Valletta, Malta's capital, around sunset, and couldn't face yet another bus ride, so we decided to walk back the 3 or so miles to Theresa's place. A great night for a long walk, and we stopped along the way for a sampling of some of the very cheap takeaway food sold from counters along the street. It mostly tasted like grease, but it cost 12 Maltese cents, so who cares?
Malta is one of the most Roman Catholic countries on Earth. They're one of the 4 most densely populated countries as well. I believe this is known as "cause and effect". Malta has also turned out to be much warmer than the Italian cities just to the north, perhaps benefiting a bit more from the warming influence of the sea.
Malta's also one of the smallest countries in the world, consisting of just 3 tiny islands in the middle of the Mediterranean. Its central location gives it great history as a port, and a long list of conquests by various powers with varying degrees of success. The latest one was voluntary, as Malta has just joined the EU, and the money's already flowing in. New road works are in progress, causing the pokey, decrepit buses to run even slower. The buses have character, though, with each interior wildy different from the one before. Our latest ride was decorated with big Circus style letters all over the dashboard. The bus drivers are pretty comical fellows, almost all of them chain-smoking despite the "no smoking" signs plastered all over the bus. One fellow puffed on a pipe the whole time he drove. They've all got their favorite people along their route who they stop and exchange a few words with daily, to the great frustration of the drivers behind them.
Our second day in Malta, we went south, to the ancient walled city of Mdina, still fortress like today, with several palaces packed into a very tight space overlooking a great view of pretty much the entire island. Near here, we took an audioguide tour of the ancient St. Paul's Catacombs, where we got to crawl around ancient underground tombs for a few hours. Creepy! There aren't any human remains down there now, but it isn't made clear if that's due to passage of time, or the fact that the tombs were robbed many years before. We also saw St Paul's Grotto, where St. Paul himself supposedly took refuge after a shipwreck. It's a small cave-like space underneath what is now St. Paul's Cathedral. Later in the day, we walked through the gardens of the President of Malta, and then strolled out to some pre-Roman cart ruts that have been preserved in the stone. They were surprisingly deep ruts... the wheels that made them would have had to be enourmous!
Our first try at hitchhiking in Europe was a great success. We got picked up by a fellow in a Beamer, who thought I looked Maltese, and was happy to chat with us as he gave us a ride to our door.
On Christmas Eve, we went out walking in a downpour and got several sockfulls of gutter water trying to cross the street. After getting on a bus and an hour of sunshine while riding to a fishing village, another storm hit just as we disembarked. We ended up shivering under a tiny bus station roof with lots of other people. At first it was just hard rain and thunder, but then the hail started to hit. It quickly grew to marble-sized and was pinging off of everything, building up on the sidewalk in little mounds. I sang a few lines of White Christmas to Cierra as we squeezed in tighter to avoid being struck.
After this dubious start to our holiday, we couldn't go anywhere but up. Buying some dry socks from a nearby market, we looked at the fresh catches of the day on ice before heading to a local restaurant to have some fish on a plate. Delicious! Upon returning to Valleta, another storm hit, and we took shelter on the front porch of a stately but small building, which we didn't notice until afterwards was Malta's stock exchange.
We hadn't seen a movie in a looong time, so we treated ourselves to a showing of Casino Royale, the new James Bond flick. We liked that one so much, we came back Christmas night to see the Borat movie with Theresa's mom, and all three of us loved that one. I just have one thing to say... My wife, she makea this cheese... If you've seen it, you understand.
Kirsten, Theresa's mom, invited us to a wonderful late Christmas breakfast. Smoked salmon, cheeses, meats, a Norwegian sesame bread... it was a real feast, and it made our Christmas day.
Theresa and her sister Erika joined us for breakfast, having just woken up from the previous night's huge party.
Malta definitely surprised us on the party front. As a very Catholic country, we expected a conservative outlook on life to be on display here. But Malta appears to be changing rapidly, and the young folk were definitely not out to go to midnight mass here. Christmas Eve was the biggest party night of the year, and we saw some outfits on this chilly evening that were definitely not warm enough, on some girls who weren't even old enough for me to properly enjoy it.
An excursion to the smaller island of Gozo gave us a look at country living on Malta. We bought a meal of Timpana from a take-out place. Imagine lasangna made with thin pastry on the top and bottom, ricotta cheese, and penne noodles instead of the long flat ones, and that's pretty much it. Some spices made the darn thing delicious, but it weighed 2 or 3 pounds and they gave it to us in a flimsy paper sack that started to disintegrate with the grease and weight immediately. By the time we'd finished eating on the bench in front of somebody's house, it looked like a couple of dogs had a fight over a bowl full of pasta there, and I was wearing some of our food. An old lady smiled at us from the window as we got up to leave, but when she stepped out later to see her front porch, she probably threw a curse or two our way.
On we walked, to Gigantija, the oldest free-standing structure in the world. It's a temple built by an ancient tribe of farmer-herders to honor a fertility goddess around 3600 BC. But I like the mythical explanation better. Locals told each other that the stone structure was a defensive tower built by a family of giants in long forgotten times. Huge rock walls with interesting circular openings in them still stand, and it's incredible to think that all of the ancient structures we saw at Angkor Wat are youngsters when compared to this.
We decided to walk on back to the ferry terminal to avoid a second bus fare, and along the way stopped for directions where a sign announced "Engin Repair". An old codger stopped sweeping the floor when I asked about a footpath up ahead that our guidebook mentioned. "You a soldier?" he asked. When I said no, he remarked "If you were a soldier, you'd have found it."
I didn't think it worth pointing out that we hadn't gotten there yet, and this fellow proceeded to show us his place, which was full of old pictures of soldiers from various wars, and even older engines. He wasn't running an engine shop, he had an engine museum in there, complete with an American water pump from the 1800's that he'd fixed up and had in working order. I thought he'd make us go out in the back and look at his armored car, but we hinted that it was getting late and we needed to finish our walk before the sun went down.
We finished our trip to this fortress-island of stone with a final day in Valletta, just walking around and enjoying the views. The cities all around the harbor retain their medieval stone walls, and it has to be one of the most imperial anchorages to sail into. Ancient parapets cradle the modern ships, and one local we talked to boasted of the Grand Harbor as the most beautiful port in the world.
Oh, and of course, our visit to Malta would not be complete without meeting a real Tabone. The lady living above us all this time turns out to be a Tabone, and on introducing myself, I was invited into her flat to sit and talk for a while. Sadly, there's no way to tell if we're actually related, and the closest relative I could possibly find would be like a 12th cousin or something. So we departed Malta for Tunisia with only the knowledge that we'd found one place in the world where the people look a little bit like me.
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| 31. | Adventures on a tiny island... - Sweqi, Malta Dec 25, 2006 |
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