Expatiperro

Apologies for not posting more frequent and timely updates. I would make the excuse that my life here is uneventful, normal, and boring, but the truth of the matter is that I've just been too lazy and unmotivated to post. Let's fix that...

Two weekends ago, I went with my Sardinia companion and general travel buddy Grant to Malta. A little geographical background- Malta is a country just south of Sicily made up of three islands, but whose total land area is only about 300 square miles (about the size of Queens). It's a little difficult to conceptualize just how small a 300 square mile country is without seeing it for yourself, but as a rough idea, from Malta's highest point, you can see over half of the country. On a map, the lone airport's runway seems to run half the length of the main island. And traveling from one end of the country to the other by a public bus and ferry takes about 2 hours. On bad roads. With traffic. Get the picture?


The inspiration for this trip was Grant's desire to visit North Africa or someplace near it to practice his Arabic, but the motivation for the trip came from the €10 roundtrip tickets we found on Ryanair's website. (How they make money selling tickets that cheap is beyond me, but I only wish they could do that in the States, too.) Between the time when we bought the tickets and actually got on the plane, I did some reading on Malta, which gave me the impression that Malta was like England, but with more sun and religion- it's an Anglophone country, is famous for its beaches and nightlife, and is incredibly Catholic. Reading these description, I convinced myself that going to Malta would be a good preview of what I would be like to return home and deal with the culture shock. People speaking English all the time, food that doesn't all contain ham, American meal schedules- I was psyched about visiting a US-lite.

But oh boy, was I ever wrong. Malta is by far the most unique, eccentric place that I've ever visited, and my expectations could not have been more wrong. Some general impressions:

• Malta is technically an Anglophone country, thanks to being an English colony up to its independence in 1964. But the language that we heard most often was Maltese, which sounds like Arabic, but with an Italian accent. If you're trying to imagine how that sounds, just think of someone speaking a slurred Hebrew and randomly accenting various syllables while gesticulating wildly. And if that sounds strange, the way Maltese is written is even stranger. Total gibberish to an outsider. The langauge is a result of Malta's history- because of its strategic location, it's been fought over for thousands of years, and at various points has been ruled by the Phonecians, Romans, Arabs, Italians, French (for two months), British, and anyone else who wanted to control the Mediterranean.
• SO CATHOLIC. I was expecting this before coming, since Malta was ruled for a few centuries by the Knights of Malta, a super Catholic order whose members were European nobility. It's said that Malta has one church for every 1,000 people (or 400 churches for a population of 400,000), but the reality never hit me until we arrived and saw that the skyline was composed almost entirely of steeples and crosses, literally one per city block (we counted 13 just from our hotel window). And these were not small churches; on the contrary, they were all substantial buildings, especially one on the island of Gozo which supposedly is one of the biggest domes in the entire world- you could literally see it from half of Malta.
• SO OLD. In addition to all of the countries that have ruled Malta in recorded history, there are also megalithic ruins from an unknown civilization that date from before Stonehenge. And these aren't just piles of stones- they are entire buildings (including the world's oldest free standing ones), catacombs, and temples which were all intricately carved and painted, and whose designs you can still see today. These ruins are everywhere- some were found when farmers stuck shovels in the ground- and just incredible to see. The most impressive one was the Hypogeum at Hal-Saflieni, a three story temple/burial chamber carved entirely underground, and designed to look similar to the above ground temples of the time, 4,000 years ago. You can't help after seeing these sites, especailly the Hypogeum, rethinking your conception of the ancient world, and wondering what other things that they were capable of doing, which didn't survive the years.
• SO CHEAP. As unexpected as everything else was in Malta, nothing could have prepared me for the ridiculously cheap prices on just about everything in the country. Our deluxe hotel room with views of the Grand Harbour? €50. A delicious, filling lunch with drinks? €7. Bus fare from the capital, Valletta, to any point in the country? Less than 80¢. And while admissions to historical sites and museums wasn't dirt cheap, they did give 50% student discounts. After me playing Grant's sugardaddy in Sardinia, it was nice that neither of us had to worry about money the entire trip.

So now back to the travelogue. Grant and I arrived in Malta bright and early on Saturday morning, took a bus to Valletta and checked into our hotel, and immediately set out to explore the city. Three hours later, with the city throroughly explored, we caught a bus (admittedly one of the most exciting parts of the day- Malta's buses are from the 1960, lack doors, are covered in handpainted designs, and have amazing names the the Duple Dominator, Tiger Cub, and Rocky) to the twin cities of Mdina and Rabat, where we checked out some Roman catacombs, ate some delicious Maltese pastries, and looked inside a couple of grossly oversized churches. A full day in the books, we caught the bus back to Valletta, napped and supped, and then caught an amazing stroke of luck. The annual fireworks was supposed to end of the day before Grant and I arrived, much to our disappointment. But due to "tehcnical difficulties" (i.e. prematurely exploding fireworks), the final night of the festival was pushed back to our first night in Malta- which, in a double stroke of luck, we got to enjoy from our hotel room window, which overlooked the Harbour. Note to my readers: You have not lived until you have seen 30 minute fireworks show choreographed to the Star Wars soundtrack.

The next day began with a 6:30am wake-up call to claim tickets to see the Hypogeum. Because of its fragile state, the government only allows 70 people per day in, which means that tickets sell out at least two weeks in advance. But being the sympathetic people that they are, the authorities leave open one tour a day for procrastinators like us. The catch? Having to get up a an ungodly hour the day before to claim the tickets, and having to pay €20 per person. But still, it was well worth it, and also a great opportunity to make friends with the other die-hard tourists. Tickets in hand, we decided to spend the day visiting the island of Gozo, the supposed home on Calypso's cave, and a bucolic escape from the only-slightly-less bucolic main island. This trip, however, required us to cross the entire country, a feat we accomplished on public buses in two hours for 80¢. Gozo proved to be a little too bucolic for our tastes, perhaps because it was Sunday and NOTHING was open, but it was a nice place to chill for a day.

On our last day in Malta was dedicated to seeing neolithic temples, walking around Valletta, and poking our heads in chuches to see what was inside (highlights included a Caravaggio painting, St. John's wristbone, and the column on which he was decapitated). Up to this point, nothing in the trip has done anything to make me feel like I was an an American-type country, or at least make me remember what it's like to be at home. So to solve this problem, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Trashy? Yes. The best BBQ I've had since leaving the US? Definitely. Any regrets? None whatsoever.

Our trip ended the next day with a mad dash to the airport, and a reminder of how cheap our airfare really was- the 15 minute taxi ride to the airport cost double what we paid for the 2 hour flight. We landed in Girona, said our goodbyes (until our next trip, anyone have exotic suggestions?), and I booked it back to Barcelona for a full day of teaching. All in all, it was an exhausting trip, but in the best possible way. I feel so lucky to have seen a culture and country so different than any I'd experienced before, and one that challenged my assumptions on history, human progress, Catholic ferverency, and general afforability. Now if only the rest of the world could be so cheap...