Part 3: Hitchhiking Gozo with growling buses, smashed birdcages and Maltese Punks

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All I saw was a fleck of white, and then I heard it smash. Then a spot of green bounced in another direction.
The heavy winds outside Valletta had blown a birdcage off a high residential balcony, and, as shattered as his cage, the small canary was struggling to breathe on the cement steps.
The damn thing had almost hit me, missing by only about a meter. The shop on the ground floor of the building had closed for lunch, but I pounded on the door until someone answered. I explained the situation and we did what we could for the bird.

Getting to Malta was the biggest travel disaster of my short life

As I struggled to catch my flight to Malta, I constantly felt like a portly Dom DeLuise or Allen Funt was going to pop out of their grave and ring me up on Candid Camera. I hopedthat would happen. Instead, it was more like, “in for a penny, in for a pound.”
In my last posting I described the criminal process by which the fees began to rack up (€12 for the bus, €7,50 for the train, €50 for the taxi, and €40 to print a paper ticket at the Ryan Air check-in stand = €109,50) in the last posting, so I will move on. I should note that in the last month, Ryan Air has announced that it will now become the first airline to charge passengers for use of the in-flight toilet. The machines will accept either 1 euro, or 1 pound for entry. I may prefer using my in-flight sickness bag and leaving a present for the stewards.

A fine arrival and welcome

As soon as I arrived on Malta, my punk rock-mulleted friend JP picked me up at the airport and began explaining this peculiar island to me. JP is fully Maltese, and operates a Maltese record label (Reciprocal Records) and a record manufacturing services branch for Sony/BMG.
His punk/ska label hadn’t released an album for four years until the month I arrived.
When I arrived, JP was in the middle of a sad drama involving a kitten he’d bought as a Christmas present for his girlfriend. They had given the cat a vaccine, but she ended up getting the actual sickness from the vaccine and had to visit the vet every week; his comforting gesture had become a stressful disaster.
JP knows just about every musician and producer in the country, and used to be a major concert promoter (until he got screwed by the venue he did his biggest concert at). He’d been working for several years to open his own venue, and finally selected one.
He took me out to the Hard Rock Café in Valletta, where I met his crew of musician and industry friends, including Malta’s top music journalist, who gave me contacts for all the best musicians in the country.
While JP drove me back from his apartment late one night, we decided to take a detour through Mosta, in the center of the island. He ducked down a residential area to make a cautious turn-around, rather than pulling the move in the center of the empty street. He was concerned about randomly placed cameras, which also catch speeders. I laughed at the biggest punk-rocker on the island making cautious maneuvers out of fear of authority, as he also keeps a careful eye out for police officers who may confiscate his vehicle if he is caught talking on a mobile phone while driving. Then he said, in the same solemn and defeated tone, unknowingly mimicking Jonathan Pryce’s character in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, “I suppose it’s for the best, really.”

Minor objectives and observations

My goal one day was to walk to the post office to buy stamps, and then walk to the university. I basically failed at 2/3 of these goals. I didn’t find the post office, but I met a new Indian friend named Aaron, who led me to a shop where I did buy stamps and mail a postcard. Aaron told me that the post offices in Malta all closed for the day at 12:30. His reason for this was simple: “Maltese are lazy,” he said. That may explain why there are more fat Maltese than any other ethnicity I’ve observed in Europe.
I also failed to make it to the university. Apparently choosing to get horribly lost instead. I had studied a map, and believed I knew which way to get to the university. I didn’t account for the fact that the streets of Malta seem to have been laid out by the team of Yakko, Wakko and Dot.
Malta is the only place I’ve seen, outside of villages in rural Alabama, where locals will fly past you on the streets, riding quads and lawnmowers.
After wandering along the interstate for several Kilometers I gave up on the University and took a bus back home, planning a more organized effort at some point in the future.
I walked down to a market and bought a bag of ravioli, sauce and wine (sweet Marsala by accident) for a total of €8,50. I don’t know how everything is so cheap here, but it is. Even my private room at the hotel is about €10, with a television and a refrigerator.

Maltese busses ooze personality

My main form of transport on Malta was by bus. These rugged red and gold monsters have you feeling like you’re riding a whale. They rumble, they roll, they bounce and cough. Each bus driver has turned his or her bus into a medium for personal expression. Each bus has an altar dedicated to either a religious deity, or else a pop culture one. Pictures of Jesus are interchangeable with John Lennon or Bob Dylan. Some feature calendar girls, and others with just family snapshots. Many pieces of original equipment have ceased to function as intended. Doors don’t open or close properly. The change collection machines have crapped out. But the gear boxes are the most notable.
Every bus seems to have a different locational arrangement between the captain’s chair and the gearbox. Sometimes the chair is in front of the gearing, sometimes behind. The drivers have modified their shift handles to compensate for their own physical characteristics. My favorite bus had a three-foot extension duck-taped to the end of its shift knob. This made the gear shift look more like an oar than handle. Sometimes the driver had to arm wrestle with his box three or four times before he was able to lock it in. I’ve never had more respect for a bus driver.

A visit to Mdina, the ancient capital

One day I took the bus to Mdina, the ancient capital of Malta, finding it to be a heartless ghost-town, selling its soul for a vapid appeal to the tourist industry.
I tried the local drink, a blood orange soda called “Kinnie”, which is heavily promoted on signs all over the country. I found it to be nearly drinkable, if not for its intolerable aftertaste. In Mdina, I opted not to pay for entry into the museum, as I didn’t have the time to appreciate it. After a 20 minute walk through the town, I was done.

Gonzo for Gozo

After traveling most of the island on buses, I decided to visit Gozo. I liked the idea of a more rural and agricultural island, reminding me of my little Hawaiian paradise.
The bus ride to the northern tip of Malta was an adventure in itself. This is apparently the Windward side, and the landscape is mostly barren. A couple of young children waved down my bus as it bumbled along the dusty road. The driver stopped for them, and then let them off some time later, at another equally random location. I watched as they climbed a rusty fence and trekked up onto a farm where they probably lived.
This side of Malta has a couple of resorts at a place called “Paradise bay,” but from what I could see, Eden was not to be found among the wind and rain I observed.
The ferry to Gozo costs almost nothing. For a pedestrian, it’s €4,50 for a round-trip ticket that can be used at any time. Considering the distance is about half the trip from Maui to Molokai, the first-class conditions were a real bargain over the Molokai Princess’ $45 one-way ticket. With such incredible currents, the Gozo ferry seemed to drift effortlessly over the water.
The Gozitan bus system is not like the Maltese system. They tried to copy the “feel” of the Maltese buses by painting them in bright and colorful fashion (green instead of gold), but failed to actually put more than a couple of them on the roads. I didn’t see a single public bus for me to catch near the port at Mgarr harbour. So I set off walking up the steep incline, hoping to catch a bus somewhere ahead or thumb down a ride. No buses. No rides. Unclear signs that provided no useful direction; I hardly cared. It was beautiful, unpopulated and free.
The mid-Mediterranean weather was wonderful, and I hiked across the island to a tiny village called Qala, and another called Nadur. The people were gruff here, and suspicious of foreigners. I could see why. Several mega-wealthy celebrities have recently been buying up whole towns and chasing out the local population. Extreme gentrification. When I reached Nadur, I expected to find traditional village folk - what I found was f*ing Oprah. Half the houses in these villages are undergoing multi-million dollar remodeling projects.
My time was running short to catch the ferry home, and I started moving toward the main city of Victoria, before making my way back to the wharf.
I stopped to ask a man which direction I should walk toward the city, and he told me to climb in and he’d drive me there. Mike introduced me to his 70-year-old mother in the passenger seat, and drove me the 8 kilometers to Victoria. Along the way, he unexpectedly played an eclectic collection of some of my favorite 90’s songs - from the Cardigans to the Crash Test Dummies.
Once I arrived in Victoria, I embarrassed myself as a professional traveler. In the first case, my horrible watch (still with me at this point) had fallen to an inaccurate time (about 30 minutes slow). In the second, I actually made the rookie traveler mistake of looking at the wrong departure point on the ferry time schedule. This idiotic combination opened a Pandora’s box of misfortune containing a singular eventual benefit.
Misreading the ferry schedule, I judged that the city bus leaving Victoria would arrive too late for the 19.00 ferry. Therefore, I felt my only option to catch the ferry was to hitchhike to the harbor, six or seven mountainous kilometers away. My thumb and me set out to make this happen; it didn’t. When nobody stopped, I ended up running and walking across most of the island of Gozo. I missed the ferry. The people who waited in Victoria for the bus made it there in time.
And while I ran, some of the things I had collected along my way came flying out of the bag I was carrying. Away went the morning pastry I had bought. Away went one of the loaves of Gozitan bread. Probably something else too.
After arriving at the ferry terminal, I asked a passenger if he knew where I should go. We began talking about Malta, and he revealed himself to be an American Ex-Patriot from Washington State named Hans, working as a supplier for Maltese pharmacies. Over the next hour or so Hans taught me about ex-pat life on Malta, described the ugliness of saint-swearing in the Maltese language, local issues, and where I could find an authentic old Maltese village called Dingli. In addition I found that apparently tourists are not commonly informed that the western waters off Malta are infested with the largest Great White Sharks ever sighted, and several swimmers are eaten there every year.
Hans generously offered to drive me home, as the ferry was arriving after the last bus had departed for Valletta. I left him with my email address, and felt very satisfied that once again a misfortunate event had left me with a new friend.

Some random notes

I succeeded in trying every beer on the island. The Cisk, The Blue Label, the Hopleaf and the rare Lacto. The Lacto, a slightly too graphic name for the Maltese “milk stout” was actually very good. It had its own unique flavor, and wasn’t too heavy. This could be my beer if I lived on Malta.
Every Maltese speaks English, but they may hate you for making them do it. It was strange for me to be in an Anglophile country after so long. I couldn’t break the habit of speaking Italian with people. Luckily, most Maltese also speak Italian.
One day as I tried to reach Valletta, I walked along and paused at a bus stop. There was an old woman there, looking rather perturbed. I asked what why she was so distressed, and she told me that the last four busses had passed her by because they were too full. Indeed, as I spoke with her, two busses flew by, as if to accentuate her point. The third bus stopped, and together we forced our way into the zoo inside.

The Capital fortress of Valletta

There are two ways to reach Valletta. Though the peninsula reaches out temptingly in front of you at all times, access is a pain in the ass. You can take the bus, but the best way to reach it is by the public water taxi. For about $.25, you can take a five minute boat ride across the harbour, and end up at a convenient location at the foot of the fortress walls; it’s much faster than the bus too.
To get to the unassuming, untrumpeted water bus stop, you must walk past perhaps two dozen people trying to sell you onto a harbour tour for about €25. Unless you like drifting around in cold morning weather, you are much better suited to get your photos and enjoy the harbour from your quick ride to Valletta.
When I arrived at the gates of Valletta by bus one time, they were playing strange and disturbingly loud Beatles music for no apparent reason. It was so loud you had to cover your ears to walk past the speakers.
Just in front of the gates there are food stands of many varieties, including a cart that sells the most delicious dates for €,20. I gobbled at least a half dozen during my time in Malta. I can’t think of anything you could buy in America for $.25 other than a Jolly Rancher, but here you can have hot, fresh, local and delicious dates!
Many of the sidewalks on the steep streets of this city have steps to them. Perhaps it made sense long ago, but today it must make traffic impossible for disabled persons.
As I walked along, I noticed the odd tourist pedestrian traffic pattern: main street = 1 million people; one street off the main street = 13 people; two streets off the main drag = empty.

My Argentine friend Roberto

My hostel is a strange place. The staff is NEVER present. I stayed for about a week and was lucky to see them when I arrived. I had to stake-out the reception desk for half a day before I found any staff again.
While I was eating my lunch one day, another traveler came and talked to me. Roberto is an Argentinean pearl artisan who lives in Tahiti. He makes brilliant black pearl jewelry, and sells it to his special clients throughout the world.
He never learned English formally, but picked it up very well from his travels around the world. Using his jewelers’ touch, he was able to fix my watch band for the last time, putting it back together so that it could curse me again later when it stopped keeping accurate time.

On my return Ryan Air flight, I made some cynical notes about how horrible this company is

“These people think they’re Disneyland.”
First, they’re selling cigarettes for €6, which is so freaking expensive that I almost feel sorry for the fools killing themselves.
They are broadcasting commercials during the flight. Freaking commercials for chocolate. WTF is with the incessant marketing EVERYWHERE in this world.
One commercial on Maltese radio employed perhaps the least convincing hook I’ve ever heard. The announcer said, in a meek British accent, “Is it possible to buy a stylish new bathroom set at a wholesale price … (pause 1.5 seconds)… It IS possible, at Robert’s furniture.”
At the university of Malta cafeteria today I was amazed. Every wall was covered with some kind of publicity. There was a giant wall dedicated to PowerAde, and so was every pillar in the room - about 12 of them. The smaller walls all advertised something else.
In any case, back to Ryan Air.
I very nearly missed the flight. I had misread the departure time, and been unable to communicate this for certain to JP, who was planning to take me to the airport. This meant I had to catch the bus to the airport. I left with just one hour left before boarding for my flight was supposed to close (17.30). I should mention that flights to Trapani occur just twice a week, so if I missed this one, I may be stuck for another three days. I caught a bus to the main station outside Valletta, and then transferred to the airport bus. I almost chased down the previous bus that was driving away, sensing that things were going to be very close. What I couldn’t anticipate was that the “airport bus” was poised to circumnavigate the island before it came to the airport. At several points we came close to the airport before correcting course and heading the opposite way. It was when we bumped along the country highway that leads to the airport, and deliberately dodged it to drive up the hill to the city of Mdina that I completely lost hope of catching my flight. I became withdrawn and mopey, with a dash of self-loathing. When my bus finally looped back at about 5:40, I put on my game face and decided to give my best effort. I knew that Ryan Air always claimed they were the number one on-time carrier, which seemed to assure me that they would either leave me behind or find a way to charge me for showing up late.
When I arrived at the terminal, I was pleased to see I hadn’t missed the flight. But as if they felt the need to deflate me somehow, they immediately greeted me by pointing at my three bags and telling me it wasn’t allowed without paying them money. I exploded. I swore that I’d carried the same number of bags coming from Trapani, and it was outrageous to selectively enforce something like that. I told them I’d been hit up on the way to Malta for €40 simply because I didn’t have access to a printer to print my paper ticket.
Then I told them if I wasn’t allowed to have three bags that was fine, and jammed my bag into the box I was carrying. They stammered,

“you can’t bring that… it’s…it’s…it’s… A BOX!” I said, “and…??”, and I kept walking.

In the middle of this exchange, a Sicilian Godfather-type figure walked over to see the commotion I was making (trying to save myself another $45). When I told him my situation, and that I’d been ripped off at every turn on this trip, he kind of nodded and said, “alright… this time.” I thanked him many times. I had three more flight attendants try to stop me after they saw me with my box. I waved them all off and told them I had been “approved.” They must have recruited their employees from Countrywide - trained on selling adjustable-rate mortgages or some other comparably devilish trade and then sent them through a brain-washing so that they see $$$ every time there’s a bag or some other way they can ring you up.
Now that I’m back on the ground in Sicily, I’m ready to race up off to the third world - or any place less commercial.

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Photos

Crew
My Maltese crew, at the Valletta Hard Rock Cafe.

Captain Morgan Cruises?
I can only hope it's captained by Joeseph Hazelwood himself!

JP-Pizzabag
JP, holding a special Maltese "Pizzabag"

TP sign
Found this at the Gozo Ferry Terminal

B-Gozo
Brennan, in the Gozo countryside.

B-Harbour
Brennan, at Grand Harbour.

Camino
Camino, the third Maltese Island.

Comments

[Zoe]

Grand Harbor
Grand Harbor looks creepily like Izmir Harbor (in the Aegean Region of TR)...

[anonymous]

Hilarious article, beautiful flowers & it sounds like you are due to get a new watch......