Looks of Contempt from the Superior Class

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We’re up early for a long day of travelling, first by train back to Palermo, and then on to Malta (not by train) via Rome. But the day’s first challenge is to find the Cefalu train station. We know it’s up the hill somewhere, and we know the hill’s steep because our suitcases are trying hard to extract our shoulders from their sockets. My theory is that if we keep going uphill eventually we’ll run into the railway line and then we can walk along it to the station. And it’s an excellent theory, which would work perfectly in almost all circumstances. The one exception would seem to be if part of the train line just happened to be in a tunnel. By the time we’ve realised this flaw it’s an eleven minute walk to the station and the train leaves in ten.

We sprint onto the platform to find a train sitting there, but it’s number 22154, and according to our tickets the train we need to catch is number 22155. As we seem to have found a few times already they seem to do things a bit differently here in Sicily. I ask one of the staff if this is our train and he tells me it is. But why is the number wrong I ask? It’s not wrong he says; 22154 was the number of the incoming train, and they’ll change it to 22155 as soon as it pulls away from the platform. I would have thought that that was possibly just a tad too late, but he’s Sicilian and I’m not, and if that’s the way they do things here well who am I to argue.

It’s a relatively uneventful trip, so a couple of random observations.

Why is it that some of the upper class elite in the front sections of planes like to look in contempt at us peasants as we trudge wearily past them on the way back to our pens in cattle class? This particularly seems to happen if we’re some of the last to board, and the looks wreak of “don‘t you realise how important I am, how dare you have the gall to hold me up”. Do they think that because they’re drowning in money they’re somehow better than us lesser beings (I think I may have just answered my own question)? Half of them usually seem to be children, who would have inherited their wealth, and half of the rest usually look a bit dodgy, so they probably got rich by ripping the rest of us off. We’re nearly last to board our flight to Rome, and a dodgy self-satisfied looking first class guy is giving me the evil eye. I try to stare him down, and eventually win the battle of wills. I feel content. This feeling lasts for about thirty seconds until I realise that he’s probably a member of the Palermo mafia, and what’s worse I was carrying my Aussie passport in his full view as I walked past him, so now he knows where I live, well at least to within a range of eight million or so square kilometres.

When they do the safety briefings on planes and they get to the bit about the masks dropping down as you’re about to crash, they always tell you that you’ll be able to breathe perfectly normally even if the bag doesn’t inflate. How can this possibly be? I would have thought that would be like expecting someone to be able to breathe properly with a plastic bag tied over their head. I think I might be missing something here.

We get chatting to a delightful young lass called Taylah who's sitting next to us. Her parents are Maltese but she hails from Broken Hill in the Aussie outback, where she tells us there’s a large contingent of people with Maltese heritage. She’s never been to Malta before and says she’s really excited about what she and her partner Blake have got ahead of them. His family have lived in the outback for generations, so I suspect he’s got a bit of culture shock awaiting him.

We’re met at the airport by Issy’s cousin Louis. It’s a key day in the week long annual feast in their local village of Birzebbuga, so we grab his wife Lily and head off to watch the celebrations. The church is massive and all decked out in feastly decorations, as are most of the buildings in the square in front of it. It’s a joint effort between two rival clubs, and whilst they’ll cooperate to put the celebration together Louis tells us they’ll probably spend most of the time yelling insults at each other. We watch the church’s massive statue start its parade through the street, and the evening ends with an impressive fireworks display.

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Comments

[Home and Away]

I recall tha Izzy...
is originally from Malta. Have a great family reunion!

[DaveandIssy]

From Malta
She sure is, and we did. Thanks for the kind thoughts!

[D MJ Binkley]

Peasants in the Back! LOL.
I love the word pictures you paint. Enjoy visiting the homeland. Changing the train numbers after you leave does seem odd.