My first impressions of Malta
By
Bjarne Skov
I have just returned from my first visit to Malta - a one week stay as a tourist. Due to the short stay in Malta, my preparations for the trip were quite extensive, a fact which, among others, took me on the net to the Malta Home Page (thanks, Grazio!), and led to my engagement in the developing of the "Survival Maltese" language page: I am one of the learners of the language, and interactive development of teaching material is indeed exciting! After my return from Malta I easily understand why all people I have met who have been there, get stars in their eyes, as we Norwegians say, and tell long, interesting stories about their visits to these islands. I now have been there, and I want to go right back!In our department - Media and Communication - we often receive visiting professors from Zimbabwe. Their first impression of Norway is that weather here is very diverse - we have a new type of weather almost every day, which according to their observation leads to the inevitable fact that Norwegians devote a lot of their small talk to weather conditions. On this background it should be no surprise to you that my Malta comment starts with the weather: I have never been to a place so similar to Norway! During our stay we had heavy rain showers every day, except for the last day when we had sun; there were thunderstorms every night, and the surface of the Mediterranean really showed that the Biblical account of St. Paul being shipwrecked in Malta is very probable - a nice seaside restaurant in St. Julians where we enjoyed cerna and lampukis (main season of lampuki) one of our first afternoons, was totally under water the next day when we passed, and a nice swimming-pool in Sliema situated behind a three-four meter tall molo received fresh sea-water with every new gigantic wave - a magnificent, but scaring sight!
A main difference between Malta and Norway is that Norwegian houses and roads are built for difficult weather conditions - the Maltese are not: Who says that Malta has no lakes and rivers? Every road was transformed into a rivulet with tons of water trying to find its way towards lower areas - and in the lower areas where the water could find no escape, it put itself to rest in veritable lakes in the middle of the streets and roads, up to half a meter deep. In our appartment hotel (Garden View, in St. Juliens), a stream of water across the restaurant's marble floor represented a deadly threat to the waiters who had to cross it on their way from the kitchen to the tables - I had no idea marble could get so slippery when wet! The lady in the umbrella shop said that this was not the right weather for the time of the year - normally it would not rain like that until December. Global heating or natural variation? I dare not speculate, but it was very wet!
I shall not tire you with an account of all the places we saw during our stay - suffice it to say that the weather conditions allowed us to do a lot more than lying around on the beach, and that my full-day visit to Gozo made me convinced that the Maltese are right when they themselves choose Gozo as their holiday resort. One of our travel companions, who had been to Malta ten years ago, reacted very strongly to all the new buildings which make large areas on the eastern coast of Malta look like one single, big city. Only after some time you notice that on the sidewalk in the streets there are signs marking that you are now crossing the border from one town to the next - no gaps in-between, no difference in the appearance of the street. This, alongwith the huge amount of cars roaring down the streets on what to us seems to be the wrong side of the road, creates a crowded and overpopulated impression which is not overcome until you see the green pastures and (relatively) empty roads of Gozo. Still, if you want to survive, you have to remember to pass on the left side of the cars and buses you meet and drive clockwise instead of counter-clockwise in roundabouts...
The most impressive event we witnessed in Malta was an anti-drugs demonstration. We were in Valletta on Thursday afternoon, and started to notice that very many people seemed to arrive in town just then. After having browsed through a couple of bookstores it had become dark, and suddenly the main street was blocked: There was a stage, and a huge (at least 5 meter tall and three meter wide) poster saying, in big red letters: "The Maltese are dying from drugs!" The poster portrayed the Statue of Liberty of New York, with a text on its girth reading: "I love ecstasy!". Beside the poster there was a wooden figure of an archetypical rich and fat American, holding a bag shaped as a map of Malta full of gold coins, smoking his sigar and looking very satisfied. Then, far away, down the main street we saw them coming: Thousands of Maltese in a procession, pouring in through the city gate of Valletta, and at the same time, out of one of the church doors in the street - all holding those small red-glassed candles, marching slowly up the main street towards the stage - young and old, whole families, in a remarkable protest against drugs. The main difference to any manifestation of this kind I have seen here in Norway, was the intensiveness, the visible feeling of unity of the families against what they felt to be the big threat against family values and family life - against family itself: drugs. A beautiful sight!
The language of the islands is intriguing to me - this is why I tried to learn some useful words and sentences before leaving, and found only the "Survival Malti" page as a suitable source. Getting hold of learning material in Malti very difficult over here, in Norway, only the 1967 "Teach Yourself Maltese" could be found in the libraries. No bookstore sells such material here in Oslo, as far as I have been able to find out. Unfortunately, the Teach Yourself book seems to be designed more or less for students of Arabic dialectology, and is not suited to learn practical everyday sentences at all.
Was it, then, worth the effort to learn some of the language? Yes - in the sense that I actually was able to find out what people around me were talking about - I have a strong dislike of being in an environment where I can understand nothing of what is going on. Thus I noticed when the small restaurant we visited ran out of local beer, and had to send someone to the next shop to buy some more to meet our needs - "take care to buy cold beer!" - and I noticed when the bus driver on our way from Gozo seemed to have lost his notes about who were to be let off the bus where, and contacted the central office on his radio to find out. And No - in the sense that the Maltese seemingly would not dream of speaking Malti to anyone who looks like a foreigner, and quite naturally start their conversations - be it in shops or in bars - in English. Also, in St. Juliens, where we lived, there seemed to be a tendency not to speak very much to foreigners at all - quite contrary to my previous expectations of meeting an open and friendly population. Maybe this applies only to the main tourist areas (where I can well understand if people are reserved), and maybe we went to the wrong places, but actually we led conversations of any length only with a handful of people, one of them being - one of the waiters in the hotel restaurant who had been living in Sweden for several years, and spoke perfect Swedish!
When travelling, of course you have to comment on the food of the place. Luckily, I love fish, and apart from the specialties with cerna, dott, lampuki and rabbit, through which we worked ourselves systematically in more or less expensive (tourist?) restaurants, my best meal was in a small, cosy restaurant with only five tables hidden away in a back-street of Sliema - The Haven. There they serve tuna steaks, whole (small) tunas, grilled, and served with boilt potatoes and salad. The food, the atmosphere and the service of this place are simply perfect, but don't arrive all at the same time, because then you'll not be able to get a seat! If you look for it, it is situated in Triq Ghar-il-lenbi, but you shall probably have to search a bit around to be able to see it, hidden away as it is from the street in a small passage!
Bjarne Skov: Executive Officer in Student Matters at Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo. Norwegian citizen with Danish roots, education from University of Oslo with philology as my main interest (studied English, Russian and Lithuanian apart from a year of European Studies) also in my free time (private studies in German, where I lived for two years, French and Spanish, apart from hobby activities like Icelandic and now also fragmentaric Maltese). You can reach me at my office on e-mail bjarne.skov@media.uio.no