Summer is finally here
There has been no news on my residency request, so I'm still stuck in Malta.
As far as being stuck, I really can't complain about the location. Summer has
finally come and it is glorious! The sun shines almost every day and I live
half a block from the sea in either direction. On one side is the open sea.
There is no beach with sand, instead there is a huge rocky shelf that everyone
lays out on. My favorite location is the Roman Baths. These are small square
pools, just over waist deep, cut into the rocks. There are steps leading down
into them and since the water is still really cold, it's nice just to sit on the
edge and dangle your feet in the cold water on a hot day. An eel lives in one
of the pools and it's interesting to watch him go about his life, along with the
fish and crabs who live there also. Since many of my friends live in the
general area, it's a great place to meet and hang out. We had a picnic there
just the other day. The only other
Americans I know, Jim and Cindy were headed back to the US, so this was their
last beach visit. It was a beautiful sunny day but we didn't count on
the gale force winds! Instead of the glassy calm water, the sea was way too
rough to go near and we took shelter on the rocks next to the sea wall. The
wind was partially blocked, we were closer to the cafe and beer, the sun still
shone on us, and many of our friends were able to make it, so it was pretty
close to a perfect day.
Along with summer come the tourists. I have no problem with them, technically I'm still one since I'm not a resident. The problem comes with riding the buses. The influx of people make them overcrowded. But it's not all bad; with that over crowding comes a bit of entertainment. First, a few things to know about buses in Malta. The drivers seem to have no training and take a very lackadaisical attitude toward their job. It's important to always ask which way the bus is going because they quite often can't be bothered to change their signs when they change direction. For example, I live in Sliema. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten on a bus that says it's going toward Sliema, only to end up going in the opposite direction. And of course you don't notice until you've gone in the wrong direction for some time. Another thing, they drive like absolute maniacs! Stop, yield and directions signs have some invisible lettering that says buses exempt. OK to be fair, those signs are mere suggestions to most Maltese, so it may be a bit unfair to single out bus drivers. This most definitely applies to speed signs.
Here are some examples of my adventures on the bus:
In Malta, as in the rest of the EU, they use more change then we do in the US. In the US, we have .25, .10. .05 and .01. In the EU, they have a €2 and a €1 coin, along with .50, .20, .10, .05, .02 and .01. This means that at the end of the day, you are weighed down with coins. I have nice little stacks of change by my front door. As I head out, I normally count out the €1.50 bus fair. The drivers usually react in one of 3 ways. They bitch, but count the change and give me a ticket; they don't bother to count it, they just give me a ticket, or they count it as if its actual money and give me a ticket with no attitude. I say the reaction is pretty evenly distributed but recently a driver came up with a 4th option. He took the money, and gave it right back, but waived me on the bus. Now you might think, good deal, I just got a free bus ride. And it would have been, except there were the rare ticket checkers on this bus. In fact, there were 2 of them. Lucky for me, he got to me right as I sat down and I still had the change in my hand. I showed him my fare and explained that the driver couldn't be bothered to count it and give me a ticket. He gave me a disgusted look and told him to follow him. I just sat in the last open seat and I was reluctant to get up because it would mean standing on the now over crowded bus for the rest of the ride. I made my way to the driver in time to hear the ticket checker bitching at him. I handed over my money and got my ticket as the ticket checker rolled his eyes at me. We were in agreement! I was happily surprised to see no one took my seat, in fact the person closest to it smiled at me when I got back. Thanks nice lady! Obviously the driver was especially lazy that day because the other ticket checker made his way to the front with another passenger in tow.
As I mentioned before, it seems the drivers have no special training when it comes to driving something that large. They take some of the corners so fast it's a wonder the bus doesn't tip over. When the bus is full and people are packed in the aisles, passengers fall into one another or end up in a strangers lap. Usually everyone just laughs it off. If there is an elderly or disabled person, everyone kind of looks out for them. One day the driver must have been in more of a rush than normal. Everyone had a seat, but even then, you had to hang on as he drove. He took one corner especially fast and one lady was thrown from her seat, into the floor and slid half way down aisle and down the middle steps. She sat there, screaming at the driver, who barely turned around in his seat and certainly never took his foot off the gas. What's funny about this story is that she just sat there on the steps, bitching at the back of the drivers head. At first people tried to help her up, but she seemed content to sit there - bitching for the next 10 min or so. She was Maltese, so I have no idea what she had to say for those 10 minutes, but she sure put her heart and soul int it! Eventually, she calmed down, got up and took her seat.
A friend of mine was recently on a bus ride that scared her and her fellow passengers so bad, they actually got off. The same driver is now in jail; seems he ran right over a motorcycle that wouldn't get out of his way.
There is a strawberry festival in the small town of Mgarr. The bus you need to get there only runs once an hour. Getting there was no problem, but getting back would be a nightmare because everyone would try to get on at the same bus stop. Mic and I thought we would outsmart the average person and get on the bus one stop before. The problem was figuring out where that would be. Since the route through town was closed due to the festival, we decided to head out of town, go around and pick up where the route resumed. Well, it was a hot day and the countryside offered no shade. Eventually we found a stop with a few people, but no one knew if the bus would stop. After waiting what seemed like forever, one came along and we all hopped on. It went back the exact route we had taken and we were horrified to think it would go right back to the original bus stop and the driver would make everyone get off, which they often do when changing directions. This time, we lucked out and they let the group of us stay on. The bus swung around to leave Mgarr and we could see about 3 busloads of potential passengers all pushing and shoving for a limited number of spaces on the one bus for another hour. One lady apparently pushed her way to the front and was the first one on. The other passengers were none to happy with the line jumper and tried to pull her off. She grabbed a pole and held on for dear life. The bus driver was yelling, two other employees outside were yelling and the passengers she cut in front of were yelling, all in Maltese. After what seemed like forever, she finally broke free and took a seat. Other passengers got on and off we went, smashed up against one another. And the yelling never abated. One male passenger seemed particularly incensed and every so often would say something to her and she would reply in kind.
My friend Terri and I decided to go on trip to the neighboring island of Gozo. To do this, you take a bus to the tip of Malta and hop on a ferry. Very close to the ferry is a beautiful beach, so the bus is usually packed. On the way back, there were more people then seats, so everyone crammed on. It was long ride back to Sliema and this rolling sardine can drove right past every single stop on the route. There was no way to fit more people in, so why bother stopping. What I wondered was, how would those people ever get anywhere, since every bus passing their way would be equally full.
I'm not all that attentive when I ride the bus. Sure I look out the window, but I don't pay attention to routes, so I rarely know where I am. I usually know where I'm going and can either recognize my stop, or I know the name when it comes up on the next stop screen. Very rarely have I actually gotten lost. Mic on the other hand, knows where everything is and what route the bus should be taking. On one excursion, I'm not sure where, we had to sit several rows apart. I was happily staring out the window at nothing when I noticed the bus struggling to get up a hill. This is quite normal as the engines are not very powerful. This time, however, the bus was barely getting to the top and I could hear the driver stomping the gas pedal. It seemed to me he had transmission problems and I then noticed it wasn't shifting gears as it should. I texted Mic to see if he noticed an he texted me back that we were going the wrong way. Just then another passenger got up and appeared to be giving him directions. Mic texted me that not only was the driver lost, he had just gone the wrong way down a one way street. By now other passengers were looking around. Eventually the navigator got us back on track. I would think knowing your route would be a key bit on information a bus driver should know. Apparently it's not necessary as this was not the first time the driver has been assisted by a passenger.
Those are just a few of the more colorful bus adventures. Most of them happen in one degree or another almost every day. Everyone just shakes it off as, well, this is Malta.
I mentioned a trip to Gozo, it is the 2nd largest of the 3 Maltese Islands, Comino is the smallest. My friend Terri and I decided to take a hop on hop off bus trip as neither of us had seen it. We looked at the program and chose which stops we wanted to get off. These buses have a taped narrated tour but I didn't feel like listening, so I just enjoyed the passing scenery. Eventually I realized the bus wasn't stopping at any of the stops. Apparently you had to request a specific stop and no one was. The Malta tourist buses stop at every one. By this time, I had no idea where we were on the tour or what stop was coming up next. Terri and I studied the map and decided we didn't really care about any of the sites except one, the Azure Window and that would be easy to spot. I guess it was the most popular stop, as every single person got off with us. The Azure Window is a natural limestone arch that was created after two limestone sea caves collapsed. It's a beautiful place and we ended up spending most of the day there. We took a boat ride through some caves and got to see some amazing rock formations. After lunch, we ventured out to the main arch and took way too many pictures, then sat in the sun eating ice cream. Even though we didn't make any of the other stops, the one we did made the entire trip worth it.
As it turns out, Rob Lowe was also at the Azure Window that day. I follow him on Twitter and I noticed he tweeted a picture of Valetta. I did a bit of checking and discovered he was in Malta for a few weeks filming an upcoming TV series called Apocalypse Slough. I decided I was going to find him. It wasn't as easy as I thought. Every night he tweeted a picture of where he had been that day, but apparently they didn't film twice in the same location. I was one step behind in Valetta, Rabat, Mdina, and the Dingli cliffs. Wouldn't you know it, the day I give up is the day I happened to be in the same area, but wasn't looking for (and didn't see) him? Someone else did though and tweeted a picture of him wind surfing.
There were several festivals here in the past month. The three best ones were the strawberry festival, fireworks festival and the Nutella festival. Can you imagine an entire festival featuring just Nutella? It's true and it was pretty good I must admit. It started late on Friday night and went all day Saturday. The strawberry festival was also Sat, so we had to do Nutella on Friday. We got there around 11 PM and the place was packed! The main area was the small town square. There were venders lining the streets selling everything you could think of using Nutella. They had crepes, dipped fruit, hamburgers stacked with fruit instead of meat, shakes, candy, you name it. The square was so filled with people that you could hardly move. We tried crepes and waffles layered with Nutella, bananas and strawberries. They were delicious, even if they were horrible bed time snacks.
The next day was the strawberry festival. It was planned out much better; the space was bigger and the vendors more spread out. There were different artistic displays of strawberries, including an enormous cake. There were also many delicious ways to eat strawberries and we tried quite a few. The president of Malta even showed up. She walked around with her small security detail, talking to everyone. There were two Karaoke stages and most of the singers seemed to be young girls. They were pretty good. Hard to imagine so much going on centered around strawberries, but it was a great festival.
The last one the fireworks festival. The Maltese are crazy for fireworks for
some reason. They have an annual contest to see who puts on the best display.
I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised to see a fairly
elaborate display. It was synchronized to music and quite impressive. I'm not
sure who won, but next year I'm going to try to see all of the displays and
judge for myself.
I'm a member of several expat groups and my favorite one just had the first boat trip of the season. Everyone raves about them, so I was excited to experience it for myself. About 20 of us hopped on the boat and headed over to Comino, the smallest of the islands. It's pretty barren, but has the most spectacular blue water. It's most famous for the Blue Lagoon and I can see why. The water was such a beautiful shade of cyan and was crystal clear. Even though it's no where near the height of the season, the lagoon was packed with boats. I was told to just wait, in 2 month you could literally walk from boat to boat they're crammed in so tight. We spent about 8 hours going from one beach to another and each was spectacular. We had an absolute blast all day; it was a potluck so there was plenty of food and the liqueur was free flowing. I got to know some people much better and I met some great new friends. Some folks braved diving into the water for snorkeling while a few others opted for a beach. Growing up in Florida, I'm used to (and much prefer) really warm water. Alas, the water here is pretty cold. I'm proud to say that I joined the elite few who actually went swimming. Getting in was downright painful, but surprisingly not too bad once you took the plunge. I also went for a short hike on the island, but most of the time I just hung out, got some sun and made some memories.
So, when I think back over the past month, it doesn't really seem like I've had many adventures worth writing about, but my days seemed to be quite busy. I have so many great friends here and it seems there is always something going on. Tuesday morning is coffee with one group, Tuesday afternoon is pool time with another, Friday night drinks with one of several groups and Thursday is either bowling or movies. In between, any number of activities can be going on with any number of people. For a social person like me, I could not possibly imagine a better place to be. I am most definitely having the time of my life and, and I honestly can't see how life could get any better for me!
Link to photos:
https://plus.google.com/photos/118205599704530902363/albums/6141385266271463153?authkey=CIfD47_BsMO3-AE
Along with summer come the tourists. I have no problem with them, technically I'm still one since I'm not a resident. The problem comes with riding the buses. The influx of people make them overcrowded. But it's not all bad; with that over crowding comes a bit of entertainment. First, a few things to know about buses in Malta. The drivers seem to have no training and take a very lackadaisical attitude toward their job. It's important to always ask which way the bus is going because they quite often can't be bothered to change their signs when they change direction. For example, I live in Sliema. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten on a bus that says it's going toward Sliema, only to end up going in the opposite direction. And of course you don't notice until you've gone in the wrong direction for some time. Another thing, they drive like absolute maniacs! Stop, yield and directions signs have some invisible lettering that says buses exempt. OK to be fair, those signs are mere suggestions to most Maltese, so it may be a bit unfair to single out bus drivers. This most definitely applies to speed signs.
Here are some examples of my adventures on the bus:
In Malta, as in the rest of the EU, they use more change then we do in the US. In the US, we have .25, .10. .05 and .01. In the EU, they have a €2 and a €1 coin, along with .50, .20, .10, .05, .02 and .01. This means that at the end of the day, you are weighed down with coins. I have nice little stacks of change by my front door. As I head out, I normally count out the €1.50 bus fair. The drivers usually react in one of 3 ways. They bitch, but count the change and give me a ticket; they don't bother to count it, they just give me a ticket, or they count it as if its actual money and give me a ticket with no attitude. I say the reaction is pretty evenly distributed but recently a driver came up with a 4th option. He took the money, and gave it right back, but waived me on the bus. Now you might think, good deal, I just got a free bus ride. And it would have been, except there were the rare ticket checkers on this bus. In fact, there were 2 of them. Lucky for me, he got to me right as I sat down and I still had the change in my hand. I showed him my fare and explained that the driver couldn't be bothered to count it and give me a ticket. He gave me a disgusted look and told him to follow him. I just sat in the last open seat and I was reluctant to get up because it would mean standing on the now over crowded bus for the rest of the ride. I made my way to the driver in time to hear the ticket checker bitching at him. I handed over my money and got my ticket as the ticket checker rolled his eyes at me. We were in agreement! I was happily surprised to see no one took my seat, in fact the person closest to it smiled at me when I got back. Thanks nice lady! Obviously the driver was especially lazy that day because the other ticket checker made his way to the front with another passenger in tow.
As I mentioned before, it seems the drivers have no special training when it comes to driving something that large. They take some of the corners so fast it's a wonder the bus doesn't tip over. When the bus is full and people are packed in the aisles, passengers fall into one another or end up in a strangers lap. Usually everyone just laughs it off. If there is an elderly or disabled person, everyone kind of looks out for them. One day the driver must have been in more of a rush than normal. Everyone had a seat, but even then, you had to hang on as he drove. He took one corner especially fast and one lady was thrown from her seat, into the floor and slid half way down aisle and down the middle steps. She sat there, screaming at the driver, who barely turned around in his seat and certainly never took his foot off the gas. What's funny about this story is that she just sat there on the steps, bitching at the back of the drivers head. At first people tried to help her up, but she seemed content to sit there - bitching for the next 10 min or so. She was Maltese, so I have no idea what she had to say for those 10 minutes, but she sure put her heart and soul int it! Eventually, she calmed down, got up and took her seat.
A friend of mine was recently on a bus ride that scared her and her fellow passengers so bad, they actually got off. The same driver is now in jail; seems he ran right over a motorcycle that wouldn't get out of his way.
There is a strawberry festival in the small town of Mgarr. The bus you need to get there only runs once an hour. Getting there was no problem, but getting back would be a nightmare because everyone would try to get on at the same bus stop. Mic and I thought we would outsmart the average person and get on the bus one stop before. The problem was figuring out where that would be. Since the route through town was closed due to the festival, we decided to head out of town, go around and pick up where the route resumed. Well, it was a hot day and the countryside offered no shade. Eventually we found a stop with a few people, but no one knew if the bus would stop. After waiting what seemed like forever, one came along and we all hopped on. It went back the exact route we had taken and we were horrified to think it would go right back to the original bus stop and the driver would make everyone get off, which they often do when changing directions. This time, we lucked out and they let the group of us stay on. The bus swung around to leave Mgarr and we could see about 3 busloads of potential passengers all pushing and shoving for a limited number of spaces on the one bus for another hour. One lady apparently pushed her way to the front and was the first one on. The other passengers were none to happy with the line jumper and tried to pull her off. She grabbed a pole and held on for dear life. The bus driver was yelling, two other employees outside were yelling and the passengers she cut in front of were yelling, all in Maltese. After what seemed like forever, she finally broke free and took a seat. Other passengers got on and off we went, smashed up against one another. And the yelling never abated. One male passenger seemed particularly incensed and every so often would say something to her and she would reply in kind.
My friend Terri and I decided to go on trip to the neighboring island of Gozo. To do this, you take a bus to the tip of Malta and hop on a ferry. Very close to the ferry is a beautiful beach, so the bus is usually packed. On the way back, there were more people then seats, so everyone crammed on. It was long ride back to Sliema and this rolling sardine can drove right past every single stop on the route. There was no way to fit more people in, so why bother stopping. What I wondered was, how would those people ever get anywhere, since every bus passing their way would be equally full.
I'm not all that attentive when I ride the bus. Sure I look out the window, but I don't pay attention to routes, so I rarely know where I am. I usually know where I'm going and can either recognize my stop, or I know the name when it comes up on the next stop screen. Very rarely have I actually gotten lost. Mic on the other hand, knows where everything is and what route the bus should be taking. On one excursion, I'm not sure where, we had to sit several rows apart. I was happily staring out the window at nothing when I noticed the bus struggling to get up a hill. This is quite normal as the engines are not very powerful. This time, however, the bus was barely getting to the top and I could hear the driver stomping the gas pedal. It seemed to me he had transmission problems and I then noticed it wasn't shifting gears as it should. I texted Mic to see if he noticed an he texted me back that we were going the wrong way. Just then another passenger got up and appeared to be giving him directions. Mic texted me that not only was the driver lost, he had just gone the wrong way down a one way street. By now other passengers were looking around. Eventually the navigator got us back on track. I would think knowing your route would be a key bit on information a bus driver should know. Apparently it's not necessary as this was not the first time the driver has been assisted by a passenger.
Those are just a few of the more colorful bus adventures. Most of them happen in one degree or another almost every day. Everyone just shakes it off as, well, this is Malta.
I mentioned a trip to Gozo, it is the 2nd largest of the 3 Maltese Islands, Comino is the smallest. My friend Terri and I decided to take a hop on hop off bus trip as neither of us had seen it. We looked at the program and chose which stops we wanted to get off. These buses have a taped narrated tour but I didn't feel like listening, so I just enjoyed the passing scenery. Eventually I realized the bus wasn't stopping at any of the stops. Apparently you had to request a specific stop and no one was. The Malta tourist buses stop at every one. By this time, I had no idea where we were on the tour or what stop was coming up next. Terri and I studied the map and decided we didn't really care about any of the sites except one, the Azure Window and that would be easy to spot. I guess it was the most popular stop, as every single person got off with us. The Azure Window is a natural limestone arch that was created after two limestone sea caves collapsed. It's a beautiful place and we ended up spending most of the day there. We took a boat ride through some caves and got to see some amazing rock formations. After lunch, we ventured out to the main arch and took way too many pictures, then sat in the sun eating ice cream. Even though we didn't make any of the other stops, the one we did made the entire trip worth it.
As it turns out, Rob Lowe was also at the Azure Window that day. I follow him on Twitter and I noticed he tweeted a picture of Valetta. I did a bit of checking and discovered he was in Malta for a few weeks filming an upcoming TV series called Apocalypse Slough. I decided I was going to find him. It wasn't as easy as I thought. Every night he tweeted a picture of where he had been that day, but apparently they didn't film twice in the same location. I was one step behind in Valetta, Rabat, Mdina, and the Dingli cliffs. Wouldn't you know it, the day I give up is the day I happened to be in the same area, but wasn't looking for (and didn't see) him? Someone else did though and tweeted a picture of him wind surfing.
There were several festivals here in the past month. The three best ones were the strawberry festival, fireworks festival and the Nutella festival. Can you imagine an entire festival featuring just Nutella? It's true and it was pretty good I must admit. It started late on Friday night and went all day Saturday. The strawberry festival was also Sat, so we had to do Nutella on Friday. We got there around 11 PM and the place was packed! The main area was the small town square. There were venders lining the streets selling everything you could think of using Nutella. They had crepes, dipped fruit, hamburgers stacked with fruit instead of meat, shakes, candy, you name it. The square was so filled with people that you could hardly move. We tried crepes and waffles layered with Nutella, bananas and strawberries. They were delicious, even if they were horrible bed time snacks.
The next day was the strawberry festival. It was planned out much better; the space was bigger and the vendors more spread out. There were different artistic displays of strawberries, including an enormous cake. There were also many delicious ways to eat strawberries and we tried quite a few. The president of Malta even showed up. She walked around with her small security detail, talking to everyone. There were two Karaoke stages and most of the singers seemed to be young girls. They were pretty good. Hard to imagine so much going on centered around strawberries, but it was a great festival.
I'm a member of several expat groups and my favorite one just had the first boat trip of the season. Everyone raves about them, so I was excited to experience it for myself. About 20 of us hopped on the boat and headed over to Comino, the smallest of the islands. It's pretty barren, but has the most spectacular blue water. It's most famous for the Blue Lagoon and I can see why. The water was such a beautiful shade of cyan and was crystal clear. Even though it's no where near the height of the season, the lagoon was packed with boats. I was told to just wait, in 2 month you could literally walk from boat to boat they're crammed in so tight. We spent about 8 hours going from one beach to another and each was spectacular. We had an absolute blast all day; it was a potluck so there was plenty of food and the liqueur was free flowing. I got to know some people much better and I met some great new friends. Some folks braved diving into the water for snorkeling while a few others opted for a beach. Growing up in Florida, I'm used to (and much prefer) really warm water. Alas, the water here is pretty cold. I'm proud to say that I joined the elite few who actually went swimming. Getting in was downright painful, but surprisingly not too bad once you took the plunge. I also went for a short hike on the island, but most of the time I just hung out, got some sun and made some memories.
So, when I think back over the past month, it doesn't really seem like I've had many adventures worth writing about, but my days seemed to be quite busy. I have so many great friends here and it seems there is always something going on. Tuesday morning is coffee with one group, Tuesday afternoon is pool time with another, Friday night drinks with one of several groups and Thursday is either bowling or movies. In between, any number of activities can be going on with any number of people. For a social person like me, I could not possibly imagine a better place to be. I am most definitely having the time of my life and, and I honestly can't see how life could get any better for me!
Link to photos:
https://plus.google.com/photos/118205599704530902363/albums/6141385266271463153?authkey=CIfD47_BsMO3-AE
Ah, Lisa, thanks for posting - I am envious of the fun and the sun. Here in southern Colorado we're having an unusually cold and wet May - second wettest since they've been keeping records and we've weeks to go. Ice, snow, rain, hail - you name it - on Mothers' Day, so you sunshine pix warm me up.
ReplyDeleteThanks! Steven G