Malta, Days #3-4 – November 2016

 

Sliema, Wednesday, 23. November 2016

 

I awoke with a headache today. It’s probably from all the wine we drank at dinner last night in Valetta.

 

It’s apparent nothing dries here. My towels are always damp, even when I hang them outside to dry. I’ve asked the staff for fresh towels for the whole fifth floor of our apartment, as I assume everyone else is having the same issues.

 

After our sessions finished for the day, I walked down to the waterfront (literally down! Hills are steep here!) and found a bookstore or two. The second one was called something like Merlin’s Library. It’s located on Bisazza Street. Anyway, I found a few cookbooks and a some A-1 level (beginner) Maltese language books and CDs. Everything was 15% off. Other than this jaunt down to the bookstores in the center, I had no rest to speak of before our sightseeing trip to Mdina. Leaving Sliema, the traffic totally sucks! Crazy! There are too many cars on this tiny island! But at least the boredom of being stuck in traffic was killed by Laura, our tour guide with a heavy Maltese (sounded almost Arabic) accent and a great sense of witty humour. But she gave us some interesting information about Malta, too. The country is 98% Catholic and divorce was finally OK’d in 2011. There are two main political parties: Nationalist and Labour. 

Night time in Rabat

The first stop on our tour was Rabat, a medieval city with quiet, stone-paved streets. It was after dark now, so we had a night tour of the town, which added a special calm to everything. We passed a hospital where, according to Laura, women would abandon their babies because they were too poor and unable to care for them. The women were largely prostitutes and thus tended to have many children.

 

From Rabat, we passed into Mdina, a walled city on UNESCO’s world heritage list. It is also home to the last remaining members of Malta’s aristocracy. Houses and palaces are also baroque and earlier… going back to the 1500s. Think: the Siege of Malta, 1565. Eventually, Laura brought us to a viewpoint overlooking the “valley” with a view back to Valetta (practically on the other side of the island). There, she pointed to a domed cathedral in the distance, called Mosta, which is something like the third largest unsupported domed cathedral in the world. Mosta miraculously survived a bombing raid during World War II, when a bomb fell through the roof during mass but failed to detonate. It was hailed as a miracle, and later, the serial number of the bomb was traced to a munitions factory in Poland where it was discovered two Jewish prisoners had been working. The two apparently had made the bomb in such a way that it would not detonate, perhaps as a kind of “revenge” for punishing God’s Chosen Ones.

A cathedral in Mdina

At last, Laura lead us to a restaurant where we were scheduled to have dinner. We thanked her for her entertaining tour and she left us. We actually arrived thirty minutes ahead of our reservation, but given how late we’ve been having dinner this week, I suppose that was all right. We wined and dined. I had a pasta dish, as I recall. And we had enough fresh, crusty bread and good wine to last a lifetime. Well, then Il-lejl it-tajjeb! (Good night!)

The AM Language Studio in Sliema where we had our workshops and training seminars

 

 Sliema, Thursday, 24. November 2016  (Il-Ħamis, 24 ta’ Novembru, 2016)

 

Happy Thanksgiving! Oh well, not in Malta. At least we’ll have a BBQ party on the rooftop terrace of the AM School tonight.

 

Sessions started off again at 8:45 in the morning. Federica, one of the two Italian participants began with an A-1 level activity about work safety. She asked us to work in small groups and to write a work safety story.

 

I’ve been asked why I keep a journal such as this. In fact, I have a number of notebooks for different purposes. But a journal allows me to write my day-to-day experiences and any “crazy” ideas that come to mind.

 

Lunch was interesting because the school’s rooftop café was serving baked fish today. I don’t normally do fish. Instead, the cook had a bunch of ready-made specialties in a showcase he was able to offer instead of the fish. He suggested meatballs in tomato sauce, served over couscous and garbanzo beans. He reheated it for me and it was amazing! He said the meatballs were made with bits of lemon zest, and the sauce was rich and was packed with zesty flavour. In fact, one of the cookbooks I found and bought has a recipe for meatballs and tomato sauce. There was also a kind of streetfood I tried called pastizzi. It’s a flaky pastry filled with a kind of ricotta cheese or peas. I’m happy to report I tried the cheese version, although I don’t know whether the pea filling consisted of whole peas or a kind of mashed pea paste.

Streetfood in Malta: Pastizzi in Sliema

 

Sessions and training were over early, at about half-past two, and I went on my own around town to explore again. I went back to the bookstores, the shopping street, and eventually strolled along the waterfront towards Valetta, checking in little mom and pop grocery stores and souvenir shops along the way.

Panorama of the waterfront in Sliema and the harbour looking to Valetta

To wind up the day, we had a rooftop barbecue party. I came back to the apartment after sitting with Armandine (from France) and Yuliya (from Latvia), to a kitchen full of Slovaks having a small party of their own. I joined them for a glass of wine or two, then texted Zuza and tucked myself into bed. 

Malta, Days #1 & 2 - November 2016

Sliema--Monday, 21. November 2016

It's really warm this morning as we met at the rooftop garden café of the AM Language School for breakfast. It's just half a block's walk uphill from the dormitory. On the way, I ran to a corner grocery store to buy soap and toilet paper, as well as a newspaper. (English is one of two official languages in Malta.) The shop looked like it had everything crammed in there. It was like a grocery store and general store all in one. I had to ask where to find the toilet paper.

The sunrise cast a mystical light over the city, reflecting on all the grey and white concrete buildings crammed together. Malta gets 80,000 foreign students annually and 10% of those attend AM. Old red phone boxes are a part of the scene, as well as a smattering of Arab influences on some of the houses. It has a sort of Middle Eastern flavour here, as well as a more typical Meditteranean feel of Italy or Greece. The Maltese work hard and play hard at night.

After breakfast, we started our first workshop. That lasted an hour and a half before the coffee break, at which time we all reconvened on the rooftop again. I feel like I've been through enough training this past year to last a lifetime. But this one will be different! We're going to learn about CLIL, or content-based language learning, that is, teaching business skills using English, rather than focusing on the "traditional methods" of English grammar, reading, writing and vocabulary.

Kif int? ('How are you?' in Maltese.) Well, I'm fine now after lunch and a walk down to the harbour and waterfront at Sliema. I found a small electrical shop selling the correct plug adapters. Yippee! Now I can plug in my phone and charge it, as well as upload pictures to my laptop. At 1:30, I was back in the "sessions"... which left many of us with our heads spinning, all this new CLIL methodology. None of us were prepared for this, nor do we have any idea what the outcome may be. Of the two lesson plans I wrote before arriving in Malta, I will present just one tomorrow and simply wing it. 

The first day of workshops came to an end at four in the afternoon. Everyone felt completely whacked. I went back to the dormitory (just a 2-minute walk downhill) with Andrea from Trnava. We stopped at a store to buy a few snacks. Back in my room, I uploaded all the photos I have so far and then took a rest. Tomorrow I hope we can relax more and treat this adventure as more of a "bleisure" (business + leisure) trip.

Outside my room, a symphony of car horns blares as traffic moves slowly up the narrow, bustling street. One driver gets impatient, then they all do and we get the Stuck In Traffic Philharmonic". Welcome to Malta. Dinner came late again, down at the Surfside Restaurant. I had pizza, which took ages to get. The 21'ta Novembru came to a close.

Sliema--Tuesday, 22. November 2016

It's another bright, clear morning here, and not as warm as yesterday, though. But that's OK. It will get hotter later on. Apparently it's 18ºC in Bratislava, so maybe our friends  there aren't jealous that we're in Malta. I bet temperatures will dip right to about zero by the time we get back.

Today's Maltese lesson: Bonġu! (Good morning!) It's pronounced BON-ju, and sounds quite French. Lana, one of my colleagues on this project from Latvia, inscribed something in Latvian in my diary which I won't copy here since I cannot read it very well. One of the beautiful things about a project like this is you get to meet folks from all over Europe.

Looking towards Fort St. Elmo, Valletta

We wrapped up our Day 2 sessions early today so we could take a big group tour of Valletta. Our guise Erik met us at the waterfront in Sliema. He was a tall, well-tanned Maltese man who spoke perfect Queen's English with a crisp accent. I imagined him in another life as a presenter for the BBC. Soon a large tour bus showed up and took us for a guided tour around Grand Harbour and to Valletta, to a major fortress overlooking the harbour.  A nice dinner in town followed suit.  

Arrival in Malta

Valletta, Sunday, 20. November 2016

It was very mild when our plane touched down; none of the autumn chill we were used to in Bratislava. it had just rained, perhaps not an hour earlier, and the air was humid. A young man met our group at the airport, and a large minivan picked us up and hauled us to the dormitory we'd be staying at. We passed a Peugeot dealership and started laughing. It made us feel like there was a piece of Slovakia in Malta. Some in our group were from Trnava, site of a Peugeot assembly plant there.

We came through the capital Valletta to the town of Sliema, and finally to a long, narrow street on a steep slope. People were gathered outside the dormitory waiting to meet us. We were the last group on the project to arrive. They represented the French-UK team. We haven't met the Latvians and Italians yet. 

We stepped out of the van and they divided us up hastily and assigned our rooms. Somehow I ended up being listed with two... women. I was old enough to be their father. Yes, everyone had said "Don't worry, they'll be guys", but the clothing in the wardrobe spoke otherwise. "OK, then. Nevermind. We'll sort it out later."

There was no toilet paper in either of the two shared bathrooms, and someone noted the electrical outlets were the UK style, not the ones typical for continental Europe. Charging a phone would be a problem until we could locate some plug adapters. But the suite was nice otherwise, and closely resembled an IKEA showroom.

Ta' Kolina Restaurant

It was already too dark to take pictures, though I managed to get a few snapshots of the town as we walked fifteen minutes to the Ta' Kolina Restaurant for dinner. There were two long tables filled with the remaining participants on our project. The food also looked a bit exotic: some kind of lentil or mashed pea and garlic spread for pita crackers. I opted for fresh vegetable soup and braised beef with carrots, onions, and mushrooms. I sat across from one of my school directors, who was quickly full and couldn't eat anymore. There was red or white wine, and later dessert We were done with dinner by 11:30 pm., when we marched back to our suites to get to bed.

The streets reminded me of southern Italy and how I would expect North Africa to look. We were, someone at dinner joked, only about four centimeters from Africa.

Street at night in Sliema

Back at the dormitory, we got my room issue all sorted out, and Klaudia, the school president, agreed to trade her single room and bunk with the two young women--one Italian and one Russian, both representing Italy. I had the single room all to myself.

House number plaque near Manuel Dimech Street, Sliema

Welcome to Malta

In 2016, I was selected to participate in a European Union-funded program--something along the lines of the Erasmus program--to build English language lesson plans for the automotive industry. 

I accompanied my school directors and one Slovak colleague, and with representatives from about three other area language schools, our Slovak group made up the largest delegation at our week-long program in Malta.

Stories of the week in Malta will follow, based upon the journal I kept while there...