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.