Malta by www.born2travel.it

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10. 04. 2004 St. Julians (MALTA) After various adventures, with an Air Malta flight we land on this little island not far from Italy. Having left a tremendous rain in Rome, we are welcomed by timid rays of sun and a cool little breeze! After a refreshing shower we meet my very kind Maltese friend: Roberta. We go to Busibba to drink something and already notice the first characteristic thing in the car: British driving on the left! Being a former English colony, it retains many little details that often give me the feeling of being in Great Britain. Malta is a great centre as far as study holidays go (to practise English, although it is not the state language; in fact Maltese is spoken above all, a strange language, a mix of Latin and Arabic). There are numerous schools attended by foreign students, especially Germans and Scandinavians.

Finally in the evening we throw ourselves into the unbridled nightlife of St Julians! These Maltese are really clever: they have spread about ten "free entrance" discos along a single street where you only pay for your drink (not even obligatory) and so it happened that we danced half an hour here to techno music, an hour at the Havana Club to hip hop and R&B, another hour or so next door to another kind of music, etc. A truly exciting nightlife, I did not expect it to be like this! 11. 04. 2004 St. Julians (MALTA) Today is Easter! And we celebrated it by visiting Mdina, the so-called "silent city", very characteristic and picturesque, built by the famous "Knights of Malta". From there we popped over to Valletta, the capital, today really deserted! I think we are the only ones around at Easter here...

In the evening we meet two Roman girls: Marzia and Francesca, whom we had met at the airport... Between a beer in one of the many English pubs and a couple of spins on the dance floor we spent a pleasant evening! 12. 04. 2004 Valletta (MALTA) [Nick]: We are going to Valletta on bus "62" but... what happened? We have been stuck on this road for more than half an hour now... I got off for a moment to check...

can it be that we are stuck in traffic on the seafront admiring the so-called "luzzu" (typical local boats) just because of a little broken indicator light, rear-ended by our bus? I ask a German guy: "What do you say we take a collection and buy it for him, this indicator, so at least we can set off again!" And he, from the height of his two metres, sighs calmly: "That's Malta!" [Nick]: Today Valletta looks much busier than yesterday, all the shops are open and there are hundreds of tourists everywhere. We strolled for a long time, getting lost in the many little alleys, real labyrinths in which you breathed a very particular air; I thought of how many people so different from each other those old walls had seen over the course of history, from the Arabs to the Africans, from the English to the Sicilians...

Once at the port I stop to chat a bit with a fisherman, but to my question about why those strange boats were called "luzzu", he answers me: "They are for fishing", and I understand that the conversation would have been very difficult! 13. 04. 2004 St. Julians (MALTA) Wake up at 7.10, for the first time we have breakfast here in Malta; usually we woke up for lunch! We get ready to set off again. As always the days fly by and you do not have time to unpack your suitcase before you have to fill it again. We allowed ourselves these few days of leisure during this second academic year that is destroying us in the true sense of the word... At least the memory of these carefree days will give us a smile in the harder moments that still await us in there... Thank you Malta

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