Groups of elderly couples sit around gate one hundred and six and wait to board the aircraft. Counting only fifteen fellow young travellers at the gate, I board the flight in the early morning as a desperate attempt to leave stormy Ireland.
For the next four hours, the kindly nicknamed ‘Senior Express’ floats over the British Isles and through the sunny fields of France, emerges over Genoa to follow the Italian coast to Sicily before turning over the strikingly blue Mediterranean and landing in the tiny island-nation of Malta.
‘When living in Ireland, the effect of a little bit of sunshine is remarkably surprising. Refreshing, uplifting, I feel my problems have just vanished as soon as I set a foot on the sunny tarmac and enter the small airport terminal.’
Outside, the landscape is almost moon-like. Bone dry, brown, cloudless. For a little over an Euro, a one-day bus pass opens a big key to the small island and, as the we turn and twist around sharp bends, steep narrow streets and avenues that drill through cliffs of naked stone, I reach my hostel in the charming Sliema, a combination of old fashioned Maltese houses in a strongly Arabic-influenced architecture, for a second bringing intense memories of my time living in Al-Mansoura under the fifty degrees heat.
Once in the dorm, I open the big windows and, insulated from the heat by the cold thick rock walls, I rest my feet on the ledge and look outside to a ridiculously blue sky colliding with the shades of Valetta in the background.
A little blue boat clumsily docks next to a moving steel platform. A short fifteen-minute ferry ride across a busy bay, La Valetta, Malta’s capital, lays on a very steep coastline carved into three arms extending to the Mediterranean: Vittoriosa, Senglea & Conspicua.
Across the three sisters hills, brown stone-walled buildings don crowns of rusty steel balconies and cupolas. Colourful laundry hangs over the footpaths and drip scents of cardamon and softener into the gutters.
La Valetta seems to have gone to extra efforts to slow down time and to showcase a glimpse of the Magreb within its city walls.
Pedestrianised streets lined up with upmarket shops that lead to the ruins of an old theatre and the city walls, which aggressively seem to dominate a landscape of soft hills with its earthy tones and rise for dozens of meters above the foamy crashing waves. Like a tale of a beautiful damsel being protected by the stern embrace of her guard.
At sunset, I take the ferry back to Sliema and, from Barrakka Gardens, I witness how the earthy stone turns orange and how magically the three Valetta sisters dress gowns of randomly arranged lights into the night.
I devour a stone-baked pizza a la Maltese, with sausages, fresh onions and eggs, and finally, at nearly twenty hours without rest, I collapse in the comfort of the white sheets next to the cold stone wall.
On a Saturday morning, locals open their individual worlds to the sunshine and have their coffees in their rusty balconies. With no time to lose, I take a bus away from the main urban agglomeration to explore the island.
With a rather small population and territory, the bus network seems to both try to cater for the island’s many villages and at the same time keep a reasonable frequency. This can only mean that a journey that could be done in a straight line with a car, takes three times longer on public transport.
Following my improvised map instructions, I decide to get off the bus in the middle of the countryside just outside Mosta, amid farms, small houses and vineyards. In front of me and solemnly sitting on top of a hill stands M’dina, Malta’s former capital.
A twenty minute walk follows in order to reach the city walls. I am immediately told by an overly excited tourist that the place is featured in the TV show ‘Games of Thrones’, apparently very popular nowadays and filmed entirely in Malta and Croatia. Inside, I discover a labyrinth of brown and narrow alleyways worth of any intricately enygmatic souk in the Middle East.
As the clock ticks, I walk to M’dina’s twin town Rabat for a bite to eat. In between the hundreds of tourists having pizzas and flicking through pictures in their digital cameras, a funeral catches everyone off guard allowing, through the black suits and gowns of mourners, to have a glimpse of provincial life in Malta without the need of staged carnivals.
Through fields covered in perfectly lined crops of lettuce, tomato and artichoke, I reach Golden Bay just as the cold April wind blows from the Mediterranean and brings chill from the Apennines, refreshing the dusty streets of the fishing villages.
The sand shifts and turns into an almost sorrow orange. Sorrow for the day finishing and the cold night arriving. Children build sandcastles in the now cold sand and elderly couples restfully watch the sun setting over the hills around the Bay as if they were glancing at a perfectly laid analogy of their own personal twilight.
I return to Sliema at night and I get lost in the maze of high rise luxury condos. Empty off season, they are bound to become packed in a few months, when the heat is unbearable and the tan is borderline criminal.
My last twenty four hours in Malta involve traveling, as the tiny island-nation’s sister is just a short ferry ride ahead. From Cirkewwa, the chunky white vessel drags away from the pier on time and cuts through crystal clear waters which, mixed with the clear skies, turn into some sort of surrealistic blue oil painting.
I open my backpack and share a picnic. I open a bag of biscuits and cut through a block of yellow cheese. The wine is poured in plastic cups as the wind blows over the rocks. Bottle finished, brain compromised. Perhaps the best memory of this trip: standing atop the unique golden arch with my feet hanging over the Mediterranean and my head floating up to the blue sky.
I sober up while I need to walk up the road to the nearest bus stop at sunset, transfer buses in Victoria on evening rush, take the ferry back to Cirkewwa in the darkness of the early night sea, and bus to Sliema for seafood pasta and bed.
It has been a trip of much needed sunshine and fresh air. A trip down the memory lane of a past life in Qatar within the comfort of Europe.
THE FLYING CAMBA 