Day Four Malta: 5/16/22: My morning in a Malta Garage and Other Mediterranean Stories

Greetings-

Hope all is well; we are once again in shock about the most recent events back home. But here we are in Malta and focused on understanding more about this small country. We’re also trying to understand their politics. As I understand it, since Malta gained independence from Britain in 1964, its politics has primarily been dominated by the Christian democratic Nationalist Party and the Labour Party (social democrats). More on this later.

We were quite late in getting our act together this morning, but eventually hit the streets and walked to the garage (near the bus terminal) where we had parked our car last night. It’s next to impossible to find street parking in the old section of Valletta so we knew early on we’d need to find a garage or parking lot and then walk into town, which was fine. Anyway, we got to the garage and I recalled we had parked on level “-2A” so we headed there. We walked the whole level and could not find or car. We remembered that it was in a sort of triangular shaped area near the ramp. It was really dark in the garage last night but we were sure of these details. But alas, no car. So we went to the cashier desk and explained where we thought we parked the car. The guy said we could not have parked on the second level because that is a “members only” floor and that we must have parked on level 4, 5, or 6. I was sure we did not park on those levels but again the guy stated that levels 2 and 3 were member only. So we went to level 4 and searched everywhere— no car. We had now spent about 25 minutes looking for the car and it was beginning to feel as if we would never find the car or that we needed the garage folks to drive us up and down each lane of every floor. We were about to look at level 5, but I finally convinced Mike that we should return to level 2 where we both thought the car was parked. As it turned out we were parked in a little side section of the 2^nd level that is entered before the “members” use a special fob to enter that level. 45 minutes after we entered the garage, we were finally in our car. But then, we had used up the “free minutes” that the pre-paid ticket gives you to exit the garage. So, the arm of the garage exit would not open  when we scanned our ticket. The garage guy showed up and looked at our prepaid ticket and proclaimed: “You’ve been in the garage for 45 minutes looking for your car?” And he needed the manager to approve our exit. All in all, could have been a Seinfeld episode (and there was one where George and Jerry and Kramer could not find their car and they were hauling an air conditioner around the garage.)

Finally, we were on our way to Marsaxlokk (pronounced Marsa-schlock, I think)—a little fishing village with about 3,500 inhabitants. The fishing boats are all painted bright red, yellow, blue, green, and white. There are many restaurants lining the edge at the water and naturally the fish dishes are very fresh and literally “just  caught.” We ate at one of those little restaurants at a table where we could watch the boats and the fishermen (yup, all men), and then we strolled the town. In the middle of our rather late lunch there were canon-like sounds, followed by what seemed like traditional music from a live band, so I jumped up to see what was happening and was in the middle of a funeral procession coming down the harbor street.

From Marsaxlokk we headed to Ghar Dalam, Malta’s oldest pre-historic site, but it was closed on Mondays—so maybe tomorrow. Mike was very disappointed not to see the prehistoric bones of dwarf elephants. We then headed to see the famous Blue Grotto. I was navigating on the iPhone Google Maps and all was well until we hit a road that was closed due to construction, requiring us to back out and figure out an alternative route. We wound up on some extremely small roads—about 9 feet wide (two-way roads) with 6’ stone walls on either side for many miles; the road we went through vineyards and teeny towns, eventually arriving at viewing points to see the amazing Blue Grotto– sea caverns on the south east coast. The location of the caves is responsible for  the seawater reflecting shades of blue on the cave walls and ceilings. 

From the Blue Grotto, we headed back to Valleta and to our favorite garage (which we now know very very well) and parked in our same spot on the second level. Hopefully, we will find it easily tomorrow. We strolled along Republic Street past the new Parliament Building and new city gates (both designed by Renzo Piano), which are strikingly effective and blend in to the city well (without much of the fanfare and “look at me” style of many new buildings set into historic settings). The buildings use the traditional materials and echo a lot of the scale of the older buildings. 

After some emails and some work, we headed to Guze for dinner. As with all the other meals, our waiter was not from Malta; this time it was a transplant from Macedonia. He’s been living in Malta for 12 years and it’s permanent. We chatted a bit about the reconstruction of the city following WWII, given all the destruction from the bombing by the Germans. Interestingly a lot of the reconstruction was paid for by Libya! Khadafy saw Malta as an Arabic land, with language that is tied to Arabic. The tiny restaurant – Guze—is located on the ground floor (and partly underground) of a building that is 400 years old and apparently was the only building standing on that street after the war. Another interesting fact we learned was that the Italians were supposed to be bombing Malta, but they mostly dumped the bombs into the sea because they had affection for Malta. Once Hitler found this out, he sent the Germans to do the real job of bombing the island; the damage took about 45 years to rebuild

We also chatted about schooling in Malta, especially languages used. Seems as if Maltese and English are taught concurrently. Remember, Malta was part of the British Empire until 1964 so English was the common language. Apparently many Maltese do not know the language and only older people use the language regularly. 

Queen Elizabeth, when she was just a mere princess lived in Malta with Prince Phillip from 1949 to 1951. Prince Philip was stationed nearby and they lived in an 18th century limestone villa loaned to them by Lord Mountbatten. It was said to hold very happy memories for the couple, who tried to live a fairly ‘regular’ life (if that is possible while living in a mansion). In any case, just last week it was announced that this villa will become a museum. 

We strolled back to the hotel (clocking in at 11,033 steps) across several plazas and down an untold number of steps.

Tomorrow is another day.

Best-

Fern