A Traveller’s World

I find it difficult to write journalistic prose about Malta, something along the lines of 5000 years of history, beaches and diving and 300 days of sunshine. Granted, the history is incredible, the peoples who have lived on the island made it an eclectic mix of baroque architecture, antique furniture, British fast food and a strange language that is almost a dialect of Arabic – with a lot of Italian loanwords.

Last time I went to Malta, I stayed in a house in Valletta that must have been 400 years old. Cold and damp it was, indeed, but just touching those stones feels like hundreds of yoears of history become real, that you become part of that history.

To me, Malta is also a profoundly spiritual place, and much of its history is intertwined with the history of spirituality and later Christianity. St. Paul landed on the island and the first bishop of Malta, Publius, whose church is in Floriana just outside Valletta city gates, was ordained by Paul. Today, the charismatic aspect of faith is widely practiced. Alongside the well-known prosessions, festas, and the carnival season. It would be naive to assume that the whole country is united in one eager practice of faith – there are atheists and libertarians on Malta as anywhere else, but still the visual aspect of faith is striking to me, someone who grew up and lived in a visually deprived post-Protestant environment of Northern Europe. After the Holy Week celebrations, I started thinking in images. Words seemed to take much more time to utter and had linear meaning, while images seemed to strike at the heart and allow for multiple interpretations.

Then again, time seems to flow differently on Malta. Having to wait 40 minutes for an order in restaurant did not seem to annoy anyone but us. But, when I asked to pack my order to have it on the go, because we were in a hurry– and what’s the point of that I wonder? – it only meant we had to eat it on the street waiting for a bus that didn’t come util much later anyway. When you get into the rhythm of it, it flows smoothly.  Initial adjustment can probably drive someone mad.

I look forward to going back this September. I will probably enjoy the sea, the sunshine and the history. But there is also something else, something that is difficult to descibe and easy to overlook – the old-fashioned unadulterated life that has not yet been polluted with materialism. I hope it will last. For some time, at least…

Tags: Malta, Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 3:27 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.