A Slice of Italia (Italy)

I got a ridiculously cheap flight from Malta to Italy, and so I was making my way into a country I had intended to avoid on this trip. Italy is the sort of place I always imagined doing comprehensively when I’m older, when I don’t have the energy or the enthusiasm for the more obscure and difficult places, and when I have the money to do it properly. But when opportunity arises in the form of dirt cheap flights, the journey can change, and suddenly I’m staring at the Tower of Pisa thinking ‘Holy shit that thing is on a lean.’

Things didn’t start off so well. When I arrived into the country I waited in the dark outside the B&B I booked for forty minutes, ringing the buzzer continuously. It was only when I had given up and decided to walk around and see what other accommodation I could find (an absolute no no in any other country this late at night), that a police car passed and I waved it down. They called the owner for me and I eventually got into a room. This is the sort of shit you have to go through when you can’t afford the Hilton.

 

Pisa was my base for my short stay in Italy. Obviously, the leaning tower is the key attraction here, and my expectations were pretty low which is why I was pleasantly surprised when I came from around a corner in a seemingly ordinary quite town to see this tower looking like it was about to topple over. The photo’s I’ve seen of it, and the photos I took, really fail to capture the lean.

The tower is in a complex of grand old buildings which are equally impressive – they just don’t have the novelty factor of looking so unstable. 

It’s one of the world’s most recognisable tourist attractions, in one of the world’s most touristic regions (that being Tuscany), in one of the world’s most touristic countries. But the town of Pisa itself is a university town with a river running through it and is unique in that it has so many visitors but most only stay an hour or two to take a photo of the tower and then get back into the coach, so it isn’t completely dependent on tourism. There is a lot of real life here as well.

From Pisa I used Italy’s efficient train network to explore the region with my friend Carol who I had met up with once again. Florence was only an hour away and was great to see. It’s a small city and has nice streetscapes and a river. A key attraction is the Duomo, an enormous cathedral in the centre of town with unique décor. But the highlight in Florence for me was the Pizza and wine I had for a long lunch in a cosy cafe as we waited for the rain outside to ease.

The leaning tower exceeded my expectations and so did authentic Italian pizza (just wish I could have got to naples).

On a sidenote, I asked a young Italian couple what were the best and worst things about Italy. They said the food and the mafia, respectively.

The small town of Lucca in the heart of Tuscany was my favourite. The town is situated within ancient defence walls and is quite quaint. It was nice to walk around and see churches and Alfa Romeos and narrow streets and architecture and old women riding bicycles on cobblestone roads.

 

We ended one day by exploring Livorno, a more working class town on the sea. Here there are canals which give one particular area of the town the name ‘New Venice.’ In this town I emptied my 2L bottle of water into a pot plant and went into a cellar and from the huge vat a man poured me 2L of red wine and charged me 2.5 Euro. Carol and I had a great evening sitting above a canal and watching the dusk wash over the sky behind it.

 

I visited a great local market in a town called La Spezia where there were hams and sausages and blocks of cheese and tubs of pesto for sale. From there I went to a smaller town right on the water’s edge, which was so rustic and so genuinely ‘traditional’ that it looked almost fake, like a movie set.  It made me understand that people come to Italy because it’s just plain nice. It’s pleasant, like a painting of a sunny day.

 

From Pisa it was great to be able to see the highlights of the Tuscany region, something I couldn’t have done with such ease in most other countries I’ve visited on this trip. Because this country has its shit so together, it allowed me to make the most of my limited time.

I’ve always been a little intense about the ethos of travel, in fairness to one’s self and the place being visited. And there I was, passing Italy in the blink of an eye. What a hypocrite! So what do I have to say for myself?

 

Firstly, the way the flight deal worked out I more or less chose to go to Italy on a whim.

But in a more metaphorical way, this is how I will justify my stay:

Italy is a big pizza and I had one very thin slice. That slice wasn’t very filling, but I got a dam good taste of most of the ingredients.

 

The Gozo Leathertramp (Gozo Island, Malta)

I caught the ferry from the main island of Malta to Gozo, the smaller and much less populated sister island. I had arranged to rent a room from an English expat in an old mill that had been converted into a house out in the paddocks. I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived – I had a large room with a terrace overlooking the surrounding countryside and the place even had the original mill stone. And that’s all for $15 per night! After the great time I had renting a room in an apartment on Malta, this just further added to the idea that hotels and hostels are boring and sterile and should be avoided where possible.

 

(That’s me sitting outside my room on the top level of the old mill.)

Because the farmhouse was in the middle of paddocks, I was woken early each morning by the sound of gun shots. It was that time of year when the migratory birds fly from Europe down to Africa to avoid the cold weather. Many species use Malta as a stopping point along the way, and it is part of the local pastime to go out with a couple of guns and a retrieval dog and shoot them out of the sky. The birds aren’t big enough to eat so it’s purely for the novelty of hunting, and there have been significant decreases in bird populations because of the hunting. Safe to say this tradition probably won’t be going on for too many more years, but it added to the spirit of the Farmhouse being woken each morning by gunfire as close as 100 metres away.

I spent most of my time on Gozo walking. With my music playing (PJ.LB) and a water bottle in my pack, I’d walk for hours exploring the headland trails and country lanes of the island. The island had these epically rugged cliff coastlines which were easy enough to explore, and the small towns were nice to pass through (each with there own out of proportion church). I was walking Forest Gump style, the Gozo Leathertramp.

 

 

 

At the heart of the island is the capital Victoria, with the old citadel. Its high walls were used to protect the inhabitants of Gozo from invading armies and plundering corsairs from Africa. When foreign boats were seen on the horizon, horns would blow and all the folk on the island would muster their animals and quickly harvest anything of value and retreat into the walls of the citadel.

In addition to the citadel, there are several old watch towers along the coastlines of Malta’s islands, much in the same condition as they were when they were used to look out for enemy or pirate ships.  Situated between Africa and Europe, this place saw many unwelcomed visitors from both directions, and their best chance was to hide with as much produce as they could so as not to be starved out.  It was great to explore these ancient structures and see the citadel looming at the heart of the island from a distant.

I walked and walked along the coastline and past salt pans and up to high peaks. During my walks I came upon three snakes and on one occasional had pellets that had been fired at the migrating birds come raining down all around me.

I got a chance to meet up with one of Erin’s relatives on the island. It was nice to meet him but things got a little awkward when I told the dog lover that I munched on some dog meat in Beijing earlier in the year. But I felt like I was the sane one later when he started going on about how aliens cultivated life on earth.  I shouldn’t have been surprised – it was a relation of Erin’s mum after all.

 

It was during my stay in Malta that I realised this is as close to poverty as I’ll ever get. My hair is long and tangled, and I have given up trying to comb it. I was still using a bus ticket that expired five days previous, having worked out a way to get around renewing it. I was on a budget of 7.30$ per day, which I was regularly meeting. I started to feel sorry for the people sitting next to me on the bus, that’s how long ago my deodorant ran out. And where do I even start with all my gear that has suffered the ‘wear and tear’ of a decade. My shoes are barely holding together, bits of rubber and canvas just hanging off them, my socks clearly exposed. My belt broke and the cheap shit one I got to replace it is just about done for too, but I took the time to dig a new hole nonetheless because I’ve lost 10kgs since I left home 7 months ago, the bulk of that probably within the last three months (I’ve never been able to see my ribs so clearly). My ‘holeproof’ socks have holes in them, and I’m walking around listening to music blaring out of one earphone because the other doesn’t work anymore.

And it might sound like I’m whinging, but I like this. This is the year of make do, because when else in my life am I going to be able to live like a hobo? I think going to bed hungry and having a mental argument with yourself over whether to have two or three slices of bread for breakfast is an experience all ‘children of the west’ need to have. It’s not good for your health, I must surely be anaemic by now and I haven’t had calcium in months, but it’s gotta be good for the soul.

 

 

I just know I’m lucky enough that if I wanted to get all brand new clothes and possessions and resume nightly  feasts I could, and that’s why it’s good to starve from time to time – to get a better understanding of how good being full is.

On my 24^th birthday I went to bed hungry and dreamt of food (not by choice that particular night).  This harsh budget was kind of an experiment for this part of the trip, but I had to know what living this style of life felt like at some point, and what better place to do it than Malta and Gozo where you walk almost everywhere and see amazing things every day for free with no fear for safety.

When I left Gozo returned to the main island I stayed in a dingy hotel for $7 per night and then went and stayed again in Pascals apartment (as mentioned in previous blog) as he said I could come and stay free of charge to help him more with his English.

My time in Malta, and especially Gozo, was one of the highlights of my trip so far. And that just goes to show you don’t need to be living extravagantly to be having a good time. In fact, the more extravagant you do it, the more comfortable you are, the less affected you’ll be.

No money could pay for the great time I had hiking around Gozo on empty belly in worn out clothes and rundown shoes, playing the part of the unemployed, knotty haired, gaunt and possibly mentally ill drifter.

The Obscure Rock (Malta Island, Malta)

I had never even heard of the island country of Malta until I met Erin. It lies in the Mediterranean Sea between Italy and Northern Africa, consisting of a series of islands, and is one of Europe’s smallest countries. But what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in history. I’m not usually one to get that excited about something that happened five hundred years ago – I’d much prefer to be affected by something in the present, but the amazing history of this place was unavoidable.

This ‘obscure rock’, as Sultan Soleyman referred to it before he attacked in the 1500’s, has been occupied again and again over the ages. Due to its strategic position between Africa and Europe, and its mid-point location in the Christian versus Muslim wars, the ‘obscure rock’ has been attacked and occupied by anyone who’s ever held stakes in the Mediterranean; Phoenicians, Romans, Moorish, Normans, French, and finally the British, who occupied until the 1960’s.

But the most famous occupants were the Knights of St John, a group of religious soldiers sent by the European countries to fight and die for Christianity. These soldiers were exempt from the civil wars of Europe and served the sole purpose of fighting Islam – kinda like the Nightwatch in ‘Game of Thrones’.  Malta was their base.

The most dramatic of confrontation on Malta was between the Ottomans from the Middle East, who sent 200 ships and 40,000 men, and the few hundred Knights of St John and about 9000 local men. Against the harsh odds, Malta was successfully defended, and the structures assembled in the 1500’s to defend the island against such an enemy are still intact and observable today.

But the thing that most amazes me is that the Maltese locals have endured all these invasions and occupations and somehow haven’t been completely wiped out somewhere along the long and bloody history of the place. There isn’t that many of them, but they’ve clung on like lichen to a rock.

And interesting enough, Erin is a descendant of these people.

 

 

Malta is small, and I made it my goal to visit every village and town on the island. I didn’t see them all, but I saw most. I saw nice harbours with colourful old fishing boats, rugged coastline stretches, and a lot of churches.  A leftover of the Knights of St John is the rampant Catholicism (98% of pop!), and churches are in abundance. Every small town has at least one big cathedral, and the one in the capital had the most impressive interior I've seen all year.

The island has some of the worlds most ancient buildings, even older than the pyramids (though not much to look at - seems like just a few well organised boulders really.) Its also a summer tourist hotspot for Europeans.

 

Noteworthy food is the great pastizzies, pastries filled with ricotta cheese or peas, and the Maltese sausage, really meaty and salty. Nice and cheap too. (I’ve already ordered a batch of Pastizzies from Erin’s mum for when I get home).

The most enriching experience I had in Malta was renting a room off a guy on the cheap. He gave me a great price of 10 Euro per night, on the condition (which I only learnt when I arrived) that I teach him a bit of English and chat and interact with him and his son so they could learn quicker.  At first I was a bit uneasy – it was a small apartment we were all sharing and there was some rather strange conversation that first night, but it ended up being one of the most invaluable chapters of my year.

Pascal and his son are from Belgium, living and studying English for a year in Malta. They also rented out the room next to mine out, and during my stay I got to befriend a young Italian couple and later a middle aged Algerian couple. We had BBQ’s, chatted over breakfast and dinner, and got to know about each other and our respective countries.

Who wants to stay in a sterile hotel when you can have such diverse roommates as these? It felt like a perfect set up for a sitcom.

 I was especially interested in getting to know the Algerian couple, and the woman in particular spoke English quite well. After about a week living together the conversations started to get interesting. We were past the small talk, and I was ready to have some big discussions with a Muslim woman, someone who I would otherwise never get a chance to talk with.  She told me about growing up in Algeria with the common threat of terrorism, she lost her brother in law to a terrorist attack, and being scared to go to sleep as a little girl for fear the terrorist would burst into her house shouting and shooting in the middle of the night.

On an equally dramatic note we spoke about gender equality, arranged marriage, religion and politics. For a level headed woman who taught computer science at a university level, I was outright shocked at some of the things she had to say.

After I told her that I don’t have much patience for theology, we got talking about talking about evolution.

‘I believe in evolution, but just not of humans,’ she said.

‘So humans aren’t animals?’ I asked, expecting her to concede my point. But instead she said no; humans aren’t animals.

Other fragments of conversation include;

‘There’s something inside a woman which means she’s more attuned to cooking and cleaning than men,’ she said.

‘So you think its nature over nurture for women in the kitchen,’ I said half as a joke, but was surprised when she looked at me earnestly and said ‘Oh, yes.’

She also had some equally outrageous things to say about arranged marriage, pork meat and Christianity. I didn’t even bother to ask her about legalised homosexual marriage.

I liked Fatimah, she was pleasant and witty, but I was shocked at the way she thought. I had always hoped that the educated minds of the world could always find common grounds in something like science and reasoning if we’re going to keep this thing afloat. But here I was, talking to university lecturer of computer science, science is in the title for God’s sake (pun intended), a leading mind in her own respect, and she wasn’t even scientifically literate.

It was kind of depressing.

Nonetheless, it was a great to be able to talk to her about the big bang theory over breakfast - the Devoted and the Infidel. And living with the Belgium’s was equally interesting and rewarding, just a little less provocative.

This bizarre experience made me never want to stay in a hotel again and put the cherry on top of my stay on Malta’s main island.