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| Image from “Black Mountain – Part 3” |
By James T. Carney
Photos by
Detmar Straub
Malta – or rather the Maltese islands of Malta, Gozo, and Comino – lie in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea about half way between Sicily and Tunisia. It has been held by Phoenicians and Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, Knights of St. John, French, and British, among others, given its strategic importance in what the Romans called mare nostrum (our sea) and its excellent harbors.
People speak English and Maltese (which seems to be a corrupted form of the Arabic spoke on Sicily when it was ruled by the Arabs), and probably two-thirds of them speak Italian as well. It is solidly Roman Catholic, but these is an Anglican cathedral in the capital, Valletta, gratis British rule from the 1800s until 1964. Tourism is a major industry, and so is maritime transportation, because Malta provides one of the world’s largest shipment points for containers.
Well, my trip to Malta started off with a disaster and ended up in catastrophe. My high school buddy Detmar Straub had signed up for a six-day hiking trip for February 26-March 5 with HF Holidays (a British touring group with which we had traveled before). After booking, I signed up for round-trip airline tickets using Priceline.
A couple weeks later I was notified by HF Holidays that this particular tour (one of three) had been cancelled, apparently because of lack of interest. I rescheduled the trip (twice actually) and then contacted Priceline to try to reschedule my airline tickets. Priceline had a recorded message saying that it would not deal with cancellations or reschedulings until five days before the original flight was going to take off, which effectively precluded my rescheduling the flight, because the tour we decided to take started only two weeks after the cancelled tour. So, I had to purchase new round-trip tickets. (Lawsuit follows.)
I started preparing for the trip by going on daily hikes, having nerve blocks installed in my left leg, having a cortisone shot in my right knee, and twice visiting a chiropractor for my hips and lower back. I also took along a supply of Advil, which was useful, and a supply of expired pain pills, which was not. I felt like the bionic man.
I also had a Covid test because our stupid government has failed to recognize that the pandemic as such is over, and requiring tests to board airlines is now overkill and enriches pharmaceutical companies (who charge $130 for processing each test in a lab). (Home tests are not authorized, even though the government is distributing them.)
Malta – or rather the Maltese islands of Malta, Gozo, and Comino – lie in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea about half way between Sicily and Tunisia. It has been held by Phoenicians and Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, Knights of St. John, French, and British, among others, given its strategic importance in what the Romans called mare nostrum (our sea) and its excellent harbors.
Well, my trip to Malta started off with a disaster and ended up in catastrophe. My high school buddy Detmar Straub had signed up for a six-day hiking trip for February 26-March 5 with HF Holidays (a British touring group with which we had traveled before). After booking, I signed up for round-trip airline tickets using Priceline.
A couple weeks later I was notified by HF Holidays that this particular tour (one of three) had been cancelled, apparently because of lack of interest. I rescheduled the trip (twice actually) and then contacted Priceline to try to reschedule my airline tickets. Priceline had a recorded message saying that it would not deal with cancellations or reschedulings until five days before the original flight was going to take off, which effectively precluded my rescheduling the flight, because the tour we decided to take started only two weeks after the cancelled tour. So, I had to purchase new round-trip tickets. (Lawsuit follows.)
I started preparing for the trip by going on daily hikes, having nerve blocks installed in my left leg, having a cortisone shot in my right knee, and twice visiting a chiropractor for my hips and lower back. I also took along a supply of Advil, which was useful, and a supply of expired pain pills, which was not. I felt like the bionic man.
I also had a Covid test because our stupid government has failed to recognize that the pandemic as such is over, and requiring tests to board airlines is now overkill and enriches pharmaceutical companies (who charge $130 for processing each test in a lab). (Home tests are not authorized, even though the government is distributing them.)
At least the Covid test took only 30 minutes to perform and process.
At last la jour de la glorie est arrive, and I took off on an uneventful series of flights to JFK, Heathrow, and Malta with my bag checked through. When I landed at Malta, I had to take a taxi to the hotel, which was located at the opposite end of the island from the airport. The island is only about 25 square miles, but the journey was probably miles.
At the hotel, I met Det and we joined the hiking group, who had taken the same plane I did from Heathrow. They were a very interesting group of friendly people – mostly English but also a couple of other Americans.
One member of the group was a retired English criminal law judge, with whom I spent a lot of time talking about similarities between English and American courts. He was not overly fond of juries, which, when drawn from local communities that were hotbeds of crime, would often acquit patently guilty defendants. Probably for this reason, the practice of plea bargaining is nowhere as widespread in England as in the States.
Our tour fee included both breakfast and dinner (generally in the hotel dining hall but twice in the hotel’s best restaurant), so the group always dined together and had plenty of time to talk among themselves.
The food in the dining hall was decent, although breakfasts lacked scrambled eggs and fried bacon. We had real bacon (as opposed to English bacon, which is ham), but it was baked rather than fried, and we needed extra napkins to wipe the grease from our hands.
Not unsurprising, one could always have one type of fish for dinner, but never a choice of beef. Malta is a densely populated island and grows maybe a fifth of its food. Most farming areas grow vegetables, although we did see a couple of barley fields. Most food has to be imported.
Malta came close to surrendering to the Germans during World War II because of lack of food; the British Operation Pedestal could get only four ships (out of forty) through to the island.
At the hotel, I met Det and we joined the hiking group, who had taken the same plane I did from Heathrow. They were a very interesting group of friendly people – mostly English but also a couple of other Americans.
One member of the group was a retired English criminal law judge, with whom I spent a lot of time talking about similarities between English and American courts. He was not overly fond of juries, which, when drawn from local communities that were hotbeds of crime, would often acquit patently guilty defendants. Probably for this reason, the practice of plea bargaining is nowhere as widespread in England as in the States.
Our tour fee included both breakfast and dinner (generally in the hotel dining hall but twice in the hotel’s best restaurant), so the group always dined together and had plenty of time to talk among themselves.
The food in the dining hall was decent, although breakfasts lacked scrambled eggs and fried bacon. We had real bacon (as opposed to English bacon, which is ham), but it was baked rather than fried, and we needed extra napkins to wipe the grease from our hands.
Not unsurprising, one could always have one type of fish for dinner, but never a choice of beef. Malta is a densely populated island and grows maybe a fifth of its food. Most farming areas grow vegetables, although we did see a couple of barley fields. Most food has to be imported.
Malta came close to surrendering to the Germans during World War II because of lack of food; the British Operation Pedestal could get only four ships (out of forty) through to the island.
| Copyright © 2022 by James T. Carney, Detmar Straub |
Nice start to the story. Jim, you have my admiration.
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