Malta Pt. 2 - Gozo!

My dad asked me if we saw any falcons during our trip to Malta. Though the Knights of St. John once paid two per year as "rent" for the Maltese islands, sadly the poor birds have since been hunted nearly to extinction. So, no falcon-sitings for us. What we did see, however, were cart ruts. And what are those? We'll get to that.

Malta actually consists of three islands--Malta, Gozo, and Comino. Malta is the biggest and best known of the trio, while tiny Comino is basically an uninhabited rock with a beach. Gozo, located just a few miles off Malta's northwest coast, is about 1/3 Malta's size, is more rural and pastoral-feeling, and, as it was spared the bombing that damaged much of Malta during WWII, is much prettier. Though our time in Malta was limited, we decided to spend a whole day (Valentine's Day, as it happens) on Gozo.



We took this shot while waiting for the car ferry to unload before we drove on. Going over, this was a quick, easy process. Coming home, however, not so much. Apparently the big Carnival party for that day was on Gozo, and the entire country had come across to partake in the festivities. So, that night it took the better part of three hours to get back to Valetta. Blerg.


Entering Mgarr Harbor


Mgarr, one of the Knights' fortified cities


Grapes Wine Bar

Finally, on Gozo, we found something of a café culture! Piazzas and umbrella-shaded cafés are, to us, inseparable from our notion of Italy. Being such close neighbors, Italy has heavily influenced Malta and thus we expected to see a similar "life in the streets" layout to the cities, but it was not that prevalent on Malta island. Gozo, however, felt more social, more communal, and somehow more Mediterranean. This little enoteca had heat lamps under the umbrellas, which made sitting outside feel great!


Basilica of St. George

Our little café, located on Pjazza San Gorg, was in the shadow of the beautiful Basilica of St. George. St. John's Cathedral in Valetta was the first church in Malta built with a double spire, but nearly every church built after it features this motif.


Il-Kastell

Victoria (fka Rabat, but renamed after Britain's Queen Victoria for her Diamond Jubilee) is the main town on Gozo, and the highest point of the city is dominated by Il-Kastell, the old citadel. The wind was blowing something fierce, which made walking around a bit of an effort. But it also created such a clear day that we captured some pretty spectacular pictures.


Troy with Victoria behind


Me with the Gozitan plain behind


Looking towards Xewkija and its massive Rotunda

The sky was so beautiful, and since we were visiting in winter, everything was so green.



Tucked into a hillside, sort of in a suburban area, lies the rather unprepossessing entrance to the Ggantija Temple Complex. I don't know if you can make out the inscription, but it says that this is a UNESCO World Heritage site, used from c. 3600 - 2500 B.C. Elsewhere on the site, it terms this the Oldest Building in the World! There are two joined temples at Ggantija, and they are considered among the oldest and largest in the Maltese Islands. As a point of reference, keep in mind that these temples are ~500 years older than the oldest pyramid in Egypt.

The guidebook said that visiting these temple sites can be frustrating because they often leave you with more questions than answers, and this was true for us. Who were these people? How did they create not just buildings, but such complex architecture? How did they move and lift the stones? How did they learn about astronomy? What was their cosmology?


Megalithic stones at the Ggantija Temples


Inside one temple; thought to be an altar(s)


These walls are 6+ meters (~20 feet) high!

After all that philosophy at Ggantija, we needed a dose of tranquil nature. So we headed off for Gozo's west coast to check out the sea cliffs at Dwejra and the "Azure Window", a natural aperture in the rocks.


Sea cliffs at Dwerja


The Azure Window

From Dwerja, we drove a south-easterly route towards Ta'Cenc in search of... the cart ruts. Cart ruts are maybe the biggest mystery among all the mysterious ancient stuff in Malta. These "ruts" are man-made parallel grooves in the ground, and they date back to seriously old prehistoric times, something on the order of 7000 years ago(!). Archaeologists speculate that the ancient Maltese used a travois-style sled to transport stuff and thus these ruts were created by the continuous movement of these carts or sleds being pulled over the (relatively) soft limestone. But, who knows? Because they are so old and the geology and sea depths of Malta keep evolving, now some of these ancient tracks actually go off cliffs, appear underwater, and reappear across a bay or chasm. We just had to see this.



However, after wandering around fruitlessly, guided by some pretty vague directions ('Wander off to the left of the track, near the edge of the limestone crag...keep your eyes peeled'), we were ready to give up. It was cold, we were getting blown around (which you can see in the super glamorous photo above), and we had a ferry to catch. But, just as we were ready to throw in the towel, a hardy local out walking his dog on the cliffside path happened by. We stopped him and asked about the ruts, and he sort of waved over our heads, pointing off across the fields we had just skirted. Hardly clear directions, but we figured we'd try walking back that way if we could stand the wind and the rough ground for a few more minutes. Troy wandered ahead and after a few minutes called out the magic word: Ruts!


Prehistoric cart ruts

Triumph! We still don't know how we found them, but we did and they were amazing...



Gozo Photo Album - Click Here

Malta Pt. 1 - Carnival, Sunshine, and History!

Malta. Now how did we pick that, you ask? It's kind of random, actually. When we first moved Brussels, Troy had a conference in Berlin and we flew EasyJet, which produces a surprisingly good travel magazine. That issue had a great piece on Malta, highlighting its amazing history and sunny climate. The writer was obviously a good one because Malta stuck into our consciousnesses thereafter. After last year's Dark February, we knew we would need a sunny getaway this year and, after learning that Malta also has a great Carnival, the deal was sealed.

Malta is a tiny Mediterranean island nation located about 60 miles south of Sicily, and not much further than that from Tunisia. Now an independent country and a member of the EU, it was previously colonized for literally thousands of years--first by the Phoenicians starting c800 B.C., then on to the Romans, Arabs, Normans, French, and English among others. It is from the Phoenicians that the Maltese gained the custom of painting the watchful eye of Osiris on their boats.


A traditional Maltese luzzo


Kajjiks and luzzos in Marsaxlokk


Sunset in Marsaxlokk

And from the English, Malta got its crazy collection of mismatched yellow left-hand-drive buses.



We based ourselves in Valetta, Malta's tiny capital, and set off from there in our trusty Diahatsu for our daily adventures.


A picturesque vegetable stand in Valetta.


A tiny street in Valetta, looking towards the harbor


Valetta at sunset, as seen from across the harbor in Vittorioso



One such adventure was Carnival! A staunchly Catholic country, Malta does Carnival well. We were there for four days and there were festivities each day and night of our visit, including parades, floats, costumes, dancers, music, and street parties.


Dancers parade up Triq ir-Repubblika (Republic Street) in Valetta


Carnival is a national holiday, so the capital was packed!


Crazily-costumed dancers in Freedom Square, Valetta


Giant floats in Floriana.



A big part of any trip of ours is FOOD, and this was no exception. The seafood in Malta was great, as might be expected from a place so intimately tied to the sea.




Xxlukkjk Restaurant in Marsaxlokk


The mezze platter at Del Borgo, a fun enoteca in Vittorioso


Troy enjoying a lovely Rosso de Montepulciano

Malta suffered terribly during World War II. Subjected to 154 straight days of bombing (more than the famed 'blitz' in London), the island also endured untold privations and near-starvation. So sad to contemplate.




The bombed National Opera stands in a ruined state in the middle of Valetta.

Though the war left a permanent scar on the island, it also had a less-somber impact by creating a strong enthusiasm for aviation history. Our friend Matt in Brussels actually clued us into the existence of the Malta Aviation Museum, a quirky little volunteer-run outfit housed in an old aerodrome.


A very nice volunteer let me sit in the cockpit of a Fiat fighter jet.




Troy standing in front of a recently restored Hawker Hurricane pulled from the seabed.

Though much of peninsula surrounding Grand Harbor was destroyed in the bombing, a few historic buildings managed to escape destruction. One of these is the Cathedral of St. John, a baroque jewel of a church that the Knights of St. John built in the 1570s. Living in Europe, we see lots of churches, but this one stood out not just for its rich beauty, but also by how immaculate and well-maintained it is.


Cross of the Knights of St. John (aka Knights of Malta)


A relatively staid exterior hides a treasure trove inside.


The high altar. Note the golden cross of the Knights everywhere.


The floor entombs hundreds of Knights and the marble features lots of battle-decked skeletons.

So, sunshine, sea, Carnival, food and wine, airplanes, palm trees, and Knights. That would be enough for a memorable trip anywhere. But, we haven't even gotten to the best, most unique part yet: Temples! It seems that the first permanent human inhabitants of Malta were emigrant farmers from Sicily, who arrived something like 7000 years ago. (Seriously!!!!) Around c3600 B.C. the ancient Maltese started building temples--sophisticated, well-constructed, freestanding megalithic structures that are still standing despite millennia of existence in a seismic zone.


Troy on the path to the Mnajdra Temple


Ħagar Qim Temple

The temple buildings have HUGE boulders, dragged across the plains to very specific sites and apparently hoisted into place using a sophisticated system of ropes or pulleys.


Rope holes at Hagar Qim


Interior door/window at Hagar Qim

The temple builders obviously understood astronomy quite well and were accomplished engineers. Many of the temples are sited precisely such that the light falls a certain way on each of the yearly solstices. And, they did all this Without. Metal. Tools.


Precisely aligned doorways at Mnajdra

The most interesting site of all was the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, a site so rare and delicate that we could not take photographs at all. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, only 80 visitors per day are allowed inside, and we had to make reservations two weeks in advance to obtain a ticket! In use from c3600 - 2400 B.C. the site is an incredible underground necropolis, carved into the stone as an underground temple for the dead that replicates the temples for the living built on the surface. Unbelievable.


This plain suburban street stands over the only prehistoric underground temple in the world!

Phew! That's a lot to pack into four days and really that's not all--we went to Gozo too! But, that's for another post. So, we'll say sahha (goodbye) for now.

Malta Photo Album - Click Here

Snow in Germany, Snow in Colorado

It's February already, can you believe it? The last few weeks have absolutely flown by for me. There are so many things I would like to record here in our faithful blog, but before the winter completely gets away from me, I did want to mention our Christmas adventures and share some snowy photos.

My choir had its biggest performance of the year, our 30th Anniversary Concert, on the 19th of December. We sang Bach's Mass in B Minor (an amazing, technically-challenging work) with the Charlemagne Orchestra for Europe. A sell-out crowd of 2000 people filled the hall at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, making the evening really special. And, in my capacity as Alto Voice Rep, I even got to meet one of the Belgian Princesses, Princesse Claire! (Yes, a real princess!) There are some interesting photos of our dress rehearsals and the performance on the orchestra's website, including this one of me getting ready backstage.


Photo courtesy Charlemagne Orchestra for Europe

It was a wonderful evening and certainly worth staying in town for, but it also meant that we had to catch a flight to Colorado perilously close to Christmas. Considering how much we travel, we have been very lucky with seats, delays, and baggage up 'til now. I guess we were just saving it up for Frankfurt this year!

To make a terribly long story short, it was snowing all over Europe and wreaking havoc at all the major airports. A taxi picked us up at our apartment in Brussels at 7 am for our 11 am flight on Monday the 21st. We made it to our gate in plenty of time, but we were delayed leaving Brussels for two hours because they didn't plow the airport grounds enough for the baggage handlers to get through to the planes (seriously). There is only one flight per day from Frankfurt to Denver, and we missed it. We had to stand in line for SIX HOURS to get our tickets rebooked, and after all that we ended up being given a number to call and rebook the tickets ourselves. It was, in a word, bad.

We finally got to our hotel room at about 9 pm that night, after a nerve-wracking taxi ride in a blizzard. This was the view from the hotel in south Frankfurt where the airline put us up.



Pretty depressing, huh? Thankfully, we had a laptop with us, so we booked ourselves into a nicer, cheaper(!), and more centrally-located hotel. We spent Tuesday touring around and shopping (we had to buy some clothes and toiletries because we had no luggage). We went to an AMAZING Botticelli exhibit and visited the Frankfurt Christmas market.







Officially, they couldn't rebook our tickets for FIVE DAYS, however we managed to get out standby at the proverbial 11th hour on day three. We finally made it to my parents' house at 9 pm on the 23rd. Our luggage didn't arrive until nearly midnight on Christmas. Sigh. But, it could have been worse. We didn't have to sleep in the airport--3000 of the 8000 people who were stranded in Frankfurt along with us ended up sleeping there! We managed to enjoy our time in Frankfurt, all of our luggage eventually arrived intact, and, most importantly, we made it home for Christmas!

We had not been home for a whole year, so we were especially happy to be in Colorado. We spent some great quality time with our families and the few friends we could manage to visit. When we got back to Brussels, I was surprised to note that we hardly took any photos at all. I guess we had too many other things occupying our attention this year!

In the midst of all this, we had a wonderful week in Steamboat with Troy's entire family (parents, brother, sister, and their spouses and kids)! We cooked, read, played games, skied and snowshoed, and soaked up some much-needed sunshine! We did manage to remember our camera on two of our treks, so I leave you with these lovely images (the link to the album is below).











Colorado Trip 2009/2010 Album - Click Here

And, we're back...

Upon looking back through the last two years(!) of blog posts, I was surprised to see that neither Troy nor I seem to have mentioned the joys of getting our titres de sejour (residency permits). You hadn't noticed this absence? Not surprising. But here the mere mention of the phrase "visit to the commune" is enough to set any non-EU-citizen's eyes rolling and teeth on edge. While no residency-registering-process is great, our commune's is widely-agreed to be the worst in town. Such a subject might seem like an odd choice to mark our re-entry into the blogging world after a few weeks away. However, it is January and that means it is time for our annual state-mandated pilgrimage to the Maison Communale de Bruxelles to complete our paperwork and extend our right to stay. Step 1 in this process was this very morning in fact, and thus the topic is fresh on my mind. Step 1? Oh yes my friends. Don't let this seemingly innocent-sounding task fool you. Going to the commune is like battling through Dante's 9 circles of hell -- miles of lines, grumbling, shoving, ugly words, weeping and gnashing of teeth. Sounds like a story, no?

Our journey begins outside the maison communale (town hall) in the freezing pre-dawn blackness where you jockey for position in your first line of the day: the queue awaiting entry to the building, which officially opens at 7:30 am. Your placement in this first line is critical, so you have to arrive before 7 am or you're toast! This morning we were fortunate enough to be close to the front of the line and able to wait in the foyer, a boon on such a cold morning (-4℃). At 7:30, a security guard descends to let groups of about 10 at a time race up to the Third Floor - the Bureau of Strangers. (Well, ok, I suppose the more accurate translation is 'Bureau of Foreigners', but the French is 'Bureau des Étrangers', so you see where I get my preferred translation). Today, we were in the first group to ascend.

Having learned a trick or two from our previous FIVE visits, we were able to do some clever last second maneuvering coming off the turn out of the elevator, and thus made it to the front of the second line. This is the line in which you wait until 8:10 am, when the "Welcome" windows of the Bureau of Strangers open for the day. Once at the Welcome Window, you explain your reasons for visiting and are given a number, at which point you can relax somewhat. If you're lucky, you might even find a seat and sit down while you wait for the "Business" windows to open. Our guardian angel was in fine form this morning because, though some upstart Eastern European fellows cut in line and dove for Welcome Window #1, we scooted up to WW#2 and for the first time ever scored the coveted numbers 001 and 002!

At about 8:30 am, our numbers appeared on the board and up we went to wait at the window while a poor civil servant (who we have agreed has among the WORST jobs ever) worked on our permits. With each renewal they completely redo everything, including the ID cards and their hideous photographs. Several pages, signatures, and official-stamps later, we completed our business at about 9:15 am.

If you've been keeping track, today's visit took about 2.5 hours, which is a land speed record for our visits to the Maison Communale. But wait, aren't there more steps, you ask? Ah yes. Clever of you to notice. Now we have to await the visit from the police to verify that we still live together (they verify this anew every year) after which they send off an official report to the Commune. Then a few weeks later we get to do a REPEAT of this morning's routine, made only slightly less horrible because we go to the 2nd Floor - Bureau of Locals to pick up our new IDs. All this effort is good for one year...whereupon we do it all again. Ah bureaucracy, or bureaucrazy as I've now termed it. There's a reason why we need all the chocolate and beer...