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...

Winter Wonderland

Here's the scene from our terrace yesterday:



That's right: SNOW! In the nearly two years that we have lived in Belgium, this is the first time that we have seen it snow and accumulate. We've had dustings before, but this is the first snow of substance that we've personally witnessed. It has frosted the city, making it quite lovely, and the lack of street clearance has even caused the maniacal drivers to slow down...somewhat. A few days ago we got a laugh out of the BBC referring to 5 cm as "heavy snow", so you can imagine a few inches is enough to cause quite a stir!

The wintry white landscape has added that missing piece to make it really feel like Christmas here. The city has strung up beautiful twinkly lights all over town, Christmas songs are our constant background music chez nous these days, and we have a large, beautiful Rose de Noël (poinsettia) gracing the coffee table. I have also been trying my hand at baking some old favorites that somehow have escaped my repertoire up 'til now. My first ever banana bread turned out delectably:



With the season comes the inevitable mad crush of activities, and in recent weeks our social calendar has been atwirl with festivities. There have been neighborhood coffees, trips to the Neuhaus chocolate outlet, and lunches with the girls. Our lovely Norwegian neighbor Trude hosted a fun gathering where we got to try such traditional Scandinavian favorites as Gløgg (mulled wine served with almonds and raisins), köttbullar (meatballs), and pepparkakor (ginger cookies). We spent the next evening at the home of my Czech friend and fellow-chorister Marta, who brought out her uncle's fiery schnapps-esque homemade hooch to cap off the evening's fun. To all this add a series of feverish rehearsals for my choir's upcoming performance of Bach's Mass in B Minor to the mix and you've got the makings for a frenetic few weeks indeed.

Even so, beyond all this merrymaking, we've still found time to do one of our other favorite winter activities: we've been eating our way through various Christmas markets, here in Brussels and further afield. Two weeks ago, we grabbed our friends Maisie and Josh and their little guy Isaac and all bundled into the car to visit one of the most famous Christmas Markets in Europe: Köln (Cologne), Germany and it's seven Weihnachtsmärkts!



This was before the cold spell set in, so the weather was warm enough for the water in the sky to stay in its liquid form and not turn to snow. I must say that there is something odd about a Christmas Market in the rain, but we didn't let it dampen our spirits.



Köln is about a 2 hour drive from Brussels. Isaac was a little bundle of cuteness and very well behaved on his first roadtrip to another country.



And the eating commences. First course: latkes (potato pancakes) with applesauce. Hot fried deliciousness!



After a second course of brätwurst with mustard, we moved from the food market into one of the markets that featured crafts and gifts.



All that shopping and walking made us hungry (wink wink), so we moved onto our third plates: potato dumplings and smoked sausage with sauerkraut, sour cream, and herbs. Heavenly. For people who knew me growing up, they might be surprised to see me singing the praises of these particular foods. I have discovered that it's the American interpretations of all these Old World specialties (along with "Swiss cheese" and beer to name a couple more) that are singularly unappetizing to me. But tasting these foods freshly prepared in their original setting is a different experience altogether.



Some people find the idea of warm wine or beer to be odd, but Troy and I are very fond of these wintry drinks. (See "Gløgg" above). Another once-a-year-favorite is Glühwein (mulled wine), popular both in Germany and in Belgium. Here's Troy enjoying his second cup in a festive keepsake mug.



Night falls quite early this days (around 4:30 pm), but the crowd just kept growing.





The sight of the Kölner Dom (Cologne Cathedral) as backdrop to this giant Christmas tree was spectacular.



The cathedral is a UNESCO World Heritage site and seems to be in the early stages of restoration and cleaning. Already dramatic, it will be absolutely stunning when clean. Hopefully we can return one day to see it, and hopefully that visit will be as much fun as this one was.



'Tis the Season...for baking and shopping, for parties and friends, for snow and hot festive drinks, for God and family and reflection. We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season wherever you are in the world.