Stone upon stone: an Italian sojourn: Mdina: ancient and golden

A couple of things have surprised us as we learn more about Malta. Given that for so long Great Britain had ruled this strategic little island that has been on every sea route in the Mediterranean since shipping started, I had expected English to be the dominant language. It doesn't appear to be. In fact, at times, we are not easily understood--and that is surprising. Nor do we always understand, in turn. The locals speak fast and rather furiously, and it sounds unusual to my ear: not at all pretty or gentle. The language likely wears layers of mixed spoken words from every culture that has ever ruled the place, but it is surprising that so much of it sounds Arabic, like the Muezzin call, from when the Arab rule here finished some 900 years ago, or thereabouts. So, that was another eye-opener.

The other is the extraordinary rudeness of many of the Maltese bus drivers we have seen operating. Very few of them are even pleasant to the local folk who use their bus regularly. And it is not just a cultural thing you need to get used to, like the sound Italians make when they are chatting to each other vociferously: they sound angry, when they are not; they just speak quickly and excitedly to each other in a way that to our ears sounds as if they are fighting. Maltese bus drivers seem endemically rude. And it is a real rudeness. They slam the bus doors in the face of people trying to get in. They tell others to get off without explanation and refuse to drive with them in. They rarely say please, thank you, or even respond. They are deaf to people needing timetable or route advice. They shortchange tourists. They lie. And that's just some of what we've observed in three or four relatively short bus trips. In any other country there would be many complaints about such behaviour and they likely would be fired. Probably en masse if an inspector saw what we have seen. But, chatting to others about it, it seems that finding enough employees in this tiny island of Malta to do such jobs may be the problem. But they really do need to lift their game as this is not a small problem: rudeness seems to be deeply ingrained in the bus driver culture here, and it presents a terrible image to first time visitors, let alone the weary locals who have to put up with it daily.

But, today, we used buses to cross the island to visit Mdina: the ancient walled city that once was the capital of Malta. One bus, virtually outside our door, took us to an interchange somewhere over near the back of Valetta and there we caught a bus to take us deeper into the island, north and west. Both trips probably took all of 50 minutes, passing through outer suburbs noteworthy for either a Spanish architectural influence in their square blocky flat-roofed exteriors, or the more decorative, curlicued, Arabic effects. Suburbs gave way to countryside: low set in a green clad basin pocked with olive trees and grape vines, and there are chestnut trees everywhere. Some roads are bordered in dense rows of thick barriers of prickly pear, and we ofttimes imagined we were driving through a Spanish film set.

St Paul, once the zealous persecutor of Jesus, became, on the road to Damascus, a converted zealot, instead. He was shipwrecked along the coast here around 60AD or thereabouts, enroute to Rome, where he was to be tried as a political rebel, for fomenting fervour among the populace, no doubt. Around a camp fire locals saw him bitten by a poisonous serpent, but when he failed to fall ill as a result they looked on him in awe, as if he were a protected species, almost a god. He took refuge not far from Mdina and there healed the local politician, the pagan chief official of the Romans, who happened to be ruling Malta at the time. Publius, too, fell under Paul's spell and soon became a convert. And, thus, St Paul bought Christianity to Malta.

So the Mdina we could see when we arrived was a tiny town of Christian churches and convents that once held thousand of religious converts in thrall.

Today it is something of a pilgrimage place, and, as such, is of immense interest to tourists. Even now, in the off season, the tiny walled city is thick with bus loads and boat loads of visitors walking the little lanes, flocking the piazzas, and clip-clopping in horse drawn carriages as of old.

It reminds me of places like Saint Malo. Or some of the most beautiful listed villages in France, that no longer have the populations they once had, but have been renovated and polished to perfection in order to attract tourists. Mdina has a census population of 300 residents, but that is probably in the height of summer. As with the dead villages in France, Germany and other parts of the world, most folk likely turn up for the season. Now, in off-season January, there are only one or two tourist shops, a half a dozen restaurants or pizzerias, and a few event venues that have sprung up to catch the tourist dollars. Galleries and craft shops have not bothered. Some operators even now go to the trouble of wearing ancient costumes as the inhabitants once did.

Despite all of that, Mdina is extraordinarily beautiful. What once was an Arabic citadel and stronghold now has its moat filled in and is covered with trees and gardens: toothless these days, in the face of the tourist masses wearing its cobbles thin.

When the Kights Hospitallers came to the island early in the 1500s, they moved their new capital further south and started building Valetta. Mdina was left to the religious and the old nobility, yet even after earthquakes damaged many of its beautiful structures money has been found to rebuild it to its former glory.

It is surrounded by thick golden stone walls and bastions that look down over green valleys lush with olives, tomatoes and chestnuts. Its lanes are narrow, winding and tight, reminiscent of an Arabic souk: utterly charming with their gorgeous projecting balconies and decorative street lights.

Tucked between building are exquisite little palazzos: with their stone gardens and gorgeous stairwells. Even little external air vents are beautifully, thoughtfully, decorated.

We ate pizza and chatted about Malta with guests around us in the forecourt of a castello of sorts. Wondering about times past when it was fully alive as the busy and industrious capital.