Hiking in Malta; hiking through history

Breakfast at Chapel 5 B&B in Naxxar

Learning has always been my primary motivation for traveling. New landscapes, new foods, new customs, new histories - I enjoy them all. But I forget sometimes that traveling is also a means for learning about oneself. I was reminded of this on my recent trip to Malta.

Germany’s largest wine barrel. I could only finish half.

After spending a couple days in Germany en route (visiting the Heidelberg Castle that I remembered from a Rhine River cruise in the 1980s), I flew to Malta - the largest of three islands that make up the world’s 10th smallest country in area. I signed up for a late November self-guided hiking trip with MacsAdventure at a somewhat late day. My regular travel buddy had already taken trips with her sister and daughter this fall, so I went solo on this one.

View from hike near Mdina

Five days of hikes on three different islands were challenging enough for this 71-year-old. Part of the reason for going on this trip was to simply reassure myself I was still capable of doing eight and nine mile hikes. (I was.) And it was also to reassure myself I had the mental acuity to deal with international navigation, train and bus schedules, new phone SIMs, etc. (Pretty good this trip.) Although the weather was less than ideal - drizzle and winds most days, downpours on three days, I enjoyed the hikes. MacsAdventure uses downloadable GPS maps of each hike which worked great. I saw virtually no other walkers any day, except for the walks in towns.

 Single lane stone foot path - good hill on the other size

I have to say that the country of Malta is not really very pretty. Rocky landscapes, uncontrolled building development, and post-harvest fields (along with the gray skies), wasn’t postcard material. Many of the bays and seashores were lovely and old churches and fortresses were amazing. 90% of the roadways through towns were basically narrow alleyways - amazing to watch the huge public buses navigate through these tight streets. Oh, Malta as a former British colony drives on the left side of the road. 

Typical street in Mdina. Designed to be confusing to invaders who would all be within an arrow flight’s range.

What did make this visit fascinating was Malta’s historical remains. From the 5000 year old stones of Ggiantia in Xaghra to the Mdina fortress, evidence of cultures and civilizations told stories of how these island were alway changing. Located between Europe and Africa and on the Mediterranean sea lanes of corsairs and Turkish navies, the islands were invaded, looted, terrorized, and enslaved throughout history. I am reading David Ball’s historical fiction novel Ironfire, set in 16th century Malta. 

Walls of Victoria’s Citadel

I stayed in two B&Bs on this trip. One in Naxxar (na’shar) on Malta and one in Xaghra (sha’-ra) on Gozo, the smaller island to the north. The B&Bs had both good and poor elements. Great breakfasts, friendly hosts (although at one there was only one worker and she spoke NO English),  the rooms were clean and beds comfortable, and the shower water was hot. The B&Bs both were converted old houses, some 300 to 400 years old. Narrow winding staircases, thick walls, small windows, lots of steps, confusing floorplans - not dungeons, but a castle-like feel. My main problem with both B&Bs was their location. Both in small towns. Both a long walk to the nearest restaurants and grocery stores (about half a mile in Botanica's case). I am no nightlife party-animal, but neither place had other residents with the exception of two nights. It was strange being the only person staying in these dark, chilly rustic places. I read six books over the course of my stay.

Citadel on the hill - the end of my seven mile hike for the day

It was perhaps staying in these old, too quiet residences and hiking alone on isolated paths that I also learned that solo travel does not hold the appeal to me that it once did. When employed, it was good to get away by oneself now and then. Now retired, I have plenty of solitude day-to-day. My view has always been that a great travel year is comprised of one solo trip, one trip with a lover, and one trip with family. I may need to revisit this. My solo trips may now be with guides and groups.

Salt pans on the coast of Gozo

More photos here.

Three and a half hours - really?

I was looking forward to Martin Scocsese’s movie Killers of the Flower Moon. Based on a book I liked, starring DeNiro and DiCaprio, and tackling events in history that need to see the light of day, what could be better? 

That was until I learned the runtime was three and a half hours. That’s at least three cartons of overpriced popcorn, two Diet Coke refills, and four trips to the bathroom. And a struggle to stay awake regardless of how intriguing the story or time of day.

I am not sure what our obsession with overly long movies is. For me, it started with Peter Jackson’s filming of the Fellowship of the Rings.  Each movie and the Hobbit movies that followed ran over three hours. (Although Gone with the Wind from 1939 was over three hours long as well - but as I remember, it had a built in intermission.) Google “long movies” and you will find quite an extensive list of films over three hours long.

Is the length of today’s films due to artistic due diligence to the plot and characters - or the need to compete with serialized titles streaming on Netflix and Amazon? Quite honestly, I am not a huge fan of streaming titles that run 8-12 episodes over multiple seasons. I even thought Game of Thrones would have been a better production had it been a season or two shorter. 

Bad movies are nothing new. I was reminded of this when I started exploring streaming movie channels that are ad-based like Tubi, Crackle  and FreeVee. I am amazed by just how many bad (cheap) movies have been made - especially in the 50s and 60s. I suppose when one’s only source of entertainment was the local movie theater, one went to whatever was showing. As a kid, I did.

It may be that I am valuing what remaining days I have left in this life and not wanting to waste my time watching junk. Or reading junk. 

Or perhaps writing junk.  I will quit whining now.

Weeding the personal collection

One of my first nationally published professional articles celebrated the benefits of weeding books. Published in School Library Journal in 1990, "Weeding the Neglected Collection" tells the story of why and how I reduced a small high school print collection from 13,500 to 7,000 volumes - and the effort’s benefits. All in a rather amusing style, if I do say so myself.

If weeding is good for public and public school collections, is it not also good for home collections? But I find selecting books for discard from the bookshelves in my own living room, home office, and bedroom to be even more challenging. These are my books after all.

And my books are not just stories or information. They are touchstones of memory as well. That old travel guide from the 90s is not just about Paris, but about my son’s and my visit to the Louvre. The books of quotations and advice like The Peter Principle remind me of lessons that I learned while beginning to manage others in my role as technology coordinator. That old novel still conjures up the joy of the protagonist’s wins and the sadness of their losses. The picture book is an autographed copy, acquired after having a beer at a library conference with the author themselves.

Perhaps the most difficult books I got rid of were those in which some of my own writing appeared. I wrote many chapters or introductions for books over the years such as Ethics in School Librarianship: A Reader edited by Carol Simpson. While I long ago tossed the boxes and boxes of magazines and journals in which my regular columns and articles appeared, I kept these books, despite not having opened them for a couple decades. Their presence, I suppose, symbolized the same thing as the small plaques from professional associations adorning my home office - that I was once a contributing member in the field of education. 

For those of us who love books, getting rid of the physical object feels immoral. Happily my old children’s books and novels and travel books were graciously accepted by the public library to be sold at book sales they hold to raise funds. But the public library made it clear they did NOT want textbooks or books in poor physical condition. My quick research showed conflicting advice on whether to recycle (glue in bindings of books is not good) or simply add old books to the landfill. (Magazines went into recycling; books to the landfill.) Tossing books in the garbage bin hurts.

If such agony is involved, why weed personal collections at all then? I do it for the sake of my kids who will one day have to deal with my physical junk as my siblings and I are dealing with my mother's junk after having downsized to a senior living apartment. My children and grandchildren have too busy and interesting lives to spend time reading decades old professional writings outside their fields anyway. And overstuffed bookshelves have never been my thing. 

Now on to thinning out my DVDs and CDs!