Italy has always been one of my favourite countries to visit. It may be so close to home and so alike to Malta, but then again that’s exactly why I like it so much. Similar enough culturally to be a home away from home, yet different in terms of its natural environment and architectural style.

This time round, though, I found Italy almost too similar to comprehend. I’ve been thrown into an identity crisis as everything I consider Maltese and my own turns out to be not so uniquely Maltese after all. Taking over some qagħaq tal-għasel for my hosts in Palermo seemed like a good-enough idea, until it turned out that I was just giving them some more of their own daily teatime snack. The Castel dell’Ovo in Naples is scarily reminiscent of Gozo’s Cittadella and Birgu’s Fort St. Angelo. Not to mention that Naples also has its own Castel St. Elmo, which I unfortunately did not get a chance to see.

To top it all off, when the time came to leave Naples for the US, I wanted to make the most of my last chance to buy some authentic Mediterranean ingredients and prepare some ħobż biż-żejt, a traditional Maltese sandwich, for the upcoming 10-hour flight. In the end I did not have any time to shop, and had already resigned myself to enduring five months without the real thing. The next morning, though, my host’s mum offered to prepare some packed lunch for the trip which I accepted right away. Once on the plane I unpacked the multiple layers of foil and napkins, only to find – yep, ħobż biż-żejt. Just like I would have prepared it myself.

 

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Palermo itself is a great city. It’s characteristically chaotic with a large part of the centre taken up by a vibrant street market selling everything from bicycle parts to fresh fruit. Stalls fill up the winding city streets, leaving barely enough space for shoppers to walk through (yet of course ample space for motorcycles to whizz past – I’m still not sure how that worked).

My time there was limited because I was spending the night with the family of Carlo, a friend whom I met in the Swiss Alps a few years back. They live in a small town around half an hour east of Palermo, in a wonderful house with a view which I will not even attempt to describe. Carlo was still caught up finishing exams in Milan, but his family was extremely welcoming. It got interesting when I found out they do not speak a word of English, and my own Italian is limited at best. I can understand a thing here and there when speaking to someone from Florence. The Sicilian accent, on the other hand, is a thing of its own. We at least got the basics across (I think). Grazie mille for your hospitality, no cipolle, no aglio, no latte, treno domani mattina, e tutto va bene.

The second and final day in Sicily was almost entirely taken up by train rides. My next planned stopover was to be in Reggio Calabria on the Italian mainland just across the Straits of Messina. I changed trains in Milazzo in sicily on the way there to board the InterCity headed to Rome to do the one thing I’ve always wanted to do ever since I first heard of it – ride the Trenitalia train ferry. Though Sicily and Italy are only separated by 7 kilometres of sea (think of Malta-Gozo and just add on a bit), there is no other way across besides taking a ferry. Trenitalia, the national rail provider, came up with an ingenious, and as far as I know, unique, solution to the problem. Why not build special ferry boats, they said, which instead of boarding cars board trains? And that’s exactly what they did. The train arrived at the port of Messina, split into separate carriages, each was pulled onto the ferry, and we were off. No action necessary on the passenger’s part. You can even remain in the carriage and sleep through the roughly 30-minute trip if you want to, though I chose to leave the train and go up to the ferry’s top deck for the view. We reached the port town of Villa San Giovanni, docked, regrouped carriages, and continued northbound. Or at least the others did. I got down a few metres ahead in Villa San Giovanni’s station to change trains for Reggio Calabria.

Reggio Calabria did a good job at continuing the Malta parallel with its seaside promenade. I got off one station before the central one, at Lido di Reggio, and instantly felt as though I had accidentally returned to Sliema. The photos may not give the full impression, but honestly – same kiosks on the pavement, restaurants across the road, the entire city out for an evening stroll, even the occasional Surfside and Exiles below the promenade. The only difference really was seeing the lights of Sicily across the Straits.

My time in Reggio was not nearly enough to form a proper opinion of it since I had to continue onwards to Naples the next morning, but I had a great time there with my host, teacher and baker (hey Ahmed!) and the city definitely warrants a second visit.

The half-day train voyage to Naples was uneventful and surprisingly on time. I arrived, settled down with my hosts, and headed to the centre to explore the city. Thinking back, it’s amazing how much I saw in Naples and how I got a good feel for the city considering my very limited two-night stay. Couchsurfing with locals helped, of course (thanks again Antonio, Jorge and Guido!). If Palermo was great, Napoli was simply amazing. I think I might just have found a new favourite place in Italy, one which has the unplanned and chaotic charm of Palermo and at the same time the grand architecture of Rome and Milan (complete with its own Duomo and Galleria Vittorio Emanuele – though in Naples they call it Galleria Umberto I), all set in the stunning natural setting of the Gulf of Naples with Vesuvius watching over it.

Hey there!

Whether you happen to be a curious friend, worried family member, or interested stranger, a warm welcome to this blog!

I am writing [was writing – wifi expired before I could go online] this first post live from Trapani Airport, or more precisely, from the flattest of the not-so-flat benches which I could find outside the airport and which has become my home for the night after being kicked out of the terminal building at 1 am. And so, the adventure begins!

As a brief introduction, I’m a 21-year old student from Malta currently enrolled at Maastricht University, the Netherlands and studying International Relations/Conflict Studies. I’ve been travelling as frequently as studies permit ever since I was old enough to do so alone, planning a mixture of short trips originating from Maastricht and Malta as well as some longer ones over the holidays. So far my travels have been limited to Europe, but not for long. I’ve been accepted for a Semester Abroad Programme at UCLA (University of California – Los Angeles) from September till mid-December 2013, and so Maastricht University is shipping me off across the Atlantic to chart some new territory.

I’ll talk more about the upcoming trip in a separate post to follow shortly. For now, I’d like to share a bit of my underlying travel philosophy. During the past few years I’ve learnt a few major lessons which have come to shape the way I travel and which have made this trip what it is (or at least what I plan for it to be):

• Getting to the destination need not be a chore, a tiresome trip which by necessity must precede the actual fun part of the trip. Reaching the destination can, and to me should, be as much a part of the fun as anything else. Why, then, fly to Los Angeles the standard (not to mention costly) way via London or Frankfurt with a flag carrier? Why fly at all, if time is not really an issue? Why not, instead, build your own itinerary combining travel by air, land and possibly sea? That’s what brings me to Trapani in the first place, but more on that later.
• Linked to this, there is no need to have a single destination at all. Rather, once in a new corner of the world, see as much of it as possible. Why think of getting to Los Angeles as the aim of this trip, when uni does not begin until late September? Why not, instead, plan to visit as much of the US and Central America as possible before that?
• Thirdly, and probably most importantly, is the realisation and acceptance of the fact that we should still have faith in humanity; that most people truly are good people willing to lend a helping hand. You might think of hitchhiking and Couchsurfing (tracking down locals online and meeting them in person) as dangerous and unnecessarily risky, and you may, to a certain extent, have valid reasons for doing so. Yet after trying both out and using them quite extensively throughout my travels, I can report with confidence that never have I had a single problem. “All it takes is one bad experience to spoil everything” and “Someone wanting to deceive will hide behind good intentions too”, granted. As I said, you may, to a certain extent, have valid reasons for being unsure of such modes of travel. Yet I truly and honestly believe that we spend far too much of our lives worrying about hypothetical conditionals, the ‘what ifs’. What if a Couchsurfing host turns out to be a murderous rapist? Well, what if, yes. What if the person staying next door to me in a 5-star hotel turns out to be one too? I’ll leave the judgement up to you, but I feel much safer Couchsurfing than I do staying in overcrowded hostel dorms (though those can also be fine most of the time). And just for the record, there have been more cases of hitchhikers attacking or stealing from drivers rather than the other way around (thanks Ala!). No intention of doing either any time soon on my part.

Though I will be using Couchsurfing for most of this trip to the US and Central America, I have decided not to hitchhike for various reasons. Distances are far greater than in Europe and roads can often be deserted with sparse traffic. Besides, getting around by other means of transport there is so incredibly cheap. We’re not talking about a train ride with SBB in Switzerland setting you back €100 for a 3-hour ride, or even an hour’s journey with NS in the Netherlands costing €15. We’re talking about a $1 7-hour coach ride across two states, and an entire network of similarly-priced local buses covering most of Central America.

The bottom line; I try to travel as much and as often as possible, and remain open to meeting new people while doing so. I’ll leave it at that for now because La Bella Sicilia awaits. I introduced my trip and some of my previous travels in an interview with Cleo Freriks of Observant, so feel free to check it out here in the meantime.

A la prossima!