September 22–29, 2004

See more photos of the trip to Malta.

Thursday
Thursday was the first day of our one week Malta journey. It was quite nice that we were allowed to sleep in a little. We were supposed to be down at the breakfast room at 10:00 am. Everybody had to get a bit rest after the three-hour plane flight. And of course not everybody went to bed after we arrived at our hotel. One had to check out the rooms and the surroundings and some of us talked to our room's neighbours, who were -what a surprise- all Germans. After we got some information and heard about the "Fuego", the Salsa Club on the corner across from our hotel, we headed right to our new "place to be", the "Fuego".

Soon the whole group was sitting on the club's patio and everybody was socializing with one another. Everybody? No, it happened that we lost Lars somewhere on the way from the hotel room to the Salsa Club. My instructions on how to find the place wound up not being good enough, because Lars couldn't find us. Me and most of the guys were enjoying a "Foster's", an Australian lager, since the good Maltese beer "Cisk" hadn't been discovered yet.

Tired and looking forward to the upcoming days, we left the Club and went back to the hotel rooms, where Pontus, Martin and I found poor, disappointed Lars sitting on the bed. But there were more nights coming up where we could enjoy ourselves. We were actually about to go to bed, but then Lars, Pontus, Martin and I were so thirsty that we once again left the hotel room to look for some water. At the bus station we finally found a vending machine, where we bought half a litre of water; we all shared it and went back. Pontus and I couldn't get quite comfortable in our beds or maybe we were just too excited about being in Malta. So we stayed up till four o'clock in the morning.

Thursday morning down at the breakfast tables: everybody, even the teachers, looked a little tired, but also a little excited and happy. While we were having continental breakfast with bread, cereals and coffee, Mrs. Liegmann and Mrs. Wegener were telling us about our programme for the coming week. For today it was planned to take the bus to a beautiful bay called Ghanja-Bay. After breakfast we had some time to check out our surroundings at daytime. It was a gorgeous day outside, maybe even a little too hot. The brownish and yellowish houses were reflecting the sunbeams, on the streets one was able to see the hot air shimmer on top of the dusty, bumpy roads and, looking over to the water of St. Paul's Bay, one almost could have gotten blinded by the twinkling reflections of the sun on the waves. Everybody was looking for cheap bottled water, since the tap water was not drinkable. We found a store down the road, in which we could find what we were looking for.

After a while we all met in the entrance hall of our hotel (of course we had to wait for Issaaf) and then we were headed to the bus station, where we got our seven-day bus tickets. It didn't take long to get to our destination. The bus, a very old English Leyland, went up and down the hills, while the engine sounded like dying any minute. We passed big areas of unfertile looking land, palm trees and broken walls. To tell the bus driver that we wanted to get off, one just had to pull a string, which rang a bell.

We got all off and walked over to the steps that lead down to the beach of Ghanja-Bay. Everybody was fascinated by the beautiful sight, but still nobody could wait to cool down in the blue looking water and to enjoy riding on the waves that seemed to be just high enough to have some fun. Elias immediately regretted not having brought a surfboard with him.

On a plateau, which seemed to be just perfect for our little group, we put our blankets and towels down and in no time we had put on our swim trunks and bathing suits and were in the water. One was snorkelling, one was just walking around, but most of us were trying to fight our way through the mighty waves, which would throw us around with enormous force. We also tried to swim on top of the waves and bodysurf back to the beach. Elias and I would do this for hours and hours and were happy when we hit a good one. Later on Elias and I swam further out, almost to the end of the bay. Once we returned, Mrs. Liegmann told us to not swim out this far again. Now that we had had a lot of fun in the water, everybody was enjoying the sun. Some were also reading, some were playing cards and some were just chilling. Then the teachers had the great idea of walking up the cliffs which surrounded the left side of the bay and taking a look at the bay lying next to the Ghanja-Bay. All of us were too comfortable to do any move, but after some murmuring we followed our leaders up the cliffs. Standing on the cliffs we had a beautiful view over both of the bays.

But it seemed to be too dangerous to climb down to the second bay. Having this beautiful view we thought of our classmates, who were now in Brussels and for a second we remained silent. Benni had the great idea of taking a nice shot of the bay and sending it to one of our classmates in Brussels. We did so and were happy about how lucky we were being on Malta.
We walked back to our place and got comfortable again and it wasn't too long until we all had to trod back to the bus station. Before we left I heard Pontus complaining about not bringing his drawing utensils with him. Those cliffs were really made for being painted, I thought. Fortunately we would come back and Pontus would have the chance on capturing this fantastic view on a sheet of drawing paper.

Luckily the bus, which was the last bus that day driving back to hotel, took us in, even though all seats were already taken. On our way back we were standing in the middle aisle of the bus and sat down one after another, once some travellers left the bus at the bus stations. Back at the hotel Mrs. Liegmann and Mrs. Wegener gave us some free time, so we were able to go shopping and get some food and drinks for the night. Since supper seemed to be very far away, Martin, Pontus and I decided to buy Pizza, which actually served as a late night snack for the girls in our group, and some Cisk for later on.

After the free time was over we all met in Mrs. Wegener's room to hear the reports, which everybody had to prepare for before the Malta trip. Sitting around a table and eating "Spekulatius" and slices of watermelon, we got to know about Malta's history, the people and their odd language.
We had a little bit time to ourselves and were able to take a shower and talk (some of us, to be precise the "Music-LK", had to make music with Mrs. Wegener) until it was time for us to have supper down at the hotel's restaurant. There were two different kind of meals: noodles with tomato sauce and rice with some spicy meat sauce, which I liked.
After supper was over we all went back to our rooms and chilled. Janina, Henriette, Johanna, Juliane and Issaaf came down to our room and visited us. We were talking, listening to Janina playing the guitar, eating pizza and enjoying a Cisk until it was close to midnight. Then we decided to get Max, Arno, Benni and Elias, who were playing cards the whole time (I believe), and all together we went to the Fuego.
After some dancing once again we chilled on the club's patio and socialized. We saw the swimming pool, which was probably owned by the club and somebody had the crazy idea of sneaking in at night an using the swimming pool for free. Some of us sneaked onto the property and then one gave the wise advice to do this in our last night. We did so.

Quite tired me and the others finally went to bed and I was soon gone, just dreaming away about the sun and the nice waves in the bay. The next day we would have to get up early. (Dominik)


Friday

Our second day in Malta, the 24th of September, we had to get up early, for breakfast was to take place at 8:30 am. After eating the usual luxurious (!!) breakfast, we found ourselves waiting minutes for a bus that was supposed to take us around the island and give us a little insight.
Once the bus had finally come, we stuffed ourselves into the red-seated minibus and a Maltese guide started talking to us by microphone and, as it turned out, in German. Her monotonous voice and speech in the typical style of tourist guides ("and on the left side you can see..") gave some of us the feeling of being indeed very German tourists on a now German island maybe doomed to become the future Mallorca. But the guide was nice and informative, in spite of the tourist touch.

Over curvy streets and passing loads of villages we came to Mosta, an old city in which a huge cathedral had been erected during the early 20th century, which was our first stop. We had a quick glance at the inside and listened full of interest to the story of a bomb that in WW2 fell through the dome into the cathedral's main room, yet like a miracle never exploded, and to some other lament about the pilot and some random people. Most people disliked the sumptuous interior; I can recall comments like "typically Catholic".

But our stops were always short, and we were already heading towards the old centre of Mdina and Rabat. The guide's comments were frequently disrupted by long mobile phone calls, at all times. But she still had enough time to say that much about Mdina with its nice gateways and old houses that one day of our schedule, where we were to be guided through Mdina by two students, became superfluous.

Our next stop were the windy Dingly cliffs, where we enjoyed a panoramic view with loads of blue sea, huge rocks and about three crashed cars. But our guide pushed us forward, and we came to stop at some place with a nice fjord-like inlet, but it was supposedly too windy to dare go bathing. Thus we spent an hour watching others dive, try to catch fish or we simply ordered a meal at some restaurant and lingered there.

Afterwards we came to the nice little town Marsaxlokk with its huge harbour and loads of colourful boats. While Mrs. Wegener was busy contemplating whether she should buy a plastic model boat for her daughter or a wooden one, others made fun of the dreadful rubbish offered to tourists.

Again, we had to reassemble at the bus after a 30-minutes-break and rushed to our last stop, where we actually didn't stop at all but drove past and watched passively Valletta and the three cities. We drove past the shore and saw loads of old fortresses and villages and strangely connected harbours, an impressive sight.

Shortly after, we were already back at the Qawra Towers Hotel, where we had some time to relax and recover, before some of us made their reports about food, Maltese architecture, flora, fauna and St. Paul's influence on Malta. This time we met in Ms. Liegmann's apartment and finished the food offered on a table in a strangely short time. Then we met once more in the hotel restaurant and had dinner. Later on, most of us loitered in the Salsa Bar or played cards etc. And thus our second full day on Malta came to an end. (Pontus)


Saturday
Who cares about the Current Cookery Card in the "Malta Today"? We did, of course ! On our third day in Malta a rather funny rally was planned by our teachers. With a partner we had to find our way through Valletta, the capital of Malta. There were questions where we had to go to a museum or to buy a newspaper to answer them or look for some recipe or check the Euro exchange rate. Since everybody had the same tasks and therefore the same questions we kept meeting other desperate groups talking to someone in the streets and trying to explain what we wanted from them. Of course, the easiest and most often used way to answer the difficult questions was to ask the ones who should know – the Maltese.

On our way through the multi-cultural city and its markets we came past the Grand Masters' Palace, went to the Upper Baccara Gardens from which we had a terrific view of the harbour and the three cities. We also went into St. John's Co-Cathedral and saw the famous painting "The beheading of John" by Michelangelo Da Caravaggio.

At noon we were expected at the other end of the town, at the "Malta Experience" , a multi-lingual inter-active show about Malta's history. After having heard and seen loads of facts about the islands we had some leisure time and - surprise - the whole group met again at the bus station to take the bus to "our" bay, where we wanted to relax from the hot and stressful day.

Some hours later, after listening to a lot of rubbish from a Canadian guy, we left again because it had started to rain and the last bus went at 5.30. When we came to the bus station nice, warm rain came pouring down and the bus-driver decided against taking us home. But fortunately this bus turned out to be the second one, so eventually we did get home. Arriving at our hotel we changed our clothes, had dinner and went out for another long night in the FUEGO. (Arno Ruben)


Sunday

On Sunday we went to Gozo by ferry. We saw the capital of Gozo, Victoria, the Azure Window, St George's Basilica and Calypso's Cave.

We also visited the church of the virgin of St Pina. It has been said that this is a church of miracles. I liked it a lot, because it is a really beautiful and very interesting church.
There was a room inside the church with clippings about miracles caused by the virgin of St Pina, which made the church even more impressive. It had a certain kind of atmosphere evoked by the statues and paintings inside.



The Azure Window was great as well. I liked to smell the sea and to see the waves hitting the rocks. The rocks were about 50 metres high and there was a huge hole in them. I went to the Green Window, too, which is a kind of tunnel through the rocks, connecting the sea with a quiet lake. There I enjoyed the sun. In Xlendi we went swimming in the sea. We had a lot of fun as we were thrown around by the waves.

The most impressive thing about Calypso's Cave was the fact that Odysseys was supposed to have been there once. Another remarkable thing is the view one has over the sea. I regret not having gone inside the cave, but I liked it anyway.







Of course the towns and villages in Gozo were very beautiful and interesting, too, but to me they were a bit too quiet and too similar to the towns in Malta, which made it a slightly boring, since we had quite a lot of free time in each town. Anyway, I enjoyed the sun and the hot weather a lot. (Lars)

Monday
I woke up, way too early in my opinion, from the beeping of the alarm clock, a terrible sound to start the day with. It was Monday, the 27th of September, and this was supposed to be our free day. Yesterday evening we had decided to go to the beach near Golden Bay again. Actually a trip to Mdina and Rabat had been planned for today, but since we had already been to these towns or villages, whatever you might call it, we thought we might as well have a nice day on the beach.
After getting out of bed, which took me quite some time, I made it to the shower. Our shower actually worked quite well, it might have been one of the best showers in the so called "hotel". That's why we even had visitors who came only to have a shower - but that's another story In the shower I washed away the tiredness and was ready for breakfast afterwards. Breakfast was actually pretty good most of the time, although the quality of the bread varied from day to day.
Elias got the message that his wallet had been found, which he had lost the other day, and that he might get it back today; this made him rather happy again, because there was a lot of money in the wallet.

We went to the bus-stop and took the bus to the stop before Golden Bay. On the way there was a little shock though. Elias had forgotten to take his bus-ticket with him and when he was asked to show his ticket, Arno tried to give Elias his ticket, but the inspector noticed what was going on and told Elias he had to pay "40". We all thought he meant 40 Maltese Pounds, and got a little nervous, because nobody had taken this much money with him. He repeated his remark but this time adding the word "cents" at the end and calming us down again.




We got off the bus at our station and stepped down the long stairs to the beach. The water had much less nasty, wobbly stuff in it this time, so we were able to enjoy the water and the waves even more. Then we started to build a pretty big sand-castle, which came out very neat, but broke down when we filled the moat with water, But we still had a good time playing cards, reading, swimming, building a sand-Odysseus and a sand-Penelope, etc. Before leaving we destroyed our "sand-art" by throwing rocks at it, which was at least as much fun as building it up.

After arriving at the apartment we went out again to buy some booze for the evening, which by the way is extraordinarily expensive in Malta. With the booze cooling down in our fridge, we went to dinner. After dinner we got out the "Phase 10"-cards and started to play and to drink a bit. People kept arriving at our apartment and we changed the game to "Uno", so that more people were able to play at a time. With our apartment becoming more and more crowded, we all had a lot of fun this evening. I'm not really sure, if we went to the "Fuego"-bar on the other side of the road this night, or if we just stayed in our apartment, but it doesn't matter. Fact is, we had another fun day in Malta. (Max)


Tuesday
The last day of our stay at Malta will probably be remembered as the most beautiful one.

We woke up in our apartments at a very agreeable time, facing a sunny morning that invited us to have breakfast in the hotel' s small restaurant. There we were told to prepare for today's speedboat trip to the so-called 'blue lagoon' in Comino. We put our shorts, swim suits and some food for lunch into our backpacks. The temperature outside kept slowly but constantly rising, so we stayed in the hotel's entrance hall while we were waiting for the bus to take us to the speedboat. With Maltese punctuality the bus arrived and took us to the near harbour where we embarked the yellow racer. Jumping into the boat we almost risked breaking our necks since the ground was very slippery. But everyone managed to get onto the boat without serious damage, and as soon as we were seated the captain started the engine and sped away from Qawra, offering us an incredible view of Malta's coast.

Approaching our long-expected lagoon, we passed several small islands with steep cliffs, some of them with cave-like holes. Soon we noticed that we were close to the lagoon because the colour of the water changed rapidly from deep blue to azure. Most of us had seen such a colour of water only on postcards and we all were completely stunned by the beauty of the 'blue lagoon'. We left the boat and everyone of us was smiling - shallow water, ice-cream shops, just perfect!
The group chose a place a bit above the rocky beach to relax a bit, but most of us immediately went into the water. Unfortunately my nose started bleeding when I entered the water, so I wasn't able to dive but I was told later that there were some beautiful fish to be seen. Two extreme sportsmen even jumped off the cliffs, deeply impressing everyone who saw them.

After some time of swimming, cliff jumping, diving and chilling we gathered for a healthy picnic with bread, cheese and fruit. We were completely happy to be in this small paradise-like place. The afternoon was more quiet and most of us spent the time lying in the sun, walking to the ice-cream shop, talking, etc.

We left the blue lagoon in the late afternoon with the speedboat again, only this time we entered two of the mysterious caves in the rocks. When we arrived at the harbour, the place were we had embarked the boat was totally flooded and we had to get off somewhere else. Back at the hotel we went to our rooms and did nothing but wait for dinner, recalling what we had seen in the blue lagoon. After dinner we went to bed very early with the feeling of having chosen the right Leistungskurse.

Elias