Malta - Day Five

Gozo Gone Wrong

In the last decade or so, I have often heard about why American suburbs are evil. These arguments usually point out the fact that suburbs are designed around cars rather than pedestrians. They usually point out that the suburbs are filled with wide, featureless landscapes almost utterly devoid of greenery, scarred by broad, slowly curving boulevards that are the width of interstates, all the while giving scant lip service to the human bonds of a neighborhood through a caricature strip of sidewalk that does little but point out how small the pedestrian really is in this automotive disaster area.

By this argument, it seems that prevailing intellectual opinion states that we would be better with a narrow, tightly curving road with no shoulder and no sidewalk, bordered by a stone wall and tall shrubs that create blind corners around which a pedestrian cannot see oncoming cars, and -- as is plainly aware to the pedestrians -- oncoming cars cannot see pedestrians. In which case intellectual opinion has clearly never had to walk down the hill from Xaghra toward Victoria in Gozo because, I assure you, intellectual opinion would quickly rethink what it takes for a pedestrian to feel comfortable. It was a hair-raising journey down the hill with every bend in the road forcing us to ante up to a bet we didn't want to make.

Change Is Not Necessarily Improvement

The plain below was little improvement. It was not just the depressingly narrow strip of grass that, in the best case scenario, gave us the chance to get one foot off of the road. It was not just the speed at which the Gozitan drivers whisked from one place to another. It was not just the fact that foliage would often block our view of the oncoming traffic. It was also the fact that every instinct in our American bodies was to walk on the left side of the road, whereas the fact that the Maltese drove on the left side of the road meant that we needed to walk on the right side of the road. So every time a car was coming from behind, the fact that we were walking on the right side of the road meant that our minds would worry about being on the wrong side of the road, even as we knew that we were on the right side in every sense of the word.

Our hike should have been fairly pleasant. Unfortunately, it was a very warm, sunny day that day and we were wearing jeans so that we would be allowed to enter churches. So we were not in much mood to enjoy the farms and countryside that we trundled by, step by step. We were both focused on the entirely consuming task of getting back to Victoria without ending up as hood ornaments or a cautionary tale for newlyweds.

Chris was more than a little nervous about our situation and I often felt a tugging at my backpack as she attempted to keep me from leaning out around shrubs and low trees that were interrupting our view of traffic. It seems that my wife was concerned to keep her husband around for a while and I appreciated her concern. So, with every new tree or shrub shoving us into the roadway, I felt a new pull at my shoulder-straps as we eased our way into the road to get around it. Finally, however, Chris hit the limit at a particularly large shrub that covered almost half of the lane of oncoming traffic. At this, she got officially fed up of watching her new husband walk out into the unknown, so we started walking on the technically wrong, but less shrubbed side of the road.

What Feels Right Isn't Necessarily Better

The change of our side of the road did not help all that much. It just kept going on. There was still a lot of road left to go and it never seemed to end. We didn't even have a good idea of where we were, so we couldn't even tell if we were making any progress at all.

Our nerves were frazzled. The fast drivers and lack of sidewalks were taking as much of a toll on us as the heat and the walking. But for all that, we were at least together for it and we figured that we'd be able to handle things if we at least stuck together.

I have to say, it was nice to know that having my wife there made a bad situation bearable. Even when we saw the bus we wanted go speeding toward Xaghra. Damn. It.

Addendum to the Previous Article -- Tip 7 in Gozo: The busses still run regularly between Victoria and Xaghra, even if they aren't posted on the goddamn schedule that's there for the sole purpose of telling people who don't know anything about Gozo when there's another fucking bus coming.

Progress Doesn't Necessarily Feel Like Getting Anywhere

The walk got particularly slow at this point. It felt like an eternity that we were out on that road. We started seeing houses again, but not enough of them. We saw the bus stop where we could grab the bus back from Xaghra. Too bad we didn't see it until five minutes after we saw the bus from Xaghra go speeding back to Victoria. But by this point, we knew it was time to just push ahead and finish the job. Waiting for another bus would avail us almost nothing.

It sure would have availed us some easier navigation though. We came to a great many intersections I did not remember and now I had to hope I was making the right decisions on them. Many had a sign somewhere indicating our desired direction, but there were a few stabs in a general direction that had nothing else to recommend them other than that they felt about right.

Being Successful Doesn't Mean You're Done

You cannot imagine the relief we felt when we finally saw a sidewalk. The merciful strip of concrete ribbon that It was safety. If was home. It was a return to civilization. If you've ever seen the end of Blackhawk Down, or Ferris Bueller's Day Off, you'll have some idea of how we felt.

We were tired, we were hot, we were very, very thirsty and we were heading to Il Kastell because it was the main sight in Victoria. And because I had a feeling this would the last time we visited Gozo.