Malta Week Two

My first internship week passed really fast. My colleagues are all very nice and helpful actually it seems like even all maltese people are really hospitable and welcoming. Mainly my task for the first week was to do research on WordPress stuff, analyse the needs of the website and chose a theme for the website I will have to build. So I started to tinker with WordPress for the first time in my life which is interesting because I thought it is a lot more about coding. But especially in the beginning ist about widgets and plugins and research and whatsoever. The coding part starts when none of the plug-ins serves your needs and you go all crazy.

After work I usually try to do something like go for a little swim or checking out my neighbourhood. On Friday I planned to eat pancakes with my two dutch flatmates and they were not even bad(talking about the pancakes, of course). After that Richard asked me to join him and his friends to go to Bridge Bar in Valletta which was my first real try of going out at “night”. The place was awesome: with live Jazz music and so many (all) people sitting outside on some stairs. But even though it was really lovely I wanted to catch the last bus to my place and thought ok its 22:40 I will have enough time to walk to the bus stop and chose a bus. When I arrived there I found out that the last bus to my place was already gone and that there was one very last bus coming. I chose it and after a 30 minutes ride I arrived in Mosta, the neighbouring city. After a 20 minutes walk I finally arrived at home and went to bed.

On Saturday I had big plans: I wanted to check out Gozo the Island next to Malta. therefore I had to go to Cirkewwa and take the ferry to Gozo (30 minute ride). When I arrived there I realised that I had no clue what to do in Gozo so – for the first time in my life – I bought a ticket for an hop-on-hop-off-bus and yes I still feel a little embarrassed. Anyways it was a good way of travelling around because it was unbelievably hot and humid. Gozo is a lot less crowded than Malta and I might go there for some biking later this month. So far I visited the Azure window, Mgarr, Victoria (which is the capital) and Ramla Bay and I also went through many other smaller places. When I came back to our appartment I was completely damaged and the girls were all gone so I had a beer, something to eat and fell asleep at 10pm 🙂

That was actually good because the next day was so full of thing to do. One of the dutch girls joined me for a trip to Marsaxlokk which is a fishers village with a market on Sundays. To get there we had to walk to Mosta again because there are some festival things going on in Naxxar (which means fireworks all day and night but not the way we are used to it but with a special effort to having the loudest fireworks possible).

Marsaxlokk is a really nice place I recommend it to every Malta visitor. Of course the market is quite touristy but there still is many people selling all kinds of fish and there are so many pretty little colourful boats. After some walking around my flatmate went back home and I joined 8 other people for a boat trip to St Peters Pool which is an impressing Bay which is formed like a pool so you can go swimming even though the streaming is very strong. Only 2 out of 9 were bitten by jelly fish – which in fact seemed not as bad as I always thought. Vinegar and oil helped them pretty quickly. On the boat I got to know two women from Macedonia and they will help me in case I want to travel there (which I want) and two girls from Hungary with which I spent the rest of the day. We went out to eat some fish – well in fact it was Calamari and octopus – yummy.

After that I had to go to Valletta because I joined Richard and many of his friends to go to a musical about a very important year in Malta 1565 which is the year of the great siege of Malta and which is also the reason for all the fireworks in our place. The musical was great even though I didn’t really understand what they were singing (but luckily I was not the only one) after that we went out for some drinks and food but I was a little unsettled as I wanted to go back home for the biiiiig fireworks that were about to take place in Naxxar and where all my flatmates would be waiting for me. Luckily I arrived there on time and was found by Esme (one of the dutch girls). We were also joined by our newly arrived flatmate Laura (from Germany).

The fireworks were really great and loud of course so we had to stay there until 1 in the morning even though we had to wake up early the next day. Obviously the next day was kind of hard but we all managed to get up somehow especially because we knew the next day will be a public holiday. After work I was walking around in Sliema, went to a shopping mall, missed my bus back and waited for it for another hour. Back home the fireworks where going on and I started to feel a little paralysed by them but still it was kind of funny to become frightened of it every 2 – 10 minutes (and yes you never get used to it).