It’s August, and I’ve been stuck at home in the Illinois all summer. Stuck here and dying to see something new.
It doesn’t help that the blogosphere is brimming with posts about travel. Everybody’s having an adventure (and documenting it).
Why, oh then why, can’t I?
So, it was a desperate decision, this last-minute trip. I knew nothing about Malta before I went. I didn’t even know where it was, to tell the truth.
I’m betting you don’t know where Malta is either. Don’t be embarrassed if you have to consult a map for this post.
Now, let’s get this travelogue on the road.
My Trip to Malta
Agriculture is big in Malta. Lots and lots of corn. And soybeans.
But city life thrives too!
I ate lunch here! All authentic Maltese cuisine!
And you can’t beat Malta’s manageable size. You can take it all in, even on a short visit.
But you’ll want to come back anyway.
Next summer, I think I’ll go to Genoa.
sweat and sprezzatura 
So the guy finds this lamp and when he rubs it, out comes a genie and the genie says “I can grant you three wishes.”
And the guy says “Make me a malted.”
Just a random free association.
🙂 🙂
POOH!
i have been living within a two – four mile radius of my small apartment for the last 11 years! we have a great view of the building next door and no yard.
unless i missed something cheri did NOT yet blog about her last trip. and you, my dear went to your beloved russia relatively recently.
take my apartment, please. you’re always welcome in cleveland – there’s room here for one adult and one medium sized child. we’ll stay at friends and meet for poetry readings and coffee. sound exciting?
on a serious note. if you can get a break from work and family duties, why not bid on an airfare – you have had numerous invitations from your readers to visit more exciting places than cleveland.
megabus goes from cleveland to chicago… hint, hint 😉
dafna, you know I’m not complaining, just goofing around.
Poetry readings and coffee sounds like an excellent vacation, in fact. By the way, are you reading our new Poet Laureate Philip Levine? For starters: “The Two” and “What Work Is”. He’s a poet for our nervous times. Lots about the working class in Detroit.
I’m fond of Cleveland (I lived in Oberlin for four years!) and may be there in the fall. I’ll keep you posted. As for Chicago (or rather the cornfields around it): any time, Dafna.
hi jenny,
yes i got the play on words, but i misread the vibe. it seemed more mope than joke. my bad 🙂
OK, dafna, traces of moping too. 🙂
p.s.
jacob IS blogging about his trip.
he would love a comment from this bunch.
That’s great. How do I find it?
there is a link to jacobs great adventure at richard’s blog under the post about our visit.
Thanks, dafna. I found it. A boy who reads poems. Must have a very fine mother. 😉
I’ll meet you in Genoa for lunch next summer. Heck, I could do it in the fall as well.
Hi Leo! As long as we’re living large, I know a great little place for lunch in Geneva.
I, too, have been stuck at home all summer, in this hot town, enduring another summer in the city. Trouble is, I have attacks of separation anxiety each time I even contemplate Getting Away From It All. So I just stay home.
Nonetheless as I read your piece,
I was thinking of you, down in old Malta,
Feeling free as the air,
Here I was, stuck in the city,
Still going nowhere.
Philippe:
There’s a “Midnight in Paris” theme to this discontent with place, isn’t there?
Speaking of the “Midnight in Paris” problem, I’m reading a little book that I think you would like called KAFKA WAS THE RAGE, by Anatole Broyard (of New York Times fame) about living in New York in the 1940s. Great title, huh? My father sent it to me.
The silly thing is that I look for little out-of-the-way towns like Malta when I travel. In Malta, for instance, there is a lovely apple orchard, and, in the fall, there’s a spectacular corn maze.
Good one!
PS Did you see the falcon?
🙂 Yay! Thanks for playing!
My husband lobbied very hard for us to buy a house in Malta, so he could be…(wait for it…)…THE JEW OF MALTA!
Yes, and because you would be staying there for several days you would see the Knights of Malta!
Tom, you win this round. I don’t have another.
Thanks–I’m out of ideas too! (but I seem to recall there is a dog called a Maltese so I guess you’d have one of those too).
Tom:
You would fit right in at our dinner table. 🙂
Thanks! I’ll bring some malta milk balls!
There’s a cat, too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_cat
Which is the most important thing that could possibly come from Malta.
fun fun fun
Hi David! 🙂
I wonder if there’s a song about Malta, the town I mean. I don’t think there is.
If we can have songs about San Francisco, Abilene, El Paso, New York, Chicago, Tupelo, Phoenix, San Jose, Philadelphia, Wichita, Galveston, Boston, New Orleans, and Allentown, why can’t we have a song about Malta?
Malta deserves a song, is what I say.
As for the other Malta, the island, I’ve heard nothing newsworthy about in recent years, other than that Malta failed to qualify for the 2011 Eurovision song contest final.
Philippe: You forgot about Kansas City, where everything’s up to date and they’ve gone about as fer as they can go.
If we wrote a song for our Malta, could we enter it in the 2012 Eurovision song contest for their Malta? Solve two problems with one artistic solution?
We could do a fact-checking trip for my book by going to Rome and Carthage.
IF … you’re willing to cross state lines within the Midwest by going to MO, that is.
I’m told one can also go to Paris, Havana, various Berlins and so forth, and not even be able to tell them apart.
Oh, and: Get your shots.
Andreas: You bet! I’m so cozy with MO that you might catch me calling it Missoura. (That’s the preferred pronunciation at/in Versailles.)
That reminds me that Blaine, Missouri has a song. But Blaine is just Blaine.
If you don’t know much about Estonia, I recommend this travel piece (second only to yours): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUgqXGu_gTQ&feature=related
Now you have to write an entire book about visiting every non-American city in America. Or a coffee-table book! Or, rather, just devote a whole year of blogging to this topic (I forgot that you weren’t going to make money from writing).
I’m not going to make any money from writing? What are you trying to tell me?
Don’t play games with me, “Mr. Crotchety” — Don’t you think I know that YOU are Guffman?
I’m saying your talents are wasted on this intertweb. Think about it. A coffee-table book. I’ll drive the bus.
Mr. Crotchety:
This comment is the follow-up to your suggestion, just a few days ago, that I am sublimating the impulse to write by blogging.
You’re saying (in a very flattering way–thank you for that!): Look, if you want to write, then stop fucking around on wordpress and actually write something.
Yeah. I hear you.
🙂
Sled: About the cats: First, will it shock you to hear that I’m more of a dog person? With all the attending characteristics. Next, did you notice that there is a Rudyard Kipling story called The Maltese Cat? And we were just talking about Kipling! I suppose you’ve read it.
Tom: Yes, yes, the malt balls. Sorry, I didn’t respond immediately. By the way, at my house, if you say something funny and nobody laughs right away, it’s our habit to say it over and over again, until you get a reaction.
Mr. Crotchety: The Cracker Barrel story is taking shape. Turns out it’s about the contrast between happy people who can enjoy simple things like biscuits and gravy (and a lovely little gift shop) with their families at Sunday brunch and wannabe writers who observe them, shrinking under the weight of the expectations of strangers.
You know, that’s how it goes with us massively creative types, the story takes on a life of its own! Hope you had a good weekend. 🙂
I probably have read The Maltese Cat, but haven’t taken Kipling down from the shelf in years. My personal favorites are “The Return of Imray” and “The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney,” the epigraph of which I set to a stirring little march tune (in B flat) half a lifetime ago. I still hum it.
I will never understand why people want dogs. I just can’t, any more than I can understand why they would want children. It’s just one of those things that I have to stipulate that I don’t get and move on from there… Does anyone have a shot of Malta Whisky?
Wow, Malta, only 38 miles from Rockford!
LONG time has passed. I loved the people, so special and true. Hence, I wouldn’t mind a vacation in your Malta.
Two things that may console you (and all those who didn’t go on vacation this year).
1) It was three years that I didn’t have ANY vacation. 2) It is so hot now in Rome that we are all getting nuts (and bitten to death by insects).
Not that I feel guilty because I had vacation this year 🙂
And, btw, MIA is the acronym for what … I found: city of evil, a semiautomatic rifle, underground resistance, all sort of weird stuff. Which makes me think mid-western people may have changed a bit since then 😉
@MoR: MIA is missing in action, a military term. This became commonly used among Vets and civilians during/after the Vietnam war. (is that the MIA you mean?)
Including civic-minded adolescent girls who steadfastly wore POW-MIA bracelets.
Until mood rings became more popular.
Thank you for the explanation, Mr C. I secretly hoped ‘MoR is MIA’ meant ‘MoR is MINE’, because of my native language – a mistake certainly due to the heat.
You know, women have accustomed us to this deplorable double entendre, which is surely one of the reason why in the Middle Ages they were considered devilish 😉
Sled: Do you know the joke about the dispute over the beginning of life?
Protestants say life begins at birth; Catholics say it begins at conception; Jews say it begins when the children turn 18 and leave the house. 😉
Roma: I don’t begrudge anyone a vacation. Really. I’m just playing with form. How (and why) did you find yourself in Rockford?
I thought it was when they graduated medical school.
What, graduating high school’s not good enough? How very Jewish mother of you, Sled.
Do you know the joke about the first Jewish president?
Um, no….
The first Jewish president calls his mother:
–Mom, we’d love to have you come down to DC for Thanksgiving weekend. What do you say?
–Oh, honey, I don’t know. Planes are so crowded these days and the seats are so small…
–What are you talking about? Air Force One will bring you.
–Yes, but, hotels are so expensive…
–Mom, I live in the White House. There’s plenty of room for you here.
–But, you know I can’t cook unless I’m in my own kitchen…
–Mom, I’m the president of the United States. You’re not going to cook anything.
–OK, then, I guess I could come.
The next day, at Mahjong:
–So, Rivka, do you have any plans for Thanksgiving?
–My son invited me to his house for the holiday.
–Which one? The doctor?
–No. The other one.
I would laugh, but I’ve known people too much like that…
Nice. Ever been to Georgia?
Cy, if you’re going to be so uncritical of my posts, when will I ever have a chance to respond with the rap I’ve written about you?
Teasing.
Hope you are well.
Sorry. I had no idea this was a “post.” I took it for an accidentally published draft.
Thanks, CQ. Perhaps I’ll have a chance to get my ghetto on after all.
This rap of mine, it’s still sort of a draft at this point. 🙂
@Jenny
I never was in Rockford. I once met a woman in Boston who was from there. That is all.
I keep picturing a group of battle-ready Hospitallers standing around in a cornfield looking bummed out: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Malta_Knights.jpg
@Hieronymo: Perhaps they’ll perk up at the sight of soybeans. By the way, I just ordered a set of Zoomorphs for my nephew.
@everybody else: Did you know that Hieronymo, among other things, designs cool toys?
Thank you for the business and for the free publicity! Did your nephew get the toys yet?
Hi jenny,
thanks for your recent comment on SGC. i will just keep reminding myself, “if you build it they will come”. 😉 the main event is only three months away and invitation have not been sent out yet.
SAVE THE DATE BLOGGERS – DEC 10TH, ALL WELCOME. would love to see some of you in person.
It really will be great, dafna! Don’t rule me out.
Neko and Jakob
Thanks, dafna! How did you know that what I really want to be is an indie rock star?
cute:)
what you probably really want is to be a great writer like so many of the others in this circle.
coming from a musical family, what I always really wanted was to be able to sing and probably also to be loved for doing it.
cheers jenny1
Lol..Fell for the sucker punch and thought it was a post about the country of Malta…Doh! Didn’t think the pictures looked like the island we have circumnavigated several times!