“Everything here is celebrated with fireworks,” the taxi driver said, in a matter-of-fact way. “Holidays, birthdays, even funerals.”

We laughed.

“I’m not kidding,” he said.

In my naivety I thought, “That sounds nice. Maybe we’ll get to see some fireworks.”

We were in Malta, for some sunshine and as part of my quest to finish visiting all European countries before I’m forty (obviously this isn’t fully going to happen because I’m not going to be able to tick Russia and Belarus off; although I’ve seen the Belarussian border, I haven’t technically crossed it).

The journey so far had had just a few little bumps. We couldn’t fly from our nearest airport because it flies to about three destinations in total and generally at times we can’t do, so we flew from Birmingham. “Jenni,” Joe said, loudly, stricken, as the train pulled out of the station, “We’re on the wrong train!” Immediately, all the other passengers got their popcorn out (in my head, anyway). It turned out we weren’t in fact on the wrong train, so after that little heart attack (the first of many during this trip, might I add), I started to relax. It didn’t last long.

Putting my stuff in the boxes at airport security, the guy in charge stared at me and muttered something about my shoes. I stared at him in confusion. “My shoes?”
“Yes, take your shoes off. You’ve been randomly selected.”
I stared at him.
He stared back in silence.
I pulled off my flip flops, put them in the box, and waited for his reaction.
Like any generically coded NPC, there was no reaction at all.

So I ended up walking around the airport barefoot for a while. Blergh. That’ll teach me to be efficient.

The flight was an hour and a half late taking off due to French air traffic control strikes. The reaction of the other passengers upon finding out was loud groans across the board (possibly due in part to it being about 30 degrees onboard). One woman refused to stay seated, stood in a different part of the plane, and loudly complained and argued with the staff about sitting down for the best part of an hour to the point that one of the air stewards told her she’d have to get off the plane (sadly, she didn’t). After, I saw her still complaining in the border control queue as if she were somehow right about any of it.

(Unrelatedly, this is a beautifully written novel and the best fiction I’ve read in a long time).

Choosing where to stay had led us to an Airbnb on the northern island of Gozo. It’s considered the greener, quieter, more rural island. The Maltese describe it, eyes shining, as “special.” And it is beautiful. To be honest, our only real consideration of where to stay was whether it had a private pool, which very few places on the island do.

Unfortunately, I did not do the proper research. (In my defence, I wanted to escape last minute and had started to get almost aggressively annoyed at stupid things in this country, like the local shopping centre acquiring Union Jack deckchairs instead of having proper seating for public areas and surrounding them with circles of plastic grass).

You’d think I’d have learned my lesson about not researching properly from past experiences of booking a tour with a terrorist in Belfast and nearly dying in a Grand Canyon snowstorm (honourable mentions: driving a husky sled the wrong way into avalanche warnings in Tromso, being alone in an abandoned kindergarten in a thunderstorm in Chernobyl, hanging out at the Louvre when the bomb squad arrived and blew up a suspicious package), but apparently not. This time, I failed to research enough to realise that we’d booked to stay in a very small village with a very extreme yearly patron saint’s day festival happening.

And when I say “day,” I mean “week.” And when I say “festival,” it looked like a collaboration between the Pope and Blackpool Illuminations. With added cannons and effigies and extensive floral displays and fabric banners and two competing marching bands.

When I told Emma afterwards, she said, “This kind of thing could only happen to you two.”

Every day at 8am I woke to the sound of cannon fire. Actually, on day one I was already by the pool, and nearly had a heart attack thinking a genuine war had started. Because they are really freaking loud explosions and no one warned me there would be cannons or cannonfire, as they were too busy warning me about fireworks (oh, and also the risk of getting shot on private land if we went hiking. Which I was absolutely not about to start doing when my recent history of hiking is 1) a night time vertical hike in Prague with a plaque for a child who had died because it was so dangerous and was instead misrepresented as a Narnia film location tour and 2) a near vertical hike in Lichtenstein in 32 degree heat).

The island looks more peaceful than it sounded.

As well as the cannonfire, there were day fireworks. I don’t know what the point of day fireworks are, they are just extremely loud.

If there weren’t cannons or day fireworks, there were dogs barking at said cannons or fireworks. Or there was a cockerel crowing (at any random time). And on top of that, there was constant very loud birdsong throughout the day. Which was lovely, don’t get me wrong, but it was so loud that I literally felt like I was in a bird sanctuary all day. I mean, I live in a city and it’s always quieter than any/all of this.

And then once evening hit, the night fireworks started.

And this was not just five minutes of fireworks. This was four hours straight of fireworks set off a few metres from us, plus pre-fireworks fireworks. One night there was an entire Queen setlist played over speakers, interspersed with well-timed fireworks. Which, you know, would have been nice if it had just been that display, and not part of a several hour session.

I was extremely glad we hadn’t invited Tanya along, because this was no place for anyone fleeing a war or with PTSD. I will say that the novelty of watching fireworks in the pool wore off after about day four for me – I don’t super love random loud noises over a very long period of time. It didn’t bother Joe, but I started to get mildly annoyed by the end because I just wanted five minutes of silence in our relaxing, rural holiday. And sometimes neither of us could get three words out in a row and be heard – we genuinely resorted to messaging at some points so we could have a conversation.

How people in Malta have one of the longest life expectancies in the world I’ll never know. Low divorce rates on the other hand, that I could understand.

We were feeding the local stray cats and it was difficult to do that with fireworks scaring them all the time. We started off with one cat and some leftover BBQ’d chicken.

By the end of the week, we were BBQing plain chicken for four of them (partly because Joe accidentally bought eight chicken breasts instead of four, not realising they were doubles).

(Fireworks aside, I love how cat-friendly Malta is; there are signs for drivers warning them about cats everywhere).

We cooked almost every meal outside on the grill – the local shop sold lovely marinated skewers and handmade burgers which helped a lot, but we also made pizzas and pasta (indoors). The village had just two restaurants, and one was staffed by a woman who we saw yelling at her staff in the street, so we didn’t actually sample any local food until we made it out of the village for a day.

It was kind of like being in a real life Stardew Valley (other farming sims also available). There was a pumpkin patch. Various things to interact with. And lots of events at random times.

We were staying just off the village square, and every day more things appeared. On day one, we stood and watched the band play (setlist: The Lion King, Abba, Star Wars). By day three, we were having to dodge a whole bunch of metal artwork stands that had been set up, presumably for effigies or fireworks or religious artifacts.

On day five, giant nets of balloons had been strung between buildings; they were popping in the heat, just to add to the noise.

Attempting to leave the village, our Ubers kept getting cancelled. Walking down the main road, we eventually discovered it wasn’t because of flaky drivers but because there was a village-wide water fight taking up the entire street, complete with band and people throwing water and confetti from the rooftops. (Water fight video below to give you an idea of just how loud it was at any given moment).

“Maybe all this is actually normal and we’re just weird,” I said to Joe, unsure of anything by this point. (It wouldn’t be the first time). Later, we met a couple from Joe’s part of England who said, “I’ve never seen anything like it,” about the whole experience, which was very reassuring. (It’s middle-aged middle-class Sussex speak for, “what the hell was that? They let these people vote you know”).

By day six things were starting to calm down a bit, although there was something going on with about a million flower petals and a man wearing/carrying something not dissimilar to a big top tent. It made Luxembourg look incredibly normal, that’s all I can say.

Aside from that, being able to see the sea from the Airbnb just made me want it even more, so we booked a half day private boat trip. The water was stunning, and we swam in the blue lagoon. Tiny fish, crabs (we also successfully avoided swimming into a jellyfish) and white sand. I do slightly prefer lake swimming over sea swimming, but honestly it was amazing to just relax and enjoy the day.

I wasn’t super confident at first, because there were quite a few boats around (I have a weird fear of being hit by one) and the first swimming spot was a bit choppy. But I gained confidence surprisingly quickly, and honestly it was really the first time I realised and appreciated how much my body has repaired itself from covid.

In 2022 we went to Porto, and at that time I had long covid and a lot of heart pain, nerve damage, fatigue, and what I nicknamed “fizzy arm” (kind of like pins and needles for several hours at a time but when it got bad I couldn’t use my right arm at all, or trust myself to try and hold anything – luckily I’m left handed). As well as the pain from the nerve damage, I also completely lost the ability to understand my own body temperature; I could be shivering, goosepimpled and feel freezing cold with a perfectly normal (to other people) skin temperature. I could swim for short bouts in the pool at times I felt better, but there was no way I would have attempted sea swimming across wide stretches of deep open water with rocks and choppiness and no one within helping distance.

So I was initially hesitant, because it was a lot of swimming just to get to the lagoon, let alone back from it, and I didn’t know if I was capable. But I had no problems at all, and honestly I’m a bit in awe of how my body has healed itself on its own. Don’t get me wrong, it’s taken several years to get to this point, but it’s such a long way from where I was originally, i.e. not even being able to get out of bed and get dressed.

Later in our stay we managed to escape the village and head to Victoria, which is one of the biggest towns on the island (nearly 7000 people). It was a lot quieter than our little village due to the lack of cannonfire and fireworks, and it was fun to explore.

The day before our flight we headed back to the main island by ferry to stay in a hotel. We hadn’t fancied our chances of making a morning flight when getting to the airport involved two taxis and a ferry, so we checked in to the Corinthia Palace. I’m still not over how green it was, it was just beautiful everywhere. Also, it’s the only place I’ve been where they’ve handed me a complimentary drink in the check in queue (something traditional that tasted like liquid marmalade).

The wonderful staff, scenery facilities and overall effort were marginally downgraded by us ordering chicken nuggets and pancakes via Wolt while doing a lot of work from our laptops, but at least we were working from a lovely balcony (and got to enjoy the spa pool beforehand).

There was just enough time for a quick trip to the capital, Valletta, where we did a gondola trip around the harbour, ate lunch, and took a lift to some great views.

While the flight back was again delayed, this time the air con was on – aggressively so, you could literally see the steam in the air – and there was a jaunty playlist. Sadly the playlist consisted of Jet2 playing exactly half of the same four songs on repeat (Geri Halliwell, Gypsy Kings, S Club 7, and Jess Glynne) for an hour straight. Why they only played half of each song I don’t know.

But I guess the cannons and fireworks have made me super resilient because it didn’t bother me. And I’m so deaf that Joe’s speaking voice sounds normal volume to me now, and I didn’t think that was due to happen for another twenty five years at least. So, silver linings and all that.

And that was Malta.