Shan's Malta blog

Back in Germany, Shan writes about his ten day trip to Malta that combined hip hop dancing in Paceville with a visit to Calypso’s cave, "a small cave on one of the beaches which they say was where Homer was held hostage for 7 years by a nymph in the odyssey". In this excerpt he writes about the Maltese bus system. From Shan's travel blog:

Malta is bloody small, something like 250 km2 and I had 3 hours so should be a piece of cake right? Well, it ended taking me 3 hours to get to the damn apartment!! The bus system on malta is like nothing I’ve ever seen, they have all these old-skool buses that are privately owned (and sometimes decorated!) by the drivers. They describe the bus system in lonely planet as ‘inexpenisve but inefficient’ and it fits perfectly. Three bloody hours to get about 50 kms!! The main bus terminal is outside the gates of the capital city Valetta, and it is absolute mayhem.

There are all these bright orange buses going everywhere, the stops (apart from the signs being lower than the bus roofs so you can’t actually read them) aren’t in any kind of order so trying to find my number was not as easy as you’d think!! For all my bitching though I thought the buses were pretty cool, the individually decorated interiors, names like easy rider, the gamble of whether your driver loves his job or has decided he hates the world, and the ‘I’m bigger than you so you have to give way to me’ mentality of the roads. Made it feel like an adventure...


Iraqi bus or Maltese bus?

Malta Pictures by Jonathan from The B in Subtle