The trouble with Malta

Bleungberg, a blog conceived on the autobahn in Germany, posts a dispatch from Malta despite the difficulties of finding wi-fi hotspots:

..I’m mildly enjoying Malta, having now switched hotel to a more comfortable one. Not that I hated the first one – it had a great view of the Mediterranean - but it was just rather too basic to my liking. Plus I didn’t feel particular safe in it – not for my possessions anyway. Now, I’m staying right by the sea and with a harbour view of Valetta which is pretty nice. It also has a tv which was lacking in the first one. I never thought a TV would be so important to me in a hotel room – not for watching but a bit of background noise to keep me company.

Malta’s a strange place. People speak Malti, but I don’t really see it anywhere – on buses or in shops. Everyone seems to speak English pretty darn well which certainly helps. And that makes me wonder why not more tourists from England come here – they speak the language, the weather is superb, beaches (or at least ones with rocks) and resorts are plentiful. Plus, due to colonial legacy, they use three-headed plugs and drive on the left, like the UK and Cyprus. So, how did I manage to find an empty room in a seaside hotel for the whole week so easily, or why check-in with Air Malta at Heathrow took 5 minutes, with the plane only 60% full? (Its food was superb, by the way)...There are enough quirky stuff to amuse people and the food is very much to the taste of the easily-homesick Brits. They’re missing out.

Then again, I am here to work so I guess I have enough to keep me going. But by taking a long walk around the harbour to the capital Valetta and a bus-ride to the ancient city of Mdina suggest that one can easily spend four days living well here. In addition, one can now boast to have visited Europe’s second-smallest capital city (after Vaduz) and the spookiness of Mdina. The latter had virtually no tourists and was like a 9th century ghost town – which it was...