Name: Clare Azzopardi
Age: 35 years old
Occupation: Lecturer at the University of Malta Junior College
My best ever trip…
Three weeks in China, and I still can’t wrap my fingers properly around a pair of chopsticks
New York, Chicago, Boston. Three weeks were definitely not enough and I’d go there again any time. There is so much to see and do. I’m a city person and these cities brought out the flâneur (or should that be flâneuse?) in me.
When I got back, I needed at least a week to recover. I was there with my husband and we planned to see a museum every day and then walk through the streets of Greenwich and Soho in the evening, listening to jazz music and sampling the food from all over the world, from Korean to Chinese to Italian to Greek.
New York is simply exhilarating. Chicago is slightly more laid-back, but its streets are like an open-air museum, with public art at every other corner: Chagall’s mural and sculptures by Picasso and Calder.
In Chicago we had time to relax and swim in Lake Michigan, queue for about an hour for a piece of cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory and pig out on a deep-pan pizza at the best pizza restaurant in town.
I felt so welcome in…
Ubud, Bali. I travel mostly for readings, workshops and literary festivals. So I went to Bali for the Ubud’s Readers and Writers’ Festival, where I presented my children’s work. I took Gużeppina (a lifesize doll) along for the trip. But I wish I was there with Albert, my husband, because the way the organisers treated me was extraordinary: lodging in a five-star hotel, banquets in luxurious villas belonging to the main sponsors of the festival, meetings with interesting writers and audiences.
But Bali is an island for honeymooners; it’s the island of the gods and the temples, shrines and rice fields, massages with lavender oil, gazebos with queen-sized beds and white mosquito netting, birds and geckos and noises I’m not accustomed to.
Luckily enough, when I was there, there was also singer and writer Nick Cave and Pulitzer Prize-winner Jeffrey Eugenides. It’s always good to take part in a festival with such big names on their list.
I couldn’t wait to leave…
Denpasar Airport in Bali. Small, ugly, dirty, open-air and therefore hot and sticky. And crowded, way too crowded. You stand in a queue for check-in right up to the very last minute, your flight’s leaving in 10 and you’re still standing in line, chewing your nails.
I partied hardest in…
Costa Brava. I have very vivid memories of the foam party I went to with my friends from University, but I can hardly remember how my handbag (containing very little cash) got stolen. But this was a very long time ago and parties aren’t really my scene anymore.
I feel more at home with a glass of good red wine in a small and cosy jazz bar. The best three jazz bars I’ve been to: The Village Vanguard, New York, where the legendary Paul Motion Trio held us spellbound for an hour (just a few months before he passed away); Small’s on 10th Street, where we came across a young jazz student called Roxy Koss jamming with her band, only to see her at the Malta Jazz Festival a year later; and Avishai Cohen at the Blue Lamp in Aberdeen (another one who got shipwrecked on our shores a few years later). I’m not really a party person. I don’t like crowds and drinking myself under the table isn’t something I do much anymore.
I cringe when I think of…
Egypt and its big, red cockroaches. I went to Egypt with the Grupp tat-Tielet Dinja to do some voluntary work with the Sisters of Mother Teresa. It was summer 2004, hot, humid, not a fan in sight, not a stir in the air, the windows left wide open day and night and big, red cockroaches scuffling all over the place, in the shower, in the dormitory, in the kitchen…
An amusing anecdote…
I remember the first restaurant we went to in Harbin, China. I couldn’t use chopsticks. Now Harbin isn’t exactly a tourist trap, and forks are more or less unheard of.
One of our Chinese hosts ended up leaving the restaurant to try to find me a fork, only to turn up empty-handed half an hour later. So I ate with my fingers… not that it compromised the great taste, mind you.
The next day, the same person gave me a knife and a fork and politely instructed me to carry them with me at all times. Three weeks in China, and I still can’t wrap my fingers properly around a pair of chopsticks.
I wish I could live in…
Mainland Europe – probably Amsterdam or Paris or Berlin. Because weekends in Malta sometimes get a little boring, when you start feeling there’s a bit too much of the same. To catch a plane every weekend is impossible but to catch a train and go anywhere in Europe would be so easy once you live there.
I treasure the memory of…
The seals and the sheep in the Scottish Highlands. I lived in Aberdeen for eight months and visited my husband (then still my boyfriend) there every summer for six years. Aberdeen is boring and gloomy, with deathly grey granite façades, but the countryside and rivers are just a walk away and the highlands to the northwest are calm and peaceful.
If you ever need to relax, then this is the place to go. There was a little seal colony at the mouth of the River Don, just lying around on this muddy little beach. Driving through the highlands, we had to stop quite frequently because the sheep and highland cows get in the way all the time.
Scotland’s lochs, hills and rivers are perfect for a reading holiday, especially if you enjoy listening to the sweet silence of nature. That’s the one thing I miss the most on this island of ours, noisy as it tends to be.
I adored the food in…
China and Beirut. The university staff from the University of Harbin treated Albert and myself like kings and queens, taking us to the best restaurants. Not only is the food exquisite but the service tends to be impeccable. (Harbin is something of a culinary destination in China – a nice combination, that: wonderful food in a place without tourists.)
To a European, the food is quite an adventure, a bit risky, even: donkey meat, purple potatoes glazed in honey, sea urchins, jelly fish soup, and more types of mushrooms than you can poke a stick at.
On the other hand, when I was in Beirut for the Hay Festival last year, I had no one to pamper me, but I had no problem finding the right spot for a book and the best meze on Al-Ħamra Street.
T-Marbouta is the name of this little cafe with bookshelves and comfy sofas, where students and book lovers gather to chat, read, smoke shisha and enjoy a cuisine which, while not as challenging (to a Mediterranean) as Chinese food, is definitely the best you can get this side of the Sahara.
I enjoy returning to…
Edinburgh… for the Fringe, year in, year out – this is the place where I’ve watched so many plays I’ve lost count. My favourite theatre is the Traverse and my favourite spot of all is Charlotte Square. Mind you, when it comes to plays, I have to admit that the one that’s stayed with me the most wasn’t staged in Edinburgh, but at the Haymarket in London, a play by Edward Albee called The Lady from Dubuque, featuring Maggie Smith.
The hardest part of travelling is...
Having to come back and having to pack the books before catching the plane. It was very hard to leave New York for instance, and even harder to fit all the books I bought from The Strand bookstore into a suitcase. They stock books by the mile.
Travel has taught me to…
Travel more, risk more, read more, write more. Travel has made me the way I am now.
I dream of one day visiting…
Latin America and South Africa.
I travel because…
Malta is not enough for me. So I travel in order to experience things I would otherwise never have a chance to experience here. I’m actually glad I was born on such a tiny island.
If it wasn’t for that, I might not have felt the need to travel so much and probably wouldn’t dream of travelling more.