This is a Milanese couple’s experience of our ‘upgraded’ (from Arriva) bus service.

On August 13, in late afternoon, after an hour’s wait at the Valletta terminus to catch the 101 bus to Ċirkewwa, the man tried to find a dispatcher to tell him when this bus might appear. He was sent from one person to another without getting a proper answer. When he got rather agitated, one of the stationary buses at the terminus, seemingly randomly, bravely took on the route.

Relieved, they boarded. Just past Floriana, the bus was overflowing and its driver decided to skip all subsequent bus stops.

The desperate waving of hands did not deter him, neither did people’s shouts (in rather colourful language) that they had been waiting for two hours in the sun, or even the throwing of water bottles at the bus windows.

On the driver plodded and, an hour later, in the suffocating bus, they finally made it to the ferry terminal. If one includes the ferry crossing and another two bus trips in Gozo, it took the Italian couple the best part of four hours to get back to their holiday base in Marsalforn. Enough to make it to Milan and back.

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