You know those souvenir T-shirts we adored when we were younger? The ones saying “My mum/dad/aunty went to Malta and all they got me was this lousy T-shirt”? Well, there’s been the blog post equivalent of that and it definitely didn’t go down well with the natives who put up a vociferous defence of Malta and all things Maltese.
The offending blog post was written by a visitor who spent a week in Malta. She rented an apartment in Valletta and used public transport to get around. There were a number of things she didn’t like.
For starters she mentioned the restaurants. Most of them offer bastardised Anglo-Maltese dishes, and she found the ever-present rabbit dishes on the menu unexciting. The choice and quality of the fare of the local eateries didn’t tickle her fancy. Neither did she enjoy getting ripped off at establishments. She mentions having to pay €18 for two coffees and two mediocre sandwiches at a well-known tourist establishment joint.
The lack of shady spots and the mutilated trees did nothing to improve her experience as she tried to take in the sights. She found the Renzo Piano Parliament building to be brutally modern and stark.
The island is nearly ruined. It’s overcrowded, overpriced and overbuilt. There’s barely a square inch of countryside left
The unexciting British high street franchises in Valletta were no incentive to spend. Why shell out on the same item of clothing you can buy in dozens of cities across the globe? Ditto the shops selling tat and the junk food in St Julian’s.
Our visitor was not enthused about Mdina, finding it a polished monument to itself and rather lifeless. Birżebbuġa was described as a parking place for old ships with no shade against the blazing sun.
She mentions the dreadful food again – English breakfast-type and barely cooked gunk. The buses do get a thumbs-up as being a value-for-money option, though she comments on the traffic being a mess. Apparently, the feeling of claustrophobia is not only a perception of the locals. This was an observation about Malta:
“The island is nearly ruined. It’s overcrowded, overpriced and overbuilt. There’s barely a square inch of countryside left. One town runs into another and everything is divided by walls.”
And the very damning conclusion: “I’ve never met anyone who said they would go back to Malta. It’s a one-off thing. A huge metropolis growing bigger than its capacity can contain.”
This account of one tourist’s experience stirred up a storm of angry comments. Touchy locals said it was too critical and that the visitor hadn’t carried out enough research to appreciate the off-the-beaten track delights of Malta.
Their sensitivity to criticism stopped them from seeing the blog post for what it really is – an honest account of how outsiders see us. And yes, every single observation about the shoddiness, the shabbiness and general drabness of the place, rings true. The unbuilt areas, the spots that delight the soul and free the spirit are few, far between and becoming less accessible.
Moreover, there may be a few restaurants that serve good food, but the overwhelming majority of them are glorified microwave stations, with vile décor and lackluster service. There is truth also in the claims of overpricing.
In general there is very little correlation between value and product or service. In part this overall mediocrity is due to the government’s lack of appreciation of what constitutes the natural and authentic charm of the island and its laissez-faire approach.
The latter means that anybody can open any kind of establishment and escape sanction when he disregards the law – whether this lawbreaking consists of encroaching on public land, serving up reheated turds or fleecing off guests. This in turn leads to service providers not bothering to strive for excellence – far greater returns can be made by overcharging for a ho-hum product.
I don’t know if the penny will ever drop and they will wake up to the fact that there are heart-stoppingly beautiful, less spoilt countries beyond our shores where the food couldn’t be more different from the processed rubbish that is on offer here in most places.
Maybe then we’ll stop believing that we are some beautiful Mediterranean gem uniquely blessed by our position and natural attributes and with some sort of divine right for our slice of the tourism pie.
This attitude reminds me of an extract from Paul Theroux’s book Hotel Honolulu, where the locals believed they were fated to thrive because of the sun. He wrote: “And there was the sun. The sun in Hawaii was so dazzling, so misleading, yet we regarded sunlight as our fortune. We quietly believed ‘We are blessed because the sun shines every day. This is a good place for its sunlight. These islands are pure because of the sun. The sun has made us virtuous’.”
As it is, we are blessed by the sun and what was once a pretty place with its own quirky charm, but we are making sure that we obliterate even that.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt