One of our guests asked this question, and I had no idea what the answer was. We live within spitting distance of Ta Pinu (though, you know, I wouldn’t dream of spitting on it), a basilica that’s a popular pilgrimage destination.
Wikipedia to the rescue. Apparently there are both architectural and ecclesiastical differences. First, the basilica:
“In architecture, the Roman basilica was a large roofed hall erected for transacting business and disposing of legal matters. Such buildings usually contained interior colonnades that divided the space, giving aisles or arcaded spaces at one or both sides, with an apse at one end (or less often at each end), where the magistrates sat, often on a slightly raised dais.”
Turning to more spiritual matters, a basilica refers “to a large and important church that has been given special ceremonial rites by the Pope.” You can read more about the specific (and frankly, pretty obscure) rites here. This makes sense, because JP 2 did once visit Ta Pinu.
And here cometh the cathedral:
“A cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop. In more detailed terms it is a religious building for worship, specifically of a denomination with an episcopal hierarchy, such as the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox and some Lutheran churches, which serves as a bishop’s seat, and thus as the central church of a diocese.”
As for architectural considerations, they apparently vary: “Although a cathedral may be amongst the grandest of churches in the diocese…a cathedral church may be a modest structure. Early Celtic and Saxon cathedrals, for example, tended to be of diminutive size, as is the Byzantine so-called Little Metropole Cathedral of Athens.”
Another of life’s small building-categorizing mysteries solved.
No, I’m not going to talk about anybody’s sexual proclivities.
There was an actual scorpion in our bedroom, about two feet from where I rest my head:
For the average person who dwells below the 49th parallel, this wouldn’t seem particularly unusual. And besides, the thing was tiny-about three-quarters of an inch long. However, this is the first scorpion I’ve seen in real life.
And scorpions are kind of mythic, you know? They’re the stuff of desert adventures and Mortal Kombat. Whenever you see them in pop culture, they’re always vicious, cruel and armed with deadly neurotoxins.
So, it required an inordinate amount of bravery for me to coax this little dude into a cup and take him out back to the garden. I suppose I could have just stepped on him, but that’s probably bad scorpion karma.
UPDATE: I asked a local, and he assured me that these scorpions aren’t dangerous.
I’ve mentioned this to sundry people over the past few weeks, but I thought I’d better write a quick post to disclose our next destination.
Our original intent was to stay in Malta until the end of November, and then fly back to Vancouver. In living here a few months, we’ve realized a few things:
We’re not quite ready to go home yet.
Our clients haven’t abandoned us–in fact, we’ve got more work than we know what to do with.
There are plenty of other places we’d like to check out. Having gone through the effort of disconnecting ourselves from home, it seems foolish to return so soon. We’re going to ride the travel inertia for a while longer.
So, here’s the latest plan (how do you make God laugh? Make a plan):
Stay in Malta an extra month, leaving some time between Christmas and New Years.
Fly to Morocco, visit a couple of places, and ensure that it appeals.
Assuming that we like it, stay there about three months.
After Morocco, we may fly home. Or we may not. See the parenthetical idiom above.
In any case, I’ll be flying to Toronto in October and Vancouver in mid-March for speaking gigs.
Where Should We Live?
We’re planning on spending ten or twelve weeks in the country. That will probably be in one location, but we could break it up into two. Where do you think we should live? Early favourites include Marrakesh and the seaside town of Essaouira. First order of business: learn how to pronounce ‘Essaouira’.
I’ve just returned from the local pub, where I watched Malta and Turkey play to an exciting 2-2 draw in Euro 2008 qualifying. I’m not aficionado of Maltese international play, but given the difference in populations (400,000 and 71 million) and FIFA Rankings (115 and 22), I assume this must be a historic result. Unimportantly, Malta’s squad may also be the baldest team in international football.
It’s extra sweet, because today is the 442nd anniversary of the lifting of the Siege of Malta, when the Ottomans were sent packing by to what’s now Turkey.
Hopefully some highlights will be available tomorrow on FootyTube, my newly-discovered source for football highlights on the web.
We don’t have a TV, so it’s nice to be able to get my fill of goals and incidents from the English Premier League and international play. The site is unquestionably illegal, so we’ll see how long it lasts. If anybody knows of similar sites (besides good ol’ BitTorrent), let me know.
I’ve also got a question for my Maltese readers: during the game, I saw that some people in the crowd were wearing black t-shirts with big white Maltese crosses on them (and no text, as far as I could see). Do you know where I might procure such a shirt?
UPDATE: Here’s the second Malta goal. Unquestionably, it’s the ugliest goal scored last night. But, as the saying goes, they all look the same on the score sheet:
The partnership will study the nature of family processes, including reciprocal socialisation, and the family as a system, the developmental construction of relationships, maturation of the adolescent and the maturation of the parents, socio-cultural, historical changes and the family life cycle.
Well that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? I really only mention it because it is, indeed, called “Bum Bum Adolescence is Here” and has the charming URL of bumbum.europole.org. If you ask me, the proximity of ‘bumbum’ to ‘euro-pole’ is problematic in itself.
I assume that ‘bum bum’ is supposed to reference a kind of two note flourish, as in ‘ta-da’ or something.
When you live on a tiny speck of land in the middle of the Mediterranean.
When you live on an island off the coast of an island.
When you take some visiting friends down to see a local tourist attraction.
The last person you expect to see is an international rock sensation.
Julie and I are with our friends Rob and Suze, and we’re wading around in the shadow of the spectacular azure window. We’re just on our way out when we pass a group on their way in. Suze points out that we’ve just walked past none other than Anthony Kiedis, lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and occasional nudist.
Rob snapped a surreptitious photo while I resisted the temptation to go over and ask him if Catholic school girls do, in fact, rule. It was a bit surreal, as it’s kind of the last place you expect to meet the guy who wrote, say, “Sexy Mexican Maid” or “Fight Like A Brave”.
I happened to see Mr. Kiedis and his girlfriend again today as they were riding a scooter down Republic Street in the island’s main town of Victoria. That dude has a lot of tattoos.
If I’d been paying closer attention in Physics 12, I might know the answer to this question. We have a small pool in our backyard, and a small ocean about 10 minutes away. All summer, the Mediterranean has felt warmer than our little pool.
This seems counter-intuitive, because I’d imagine that, over the summer, the sun would heat up the relatively-small amount of water in our pool. The water and surrounding stone would store some of that heat over night, and so would get cumulatively warmer over the summer. That’s happened to some degree, but it’s no match for the ocean.
When I went swimming at Xlendi this morning, the ocean was bathtub warm. What gives?
There’s a lot of nice graphic design work here in Malta, even for village events. This is one example which, with one glaring exception, looks pretty good:
What’s with all that fruit? It doesn’t remotely match the aesthetic of the rest of the poster, and seems laughably tacked on. They’re not even particularly good photos of fruit.
Julie postulated, quite accurately I suspect, that they added the fruit to imply that there would be food at the event.
We just returned from our brief overnight trip to Comino and our stay at the Comino Hotel. The hotel is a bit old-school and tired–think the hotel from Dirty Dancing, except it’s 1970 and nobody’s done any upgrades since the big dance number. Still, it’s totally adequate for a couple of nights.
Interestingly, the guests seemed to be 80% German. I’m not sure why this was, because that’s certainly not true of the tourists I see on Gozo–the majority of them seem to be British. Happily, the hotel only seemed about half-full, so there were no ugly incidents involving sun loungers.
This morning we got up at 7:30am and walked over to Comino’s famed Blue Lagoon. We had the place entirely to ourselves for about an hour, until a few Maltese folks came by to set up a brigade of sun loungers and umbrellas. It was quite remarkable to be in this beautiful spot alone. The water is as clear and crystal blue as it looks in the photo.
But that’s been the trick on Malta. Get somewhere before 10:00am, and the place is empty. This has proved true at other famous locales like the Azure Window, as well as cultural and historical sites. After 10:00 AM, though, the tour buses and boats start rolling up.
We didn’t stay, but during the rest of the day the Blue Lagoon gets assaulted by tourists–these twophotos give you a sense of just how many people and boats turn up.
I’m a travel snob. I like to explore when (and sometimes where) people aren’t. It’s nice to know I can still do that if I’m willing to get up a little early.
Behind Ta’ Pinu, there’s a rarity on Gozo–a big hill without any buildings. That’s because it features the 14 Stations of the Cross along a winding path to the top. It’s a lovely (if sweaty) walk, and the view from the top is one of the best on the island.
Being in a photographic mood. I set myself a challenge to take just three photos of each of the fourteen statues, and pick the best ones for a little photo project.
The result is a mixed bag–some are decent while others are pretty lame. I think this is the best of the bunch:
The other problem is that we only saw 13 stations. I gather that the first station is, in fact, inside the basilica.
At the top of the hill, there’s a really cool amphitheatre. The top of the hill is also home to zillions of snails each autumn. I’m not sure why they prefer the slightly higher altitude, but you can see their little shells everywhere:
They also end up on the statues, to occasional creepyeffect.
One of our guests asked this question, and I had no idea what the answer was. We live within spitting distance of Ta Pinu (though, you know, I wouldn’t dream of spitting on it), a basilica that’s a popular pilgrimage destination.
