I have never been one to be shepherded around places, preferring to go on my own and exploring at my own leisurely pace, and with as little knowledge as possible to make on-the-spot discoveries all the more interesting and absorbing. My better half thinks differently. She insists that going on an overseas holiday tour with a Maltese agency is a much better way of seeing as many different places as possible, cheaper, and certainly more efficient.
It is not a bone of contention that has been anywhere close to a solution, so very often compromise is the only way out. She joined me at Upton Park to watch West Ham play hated Arsenal on our wedding anniversary, so I surrendered to a tour that meant being stuck with a coach load of boisterous fellow Maltese for one whole week.
This summer it was my turn to be nice and obliging, so I booked a tour to Budapest and other parts of Hungary with a top Maltese travel agency. Sadly, my worst fears were confirmed.
Even before departure at the airport, one had to break into the solid, disciplined queue lines of three different tours going on the same chartered plane to the same destination. We were the first group at the check-in desk only to be told by a dull Air Malta girl that there was every chance that we would not board the aircraft as our agency had not sent its list of passengers. Some of the women screamed. The men snorted and kicked the floor like angry bulls. The tenser the situation became, the more the girl seemed to go berserk and lose control.
When all seemed set for a showdown, with our group obstinately refusing to make way for the other problem-free groups, a representative of our agency finally appeared, insisting the national airline had in fact been supplied with a list of passengers and his agency was not to blame if this had been mislaid or overlooked. The Air Malta girl who had caused all the bedlam disappeared like a prima donna who suddenly realised she had lost her voice.
Finally on the aeroplane, some of the group relaxed and found the time to get to know one another, depending on the character and attitude of each individual. Others preferred to sit it out, book in hand, hoping the holiday really started here. The thought had hardly established itself before I got this tap on the back as I positioned myself to fiddle with the load of political propaganda that the on-board Malta This Month magazine has allowed itself to publish in recent years. Oh, oh, I thought, here comes the first trial of the holiday, but it turned out to be an extremely pleasant surprise.
The polite man asking me whether I was “the Flores” he knew at the old college was Joe who I had not seen for almost 40 years. It is not easy to keep up a nostalgic discussion with someone sitting behind you on an aeroplane, but we tried until my neck could not take it anymore. Budapest was beckoning, anyway, and here, at least, was a positive note for my wife’s holiday diary. I reckon the note that went into it read: “Perhaps it will not be as bad as I thought. And he won’t sound so much like the guy in One Foot in the Grave. He’s found someone to discuss – in fast rewind and fast forward modes – football, politics and music with.”
Coincidence would have it that also in our group was yet another ex-schoolmate I hadn’t seen since we sat for our O Levels. Two men from my generation whom I hadn’t seen on the blob of land that we strut everyday, suddenly coming back into my life in this vast, cosmopolitan environment. The old diary must have felt it had been hit by an instant ball of fire.
It was when the tour really got under way, that the pendulum swung back into the negative. A “xalata” mood seemed to take hold of the group. The short, fat woman started nibbling soon as we drove out of the hotel car park, while her husband took out a bottle of water for a quick sip. Maltese Twistees and San Michel in the middle of Budapest!
Another couple had no doubt sworn they would video every single moment of the tour. I saw the woman filming road signs, bridges, mountains, sunflower fields and vineyards. She did so as she spoke into the in-built microphone in between phoning home every five minutes to say what she had just bought for so and so. I was fascinated by this obsession on the part of someone who, like the rest of us, was supposed to be there to enjoy a holiday. The husband wisely humoured her, carried all the bags and, baseball cap over his eyes, most of the time simply appeared to be on a completely different planet.
Everywhere we went, people in the bus shouted and the frequent travellers gave us loud, impromptu glimpses of their memories, much to the chagrin of our tour leader who, may his soul one day rest in eternal peace, still seemed to find the self-control required in such a situation.
An elderly English couple in our group wisely concentrated on their crossword and codeword books, trying not to appear standoffish and pausing only to listen to the tour leader’s kind repetition in English, for their benefit, of details on the places we were en route to visit.
On all excursion trips out of Budapest the tour took the semblance of a typical Maltese religious pilgrimage, something some of us certainly had not subscribed to. I have nothing against people praying, but praying is an intimate and personal option not to be turned into a morose public exercise. “They only turn to God when they find themselves in a crisis,” a septuagenarian not so diplomatically threw at the rest of us while she usurped the use of one whole seat to rest her varicose veins.
The Rosary is more of a distraction than an attraction when recited within sight of 10 twirling toes on the edge of the seat across from you. The poor monsignor who had the fortune or misfortune to join our group for a quiet holiday was buttonholed into this ritual usually after a good lunch and an abundance of wine, which, no doubt, stirred in him and in many of us slightly less holy inclinations.
Initially, I wanted to protest, but most of the passengers seemed happy to join in, so I opted to persist with reading my second of two Molly Weir books I purposely took with me to Hungary.
If that was a totally Maltese scene, the shopping areas were a nightmare. At every escalator we came face to face with the “video lady”, as we started calling her. She shot the shops from high and low, zoomed into the dancing waters of the fountains and recorded the indoor plants for posterity. The husband was shot from every possible angle, always half hidden behind fresh loads of shopping bags. It would be cruel to say I found her falling down the marble steps of a famous basilica hilarious, but it certainly was amazing to watch how the lady managed to hit the ground with the tiny video still intact in her hand and no doubt still filming.
In every shop and at every restaurant, in the piazzas and the lavatories, Maltese filled the otherwise tranquil air. Shouts of “Johnny come here”, and “Mary did you see the cheap prices here” prevailed. Four days on, the Twistees and the San Michels were still coming out of obscure little bags with Maltese brand names on them. Mobile phones rang at indecent hours and inopportune moments.
The hotel personnel must have grown used to this Maltese circus. One of the smaller restaurants was turned into a chapel for daily Mass. While others find God everywhere, in the valleys and the fields, on the mountains and over the oceans, many Maltese seem to want to ease their conscience by waking up early. “I didn’t see
you at Mass,” one told the other as we boarded the coach for yet another long trip. “I overslept,” replied the other apologetically, then they immediately went on a verbal rampage against the fellow travellers occupying the adjacent rooms.
It would be unfair to relegate the whole tour to a non-event. The agency offered a wonderful itinerary, incredibly squeezing a number of really great locations into an eight-day package tour, though the competent tour leader had a tough job trying to appease both the holier-than-thou on one side and the disinclined on the other.
But if this is what holiday tours are all about, then I wonder how many other compromises I can muster. It all ended in a not-so-mysterious odour infiltrating our queue at Budapest Airport before the trip back when the oldest member of the group apparently couldn’t control his bowels anymore. We almost checked into a New York flight by mistake, which wouldn’t have been such a shame, though the Americans wouldn’t have known what hit them. The resulting effects of the man’s bowels could easily have been misinterpreted as another terrorist attack.