The Mystical Mediterranean

A blog post by Joe White, Fall 2011

            As stated previously, these posts will be a two part series. This is not Part Two but rather part two of Part One.[1]

            After a studious week of midterms, myself and five of my yet-to-be-best friends embarked on our ten day break. The majority of our trip was spent in the beautiful island of Malta and the hills of Cinque Terre. Let’s talk Malta.

Yeah, it was pretty much like that. Beautiful beaches, warm Mediterranean water, caves to climb to, VERY inexpensive (more on that in a minute), and very visibly Catholic. That beach pictured above had a big bust of Mary, queen of the beach, in the middle of her sands. We stayed the longest on Gozo, the small sister island of Malta. In Gozo alone there are forty-three churches.[2] Crevices were carved in buildings and above residential garages to hold statues of St. Anthony and St. Joseph. We found “Ave Maria” inscribed on various apartment buildings. It was really quite beautiful, seeing their faith alive outside the walls of the church. We booked an apartment in Xlendi Bay. Four beds, two rooms, dining/living room, kitchen, bathroom and balcony: ten euro a night. Here was the view from our balcony:

That right there is the Mediterranean, folks! My goodness, it was too good. Snack bars were common place in the Maltese cities; one could purchase a “cheese envelope” for seventy Euro cents or a personal sized pizza for one euro. Cream cake: eighty Euro cent. Bravo fruit juice: one euro. Mars Bar Cake: one Euro twenty. Those cheese envelopes and pizzas were baaad news though, let me tell you. We got groceries for dinner most nights which came down to two euro each. Man, Malta was just really enjoyable. Here are some photos of Blue Lagoon:

Oof. TAKE ME BACK!

            After ten day we had a two day weekend. A friend from back home is spending her year in Ireland studying. Her ten day break fell the weekend after mine, so she came out to Austria to visit. We met in Salzburg where we visited the Sound of Music gardens (an experience I missed during the school trip to Salzburg back in the beginning). Then it was back to the Kartause to give her a taste of Gaming life. It was strangely affirming giving her a tour of this place—it made me realize how much of a home this place has become. These are my friends, this is the creek, there’s the bell tower, here’s the Byzantine chapel, this is the ballroom. These are the things I heard when I first arrived and now it was I giving the tour. We rented bikes in Krems and rode through the Danube River valley with nothing but beauty around us. Autumn trees on the hills, colored vineyards, and the big blue Danube. Great.

             Finally—and this will lead into part two quite nicely—I travelled with a group to Medjugorje (non-sponsored) last weekend. A lot of us talked about how we were not planning on travelling to  Medjugorje while there—at all. And yet we all our found ourselves on a bus going to Bosnia that Thursday evening. Unexpected as it was, the pilgrimage yielded graces both big and small. Some were moved to deeper prayer, some were heartbroken to leave.

            A true peacefulness exists in this quaint Bosnian town. The church bells of Saint Joseph’s chime every hour but also twenty minutes before mass; this is the time that Our Lady appears to the visionaries. While most of the visionaries live elsewhere, Mary has appeared in Medjugorje proper in a myriad of places, from the base of a hill where a blue cross stands, to halfway up the same hill (appropriately titled Apparition Hill), to the very top of Cross Mountain.[3] During our time there, we were accommodated by Nancy and Patrick who have been building a castle (literally) for pilgrims and religious who visit Medj. Their niceness and charitableness was second to none—in the words of my pal, Shannon, “I don’t think I’ve ever been told ‘Good Morning, treasure’ before.” The way Our Lady’s messages have sparked them to live in such a joyful and serving way really prompts me to continue on to better know our Lord and our mother. Prompts me to forward movement.

---

[1] Think how the Harry Potter movies were an 8 part series with the last being one part but having two segments.

[2] Malta itself has upwards of two-hundred and twenty.

[3] This place made quite happy: the cross atop the hill was erected in the 1933 and the Bosnian people—in their meekness—sent a letter to the Vatican asking permission to build the cross. Of course you can build a cross, the Vatican said, but since you asked, here is a piece of the True Cross. So through their humility, we have a beautiful cross containing Christ’s cross.