No hesitation today. I was going to Mdina and Rabat.
Bus 81 took me there, this time a surprisingly modern bus, probably no older than from the mid-eighties. I even got off at the right bus stop!
The historical city of Mdina, with Rabat just outside its walls, is called the silent city. What a misnomer! This is supposed to be a silent city because no car traffic is allowed in Mdina. Many of its streets are indeed so narrow as to make driving a car virtually impossible. What was then making it not the silent city? The tourists themselves? Naaahh. Car traffic! Actually a blend of construction trucks, ordinary cars, and karrozzins, the horse drawn carts for tourist sightseeing in Mdina, whose warning bells rang constantly with a yelling tone. Might have been the ones used on old fire engines…
Otherwise Mdina is a very attractive place to visit. Lots of good restaurants, and plenty to look at in a very small area. That is if I had had the calm to enjoy it fully.
Just when I was about to enter Mdina, I thought I would check my phone messages. No phone! I always bring it! An hour was spent running around trying to trace where I had been. Did I lose it on the bus? Someone took it while my attention was elsewhere? Would I get it back in any case? Fat chance. I tried to get hold of a phone to call myself and see if anyone had picked it up. No phone. All public phones of course did not work, since people always use mobile phones nowadays.
Eventually I decided I could not let the incident destroy a whole day – travelling back to the hotel to check if I forgot it there surely would. I gradually developed a ’memory’ of never taking it with me.
After Mdina, and the St. Agatha tombs in Rabat, I got on a direct bus back. Would there be a phone in my room? Of course it was there.
The lesson learnt: Always check where you have your belongings! Bring your IMEI-number to the phone, and the phone number to your operator to close your mobile if it really gets lost. Backup papers of everything is not a bad idea. A reminder that I tend to trust all the comfortable portable infrastructure too much. Credit cards, e-tickets on a card, mobile phones, internet access.
Tomorrow, I will surely check a couple of times…
