When we first were thinking about our honeymoon, we tacked Malta on to the end of our week in Tunisia to provide some rest after a week of what was to be some intense exploration. And when we cancelled Tunisia after the tourist-targeted terrorist events there earlier in the year, and decided to spend that week in the Baltic States, Malta remained the more laid back portion of the trip in our mind. For whatever reason, neither of us did much planning for this week of the trip – opting to plan for some pure R&R sitting by the pool of our Gozitan farmhouse.
It didn’t work out this way, and I should have known it wouldn’t. I have trouble sitting still for extended periods of time (unless heavily medicated), so after a couple of days on Gozo, I started looking for things to do.
It turns out that we were in Gozo for the last week of the Summer Festa season. Every summer, villages and towns all over Gozo and Malta have village festas – or feasts/festivals (which one is proper, I’m not sure) that celebrate the town and its religious organization/church. If you’re read enough of this blog, you know already, but I am not a huge fan of organized religion for myself, per se, but I am a fan of being a casual observer of it (in a Louis Leaky/Margaret Mead kind of way). So I told David to put his Catholic pants on- we were heading to Xaghra for their festa.
Here are some of my key takeaways on how best to attend a Gozo Summer Festa as a pinko hippie queer:
- Expect noise – there will be fireworks, and they will probably last all night. Though we were in Gozo for the final festa of the summer season, in Xaghra, on the North Central part of the island, we could hear the fireworks all the way on the other side of the island where we were staying (in Gharb)
- Eat everything! There will be food vendors out in spades, selling mostly traditional fair fare. Burgers, chips (fries), fried chicken, etc. were all over the place. There were also Chinese vendors (I cannot speak to their authenticity), as well as lots of places selling beer and wine by the glass.
- Stay for the fashions. I don’t know why, but the ladies there were dressed to the nines. And I like a drag queens and their fashions as much as the next gay dude, but man, the heels and dresses on these ladies were out of this world. High ass heels and some skimpy dresses were being served all around, on adults, teens, and kids of all ages. It was ridiculous, and we liked it.
I’m really sorry I don’t have any pictures of the ridiculous fashions on display at the Xaghra Summer Festa. So here’s the town square all lit up. - As are most aspects of Gozitan and Maltese life, the festas are religious events – so expect religious-themed happenings. Hymns and traditional processions of religious icons and such were centerpieces of the event. For atheist queers (like us) it was interesting to get a look into that aspect of life in “rural” Gozo. I never felt out of place at all, and thanks to the skimpy outfits of the ladies around me, I didn’t feel underdressed in shorts and a t-shirt.
The local powers that be keep a pretty good record of what’s happening where. If you’re heading to Gozo (or Malta) in the summer months, you can find out which festas are happening in which villages on this site.
We ended up not staying too late, but we could hear the fireworks going off well into the night (and continuing into the next morning, actually). And while we not be the utmost experts on nightlife and party-centric adventures, I am sure that had we stayed, it would have been epic well into the wee hours.
