Bus 2164

A Maltese Ghost Story
















I recently spent a few days on the island of Malta to explore its rich (pre)history, and believe me, Malta's history is one of the richest you'll find. It moves from the oldest free standing megalithic temples in the world, the earliest of which date from 3200 BC, through the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Vandals, the Byzantine Empire, an Islamic phase, the Normans, the Kingdom of Aragon-Catalunya, the Knights of St. John, The British Empire and finally to independence and membership of the European Union (and that is the short version).
One of the most remarkable things about Malta however are the buses. They are all unique and are maintained and personalized by their own drivers. Some of them are pretty frightening as well.
There is, for instance, the fast bus to Paradise, which is leaves from Valletta bus terminal, and is driven by Clive, which, from the way things look may get you to paradise faster than you bargained for. On a side note, a casual word of advice here; there is what appears to be an information stand located at Valletta bus terminal. This however is a misleading impression as the true function of this small building which has a wide desk behind which four or five public tranport officials are standing, is to provide a convenient central location for the aforementioned officials and bus drivers to yell at one another in Maltese, which is a curious mix of mainly Arabian and Italian. You can ask for information here, this however leads to three possible outcomes none of which may be what you desired: a blank stare, being completely ignored, or in the most positive case, being handed an indecipherable pamplet which purports to show the times of departure and routes of the various bus lines, but instead is a cleverly designed piece of surrealist art.
Even more frightening than the fast bus to Paradise is the bus this story is dedicated to: bus 2164. I got onto this bus after visiting the Necropolis of St. Paul’s Catacombs in Rabat (an eerie coincidence, as it turns out). The first impression was not very awe inspiring to put it mildly but to counterbalance this it had a bus driver who, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary (see below) did his utmost to convince the passengers that they were in fact dealing with a serious form of public transport by meticulously checking each and every bus ticket. My particular ticket, a small square of white paper which stated in bold black print: “valid for one day” and “valid on 20-04-08” was studied for at least a minute, only interrupted once or twice by a suspicious glance at the owner of the ticket, yours truly. An elderly lady who got on at one of the bus stops was sold two tickets, even though she was the only one there. When the slightly flustered lady brought this to the attention of the driver, he responded by looking suspiciously over her shoulder to check where her husband had gone, a fact which seemed odd at the time but made sense to me later when I discovered the truth about the bus.
To get back to the buses deficiencies that I alluded to earlier, they were legion, though some, like the top speed of 30km per hour might even be counted as advantages given the overall state of maintenance and the apparent absence of any form of suspension. I can assure you, you have never experienced anything even remotely similar to the infernal racket this bus produced even at sub 30km/h speeds, and in fact environments more conducive to casual conversation have been measured inside full blown hurricanes.
As if the sheer volume of the noise wasn’t sufficiently unnerving, its quality added another even more nerve wracking effect, namely creating in the passenger the irresistable urge to look over one’s shoulder at the road to check for lost engine parts, wheels or possibly a more or less complete transmission, because shifting gears sounded suspiciously similar to a handful of cogs being thrown into a meat grinder. Interesting (interesting being a relative term here) traces of welding could be seen in the most unexpected of places throughout the vehicle and the floor was in fact more similar to a scaled down version of a medium sized mountain range (say the Apennines). One of the most worrisome moments (most and worrisome also being relative terms here) on this bus ride was on a gently sloping uphill stretch when we were overtaken by an old lady with a big bag of groceries in one hand and a walking stick in the other, and for a second I got the strong impression that we were in fact starting to roll back down the hill in reverse.
Little did I realize at the time that my feelings of apprehension towards this vehicle were in fact completely justified, because as I found out, I had actually been traveling not on a bus, but on the ghost of a bus!
Let me explain: From my seat I could see that there was a sign in the front against the bus windscreen. From where I was sitting I could not read it but curiosity made me make a fast picture of the sign with my zoom lens to have a look at later, when I was back home.
As you can clearly see bus 2164 was scrapped somewhere in the fifties, yet it drove me from Rabat to Sliema in it's own blood chilling fashion on April 20th 2008. There is just one small question about this bus trip that keeps nagging me: did the bus driver sell that poor lady two tickets because two people actually did get on the bus at that stop?