Unreadable name and nostalgia

At the first of this issue, I'll give you a quiz. How do you read "Qawra"?

Malta had a lot of difficult place names to read. So the tourists were embarrassed for asking destination of bus. No, actually they gave it up. Without mercy, Naxxar, Ghadira, Zejtun, Dwejra, Xlendi, Zebbiegh, Xghajra, Gharghur, Xewkija ..... , the bombing attack of complicated name had no end.
"Excuse me, I wanna go to Godzilla .... " "What?" This sort of conversation was quite common. At least, I often got giggle of Maltese people like that. "So, how to read these names actually?" Please don't ask me. Any way, I should put the answer for the quiz. It's "AWRA".

The "Qawra" was the place where I spent two weeks at an apartment. I had heard it was the most developed tourist area in Malta. But from my impression, it's still developing. Most of the hotels and houses were under construction. There were many vacant lots and stock yards for building materials here and there. It made me remember the Japanese landscape in 1970s. I spent childhood in the high growth economic period of Japan. Therefore I felt some nostalgia for the landscape of Qawra.

The apartment was more nostalgic. It had a vinyl tiled damp hall way and a steel hall door. My room was 1 BR on the 3rd floor. At the out side of sliding door, there was a small terrace. From the terrace I could look over a dusty square, a pavement, a building material in a vacant lot and a dump truck... I remembered the old Japanese word, like "Danchi" (means a complex residence), from the scenery of Qawra.
The 1st floor of the apartment was a restaurant and karaoke party was held every night. However the environment was quiet enough except the karaoke. I could be relax there. Although the apartment didn't have any ocean view of deluxe apartment hotel on the seaside, I can walk down to the rocky coast of the Mediterranean sea easily.

I had dinner listening radio. I could tune on stations in divers languages. Maltese, English, Italian, Arabic, French, it's the proof that Malta had been the cross section of the Med. Sea. In same reason, the difficult Maltese name looked like Latin or Greece and sounded like Arabic.

The karaoke began on down stair. It started in a terrible English, and then changed to German.

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