Yet another journalist asking for an interview in the light of my little country's accession to the EU. I'm tempted to start believing that Malta is in fact important to our fellow Europeans...surely from a cultural standpoint.

In his email, the Italian journalist working for Swiss radio RTSI asked me to relate the "reality of the city of Paceville, its contradictions in with such a strong history and present". Fine, I thought, this could be "it".

Paceville, for those who know nothing about it, is the leisure capital of Malta, with a myriad of pubs, discotheques (or in 21st century jargon, clubs), cinemas, pizzerias, restaurants and what not, which, on weekends welcomes thousands of young and not so young revellers aiming to wash away the boredom of the rest of the week gone by. Ah, I almost forgot, there is also a Church cum Catholic centre aimed for young people searching for a soul amidst the din ... as if the Catholic Church, ever so eager to resist its extinction, was going to abdicate from such a fertile land! Now that would be a fine example of Maltese contradiction!

I have no idea when Paceville was established  as the leisure capital. I myself have known it since my teen years. Leafing through some newspapers from the 70s I found some notorious references to the place. Notorious? Yes sure, Paceville makes the headlines every so often with youngsters arrested for drug possession (nowadays it's coke or ecstasy but back then it was hash or speed), brawls, and the occasional murder. It seems it was like that too back in the 70s. It is the place where the night is always young, where loud noise is always on the agenda, where girls dress the most revealing of outfits, where boys tend to turn macho when the occasion arises, where alcohol is consumed by the tonnes. It is all that, and most probably not much more.

Occasionally it is visited by two opposing bands of people: writers and politicians. The latter make sure to pay a visit when they are campaigning for elections - it is good to become accustomed, once in a while, to the young world and make the best of it to win a couple of hundreds of votes. Writers, on their part, have turned Paceville into a kind of paradigm which proves to be rather fruitful. I myself have indulged in this, so did Joseph, sive Guze' Stagno, and even the elderly Frans Sammut and someone else whose name I can't recall. Now it seems that even European journalists have been attracted to the spot.

Paceville is a paradigm after all. It offers countless opportunities to study what the hell is going on in this island. Because it is not just band clubs, religious processions, passion plays for lent, fund raising activities for the needy political parties and so forth that shape the 'cultural' map of the island. It is also, or rather most prominently Paceville City and its citizens.

It is, in a way, a microcosm of Maltese society. Some outlets are frequented by teenies, others by twenty something, others thirty or even forty plus. Other outlets are for headbangers (yes that lot is not extinct yet), some for ravers (oh gosh!), some for god-knows-what. There is also class demarcation of course, because class, albeit out of the political and academic agenda, is still very much there. And as I pointed out above, there is also place for some religious minority.

I may be visiting Paceville soon, thanks to this Italian journalist. I'm sure I'll have shivers going down my spine because Paceville was never my thing. Maybe I'm too much of a snob to hang around the leisure city.

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by a journalist from the French magazine L'Express, who is currently conducting a series of interviews with writers hailing from the new EU member states. Among the many subjects we spoke about, the journalist was particularly interested in the Mediterranean character of the Maltese islands.

The Mediterranean paradigm seems to be attracting not only journalists but also other interested people who are eyeing closely the smallest member state of the EU after 1 May 2004. For me this paradigm is rather confusing, in that it expects a Mediterranean country to be very different, very distinct, from the rest of the European countries lying elsewhere along the continent.

What the differences are or should be I honestly do not know. And the more time passes the less clear this distinction gets.

There are various cliches about Mediterranean countries. Some say they are so colourful ... whatever that might mean. Others say that the Mediterranean is a region bubbling with passion and emotion. Others see it as a troublesome region since it is the melting pot of three main monotheistic religions. And others still feel there is a lot of magic around the Mediterranean, given the very ancient civilisations which originated from it.

However true all this is, one cannot be so categoric. Colour can be seen in every part of the world, even in the drabbest snowy parts of the continent. Passion is, in my view, a basic human characateristic which may manifest itself in different ways but is always there. And, if the Mediterranean is the melting pot of three monotheistic religions, which it is, other parts of Europe are the melting pot of other religions. Talking about religion, one cannot but think of Bosnia Herzegovina for instance where two branches of Christianity and Islam also intersect and interact.

Travelling through Slovakia earlier on this year, I could not help noting how 'insular' the Slovak way of life is, despite the country not having one drop of sea around. Spending a couple of Saturday evenings in local village bars an hour away from Bratislava, I could also notice the jolly, festive and colourful character of the locals. The same things I noticed when I was in Sarajevo, and also in the Polish village of Kazimiers Dolny.

Yet, if one were to go microscopic in the analysis, then size would make a difference. Malta is tiny, so tiny that you can see the edge from almost any part of the island. And this has a very evident effect on one's perception of distance. Of course, distance, like so many other things in life, is relative. A one hour drive from the South of Malta to the northernmost point feels much much longer than a one hour trip by rail from one city to another in mainland Europe.

Distance must have an effect on the people's psyche. I have no doubt about that. The smaller the size the less one gets worried about time, for example. While many would regard the Maltese laid-back character as a sort of laziness or, worse, indiscipline, I think that this particularity is wholly related to size/distance. There is hardly any problem of getting late, so why should one worry after all?

All countries are different, fair enough. And the wider the comparison, the more pronounced the differences get. Comparing Malta say to Finland, is bound to illustrate my point. Comparing Malta to Italy, the differences become blurred and next to minimal.

And hence the difference between difference and distinction. Trying to put the Mediterranean region in a distinct class of its own, is, in my view, a mistake which calls to be remedied.