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Above is a map of our 14km (8.5mi) walk around Belfast. We had under 48 hours in the city, which only included one full day, so we made the most of it. Points A and H are our hostel, the Belfast International Youth Hostel, which was a nice place and only 12 pounds apiece to stay in a six-bed room, which we were lucky enough to get to ourselves the first night. We ate breakfast at their cafe both mornings, which was delicious and similarly inexpensive. Annie and I shared a large "Ulster Fry," which is basically the "a little bit of everything" breakfast that many American diners also serve, but with more Irish foods.
(They asked me to pose with the breakfast. I obliged.)
Point B is St. George's Market, which is a huge indoor space with booths where people mostly sell food or crafts. I considered getting something, but I had just eaten breakfast and don't like buying things that just sit there looking pretty. So, we walked around for 20 minutes and left. Cool place, though. If I come back to Belfast, I'll be sure to go when I'm actually hungry.
Point C is the town hall, where there was a Ferris Wheel for some reason. It sounded like some kind of festival was being prepared for, but honestly, it appeared to just be the one attraction. We went on, though, and got the best view of the city you can get without going out to the hills. Good way to start our journey.
(Three different views of Belfast from above)
Part of the reason we came was to see the murals from the Northern Irish "Troubles," a conflict I'd learned a lot about my freshman year. I have yet to find a website that adequately sums up the conflict for the uninitiated, so I'll do my best in the next two paragraphs, so you know what's going on with these murals.
The British once controlled all of Ireland, but in the early 1900's, Ireland started its major push for independence. However, in the northern part of Ireland, there were a lot of people who wanted to remain part of the UK, most of them Protestant and of English descent. Although it's easy to say that Ireland should belong to the Irish, many of the Protestants had families who have lived on the land for hundreds of years. Think of it like modern America and the Native Americans. Even though it's easy to say that white men shouldn't have come to America and committed genocide, I'm also not sure that the right move at this point is to give the land back and find somewhere else for the 300 million of us to live.
Northern Ireland, it was decided, was going to remain part of the UK. And the battle lines were drawn. In general, Irish Catholics wanted a unified Ireland, and English Protestants wanted things to stay how they were. Militant groups on both sides started bombing each other. Regions that were already segregated in practice became even moreso. Belfast was and is the largest city, so it couldn't be easily labeled a Catholic or Protestant area, and the lines ended up being drawn by neighborhood. The fighting officially stopped about ten years ago with a treaty, but you still hear about the occasional bomb here and there.
That's about as good as I can do in two paragraphs, look up more if you're interested, or just e-mail me.
After the Ferris Wheel ride, we walked north a bit then started west on Shankill Rd. It's a Protestant area where historically quite a bit of violence took place. One of my professors told a story about getting off the bus there once to find that everything was on fire. However, we went during the day, and in the 21st century, both of which I consider to be good moves. Basically, it's a fairly normal commercial street with shops and businesses and an occasional gas station. That is, with the exception of murals and political graffitti, both of which were notable. I didn't see a lot of random crudeness on the walls. People who buy spraypaint in Belfast do it because they have something poignant to say, and that doesn't include "for a good time, call..."
We stopped briefly at Woodvale Park (point D) and then walked through a very confusing suburban neighborhood (note our travel path between D and E; it was actually a bit windier than that, I think). At E, there was a large gate through a wall that was covered in razor wire. This separated Shankill from the Catholic neighborhood of Clonard.
(A mural'd gate)
(yes, razor wire. They didn't call them the Troubles for nothing)
And here's where I make the point about the murals. In Shankill, they looked like this:
(A mural calling out the IRA on their "strategy")
(The UVF, aka The People's Army, are noble soldiers and peacemakers, while the IRA are scary and wear black masks)
Once we crossed the gate, the murals became a little different:
(Glorifying the Irish guys with the guns)
(Calling out the English army on the Ballymurphy Massacre.)
Seeing the murals confirmed what I had already learned. While they were, in one sense, propaganda, the were also legitimate memorials to people who had been wrongly killed (as though anyone is rightly killed). The IRA mostly killed Protestant civilians, and the UVF and British army killed mostly Catholic civilians. There were very few cases where two groups of people with guns ever faced each other head on and had a shoot-out. I'm not trying to say that a shoot-out is a noble form of warfare. It's not. I'm merely saying that people who never intended to fight suddenly became part of the fight, if it could even be called a fight. The Troubles consisted of mostly marketplace bombings and shootings from each paramilitary group, and thousands of people died as a result.
The thing that defied my expectations was the lack of general peace murals. No images of Republican and Loyalist children playing side by side, or anything like that. Like in the Buffalo Springfield song, the murals "mostly say 'hooray for our side.'" Those that don't say "damn the other side for killing us." I expected at least one "hey guys let's all stop with this fighting, shall we?" Maybe we were in the wrong neighborhoods, or maybe they don't exist. I'm not sure yet, though I'd like to find out.
We wandered around some suburbs in the Irish part of town (around point F) where some official-looking people were hanging plain black flags on fences and poles. I never found out what they were for, though I kind of wish I'd asked. Annie and EC attempted to befriend two dogs, but they were having none of it. They became suddenly aggressive, and although they didn't touch us, we were all a bit freaked out. This is notable mainly because I was actually the least freaked out of the three of us when faced with a vicious dog. Those of you who have known me since childhood will verify that this is not typical. So, that was our 14 km trip. We stopped for some giant sandwiches, then headed back to the hostel.
I got up early the next morning to check out Belfast's botanical gardens. There's a huge rose garden with somewhere around 50 different kinds of roses, most of which have ridiculous names. Some had random abstract nouns, including two right next to each other called "Freedom" and "Mischief." I wish I could make a joke here and say that Freedom smells a lot like Mischief, but really, neither of them smelled like much of anything. Both were past their season (not a metaphor). Others were named after people, which was even funnier. At one point I was, in all seriousness, sniffing Uncle Pete, and I started cracking up.
After Belfast, I had a three-hour layover in Amsterdam, which might have the most ridiculous airport in the world, although I can't say that for sure until I've been to all of them. However, I feel comfortable saying that it's large, confusing, and expensive. But, I made it home, and now I'm back in Copenhagen where there's an annoying amount of schoolwork and other things I'd rather not have to deal with. It's only been 24 hours and I'm already longing for winter break. At this very moment, I'm not feeling particularly positive, but I think tomorrow will ease that a bit. I've got six things weighing on my mind right now, but four or five of them are going to be resolved by mid-afternoon tomorrow, and I'll feel a little less overwhelmed. I'll leave you with one final image for this evening:
(The obligatory adorable group pose. EC, Annie, me.)
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