You know how it is, time passes and you think, okay, I’ll have to write this all down later. Then you don’t write it down, later comes, and there’s far, far too much to write…
There’s been rugby, about as much as usual, and classes, which are mysteriously coming to an end this month (my last sean-nos class is next monday!!), and all the other stuff on the side. Kayla and a friend of hers from her program in Florence were just here for a few days, which was lovely. I’ve almost entirely given up on showing people (visitors like Kayla) around Cork, which either speaks to my general disenchantment with the city or my newly developed sense of Irish culture which says that the best way to get to know an Irish city, anyway, is to go out for a drink at night.
That said, Lisa (I called her Brick in that last post), Meaghan and I went to Belfast last weekend for a little tourism. I had my Lonely Planet out the whole way, even after it got dark, since we had to drive across the whole country and I figured we could at least learn about what we were passing. It was a pretty great trip, though we didn’t sample the local nightlife after all– we were couchsurfing for the first time, and anyway we’ve all been tired lately. Couchsurfing was also so great! In case you don’t know what it is, check out couchsurfing.com; you join the community, and people you know vouch for your existence and coolness, etc, and then when you’re traveling you can email people and stay with them if they say it’s okay (you would pass the favor forward when you had a house or apartment that could accommodate visitors, too). This time we stayed with a girl from England who’s living in Belfast, and while she was sick and also working a lot while we were there, it turns out that her roommate (Australian and also a couchsurfer) plays rugby for a university team and a club team, just like I do, in Northern Ireland! On our second night, we stayed in with her to watch the France-Wales match on tv, and it was great fun. It just goes to show that you never know where you will meet rugby women, or maybe it goes to show that rugby women tend to have similar interests. Who knows.
Belfast! There’s a giant salmon covered in ceramic tiles that show the history of Belfast down by the river, which is, uhm, impressive. There was a bomb scare the day we arrived, but they found it and removed it. The girls we stayed with said that things like that happen fairly regularly, but they would never worry about it unless it got international press. As it is, the conflict remains relatively contained. I think many of the younger folks want it to be done, but there are still plenty of older people who were very involved at one point or who lost immediate family members, so I personally think it’s still going to be a while before it ‘ends.’
We did take a taxi tour of the Shankill/Falls Road(s) areas, while I’m on the topic. It seemed like the best way to learn a little bit and see the murals, etc. I don’t think any of us had expectations for the tour, though we did spend a while guessing to ourselves whether our guide was Catholic or Protestant. Lisa determined he was Protestant because of the way he presented the facts (Catholic attack, Protestant retaliation), but we never asked him. Sure he would have told us if we had, but I don’t mind not knowing for sure. Anyway, we got to see the murals (I’ll try to put some photos up one day when the internet is working better), which memorialize scenes from the conflict or from Ulster’s past in pretty political ways (eg Catholic children throwing stones at burning Protestant houses, and there were some graphic ones in support of Palestine as well, actually). The peace line in Belfast is maybe a little like the Berlin Wall, only it has two gates that are open 24/7. The others all close after business hours, and in some places there’s a fence on top of the wall that must take it up to 40 ft in the air. On the Catholic side, we saw houses with fencing in the back garden to cover their windows in case rocks or fireworks (okay I can’t remember the right word for what it was but it’s not fireworks) or something were thrown over the fence. We stopped at one place on the Protestant side where tourists had written messages in crayon or marker hoping for peace, etc, so our driver gave us crayons and we added to the wall. Then again, of course, there are places where the wall has been moved for schools, and there were a bunch of kids playing in the streets on both sides of the line, so it’s not quite the war zone it used to be. Oh, and we also passed the Sinn Fein building, and the driver insisted we take pictures.
As for the rest of Belfast, it takes no more than 20 minutes to walk from one end of the main city to the other. I will never get used to how small cities and towns are here! I just continually expect them to be bigger!
Oh dear– I’m going to Kerry and my ride just got here. I’ll try to finish this later!!!
