I am again working without notes -- I got a little lazy about them during this leg of my trip -- and so I might not be able to reproduce all of the impressions of my stay in Northern Ireland.
I arrived here angry at myself for having even decided to tack Ireland and Northern Ireland onto the end of my trip, as one of my principal motivations for doing so was to try to find a cheaper flight back to Vancouver, and I was not able to do that in the end. I felt that I was wasting three of the few days remaining between the end of July and my return to Fayetteville, three days that I could have spent back home.
I quickly found a new interest, though, which was to do non-touristy things in Belfast. Shopping for groceries and making dinner can be exciting in a new city, as one has to spend as little money as possible while making enough healthy food to last, ideally, for the length of one's stay, so as not to have to cook more than once. Making dinner is, in its very ordinariness, a nice break from the pressure of seeing as much as possible in new cities every day; I decided, upon arriving here, to spend only one day sightseeing, saving the other for things from everyday life, and to make my sightseeing trip enjoyable rather than culturally important, per se.
I pretty quickly contravened my resolution, but only because I grew interested in seeing more of Belfast: I decided to do things that would be maximally enjoyable rather than seeing things that I considered culturally important. To that aim, I took a Black Cab tour with two girls whom I had met in the hostel in which I was staying. These tours take one first through Belfast's historic district, then through the contemporary city center and, finally, along the border between the Catholic and Protestant parts of town. The latter are lined with political murals, murals honoring the dead, and Union Jack and Irish flags, and they are separated by gates that still close at night, though they open, these days, for emergency vehicles. The IRA operates the gates and, apparently, takes great interest in any newcomers to their neighborhood, though they are not hostile.
I spent the rest of my day at another closed market, much like the one in Newcastle; at the tourist office, trying to decide what to do the next day; visiting a free botanical garden and fantastic museum that included exhibits about world history, Northern Ireland's history, natural history, British artwork, and Northern Irish art; and going for a run for the first time in two months, which took me through some very pretty neighborhoods and around a giant park, which reminded me, despite not being on the water, of Stanley Park. I ended my day delightfully tired and went to bed earlier than I had in weeks.
Today I visited the Giants' Causeway, a collection of basalt columns that look almost like the tubes of an organ, flattened, widened, and stacked up one after the other. It was a cold, windy, rainy day; my raincoat was soon soaked through, and my umbrella broke in a gust of wind. I stuck around for twenty-odd minutes before taking the bus to Coleraine, from which I soon caught a bus to Belfast, just catching the tail end of the Gay Pride Parade here.
All told, I enjoyed Northern Ireland immensely despite having seen none of the things that I had planned to see here. I could have seen Derry, a city with the best-preserved medieval town walls in Western Europe (reputedly), but I had already seen plenty of town walls on this trip, and I figured that I would enjoy getting outdoors, which I quite liked, more. I also had to leave Bru na Boinne, a 5000-year-old burial site, off for a future trip, as it is more accessible from Dublin than from Belfast, and I want to revisit Dublin regardless. Northern Ireland struck me as being very similar to Ireland (or "the Republic"), much as Scotland resembled northern England: one does not pass into a whole new world as soon as one crosses the border. Interestingly, it reminded me of Norway insofar as it has sparsely-populated, rugged landscapes through which long bus rides are a pleasure. (A plus to this trip, by the bye, was my becoming less obsessed with trying to see everything in any given country.)
I have had to rush this letter and will continue having to do so. I finished less than I planned to this evening and will have to email a ton of people tomorrow, when I return home, instead of doing so today. I also have to get ready for bed and try to get some sleep before my early departure from Belfast tomorrow.
All of this is beside the point. One interesting experience here was to do two strictly-touristy things in taking a Black Cab tour and visiting the Giants' Causeway: the only people on either of those tours were tourists. A lot of times tourists are ridiculed for getting superficial views of the places that they see and for turning their travel destinations into spectacles, making their visits less authentic. I am convinced that tourism is, on the contrary, enriching, and I do not think that it takes anything away from the places associated with it. Having had the privilege of growing up in a city that is popular with tourists, I have observed that tourists do not really get in the way of cities' local residents: locals would not want to visit essentially any of the places that tourists frequent, and they hardly generate any road traffic (that I can see). Perhaps their running from sight to sight is silly, but, then, so is most human activity, in the end.
The history of the Troubles, as the conflict in Northern Ireland is known in the United Kingdom and Ireland, reminds one that some of our best feelings, such as pride for our roots, solidarity with others from our hometown, and the desire for governmental self-determination, can turn into the worst actions; as an exhibit in the Ulster Museum stated, inclusion leads to exclusion, and -- this other pairing I cannot quite remember -- patriotism can turn into hatred for one's neighbors -- something like that. People who fight for their national identity often have very high ideals, as evidenced by such movements as the prison fast here, the insistence on being recognized (by title) as political prisoners, and the Blanket Movement, or a refusal to wear a particular prison uniform accompanied by an insistence on wearing one's blanket; these actions stir very powerful emotions in us, as they represent people's placing ideals above their own welfare. The problem here is that a lot of these ideals, the same ones that demand personal freedoms, often boil down to, "My colors are better than yours." I do not claim that it is easy for warring populations to achieve peace, but I also think that we should avoid getting carried away by slogans and high-flown language.
My only other real point is that Northern Ireland is hugely developed -- at least, Belfast is. While it is clearly poorer than Edinburgh -- some of its buildings are falling apart, wrought-iron gates in parts of the city are rusting, and there are barbed-wire fences seemingly every few blocks -- it is also full of stores advertising support for a wide variety of charities, from fighting poverty to curing cancer and providing relief to South Sudan; it is full of trees and parks; and it has tons of signs reminding people about stiff fines for throwing cigarette butts on the ground and, in some places, drinking in public. Belfast has a great deal of the Georgian houses that I have enjoyed so much for the past few weeks, has a very pleasant university campus, and is excellent for walking. It strikes me as a city of people who no longer feel defined by the Troubles and do not want anybody's pity. One man whom I met today even said that he pitied people who had the misfortune of living in Ireland, as it is, apparently, much less developed than Northern Ireland due to not being a part of the United Kingdom. If you get sick there, he said, it is all over, as you have to pay for health care in the Republic, while people here get it for free.
I meant to end this email on a high-minded, inspiring note, but I do not know what exactly to say and want to go to bed. I am hungry and am looking forward to flying home tomorrow; I am going to spend my only remaining coins, two Euros and fifty Euro cents, on airport food tomorrow, and I will donate any small change that I have left, if I can (The Dublin airport had a place to donate money for the Special Olympics, but I do not consider them that important, and I am not going to donate my money at the door, but only later no, when I know how much I have left to give away.). Perhaps my final note should be a call to all readers of these letters to travel themselves, as it is one of the most inspiring experiences that one can have.
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| My camera turns every picture sideways. |
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