Week Four
Picking up on week four (February 5th ish), our weekend trip to Northern Ireland (NI).
We had a weeks worth of lectures in History about the History of NI and the Troubles, so we were pretty prepared for what was in store. The weekend trip was organized by our history teacher, Caroline, and all 40 of us went, plus 12 kids from the UCD program.
We left early friday morning and arrived in Belfast at about 11 or so. We checked in then headed straight off on our guided bus tour of the city. Liam was our guide, a phD student at Queen’s University Belfast (which looks like Hogwarts, basically). He was awesome, had some pretty funky kicks. So we drove around the two main areas of sectarian violence—Falls Road and Shankill Road. Falls Rd is a Catholic (therefore Nationalist) neighborhood, while the Shankill is Protestant and Unionist.
You could tell immediately which neighborhood you were in, as they often painted the curb the Union Jack or flew the Union Jack in Protestand areas, whereas the tricolor was everywhere in Catholic areas. And of course the murals. The murals were so amazing, such good artwork and such a good way of drawing attention to the issue. Great means of advertising, basically, and now they’re a huge part of society there, not to mention the tourism industry.
Belfast is pretty intense though. There is literally a “peace” wall seperating the Protestant ad Catholic neighborhoods which closes at night, basically prohibiting them from interacting with each other.
But we were told even if it fell, they most likely would not interact with each other anyways, which is just bizarre to think of coming from the US in 2010. But, the conflict is still so close, with the Good Friday Agreement only in 1998, so it’s understandable that tensions are still there.
After the bus tour of the city, we headed to Stormont, where the old Northern Ireland Parliament had been and where the Northern Ireland Assembly now sits. That was pretty cool, the gounds and the building were amazing—they had a chandelier from Kaiser Wilhelm II!
That night, we ditched the group and went to a Chinese Buffet instead of the group meal. Belfast apparently has like the most Chinese restaurants compared to its population in like the world, it’s insane. Anyways, the food was pretty good and it was really cheap, and BYOB so we could pregame a little. The nightlife in Belfast wasn’t too exciting, but the pubs were really nicely decorated, which was cool. We ended up at this one place and played a few games of pool, which I was terrible at.
The next morning we got up at about 7 to head down to the St George street (i think) market, which wasn’t even technically open, but they still served us, which was cool. I got a blueberry scone which was DELICIOUS. Afterwards, we all headed back on the bus to make our way towards Derry.
On the way to Derry, we stopped at the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, which is a smallish rope bridge attaching the mainland to this little island where fisherman would go. It’s wicked old, but people still use it for fishing all the time. We crossed that, even though I was pretty terrified—it was high up! But I’m glad I did it; the scenery was absolutely amazing.
From there we went a little further and got off at Giants’ Causeway, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It’s all these cool column shaped basalt rocks that were formed naturally but look manmade. It’s actually really awesome looking, and right on the water, so it’s wicked beautiful.
About an hour later we landed in Derry, where again we checked into the hostel then headed off for a tour of the city, this time walking as Derry is much smaller. Derry was actually adorable, I thought, although it was eerie at night as everything was so dark and no one was really out on the streets. Derry is cool because it’s one of the last walled cities in Europe, although most of the people live outside of the wall. It’s also a Catholic majority, which means it was greatly oppressed throughout much of the history of NI and was especially problematic during the troubles. In fact, Derry is where Bloody Sunday occured in Janaury 1972 (I believe) and 14 civilians were killed at a completely peaceful civil rights march. Because of this intense history, Derry has some amazing and pretty graphic murals commemorating the civil rights struggle for Catholics.
The minority protestant community—only about 600 people—actually chose to build a wall around their neighborhood, seperating themselves from the larger Catholic population. This is so hard to process for us Americans in 2010, but again, the history is so recent there; many of the older men were members of the IRA/UVF so it’s understandable that they still feel tense about it, and also many of the people living there had family members and friends killed during the troubles, so everything is still very fresh for them.
Despite the very intense recent history of the town, Derry was an amazing place. We had a BBQ at the hostel, where everyone was just so nice. We met a few Australian girls who were also staying there, and ended up getting into a big debate about America with them, which was fun, but it was so sad to see how some of the people in the program are so ignorant about the rest of the world. We were all drinking at the hostel too, so it sort of just ended up in a “my city’s better than yours” within the US. Which I always enjoy because I LOVE defending Worcester. And it always needs defending because everyone else always hates it! But I love it so it’s fine. When we finally went out, I ended up talking to this one guy at the bar all night, Aidan. He was nice, not from Derry—can’t honestly remember where he said he was from in Ireland. I don’t remember much of what we talked about, but he was very friendly. Ended up leaving him to go with Amanda, so I thought, but it ended up being a crazyyyy night. But super fun! Derry was so cool.
After a long and painful bus ride the next morning, we ended up in the town of Drogheda back in the Republic, where the head of St Oliver Plunkett is preserved and displayed at the local church—clearly we had to see this. It was actually so cool. And he really looked like Clint Eastwood, so weird.
We left there pretty quick and ended back it Dublin around 4, where I pretty much relaxed and went to sleep pretty early, despite many people going out for the SUperbowl—I was way too tired for that.
That week, I had my presentation in Mass Media in Ireland on the Irish Independent. It went fairly well—as good as any of my presentations ever go. I literally went first in the entire class, which sucks, but earned me a fun applause and a “way to cowboy up” cheer from some of the boys in class, which is always fun. Declan (lecturer) took a while to understand cowboy up, which was pretty entertaining. I ended up getting a B+ on the presentation, which is pretty good for me, and I didn’t try too hard, so I’m happy with that.
Earlier that day we’d gone on a field trip to Collin’s Barracks for Soc, which was really cool. It’s basically like a military history exhibit, which was interesting. After that Amy, Amanda and I got pizza at Pa Pa’s Pizza, which is my new favorite place to eat in Dublin! So good. And that night I stayed up til 2 am to take the Jeopardy college test…which I did NOT do well on at all, but hey, it was an experience.
Thursday night we had a lecture about the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) by a GAA member from Ulster (Northern providence, mostly in the NI and UK). The GAA was formed in 1884, I believe, as a way to foster nationalism and Irish identity. It consisted of hurling and gaelic football, with strict bands on foreign sports, especially popular UK sports like football and rugby. The British during the war of independence often targeted GAA members because they believed it was basically a training ground for the IRA, which, to be honest, it was in many cases, as these were young, nationalist men in good shape. The craziest example of British brutality against the GAA was in 1922 (I think) when the first Bloody Sunday took place, with British troops busting in to Croke Park in the middle of a gaelic football game and shooting up both players and the crowd, killing 14. The history of the GAA is fascinating, expecially how it ties into republican history.
That about wraps up week four…week five beginning with SIMON, the MIDGET and Glendalough. (Note: Simon and the midget are two different people, Simon is not a midget, sadly.)
