Well, I just wanted to take this moment to discuss something that’s been on my mind since I’ve been to Belfast and done a lot of the sightseeing and tours. This has been especially prevalent in my mind since meeting Jeremy’s friends from Queen’s who are actually from Northern Ireland and Belfast itself. That topic (if you haven’t already guessed it) would be The Troubles. It’s hard not to think about this violent aspect of Northern Ireland’s past because it consumes so much of the stigma surrounding international views towards it. I’ll admit, even I was a little hesitant when thinking about going to Belfast to visit Jeremy. As soon as one hears that city name immediately one’s head is filled with images of violence, bombings, the IRA, and so many more negative stereotypes. Even my European guidebook has only a tiny section dedicated to Northern Ireland inside the section on the Republic of Ireland. The section has very small elements about things to do in and around the city and really only talks about Londonderry and Belfast…nothing else. Estonia has a larger section with things to do so there’s something to think about (no offense to anyone from Estonia.) I really want to set the record straight that Belfast is an absolutely beautiful city with amazing people. It’s vibrant, fun, energetic, and trying so hard to shed this view that the country is full of budding terrorists ready to strike at any time. They’ve moved on in so many ways and it really shows.
Mind you, there are still a lot of negative feelings buried beneath the surface within the city but like any extremist movement it is only a very small portion of the population that still actively engages in these sorts of activities. Since the Good Friday Accord in 1998 there has been a lasting (so far) time of peace between the two sides and nobody wants to ruin it for anybody else. Since arriving in England I have met no finer or nicer people than the Irish. They are a beautiful, kind, and fun-loving people who take life as it comes at them every day and live it to the fullest. The pubs were packed for football and music, the kindness of our taxi driver showing us around West Belfast and his own point of view of The Troubles, and even a lovely bus driver up near Giant’s Causeway who pretty much chauffeured us all the way to Coleraine telling us the fairy tale stories about the Coves and the supposed giants who live there (not the New York variety either…or the now world champion San Francisco variety.) The first reason this city is so great definitely has to go to the people who live in it…they makes the trip worthwhile right there.
Next, the architecture and look of the city itself is amazing. There’s a legacy of English colonial rule in Belfast and the buildings truly reflect this. The architecture, look, and feel of the many structures reflect those of some of the grandest and oldest buildings in London itself. The city hall is the crown jewel of them all. A wonderful building that you could admire from all 360 angles with statues galore in the front lawns including a grand one of Queen Victoria right in the centre of them all. This is the perfect place to start any trek into and around the city and being placed right in the centre of the city itself it’s an area that would be hard for one to miss. Buildings…another reason why Belfast was a wonderful and amazing city to visit.
I am seriously digressing in terms of what I want to talk about but I figured it would be good to shed these stereotypes not only in myself but in my reader as well before moving on to what I really want to talk about.
The highlight for this entire trip for me definitely had to be the Black Cab Tour of West Belfast. As most of you know I am a huge history buff. I studied history in university and it is also one of my teachable subjects. I was looking forward to this tour and it was a must on the list during this trip. As I have said in a previous post we really lucked out on the cab driver himself. Jerry really knew his stuff and he approached the subject from an unbiased and fact-based standpoint. He did say at the beginning of the tour that he was Catholic and so he knew more about the events from a Catholic perspective but I thought he did a phenomenal job at delivering the information in a comprehensive way.
It was so surreal to actually be standing in some of the places that events throughout the course of The Troubles took place. I’ve had this feeling so many times since my arrival in England. It’s so easy to see some of the biggest tourist attractions in London in pictures on the Internet, in other people’s pictures on the Internet, and in many books and magazines. When you are actually standing in the same place looking directly at whatever building, bridge, palace, or work of art you came there to see…it feels almost like you are staring at a picture of it. I mean, it looks exactly like you would expect it to. I didn’t have to actually be standing beside Big Ben to know what it looked like, I could picture it perfectly in my head. To actually be there…staring at it and realizing you are where you are…it’s a bit mind-blowing for a moment. In terms of the spots we hit during our tour in West Belfast this feeling was heightened to unfelt proportions. I didn’t know too much about The Troubles prior to my trip to Northern Ireland and I definitely didn’t know that much about the areas in which the most violent outbreaks took place. So to be standing in Bombay Street where the first bombing that started the Troubles took place, to see the Peace Wall stretching all the way to the mountains to separate the two communities…it was a shock to the system. You begin to realize how many people lost their lives as a result of something so trivial, and true to most conflicts of this nature the majority of people who did die were innocent bystanders not actively involved in either movement…just trying to live out their lives. This became even more prevalent in my head as Jeremy and I were hitting a pub for the football matches that afternoon. Across the bar from us there was a group of elderly men enjoying a pint and watching the television. Now, The Troubles lasted from 1969 until as recently as 1998 and there have still been sporadic attacks since the Accord was signed. These men, assuming they’ve lived in Belfast their entire lives, were old enough to remember the years of hatred building like a powder keg below the surface of daily life. They were old enough to remember that first bombing in the summer of 1969 igniting that powder throughout Northern Ireland. They were old enough to live through decades of violence with indiscriminate bombings, shooting in the streets, and having to wake up every morning to leave their houses not knowing if they would be coming back…reading in the papers every day those that didn’t. I looked at these men and could not comprehend the things they’ve seen, heard, and read about. It was a truly humbling moment in not only my visit but in my life.
When I first met Will and Leslie at the Speakeasy I was amazed at how easily we got along. Like I said before, the Irish seem to just have that air around them and we hit it off right away. Once we arrived Wetherspoons that evening (and after being a few pints in) the conversation inevitably turned to our tour and about the Troubles. Now, Will was born in England and moved to Ireland as a young lad but didn’t really experience any of these events. Leslie was one of those lucky few to have grown up in a Belfast that didn’t have those violent episodes occurring on a daily basis and hers is the generation that’s supposed to work to create a new Belfast and a new Northern Ireland free from those stereotypes. It was a bizarre conversation because they both approached it with relative ease and didn’t seem to mind talking about it at all. For them The Troubles has become more of a history lesson than anything else. Even more than that they openly discussed just how much these divisions didn’t matter in their lives. People who lived through the tragedy and hatred may still have underlying feelings of negativity, but for people like Leslie; they never grew up in a world where they were defined by their political or religious beliefs. She didn’t care what religion people followed and admitted that conversations would turn that way occasionally but when people told her they were Catholic (as she was Protestant) there would be nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders and getting on with being friends. Now that is an unbelievable turn from the direction Belfast was moving in as recently as a decade ago.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember just how similar these events are to those happening in our world today. When one thinks about violence such as consistent car bombings, shooting in the streets, foreign armies occupying for peace purposes, and thousands of innocent people dying it’s hard not to think of those conflicts occurring in the Middle East right now. As one who grew up in western society I can’t even imagine what it must be like to walk through the streets knowing at any point these sorts of things could happen in my own city. I think as westerners, especially with the violence subsided in Belfast, we almost feel that these sorts of things only happen in other parts of the world…more unstable parts…they could never happen here. We cannot forget that we are in no way above these sorts of conflicts. We have been plagued with racial differences, religious differences, and so many more in our past and even in our present. Maybe if more people took a page out of Leslie’s book and those of so many other people trying to build a better life in areas like Belfast we could all learn to try to see through our differences took…to try and build a better world for future generations to enjoy.
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