Belfast

Queens University, where's Harry Potter?

So I think my photos may be gone, or maybe I didn't take as many as I thought I did.  Perhaps by the end of the 10 days I had  run out of space on my memory card.

I was a bit nervous visiting Belfast, all I really knew about Northern Ireland were "the Troubles", nice name for what was basically a civil war, as well as various accounts of knee-capping.  This view wasn't helped by one of the tour guides in Dublin. Upon hearing we were going to Belfast next, he told us a story of when he visited.  He went there as a tour guide, though his job was just to drive people from Dublin and back.  The group had organised their own tour guides in Belfast.  He told us that one of the guides gave him his card and later on the the Dublin guide had googled this Belfast guide.  Turns out he was one of the political prisoners released as part of the Good Friday Accord, and he had been convicted of killing a couple of British soldiers as well as some passers-by who happened to be in the wrong place.  Full-on stuff!

Apparently most of the people who are tour guides with the black cab tours, the ones who take you on tours of the more political parts of town, are these released prisoners.  This was confirmed when we walked into the Belfast tourist office and asked about doing a tour.  The lady behind the desk was very quick to inform us that they had no

That is Elizabeth Bennett's dress from the only Pride and Prejudice adaptation worth mentioning

part in recommending any particular cab tour, that they were political tours, and that we could take a look at the pamphlets if we wanted.  As we were only after a walking tour of the city we were a little taken aback by the response.

No matter how many times the tour operators would tell you that times had changed, that things were looking up, these sorts of reactions made us think that Northern Ireland still has a ways to go.  There were a couple of things that put us off, and made us feel a little uneasy.  We did one of the bus tours, mainly so we could see the murals without having to take a scary black cabs tour.  As we're driving along, the guide points out what they call a "Peace Wall", nice name for a 5m high wall running along the backs of houses to protect them from any bombs.  That was probably one of the scariest things for me, seeing this city divided still, more than 10 years after the peace was meant to have started.

It's a really strange place, I would go just to experience it.  Along one of the unionist roads were hundreds of Union Jacks, banners and banners of them, more than are even in the Mall near Buckingham Palace.  It was strange to see somewhere so fervently proclaiming who they were, especially as Northern Ireland barely seems to get a mention in the English press.  The other really strange thing was that the unionist and republican areas in Belfast are right next door to each other, these people are neighbours.  The other noticeable thing is how poor that whole area is.  The whole Troubles seemed to start in 1968 when Catholics/nationalists organised a march to protest against the discrimination they were experiencing.  The police force reacted violently to this and it all seemed to spiral out of control from there.  It really seemed kind of sad, the discrimination these people were facing, I also suppose history was against both sides reaching a peaceful agreement at that time, having been a number of times when both Catholics and Protestants slaughtered each other in the fight for Irish independence.

The burnt and abandoned Justice courts

Belfast is also home to the Europa hotel, which all the tour guides were quick to tell you used to hold a world record for the number of times it was bombed.  It's as if they are proud of it, which is a bit odd.  Another really weird incident happened just while we were walking around. It seemed that one of the roads had been closed off, as if a parade was about to start.  There was a policeman there keeping an eye on things so I asked him who was parading, he said "they're idiots"  I thought it was a bit weird, but turns out they were parading under the banner of the World War I division that unionists fought for, they just can't seem to let it go there. I guess I can see where this policeman's lack of patience comes from, I mean he's the person who's on the front line when the two groups try to kill each other.  I was actually a little scared, these unionists were all quite drunk and really seemed like they would be happy to pick a fight. So whilst it is interesting to experience this I would recommend spending most of your time in the Republic of Ireland, they just seemed more sorted.

The stories you hear about the Troubles are just crazy.  The photo to the left is of the abandoned Crumlin Road Courthouse, directly opposite it was the gaol, and they are connected with an underground tunnel.  During the Troubles judges in this courthouse handed out sentences which totalled something like a quarter of a million years.  It was abandoned in the 1990's, but recently it has been the subject of arson attacks, so nobody really knows what is going to be done with it.

We didn't end up spending a lot of time actually in the city.  Though we did go on a ghost tour, which was pretty weird, and being the UK they had to slip in the obligatory Jack the Ripper reference.  We also went to the museum there, I would recommend that, if only for their exhibit on the Troubles.  They must have been quite brave to actually have a section on it, because I imagine it still leads to some very strong feelings in the community.  To lighten the mood they also had an exhibit on clothes worn in movies and TV shows.  There was a big section on Downtown Abbey which seems to be the hit show here at the moment.  Even David Cameron mentioned it in a speech he gave at the Lord Mayor's inaugaration dinner.

Parliament House: Stormont, there was serious security getting in here