To Ireland

Day 17
I started the morning by waking up at stupid o'clock for my flight from Glasgow to Belfast. I was incredibly excited about the idea of being in Ireland again. I was also very ready to be out of my travel wading pool.

The flight was about 25 minutes and quite painless. In almost no time I was checking into the hostel. Apparently a large group of French students booked half of the hostel. The powers that be at the hostel decided to keep the kids on one side and the adults on another. This just meant that I was upgraded from a 12 bed room to one with just 4 people. So far Ireland is good.

One of the main things that I wanted to do was to take a black taxi tour of the murals. It was too expensive to do alone, but the girl at reception promised me that she would find me some people to go with.

My first stop was to figure out a way to Galway. Turns out that its quite expensive and takes an entire day. I still plan on going, but wasn't happy about the experience for such a short time in the city.

I then basically took myself on a walking tour. It wasn't hard, there were signs all over the place about this building and that dent in the sidewalk. I checked out the City Hall, it was pretty impressive and surrounded by monuments, however, it was closed to the public for refurbishment. I went to the harbor that Titanic had departed from. They are revamping the entire former shipbuilding area and calling the the Titanic area. Kinda weird. I popped into Belfast Cathedral, it was built in the 1930's and had a seriously ugly metal spire. The inside was really nice though. The Belfast Telegraph building had a memorial on the side of it that still showed the damage from a WWII bomb. The paper remained open despite the damage to the building.

I headed back to the hostel at the appointed time, just hoping that someone would want to take the tour with me. I was prepared to check out the murals alone, however, this was not exactly the safest thing to do. As luck would have it two Leipziger's, Christian and Markus wanted to go on the tour. One of my closest German friends is also from Leipzig and I was happy to meet the father and son pair from there. Markus had even spent a year going to high school in Nebraska and spoke practically perfect English.

We started the tour in the Loyalist (Protestant) Shankill area. There were a lot of murals to check out. One commemorated William of Oranges 1690 victory over James II. Another was of Stevie McKeag, a top assassin who died under mysterious circumstances. There was a mural to commemorate the Catholic burning of Protestant homes in 1969. Apparently all the murals have been painted within the last few years, there was even one that was not quite finished yet. There was a collage of Loyalist militant groups holding the orange flag. A creepy mural of a guy holding a gun followed you around as you looked at all of the murals. There were several others that we didn't discuss as well.

We then proceeded to the freedom wall. This wall divides the Protestant and Catholic areas. It was begun in the 1970's and has been added to as recently as 6 months ago. It is three miles long. The thing to do is to write a message of peace and sign your name. I'm not creative and simply wrote peace.

At this point we crossed over to the Unionist or Catholic side. There was a small park called Clonord Martyrs Park. The names of those killed were listed on the wall. There were several young children on the list. The houses that backed up to the Peace Wall had cages to protect from bombs protruding from them. The wall itself showed evidence of attacks.

Nearby was a memorial to Bobby Sands. He died in 1983 during a hunger protest while in prison. Unionist prisoners were originally allowed to wear their own clothing and were not required to work. This was changed and the prisoners went on strike. Bobby Sands was the first to die. He had also been elected as an MP, but was never able to take the seat as he would not swear allegiance to England.

The last stop on the tour was a wall of murals about other causes. Many of them were very anti-Bush. There was one in support of Palestine, and another of the Basque Region.

At the end of the tour at Markus' request our guide told us that he was Protestant and a Loyalist. None of us had guessed because he gave such a non-objective tour. He then told us that he could give us both sides, but that there was only one right side.

This is still a very touchy subject and I asked if it was the desire of both sides for people to get a better understanding of the situation of the troubles. He said that was basically it. However, when the idea of tours first came up it was needed to negotiate with both sides to guarantee everyone's safety. A cease fire was signed in the 1990's and there has been very limited violence since then.

I was exhausted from the early day and spent the rest of the eventing watching tv in the hostel before going to sleep.