oh boy. belfast, belfast, belfast. we arrived on july 11th, sunday night before the big 12th of july orange fest. the city was eerily dead. tensions had mounted. we were in for a treat.
or something. i was in a funk for the whole week. something having to do with the protestant celebrations of catholic defeat, plus not being in dublin, plus the whole city being tumultuous...it wasn't the best of weeks, to be sure. but i'll start from the beginning.
we woke up monday morning to hear of riots that had broken out the night before. these riots happened every night while we were in town. so, from the very beginning of our stay, we were quite uncomfortable. we had been told that the troubles were officially over and that things were starting to get better, but the violence hasn't stopped. it was incredibly interesting to be in a place where some people hate other people with so much passion and overwhelming senses of entitlement...on both sides. the protestants and catholics are both victims and violators of the situation and, in short, it put us americans in quite a strange place.
monday, we attended the orange fest parade, much to my dismay. i was uncomfortable from the outset and that only heightened when i, along with two other girls in the program, were approached by a very drunk older creeper who sought us out from the parade. awkward and ridiculous to say the least. he downed his budweisers, asked if we had husbands, belched on us, spit on us (all because he was drunk at 11am), and was generally completely distasteful and unfortunate. i kept turning my back on him, but he kept talking and telling us how much he liked us. after that encounter, our group leaders all came over to tell us that they had watched the entire debacle and wanted to intervene, but would have probably caused more trouble since they all have dublin accents. THAT is the epitome of the trouble in belfast.
after a quick lunch at the dorms, we headed out for a bus tour of the murals in shankill and falls roads, centers of the protestant and catholic working classes, respectively. as you can imagine, a tour bus traipsing through these blue collar neighborhoods was not necessarily the most exciting thing. we were unable to turn one way down one street for fear of being stoned. literally. BUT the murals were beautiful and we were able to further understand the troubles from the context of the people. interesting, yes. comfortable, not so much.
on tuesday, we had classes. the program had us housed about a 1/2-hour's walk away from main campus, so it was quite a hike to get anywhere in town. luckily, we had lovely sinead leading us to most of our destinations, so that was helpful. i thoroughly enjoyed our history and literature classes, both lectured by incredible northern irish speakers to give us more of a context of the city in their terms. david park, the lit lecturer, was incredibly engaging and i highly recommend that everyone pick up his book, "the truth commissioner." he read quite a bit of it to us and it sounds amazing. after those classes, we went to lunch. or, attempted to. the city was still completely shut down, and literally the only restaurant open (since we only had an hour and the dorms were so far away) was at the ulster museum in the botanic gardens. luckily, they had meat pies of all kinds and, as we were starving (which seems to be a theme on this trip) we were incredibly happy with the meal. then, we headed back to film class.
now, this class has become a dreaded one for most of us on the program, mostly because of our professor, stashu. he is the resident director of the program and teaches in the film department at um, so most of us had high hopes about the class. unfortunately, he is one of the most inwardly bigoted men i have ever met. he makes gross generalizations at every turn and genuinely believes all the stereotypes about the irish. so, being me, i confronted him during this class after he claimed that "all irish people are outrightly violent." yes, he said this. he says lots of things like this, actually, and it's a rough part of the program. i raised my hand and said, "you know, i come from a strongly irish catholic family, so i feel like i can speak to the fact that many irish people are not violent, but passionate." he replied, "well, to the rest of us, you guys just seem violent." the entire class groaned. it was a nightmare of a class, to say the least. i really find it unfortunate, too, because i do want to like him. but his ideas of people around him are just so...closeminded. it makes me sad that people like him exist, and most of the people on the program agree with me.
tuesday night, we were given a reading by a northern irish poet by the name of cieran carson. he was, in a word, amazing. i sat through most of the reading in awe and realized later than i had some personal things to take care of. like i said, i was in a funk for most of the week, so this did not come as a surprise.
on wednesday, we met the bus at 9 for a trip to the antrim coast. we visited dunluce castle, the giant's causeway, and the carrick-a-rede bridge. it was, in short, basically a 12-hour hike in the rain. but it was a welcome respite from the strange vibes of belfast, so we took it happily. though it wasn't the most beautiful day, my pictures cannot do this place justice. it was absolutely mindblowing! i sincerely loved every minute of it.
on thursday, we had more class. this was a little more rough, as most of us were burnt out from the week and especially from the hike, so the day felt a lot longer than it actually was. after that, we were taken to stormont, home of the northern irish parliament. while there, we were able to sit down with and ask questions of MPs from the four major political parties in northern ireland. at the beginning of the week, peter collins, director of the northern ireland leg of the program, asked all of us to write down a few questions each to ask the MPs. he told us we he would choose a few and then ask the students who wrote them to ask them directly. my question got chosen, but he didn't tell the seven of us who was reading until about five minutes before the roundtable. unfortunately (or luckily...i'm still not sure how i feel about it) i was near the end of the list of questions, so we ran out of time before i could read my question. but, i was honored to be chosen and peter thanked those of us who had written the unanswered questions vocally, so we were still recognized.
as friday was to be an early morning, a group of us grabbed dinner at an amazing italian restaurant and then headed back to the dorms to pack. we were anxious to get out of that city, without a doubt. while i'm glad to have learned much of what i did in context of northern ireland and the troubles, i wish that the city had been more receptive, more comfortable, or even more interesting. in short, i'm glad to say i've been to belfast, but don't think i'll return.
antrim coast
stormont
xxx
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