september 14

Belfast

The three retired men sitting with me on the train from Dublin to Belfast had come from their yearly trip south to bet on horses and drink. They were great. One of them forgot to lock the door to the bathroom on the train. He started doing his business only to find buddy had opened the door behind him. As he chuckled with the third old man next to me, the guy explained it was revenge for a similar prank the gentleman in the bathroom had played on him years ago.
They teased whatever young woman had the misfortune to walk past and they talked to me for a couple hours. I can't remember exactly what we discussed, but I know it was filled with that joking, prodding, friendly spirit that fills the room whenever two or more Irish are gathered. I told them about my trip, and they wished me luck.
Belfast actually reminded me a lof of Spokane. There are about the same number of people in the city as there are in Spokane County. It's cloudy most of the time. Its past is industrial. It seems to suffer the same self esteem issues when comparing itself to the larger, predominant city on the island.
I took the Titanic harbor tour for shits and giggles and spent the next morning cruising around the harbor. "Titanic: built by an Irishman, sunk by and Englishman," read the t-shirts. It was interesting. I saw where, as the Onion would put it, the worlds biggest metaphore was contructed, along with two other ships of the same size. I learned that it cost a first class passsenger about $60,000 of today's dollars to cross the atlantic, with butlers and servants in tow. I saw one of the ship's tenders, built from the same hand-drawn plans as Titanic but 1/200th the size. A battleship from World War I was moored at one end of the harbor and a rusty crane unloaded sand one bucket at a time from a ship on the other.
Most of the waterfront is now densely developed, with offices and swank flats lining water the color of Guiness. The city spent millions on a weir to control the tide upriver. Before, low tide would expose smelly mud flats that detered people from living there. Now that area is covered in new development, and there are plans to turn the otherwise unused area where Titanic was built into high rises.
Nearby, Belfast's more recent past is evidenced by the blast wall along one side of the courthouse. CCTV cameras are perched every 30 feet, and a high fence keeps people away from the sides not easily accessible by car.
Ireland's Troubles started shortly after the country revolted from Brittian in the 1920s. Ethnic Scottish and English Protestants from loyalist settlements in the east of the country feared persecution from an independent and overwhelmingly Catholic republic. Supported heavily by Brittain they fought to keep a handful of counties in the north part of the commonwealth. Meanwhile, Republicans still sing songs about one, united Irish republic.
There's a parking garage outside downtown Belfast where commuters, school kids and anyone else who needs a ride home pile into shared taxis. Their Catholic, blue-collar neighborhood was the scene of heavy street fighing. The taxis system started after pramilitaries startetd hijacking city busses to block off roads. Although the violence stopped some ten years ago and bus service is back, the taxis are still a cheap way to get up Mill Street from downtown.
I stopped at Milltown Cemetery overlooking the city. Walking around in the drizzle, I eventually found the section with the Irish flag waving damply overhead devoted to fallen IRA members and hunger strikers who died in a Brittish prison nearby. As I walked back downtown, I passed murals personifying the same people. One, immortalized in my guidebook, reads "our revenge will be the laugher of our children."
I snapped a picture of the spike-topped "peace wall" a block off Mill Street and of Sinn Fein headquarters closer to downtown.
About a half mile away an image of a man in a ski mask with a rifle welcomes passersby to Sandy Row, warning them that the Protestant neighborhood is protected by the Ulster Freedom Fighters.
It's been a long time since the ceasefire. In reality, a few murals are all that is left to distinguish Belfast from any other large Irish city in the eyes of the casual traveller. At one point during the train ride into Northern Ireland, one of the older Irish guys pointed out a place where the tracks are always being bombed. He then explained that a bomb on the tracks is how the locals have come to describe anything that causes the trains to be delayed.
While both sides have disarmed, the peace is by no means guarunteed. While I was there, the Irish papers reported that Protestant and Catholic political leaders in North Ireland were at an impasse that was quickly becoming tense. During my stay in Belfast someone found a beer keg stuffed with explosives hidden in a city park. The partisan paper I was reading accused the IRA of knowing about it but not telling police.
Newspapers aside, the only chaos happening during my night in Belfast took place outside my hostel window. I'd found a place near the train station and across from the local college. As my cabbie explained the next morning, students were just getting to campus, many with more money in their bank accounts than they had ever had at their disposal.
I had a 7 a.m. ferry to catch. Worried I'd sleep through the alarms on my watch and Palm Pilot I decided not to wear ear plugs. They wouldn't have helped anyway. Until 3 or 4 a.m. roving groups of young people would pass below my window yelling at the top of their lungs. Not talking, or laughing or even being drunkenly loud. I'm talking about ballpark, take-a-deep-breath, make-you-hoarse afterward screaming. Some were singing. Some were just yelling at each other. One screamed "I'm done" in his adaptation of Hey Hey Hey Good Bye. Between groups of teenagers, the rambunctions Somolians in the kitchen below me picked up the slack. Chatty by nature, the older Irish gentleman a few beds over who I'd met over dinner asked me if I was ok when I went down stairs to tell them to knock it off.
Then, with the crisp timing of a well performed play, entered two gentlemen who in concert were the loudest snorers I've ever heard. I'm not exaggerating. One of them had sleep apnea so bad I though he was going to die. After a couple of hours, the nasty part of me kind of wished he would.
I got up before my alarm went off at 5 a.m. After a fast cup of tea and a few minutes of panic when I couldn't figure out how to unlock the ancient front door to get to my cab I made my way to the ferry port and out of Ireland.