A week in Northern Ireland

Pictures: (top left) me at the Giant's Causeway, (top right) a mural in the city of Derry commemerating the events of Bloody Sunday, (bottom) view climbing up to the Carric-a-kee rope bridge.

I just returned from my weeklong trip to Northern Ireland. I spent a week in Belfast and then this weekend in Londonderry (or Derry- that difference in name actually means a lot to people and demonstrates the large degree that everything is polarized by the Unionist-Nationalist divide). Our trip coincided with a rare 30 degree heat wave (translating to about 86 degree F). Although not really all that hot for summer, I must be adapting to the weather b/c it sure felt hot.

In Belfast, I stayed at Queens University. I was a very old looking gothic set of buildings. Our housing accomidations were single dorm rooms with a shared kitchen space. Queens was nice altough a bit removed from the city center. Our program managed to pack a lot of events into the week, so I am a bit exaushted at the moment. We visited Belfast City Hall and had a "reception" with the Lord Mayor (it was really just presenting us with a plaque and then a tour). We took a full-day excursion to the Giant's Causeway and the Carric-a-kee Rope bridge. Both of these coastal spots were amazing. The Causeway is a natuaral phonemon that produces highly regular 5 and 6-sided stones that pattern the coastline. Plus it is surrounded by huge cliff sides. The Rope Bridge, obviously took some effort in design, connects a part of the coast to a smaller island and provides breathtaking views of the Atlantic coast. I never realized that ocean water was really that blue.

No visit to Northern Ireland could be complete without an examination of the pecular events that have shaped its history. Since the partition of Ireland in the 1920's, there have been alternating periods of tension and relative peace. Much of Belfast was bombed out in WWII, so much of the sites, such as city hall have been largley reconstructed. The violence of the Troubles still looms large here. One of our day tours was a visit to local murals. Murals have become a way to express almost any feeling about this violence from calls for peace to continued celebration of IRA, UFF, UDA, etc paramilitaries that caused chaos in the city. I must admitt that the type of neighborhoods that housed Belfast's murals were very run-down. As one of my peers put it "its a bit like a gang war, where you put your gang colors on your house." It was always clear if you were in an Unionist or Nationalist (more commonly and less aduquitely grouped as Protestant and Catholic) area based on either Union Jacks or Irish tricolor flags hanging from lamposts and shop windows. Sadly, although as our tour guide put it "things have gotten much better", there are still clear demarcations of territory made even more acute by the erection of so-called "peace walls" that seperete some neighborhoods.

Not that the story, is all gloom but it has a long way to go. We finished the week by taking a trip to Stormont (the N. Ie. Parliment). It was a beatiful building that hasn't held a single session of Parliment in several years. The UK government at Westminster has been struggling to get a devolved Parliment up and running but hasn't been able to do so. Our round table discussions with members of 3 of the 4 major parties showed why polarization is still a problem.

Now back in Dublin, and have finally moved into my last housing accomidations for the trip. So I don't have to move again. I will be traveling to London next week, I cannot wait.

Dail Eireann, Kilmainham Gaol

Hi all,

In my last post, I commented that I would be taking a visit to Dail Eireann (the Irish parliament) and it turned out to be a fun trip. Our group got to meet with the head of one of the Irish third parties, the Labour Party. Oddly enough, this is one of the few Irish parties that has an English name. The two primary parties (that I am spelling wrong) Finna Fial and Finna Gail both have Irish names. I should know what they mean but have forgotten. We had a Q&A with Mr. Rabbitte, the Labour leader, while he tried to answer our questions, like most politicians he dodged really saying anything concrete. I was shocked to hear him, and later one of our guest lectures, refer to the their "welfare state." Opinions aside, no one in the US would ever self-describe our government as a "welfare state", except as a form of attack against a proposed policy. In Ireland though, politicians can openly talk about the benefits of such a mentality. Sadly, when we took our actual tour of the facilities our guide was a bit boring and we couldn't take any pictures. I wish I had some photos to share because the place was full of ornate design.

Yesterday, our group took a tour of Kilmainham Gaol (Gaol= jail). Its a famous Dublin landmark in the way I would guess Alcatrz is in the States. The most important thing about the jail is its connection to political imprisonments. Charles Stuart Parnell, who was a British MP and argued for Irish Home rule, was imprisoned there. Also the leaders of the Easter 1916 rising were executed at the Gaol. I have been inundated with 1916 right now, both in literature and history class and in seeing the film The Wind That Shakes the Barley (about the civil war that proceeds it).

This will most likely be my last post until I return from Belfast. Sadly, I won't have easy Internet access up in the North. I can get on a bit but I will most likely just be checking e-mail and not writing a lot. I won't be back from Belfast until the end of next week.

Weekend in Galway-Arron Islands

Hi all,

I know that its been a while since I have updated this blog. There simply just doesn't seem to be time to get anything accomplished. In that mindset, I am going to drop straight prose for awhile and let some bulleted points speak for themselves.

This weekend, I traversed the country to the city of Galway on the west coast. Its a nice big-small town. I think it gets a lot of tourists because its the biggest city around. We also went to the Arron Islands (actually just the biggest one Ish Mor) off the coast, one of the last places wher people still speak Irish as a first language. Here's some key highlights. I would like to apolozie to the Arron Islands as I know that I have spelled everything there wrong.

-Ran, I mean sprinted, I mean pushed through a door, to catch a train.
-Listened to traditional Irish music in a pub. Funny because all the locals know the words and the tourists don't
-Went to a club to find that almost all their pop music is the same as ours.
-Stayed in a hostel for the first (and second) time
-Leaned out over a 200-300 foot high cliff
-visited a beehive (that's the picture in the upper right). It's one of the oldest homes in the Arron Islands.
-Was really shocked at how life on Arron really has only gotten a lot of modern convineces in the last 40 years or so. Yet at the same time life expectancy is around 80.

Back in Dublin:
-Had an aweful and grossly overcomplicated move that resulted in getting a much better room.
-Watched the World cup final, surronded by the large numbers of Itialinans who seem to flock to Dublin in the summer.
-Was asked if I had come to Ireland to defect

I am sure more interesting things will follow. Currently, I am really excited to take our tour of Parliment tommorow.