blog d'europe: northern ireland

a spur of the moment decision led me up to ireland. after a 12.5 hour a bustrip (before you ask, it was the cheapest transport), i arrived on the emerald isle. i was up here on a paddywagon tour, which went across both northern ireland and the republic. as it happened - we were a bunch of about 30 gap students, mostly aussies & kiwis, with a handful of south african's too. best group of gappies ev.

together with our 100% irish born & bred guide, conner (conrad), we kickstarted the tour with northern ireland. bit ashamed to admit that i didn't know a thing about irish history until last week...but it was a slap in the face to hear that they're still recovering from civil war.

we had our first night in belfast, the capital of northern ireland. we did the famous black taxi tour (with a taxi that was actually bright red...) around the city, to give us belfast's troubled history in a nutshell. it was a bit of a laugh trying to understand our taxi driver & his belfast accent. imagine the irish accent 10x quicker, with half the syllables left out, and the other half with different stress... and you'll understand why we only picked up about half of what walter (or as he said it, wo-ar) was saying.

we passed the europa - ireland's most bombed hotel with 31 hits to date, as well as the peace wall. it's a brick wall covered in murals depicting happenings from the intense '80s. this wall essentially divides protestant belfast from catholic belfast, and still closes its gates every evening - so you can't get from one side to the other after dusk. along shankill rd you can find more murals again (the irish are big on their murals), as well as a part of the wall where the public can write peace messages.

we dropped into giant's causeway, the bizarre rock formations on the north coast, leading into the irish sea. they're made up of hundreds of hexagonal stone columns squeezed together. it was formed by volcanic lava, 10's of millions of years ago. the gaelic folklore behind the causeway however, is that it was made by a scottish giant as he fled ireland, destroying the stone pathway connecting the two countries as he went. click here for the full story..

derry, or londonderry (depending on whether you're catholic or protestant) was next. despite being in the north of ireland, it's a mostly catholic city - with only about 300 protestants, who still live within a caged section of the city, for their own safety. you might've picked up on the fact that personal identity in ireland is not so much your nationality, but more your religion - namely catholic or protestant. this was a weird concept for me, because in australia, religion doesn't play such a huge role in defining who we are.

in the protestant part of londonderry, the curbstones are painted blue, red & white (the colours of the union jack) to emphasise their belonging to the uk.

so now i'm making it sound like ireland is a grim place to be...but it's really not! derry is home to peadar o'donnell's pub. aka the epicentre of irish river dancing. while enjoying a beer or ten, we all got to both watch a professional river dancer (yes, there is such a thing) ....& then join in, with live irish music bouncing off the walls.

i also think it's important to mention that i bought a pint o' guinness by choice (because it was the cheapest, but that's not the point), and that i actually finished it. mean effort on my behalf, just sayin'..

slán agat,