Throwback Thursday: Giants and Artists
Every Thursday I bring you a post from one of my journals. This week, it is a post I wrote on study abroad in Belfast. Enjoy!
“Welcome to Belfast. Belfast is a really safe city. By the way, don’t go into the pub across the street.”
This past weekend was my Arcadia sponsored trip to Belfast and the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. Belfast is a beautiful city with a fascinating history. However, when the above is the first thing your program manager says after you’ve pulled up to the hostel, it doesn’t put you at ease. Apparently, the bar across the street was known for being “sectarian.” As dumb American tourists, we would probably have made it out alive, probably.
Our trip to the North was a hectic one. That tends to happen when you try to herd 103 American students around a city and over a national landmark. We arrived Friday afternoon and got settled in and rested up for our Saturday excursion to Giant’s Causeway. Saturday was one of those lucky days in Ireland. The sea air was crisp but the sky was cloudless and the sun was warm. We broke into groups for a guided tour of the Causeway. Unfortunately, the tour was a bit of a waste. It lasted about an hour. Our guide was a young German woman who was very nice but kept talking about the geological formation of the Causeway. It involves volcanic eruption and the cooling and breaking of the rock afterward. However, not only did she hardly know what she was talking about, but the little bit she did know, she couldn’t always say in English. It was a bit awkward all around. When she set us free though we all ranged over the Causeway. It is spectacular, like stepping stones out into the ocean. On the drive back to Belfast we stopped at the ruins of Dundalk castle built on the cliffs over the ocean. It was grand just to look at it and imagine what it would have been like to live there, with nothing between your home and the wide sea.
On Sunday, a lecture was arranged for us, on the murals in Northern Ireland, particularly in Belfast. The mural tradition, begun in the early 1900s, was and still to some extent is, the artistic side to the war between the Unionists, those who would have Ireland remain under the British crown, and the Republicans, those for a united and free Ireland. The talk was incredibly interesting. The murals cover a variety of subjects, political historical and cultural. Those of the Unionists tended to have a more violent tone, depicting men in masks with guns. Though most of these have now been painted over with more politically and historically geared pictures. Those of the Republicans tended to have an international solidarity element, there are murals depicting Che Guevara and Frederick Douglass as well as mural declaring the Israeli takeover of Palestine a human right’s violation. After the lecture, we had a bus tour of the city during which we got to see a number of the murals. Belfast may now be the safest capital city in the world for tourists, but there is still a wall between Shankill Road and Falls Road. The people are friendly and jovial but you cannot help but think as you look at the adults you pass on the street, “what have you seen?”
It was an educational weekend in a historically and culturally rich city, that I will never forget.
Talk to you soon,
Maggie
