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Published: December 5th 2008
Otherwise known as...
The Flat Saturday Agreement...
The Red Black Hack Tour...
And...
Are You Sure We Aren't In Gaza?
Hiya everyone,
So our second full day on that Green Isle that floats off to the left of our home away from home in Edinburgh brought us to the city of Belfast in Northern Ireland, which, for those of you who don't know, is still a part of the United Kingdom even though Ireland itself has been an independent nation since the 1920s. I'll explain a bit of the conflict history a bit further down for now I think I'll explain the lead of to the first of our secondary titles for the day.
We left Dublin bright and early in the morning, though in actuality the sun hadn't even come up yet as it was barely eight o' the clock in the morning and we are in winter on the same latitude as northern Canada over here. Onto our bright green Paddywagon bus we went with 14 other people from various parts of Europe (Germany, Brussels, Italy, possibly Spain), and our tour-guide/bus driver David who is from Belfast, born and bred.
Plunkett's Head Is Here
I just couldn't bring myself to take a picture of it so you'll have to look it up online.He regaled us with stories of the passing landscape and his home city while we ventured to our first stop, which was a misty little town on the River Boyne which is home to St. Peter's Cathedral - which happens to be the home of the preserved head of St. Oliver Plunkett. Why is this hundred years old head sitting in a little glass case with a golden spire coming out of the top, you might ask? And since I'm sure you've asked so nicely, I'll tell you.
You see St. Oliver Plunkett was a Catholic himself, the Archbishop and Primate of Ireland at the time to be exact, and he wanted other people to be Catholic to. And since he was a teacher he had quite a few people who looked up to him in the area, and many of them converted to Catholicism under his tutelage. Which would have been all fine and dandy - except for one teensy little problem - you see the year was around 1680 and there were lots of people who didn't like Catholics because of a wee thing called the Popish Plot and the remaining anti-catholicism hanging on from the
years under Cromwell. So there were quite a few people none to happy with Mr. Plunkett so they tried him for treason against the state (they said he was going to let a French invasion into the country) they however had no evidence (because he wasn't really a traitor) and couldn't find him guilty in a lawful court - so they set up a kangaroo court (no due process, etc.), found him guilty and had him hanged, drawn and quartered in England and the little bits of him were sent afar in the years that followed - his head eventually making it back to St. Peter's Cathedral in Drogheda. He was the last Catholic martyr to be killed in England. And to completely honest his little head in that little gold box was a bit creepy (and sort of tourist trap Americanny - think like, this potato looks like a bat or the biggest ball of string type thing) and not the best thing to see at half eight in the morning.
Then it was back onto our wee green bus of Irish wonder and we set off for our next side exhibit before we drove the last
The Wee Tower at Monasterboice
It was all in the middle of a cemetery. stretch. Stop #2 was a bit out in the country where we were greeted by the celtic crosses and round tower of Monasterboice. As I'm sure you've already realized (from the above and previous entries), Nessa and I feel compelled to give you all a history lesson every time we go somewhere new, but this one is even special-er than all the rest, because this one, my friends, has Vikings. We could name this lesson "Monks Under Fire, Literally" if we wanted I guess. And here's why. You see, we're talking Catholicism again, the monks who lived in this wee tower being Catholic and all. Now it wasn't that the Vikings cared at all what they were, except that Catholic monks were usually particularly well off because people gave them little gifts and whatnots when they were married or had a child baptized or anything like that. So Vikings being the burning, raping and pillaging lot that they were, used to show up and steal all the monks stuff and then run back to their boats. Until the monks wizened up that is, and built their little tower with only one door. That door happens to be about 15 feet
off the ground however and could only be reached by a rope ladder. So when one of the brothers saw the Vikings coming they'd all climb up and into the tower and wait for the Vikings to leave because they couldn't get in. Well that lasted for about nine years and then the Vikings one upped the monks on the wizening up and realized that if they lit a fire at the bottom of the tower the monks would either have to get out or die of smoke inhalation - this worked wonderfully and everything went back to normal for the thieving Vikings.
And round about the tower of two of the oldest intact representations of stone celtic crosses. Which, by the way, are absolutely gorgeous. The whole idea behind the celtic cross was an incorporation between the existing pagan religion in the British isles, whose symbol was the circle (continuity of life, sun and moon and all that) and the cross of Christianity. So the circle was laid over the juncture of the arms in the cross (sometimes there are two) and there you have it ladies and gents - the celtic cross. That was Monasterboice, and
Wee Doors Will Do In A Pinch
When there are no wee windows in sight. then we were back onto what to be completely honest looked like the Garden State Parkway, only backwards, on our way to Belfast. And that is when the Flat Saturday Agreement, which brought burning rubber, not to be confused with the Good Friday Agreement which brought peace (I'll explain later) occurred.
For the first time in Paddywagon history our little green bus copped a puncture. And BOOM there goes our tire, burning rubber, squealing rim, all that goodness. And there we were stuck on the side of that psuedo-GSP only 5 minutes outside of Belfast. Well David, or bus driver, also discovered at this point that the bus was not equipped with an adequate jack to change the tire. So there we were listening to one of the most hilarious radio shows on alcohol we've possibly ever heard while we waiting for the Black Taxi Tour drivers to come out and rescue us from our popped tire purgatory. And that my faithful readers is how we arrived at our next sub-title, the Red Black Hack Tour, because the "Black Taxi (or Hack, as they call them)" that we were ushered into was in fact, not black at all,
Across the Graveyard
It was absolutely frigid, but gloriously beautiful with all of the trees covered in ice. but red.
Now these little taxis are run by a bunch of older men from Belfast who have lived through the political unrest that began in earnest with The Troubles in the 60s. So our cab driver took us around the city to some of the most politically charged sites. Starting with he murals on the Protestant side. Now let's stop here for a second and let me fill you all a crash course about what went on in Northern Ireland until the Good Friday Agreement, more commonly known as the Belfast Agreement, was signed on August 10th 1998. So the basis of the conflict existed between the Protestant Unionist population who wished to remain a part of the UK and the Catholic Republicans, who wished to break off from the UK and join Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland. There were a variety of factions and political goals expressed during the time, but at the end of the day over 3,000 people had been killed and thousands of bombs had been detonated in the area. I highly suggest you look up the conflict, even if you only read it on Wikipedia, to get a feel for
all that happened.
So back to the murals on the Protestant side. These murals have been commissioned by the leading Unionist political parties in the area and cover a variety of subjects, including Oliver Cromwell, William of Orange (another Protestant Figurehead), memorials to fallen militants, and even the Red Hands of Ulster (Long story short: A long long time ago there were these two guys and they both wanted to rule the same bit of land. So they went to the king and said "Oh, King of mine, tell us who gets to rule in Ulster?" and the king said whichever one you lays hand on the soil of Ulster first shall. So they ran, and when the one man realized he was losing and could not catch up, he cut of his own hand and tossed it over the river and over his opponent and onto the land of Ulster. Thus sealing his victory and his rule. The End.). It was on our way to the Catholic murals, which, as you will see from the pictures, are generally more internationally political and concerned with freedom, rather than focusing entirely on the former conflict, that our third and
final sub-title appeared for the day. "Are you sure we aren't in Gaza?"
I don't think that I can explain to you how devastating it is to realize that the people of a flourishing and thoroughly modern city (Belfast is no peripheral, far flung corner of the world) still live with such an obvious and painful reminder of their past and the tenuous truth of their present truce. The wall that stretches across Belfast between the Protestant and Catholic sides of town in easily 30 feet high and consists of concrete block, sheet metal and industrial fencing (the top portion having only been finished about a week before we arrived). In the wall are gates that allow traffic to flow in between the sections of the city, only two are open 24hrs a day, one that is open from very early in the morning to a bit later at night, and the rest are only open Monday through Friday during working hours. These two sides of Belfast remain almost entirely segregated, and while Republicans, Unionists and people with no open affiliation work and live alongside one another in the city centre No Catholic would/could live or work on
Psuedo - Garden State Parkway
This is out the window of our broken down bus.
the Protestant side (unless they worked in a bank or government building) and the same would be true for Protestants on the Catholic side. Bombs may no longer shake the peace of Belfast and police have just recently switched from armored four-wheel drive SUVs to regular police cars, but there is no doubt that tensions still visibly exists within the city limits. Vanessa and I signed that wall (as visitors are want to do) and we'll sign it again when we return for the conflict simulation we'll be attending during grad school to truly understand how such a conflict was allowed to exist where and when it did and how the international community came together to see it come to an end.
Then they dropped us off in city centre where we ate at a Northern Irish version of Panera, enjoyed in the international Christmas festival which included a German beer tent and an insane spinning bratwurst grill, homemade fudge, chocolate dipped waffles and the apparent Irish obsession with Native Americans. We have no idea why it's there, but it definitely is, I can't tell you how many stores were names Cheyenne or Mohawk and we ate at
William of Orange
On the Protestant Side a pizza place called Apache with the ten tenants of Apache life stenciled on the walls. At the festival it manifested itself as a tent full of dream catchers and animal pelts and a giant tepee. They never did fix the green bus of wonder and sent us home on a little white one, driven by a man who got a lost in Dublin. But that was that.
And this my friends, in many many words, but not nearly enough, was our trip to Belfast.
Yours aye,
Kaitlyn
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Eileen Valdes
non-member comment
who would have thought
well very funny blog , first of all. love the celtic crosses and st. Pat. also the history lesson, i need one. loved what you left on the wall, hope your generation will be different and break the cycle and not repeat history, but learn from it. awesome, love ya marmey