Murals

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okay, so i'm a bit tired, my apologies if i ramble or misspell or don't make sense 😊 so i got back to dublin on saturday, found a hostel after a bit of searching, it was touch-and-go whether i would be setting my tent up in st. stephens green, but we managed to get 2 beds in a 6 bed dorm in the kinlay hostel, which is just meters away from christchurch cathedral (yes, i have picked up on the metric system and other random irish things) so there was a bit of hostel magic, which made up for the room arrangements. yeah, 4 drunk guys in a room with no ventilation, not so much a smell i want remember....but that was made for by the mago that we were given at breakfast - really delicious, and i confirmed my "special" status by how i managed to mangle it cutting it. i had a relaxing sunday, went to mass in a 2 churches that were roughly 1000 years old, but who's really counting? then naptime and off to the bus station to get to belfast. the ride to belfast was uneventful, we were met at the bus station by trevor, my cousin's friend she met while in madrid. he's cute, and the accent certainly helps...and everyone knows my weakness for good accents. (for instance, a fireman with an accent...almost irresistable 😊 ) but i digress...so we had a quick tour of belfast, then a glorious night of sleep - it was quiet, no bugs, no smell, really one of the simple joys of life. out the door this morning (after 15 minutes of trying to lock the door and us realizing that maybe we would just watch tv today if we couldn't get it locked), really with having difficulties turning on the shower and now this...there are clearly life skills that i still need to learn. so into belfast and time to see the sites. so it's a european city with cathedrals and big buildings and tiny cobblestone streets. not too different from anywhere else. the fascinating thing about northern ireland are 'the troubles' - the civil war between protestant and catholic irish. there's peace, but trevor spoke about growing up during the troubles - avoiding certain areas and not going to clubs because you never knew if they would be bombed that night, and it's recent too, so there's two streets that are strongly protestant / catholic. i'm staying in the strongly protestant area, lots of red ulster fists, signifying unity with england and the queen. one store advertised 'one island, two nations', while the catholic side wants to join with the republic of ireland. the irish flag is symbolic of this - green for catholic, orange for protestant, joined by a strip of white for peace. anyway, these murals are amazing, generally recording the number of dead in a certain bombing, pledging to never give up until ireland is united/freed and with various initials following - ira, uda (ulster defense association), uff (ulster freedom fighters) etc. the city is still very physically divided, west belfast is protestant, with one enclave of catholics (drove through that tonight and our catholic guide was uncomfortable - little kids yelling bastard and f**k) and visible fences dividing the city. the two sides root for different football teams and the east side sides with the underdog - memorials to sands, i forget his first name, a hunger striker who died in the 80's. they sympathize with anybody fighting for independence, so cuba and hezbollah are in there. different flags fly in the various quarters and gaelic is only seen in the catholic area. when you see the murals, each side glorifies its own and vilifies the other, and claims that all the dead were innocents and that each attack was unprovoked (really wish i could post a pic here, because these murals are pretty intense) but it makes you think about how perception is often everything. any side can be innocent and any side can be considered terrorists, its all a matter of where you're sitting. to see it so starkly and so physically divided was fascinating and revealed, in a way, the stupidity of it, literally, that you're an good person if you live here, and a bad person if you live there. 'where the streets have no name' is referring to belfast - when where you live won't determine whether you are 'us' or 'them', because any address in belfast is immediately identifiable as catholic or protestant. and that's all i have to say about that.

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