“She was fine when she left here.”

August 15, 2013

Belfast City Hall

                              

A Cultural Event at City Hall

As a tourist in Belfast it would be easy to miss the segmentation of the city if you were not looking hard enough but locals know better than to march in unwarranted territory. From 1970 through 1997, Belfast was the headquarters for the Irish Troubles. During this period of time there was brutal conflict between the Catholic republican community, who want Ireland to succeed from the United Kingdom and the Ulster Protestants, who are loyal to the crown.

Although there has been great progress since the end of the troubles; the city of Belfast is still very divided based on how one identifies their nationality and religious beliefs. Ross and I took the sightseeing tour bus and learned all about each section of the city. During our two hour bus tour we were painted a vivid picture of the sever impact the troubles had on the city.

Their version of Parliament 

Making our way through the loyalist areas the light post are heavily decorated with British flags. There are numerous murals illustrating the Ulster Volunteer Force ( UVF), some of them memorials others blunt images of power and gorilla warfare.

Peace Wall..its the green one in the back.

 As we transitioned to the areas of the city that identify with the republic of Ireland Ross and I saw the Peace Walls. These partitions divide the city up preventing contact between the rivaling communities. The Peace Walls are roughly 40 feet tall and are up to 3 miles long. They look like maximum security prison walls, minus the razor wire. 

The always changing murals on the peace walls represent a lingering desire to just live in peace with one another. The passages from one neighborhood to another when crossing the peace walls are called peace entrances. Most of them stay open all the time, as a sign of good faith but others in areas with historically higher levels of hostility, like Murder Road, keep hours like a business, only open Monday through Friday 8am til 5pm.

Peace Entrance 

                                         

During our visit with Kevin and Trish we got a even better understanding of how the troubles effected those living through it. They both were raised Catholic so as children they remember not vacationing in certain areas of Ireland because even holiday locations were split based on differing views. Trish remembers signs in shop windows that said, “ Hiring, Catholics need not apply.” Even in the smaller towns of Northern Ireland had roads you knew better than to walk on. Kevin was a cabby for a few years of the troubles; he explained how stressful this job was at the time, always fearful of random acts of violence in the streets or being asked to drive through a questionable area.

Another fact the tour guide told us was that a hotel in Belfast held the record for many years for being the #1 most bombed hotel in the world. The Europa Hotel in center city now holds second place to a hotel in Baghdad and since has undergone a name change.

Queens College, Belfast

                                      

The narrowest house in Belfast

The South side of Belfast has become known as more progressive considering it is made up of a younger demographic who seem to careless about how one classifies themselves. In this area of Belfast a growing trend is mixed religion schools so that hatred is not breed into the younger generations but throughout the majority of the city Catholic and Protestant schools still exist.

The Titanic Museum 

Everyone in Belfast is proud of is the fact that the Titanic was built here. The tour guide spoke a good bit about the building process when traveling through the historic ship yard before approaching the new Titanic museum; the newest tourist attraction in the city. The saying about the Titanic goes, “She was fine when she left here.” Even though the story of the Titanic was tragic the locals take great pride in the final product before the ice burg got a hold of it.    

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