Titanic, Troubles, and Tiredness: Traversing through Belfast

Monday, March 28, 2022

By Sarah Ann

Yesterday, Mom, Christian, and I left for the Chicago airport. This was our third trip planned for going to Ireland—the first in 2020 when we were going to the Netherlands for 2 months, and the second in February when Trinity (my Irish dance school) decided to send me to an Irish dance competition called All Irelands. All Irelands got canceled (thanks covid) after we had already bought non-refundable plane tickets, but we were able to push our tickets back.

Funnily enough, two boys from my Irish dance class, Ossian and Faolan, were also on my flight. It was an eight-hour flight that went smoothly. I worked on crossword puzzles (if anyone can think of an eight letter word for "labors," please let me know in the comments), Christian watched Garfield, my mom read, and none of us slept. When we landed in Dublin, it was 5am Irish time but midnight to us.

Dad had spent 4 nights in Monaco (a tiny European country) for a work conference, so he met us in the airport. It turned out to be essential to have someone who wasn’t jetlagged, because he drove the one hour to Belfast. Our car is a stick shift with the steering wheel on the right, and Ireland is drive-on-the-left, so driving requires someone wide-awake. Before I fell asleep in the car, I could hear Dad stomping on the gas, while Mom screamed at him to stay under the speed limit. (Okay, jk, but there were a lot of nervous gasps from Mom). 

The amazing thing about being so sleep deprived is you can fall asleep for an hour, and when you wake up, you don’t think you fell asleep at all. That happened to Christian and me. When we arrived, we found a small café and ordered breakfast (ham and cheese croissants). Most of Ireland is one country, officially called the Republican of Ireland. However, Northern Ireland, where Belfast is, is part of the UK, so the café took pounds rather than euros.

 We went to the Titanic Museum. The museum was rated as the top attraction in Europe, so if you were planning to go to the Eiffel tower any time soon, you may want to reconsider and come here instead. The Titanic was built in Belfast. The museum was very well done and even included a “ride” that Christian loved.

We ate lunch at the museum (ham and cheese croissants), then headed to a taxi tour about the Troubles. Most of Ireland is majority Catholic, but in Northern Ireland Protestants make the majority. When the Republic of Ireland was gaining independence from Britain, Protestant unionists and loyalists wanted to stay part of the UK, while Catholic republicans and nationalists wanted independence. “The troubles” began in 1969, when some Protestants burned down Catholic neighborhoods, and were marked by persecution of the Catholics.

Our tour guide was a Catholic who looked like he was in his 60s. As a teenager, he’d go to the movies with friends. At the end of every movie, they’d play the anthem, and everyone would have to stand to the queen. He and his friends would always leave 10 minutes early because they refused to stand for the queen, despite this marking them as obvious Catholics for everyone.

I love hearing local people’s perspective while traveling, but one person's perspective is biased. For example, we later learned that during the troubles the Catholic Irish Republican Army bombed the Protestants, a fact our tour guide never mentioned. The next paragraph is also all according to our tour guide.

The crazy part is that the city is still segregated—Protestants on one side, Catholics (and other minorities) on the other side, businesses in the middle as neutral. It’s no longer the Protestant people persecuting the Catholics, but Protestant gangs, the UDA and UVF, keeping power. The Catholics are Irish, and our tour guide’s children went to a school where they only spoke Gaelic (Irish). Someone on the Protestant side tried to start a Gaelic school, but the gangs closed her down. There’s hope for integrated schooling in the future. Our tour guide’s best friends are Protestants, but they must come to the Catholic side to hang out, since our tour guide isn’t allowed in Protestant pubs. We began on the Catholic side. Political murals decorate the streets.

This mural on the Catholic side is partly in Irish. It celebrates Bobby Sands, former IRA leader, and one of several men to starve himself to death in a hunger strike while imprisoned during the Troubles.

Many featured Noah (like the one above), a 14-year-old Catholic who was mysteriously killed. The police refused to publicize the records about his death. It is almost certainly because they were involved in it with the gangs. There were also murals featuring issues in other countries—signs about freeing Palestine or celebrating Rosa Parks and Frederick Douglass. We crossed the 20-mile wall into the Protestant side, where the murals venerated former gang leaders.

This Protestant mural honors a Protestant gang leader.

Me along the dividing wall, which is covered in graffiti.

Northern Ireland didn’t want to leave the EU with Brexit, so our tour guide believes that they will soon vote to reunite the Republic of Ireland. In the meantime, that makes the gangs extra angry.

We left Belfast and drove four hours to Doolin, where we’ll be staying next. We stopped at an oasis-type thing along the way, and Christian was very excited to get ice cream. I slept along the way. At some point we stopped at a pretty castle.

Beautiful scenery--and cows!--lined the road.

When we made it to our inn, we were all exhausted!