Belfast

I spent my second day in Northern Ireland exploring the city of Belfast. Belfast felt smaller and quainter than Dublin, which is interesting considering that it was the epicenter of so much violence during The Troubles.

Belfast City Hall.

In the morning, I walked through the campus of the Queens University of Belfast...

... and the botanical gardens near campus. To the right is a statue of Baron Kelvin, who invented the Kelvin scale and was born in Belfast.

Later in the day, I went on a Black Cab Tour. The tour was a history of The Troubles, taking you through the city to look at the important places in the conflict and the many political murals. Bobby, our tour guide, was from Belfast and lived through The Troubles. He said it was very scary being a taxi driver then, because Catholic taxi drivers would often be killed by Protestants because they were easy targets.

We drove around to see the many murals that were painted in response to the conflict.

In the Catholic area, a copy of Guernica- perhaps the most famous artistic response to the horrors of war.

I didn't know that Frederick Douglass traveled to Ireland during the Potato Famine and had a strong Irish connection.

The murals are also strongly engaged with American foreign policy.

And with the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The Catholic community tends to be very pro-Palestinian, whereas the Protestant community tends to be more pro-Israeli. There were, interestingly enough, two Israeli men on the tour, and they were very curious about The Troubles and wanted to know more about the current situation. They would ask things like, "Are the two communities reconciled today?" and so forth. Bobby's assessment wasn't the most encouraging: despite the de-facto peace, the two communities are still very separate, and although the violence has essentially stopped, tensions do get high around July 12th, the day the Orangemen march.

Bobby said this mural is the most photographed mural in the world.

We stopped by a memorial dedicated to Catholics who were killed at the start of The Troubles. In the late 60s, many in the Catholic community cried out for the IRA to return to protect them, like "a phoenix from the flames," which is why there is a phoenix on the gate of the memorial.

(see Belfast (continued))