unsold story

I really like this story about Belfast but I have never managed to place it. Those of you who have been hanging around with my blog since MySpace might remember the trip.

Here is a link to a slideshow. The was before I bought my shmancy new camera so the photos don't thrill me, but they are documentation of a sort.

Happy Days

I was 10 years old in 1968, the year a two-day riot in the town of Derry was the first stone thrown in what came to be known as The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The Troubles went on for 30 years. For nearly all my life, my mental image of Northern Ireland has been grainy newspaper photographs of people standing in rubble, throwing things. To me, Belfast was a mysteriously angry, dangerous place.

The first thing I did upon arriving in Belfast was take a Black Taxi Tour. My guide, Ken Harper, took me along busy streets lined with small shops in the blue-collar neighborhoods where some of those newspaper photographs were taken. The rubble was gone. The rebuilt streets bustled with the mild business of day-to-day life. Ken pointed out locations of bombings, riots and assassinations, informatively but with a whiff of reluctance. “I call this the ‘gloom and doom’ tour,'” he said with a self-conscious chuckle.

We stopped in a quiet Shankill neighborhood of two-story buildings painted with some of Belfast’s famous political murals. I got out of the car and walked across an emerald lawn to stand beneath the most startling of the bunch. It depicted, against a cerulean background, a man in camouflage clothes and black hood holding a machine gun pointed directly at me. Beneath him were the Union Jack-festooned coats of arms for the Nationalist Ulster Defense Union and Ulster Defense Organization.

Those old newspaper photographs started coming into focus.

These murals remain a constant reminder of emotions that run deep and murky, even as Northern Ireland emerges from its Troubles. The Northern Ireland Office has been dangling financial incentives to paint over the most aggressive with cheerier scenes but many murals remain as compelling documents of a complicated history, as does the so-called Peace Line between the Protestant Shankill and the Catholic Falls Road neighborhoods. The Peace Line is being made higher because, Ken said, kids still throw stones at each other. The best hope for the future, he added, is integrated schools, which still are rare.

But the city really has changed since the times when any day could bring bloodshed in the city. “Happy days,” Ken repeated again and again. “My life is improved.”

Ken didn’t limit our tour to gloom and doom; he also showed me the brighter tomorrow. We drove past the dockyards, where the Titanic was built (OK, that’s a little gloomy but it is among Belfast’s claims to fame). The area is being developed into an entertainment complex and the Titanic Signature Project—a Titanic visitor attraction-- is on the drawing board with a projected opening date of 2012, the centenary of the ship’s disastrous sailing. And the port is seeing new life. In 1999, two cruise ships called on Belfast; in 2006, that number was up to 23.

Ken pointed out Malmaison, one of a UK hipster hotel chain, opened in late 2004, adding to what is now about 2,500 hotel rooms in the city, up from just 900 in 1999. Currently, only about 21 percent of tourists to Ireland come to Northern Ireland but the country is girding for a change. Then he dropped me at my hotel, the pleasantly efficient Europa, famous as the most bombed hotel in Europe and also where President Clinton stayed during his 1995 visit to Belfast. “He was treated like a film star,” recalled Ken.

Clinton even flipped the switch on the municipal Christmas tree, I learned from a small plaque outside Belfast’s massive City Hall the day after my tour with Ken. City Hall is one of Belfast’s sights to see, an elaborate 100-year-old Victorian concoction designed by a young man who won a competition for the privilege.

A City Hall tour includes a stop in the imposing oak and royal red council chambers, where we were invited to sit in council chairs. I plopped into the seat of Alex Maskey, Sinn Fein’s longest-serving councilman. I still struggle to wrap my mind around the idea of Sinn Fein as part of a bureaucracy instead of throwing bombs. Perhaps this is why, unlike the rest of Ireland, which is marketed mostly to older Americans, tourism officials in Belfast are interested in reaching young travelers who might not carry memories of the gloom and doom days.

Because whatever its past, today one could easily just focus only on the pleasures of noodling around this compact and low-key European capital of red brick buildings and pleasant pastimes. The city is easily walkable, the locals are friendly and thrilled to welcome tourists. In a few days’ meandering, I puttered in the tony little shops of Lisburn Road, walked among students near Queens College, sat and watched a young couple and two large hounds frolic in the Botanic Gardens. I visited galleries in the historic Cathedral Quarter, pausing to read neighborhood histories on new street-corner interpretive signs.

At the Ormeau Baths Gallery I stumbled upon a well-attended lecture about jewelry design before wandering up to a particularly nice exhibit of modern Korean ceramics. I braved bellowing music to look at faux vintage t-shirts at Cult, a UK chain store for the young and trendy. I ate fish and chips at John Long’s, a classic fish and chips shop of the agreeably ambience-free variety. I peered at yet more grainy photographs of Belfast rubble in the ragtag but absorbing World War II Memorial museum. Northern Ireland is the back door to England and Ireland and Belfast was heavily bombed in the war. Thousands of people were injured or killed, tens of thousands lost their homes. Poor Belfast, bombed from inside and out.

The famous Crown Saloon, across the street from the Europa, also is a survivor of multiple bombings but has been beautifully restored to its gilded glory. Friends and Belfast locals who took me there explained that although it’s a tourist spot, the Crown is known for pouring a good pint of Guinness so I had my first-ever there and found I liked the bitter, creamy brew. I’m told it tastes better in Ireland, although the Irish don’t drink as much Guinness they once did. They’ve gone all wine bar.

At the elaborate Royal Opera House, I saw a popular black comedy, “The History of The Troubles According to My Da.” The show is hilarious, I know, because the audience was rollicking, but I understood only every 17th word through the chewy accents. Still, I gleaned a plot of one ordinary man’s life tangling with the IRA, with prison, with thugs who beat his son to death--all told with humor that, a local explained, bothers some people, who think it’s still too soon to laugh.

One night I went with friends for dinner at Cayenne, a chic restaurant owned by celebrity chefs Paul and Jean Rankin. Over beautifully prepared entrees of duck and venison, we talked about this and that and The Troubles. My friends are both in their ‘30s and grew up knowing nothing but. Things really are different now, they assured me. It’s not just a front for tourists. Their lives are changed.

But I noticed an older man at a nearby table who was listening to our conversation, his brow furrowed with obvious discomfort over our discussion. I realized that troubles running so deep may never be completely aired out. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

Still, my image of Belfast has come into sharper focus and it’s a much prettier picture. Happy days. I fervently hope they remain.


The Troubles in brief

What were those Troubles about? It’s not an easy tale to tell, but in brief:

Northern Ireland’s volatile mix of politics, civil rights and religion had Catholic Nationalists fighting Protestant Unionists for civil rights and Irish independence from the British crown. The first riot started when Catholics in Derry marched for fair housing and voting rights.

The Troubles spread to Belfast and escalated with an alphabet soup of ugliness. Paramilitary groups such as the IRA (Irish Republican Army) and UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) waged terrorist warfare. Bombings, riots and assassinations became commonplace.

In 1972, British troops fired on protesters in Derry; 13 died that day and one died of his wounds later. This was Bloody Sunday and the events of that day are still under investigation. Nationalists were jailed without trial, hunger strikers, including Bobby Sands, starved themselves to death in prison. Walls were erected between Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods.

After years of closed-door talks, the lumbering descent to hell started turning around with the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement of 1998, helped along by the diplomatic efforts of Bill Clinton. Political power was officially if uneasily divided. In 2005, the IRA formalized a ceasefire.

While troubles linger in Northern Ireland and political turf is still being staked, the recent cordial meeting between Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams and the Unionist party’s Ian Paisley was a watershed moment. Northern Ireland is hopefully truly moving past its Troubles.

For more information about traveling to Belfast: Discover Northern Ireland and http://www.gotobelfast.com/ (Which for some reason won't accept a link so you'll have to cut and paste. It's a complicated place...)