A Northern Ireland Experience

Our second class trip was to Northern Ireland- Belfast in particular with other stops as well. On Wednesday before the trip, Don lectured us on the culture and atmosphere of the area, as well as the historical and ongoing tensions. It sounded like we were in for an experience. I told my global climate change professor that I was heading to Belfast, and she continued to tell me that she grew up there in the height of the troubles. At one point, she wasn't allowed to answer her door after dark, her mother was held at gunpoint on multiple occasions and her father had multiple threats made against his life. One day she was walking down the street with her mother and the gas station just a short distance ahead exploded in front of them. They were merely lucky that they hadn't the house left a minute earlier. She said it has calmed down extremely from that time, but to still be careful. It was amazing how calm she was while describing these incidents, and when I commented on that she explained that it was a war-zone first and foremost, but it was home and her reality. That was an interesting prime to the trip.

We left early on Thursday morning, and I packed a sandwich and lunch so that I wouldn't have to buy one while we were out. When we arrived in Belfast, one of the first sights was a bus drive down "RPG Avenue", named during the troubles. It was immediately startling, and our director later said he cringed at what one of our first sights was. We drove past a funeral that was surrounded by armored police cars, and news cameras across the street. It was the funeral of an IRA leader, and the attendees were wearing black cloths over their faces, with sunglasses on and standard IRA attire. It was a startling sight, considering the violence that we had learned about all week before the trip, as well as the additional security forces present. We left that area, and drove to the International Wall, which depicted various celebrities including various

US Presidents. Belfast is split by massive 40 + foot walls that divide the city, into ethno-English and ethno-Irish, The IRA and the Loyalists, the Protestants and Catholics. The walls had to be so high to limit what could be thrown over at the other side. This is referred to as the "peace wall" to prevent violence. The city is filled with propaganda murals for both sides, including the "peace wall", pinning one side against the other. We examined the artwork, and were explained the symbolism behind them. We originally started on the Catholic side, and visited a memorial park to the victims of Protestant aggression. We later crossed through large metal gates that divide the city, and which apparently are shut and locked every

Gates that shut at night to block of the sections

night preventing communication and interaction between the communities. It was incredible to me that we are talking about the year 2014, and these gates are still shut nightly out of fear. We then walked through the Protestant side, and the communities were incredibly similar, despite the fact that there was British propaganda everywhere we looked, from murals of the Royal Family, to British flags and souvenir shops. It was as if we'd crossed the sea, and we all expressed a similar confusion. While we were walking down the street, clearly tourists, a couple of younger kids across the street began throwing rocks at our group, and hit one girl in the head, but she wasn't hurt. Our group director told us we were in no danger as they walked away, but it was alarming nonetheless. We visited a Protestant memorial garden, almost

identical to the one across the line but pinning blame on the Catholic community for the loss of their own members. Both were lined with flowers and clearly well maintained, so the impact was real and current. I was incredibly uncomfortable in this environment. We then went back to the Catholic side to visit one community which had received international attention when the Protestants burned it down. It was rebuilt, exactly as it was with the homes close to the wall. All of the homes on the back wall featured large metal cages that blocked off their backyards from the wall, which was apparently to deter injury when acid bombs were launched over the wall. This is a terrifying thought for me. It was incredible the

Cages on the back of homes

amount of flags and symbolism that were used to promote both causes, on almost every house, far more extreme than anything I'd personally seen before. The group was mentally exhausted after our venture, and we headed into the neutral peace zone of the city center for lunch. I had packed a lunch, so I ate that while everyone else bought food, but then they headed next door to the dessert place, and naturally I caved to a nutella crepe with vanilla ice cream. Yes, it was just as delicious as it sounds. We sat outside in the sunshine, and it was a gorgeous day. After a break for lunch, we reformed as a group and headed over to the bus to go to a Titanic walking tour, and we couldn't have asked for a better day.

The most striking moments of the tour included visiting the original ferry ship that was used to bring people out to the Titanic when the ship couldn't come closer because of shallow waters. It was decommissioned, and sent to Paris for display, but purchased back to be saved from scrap metal and restored in the 1990's. We were shown the original gates, where tens of thousands of men lined up early in the morning to look for work. The first ones through the gate were the ones who would be able to work for the day, the others would have to go home without pay. There were various stories of fights that broke out in competition for work. We were able as well to enter the original Harland and Wolff building, which

had been shut down until two months ago as a result of extensive structural damage from neglect and abandonment. Obviously, the company took a huge hit when the Titanic sank, and had to lay off 95 percent of its workers in Ireland, an industry seemingly gone overnight. We were allowed in the office of Thomas Andrews, who was in charge of the drafting for the ship and primed to take over H&W later  in his career. He perished on the ship, trying to do everything in his power to keep the ship afloat for as long as physically possible and save lives. Upon his death, his office was locked immediately, and nobody was allowed in as a sign of respect to him. We were able to see his desk, where much of the designs were reviewed and drawn, which I was very interested in. The next room was by far my favorite part of the tour. It was a plain room, but large. Apparently it was the corporate executive office, and appeared much grander until the fireplace was cut out and stolen as well as other changes to the now empty room. We stood around, and saw a picture of the original office, and pointed to where each of the key directors sat on one morning, with the financing party as well as the lead designer who had designed the entire ship top to bottom. The plans were going very well, until the top two floors, which were described by the chief executive as "cluttered", and he disapproved immediately. What were they "cluttered" with? Lifeboats. According to the new legislation that was out, Titanic's watertight compartment system allowed it to have significantly less lifeboats than were shown in the plans. The chief executive claimed that having that many lifeboats was unnecessary and would make people afraid to board the ship and lead to lost revenue from fear. The designer, who had completed all of the plans, is said to have desperately refuted this point. This lead to a screaming match and a large fight, after which the designer told all of the people in the room that he was removing himself from the project if they did not add the suggested lifeboats. They refused, and before the construction of the ship even began, he quit and told them on his way out "if anything happens to the people on that ship, it's on your head not mine". He immediately left the entire industry. As my dad said, did he have some sort of premonition? If the suggested number of lifeboats were on board, it is possible that the majority of people that were lost would've been safe and survived. Incredible to stand in the room where that debate and screaming match occurred, given the gravity of later events. We proceeded from there to the

actual drafting room where the plans were developed, which again was incredible. It overlooked the shipyard, where the titanic would've sat as it was being constructed. All of the work was done without calculators or any devices like that, which means that the men that sat in that room were literally super geniuses. They must've been so proud to watch the Titanic get built and finished, and devastated when it was lost. We continued to the dry dock, which was massive and actually walked down where the bottom of the ship would've sat, looking upward to where it would've stretched to. We were shown pictures of the ship from exactly where they were taken in front of us, real physical history. We also

were able to see and touch the same metal that was used on the side of the Titanic which formed the barrier to the dry dock. The entire dry dock could be filled and drained within three hours, which was an incredible engineering feat. The other side of the steel wall was blocked off two years ago and a new concrete wall protected it from the water, allowing us to see the steel exactly as it currently is on the Titanic, having been exposed to water of the same temperature for the same time period. It was awesome. We learned that there was a 6 week lag in the Titanic project relating to one of its sister ships, so it was 6 weeks late itself. Although this seems unimportant, he said to consider the fact that had the ship been on time,

the cruise would've been that much earlier, and said iceberg likely wouldn't have been there. Our guide said, if the other ship had been on time, we wouldn't have been here, those people would've likely lived, and the Titanic would've been a ship that would've been forgotten about. Additionally, we learned that if the Titanic had ran straight into the iceberg, rather than attempting to turn away from it, the ship would've been fine and came back to Belfast for some repairs. Because they turned, the iceberg ripped down the side exposing six of the compartments rather than just the one or two that the straight on collision would've caused. The ship could've withstood 4 of its compartments being compromised, but 6 was too many.

The Dry Dock

A funny follow up to that story, is that when H&W reentered the abandoned building years later, they

Tiles on Titanic's foyer in H&W Hallway (Damaged)

tried to figure out where the fireplace that was in the executive office had gone, as they couldn't find any piece of it on the property. Apparently after an anonymous tip, they got in a van and drove to the house where it had been put in, knocked on the door and told the man that they were here to take the fireplace back. He tried to deny it, but they held up a picture of the fireplace in the office, and pointed to the one in his living room. That day, they cut the fireplace out of his house, and brought it back to the office. As our guide said: "that's revenge, Titanic style baby!". I thought that was great.

We left the Titanic museum, and went back to the hotel for dinner. We were able to squeeze some time

before dinner to walk around the city center of Belfast, which was active and surprisingly friendly. We headed back for dinner, and I enjoyed a sun-dried tomato pasta as an appetizer, then pork loin in a red wine sauce and potatoes, finished off with a chocolate cake with chocolate sauce. Another awesome meal. I talked to a girl in my program, Emily, and who also grew up on a lake and around water. We were both saying how excited we will be to get home, without wishing away our amazing trip and the short time we have left. We went back to the rooms, and within a few minutes there was a knock at the door, and quite a few people from the program had showed up with some Stellas, so obviously we let them in. It was a relaxing night, just talking with a group of people from the program. After a while, we went out the

Northern Ireland Police Cars

"neutral safe zone" of city center to walk around, the area that they told us we would go out in if we were interested. We didn't plan on going out, but after the morning culture shock, we agreed that we probably would never be in Belfast again, so we may as well see the city while we were here as opposed to sitting in the hotel room. We walked in front of city hall, and the town was shut down completely, which is apparently relatively normal for Belfast given the conflicts on both sides. On the street in front of city hall, at one end of the street was a heavily armored Land Rover police vehicle with 4-5 heavily armed police men clustered. This was rather startling, but we kept moving down the street. When we got to the other end, there was the same exact setup. Two heavily armored vehicles with heavily armed police on a single street in sight of each other.... hmmm. We agreed that this would only happen in the states if there was
something going on. We decided that we were too far out of our elements and comfort zones with this type of action, and weren't sure if there was actually a safety issue occurring, so we gave up on Belfast and went quickly back to the hotel. Wow, I am so glad that I studied in Dublin rather than Belfast! In the morning we were meeting with American students who studied in Belfast, so I was really interested to hear what they had to say about their experiences.

Hotel Room View

The following morning, I went down to breakfast with Emily and Scott at 7am, as our meeting was at 9 with the Belfast students. It was a remarkable breakfast spread, with literally everything you could've wanted, unlimited buffet style. Clearly I made the right choice coming early! I think I had three servings, including bacon, hash-browns, eggs, croissants, yogurt, and fruit. It was great. Afterwards we met the Belfast students, and there were three of them. Their experience was completely different than ours, as they said they did enjoy their time here, just noting that you had to be really careful of what you say and know where you are when you say it. They detailed a couple of incidents that caused them to run into stores on the street for safety, as if it were completely normal experience. Nope, I'm way too much of a chicken for that, I'll stay in Dublin thanks! They were nice kids, but I wasn't too disappointed that we were leaving Belfast today.

Our next stop that day was a stop at Carrickfergus castle, a very old but beautifully maintained Norman castle. We had an awesome tour guide, and learned various facts and tricks of the castle owners and designers. One notable feature was a "trip-stair" in the original castle, one that was a different height than all of the others, designed to cause attackers running up the stairs to trip and fall back down and take out the people behind them. We also learned that the bathroom in the castle was a chute out the side, and you were judged by how much excrement was on the side of the castle, indicative of the type of diets that were consumed. This, I know, is absolutely repulsive. Why would anyone actually want to see that?

We were also shown defense tactics of the castle, including the arrow holes that were unnoticeable, as well as the locking cage at the gate. We learned that the castle used to be surrounded on three sides by water, but because of land reclamation it only had water on one now. We learned that at the time, there was no way to attack from a ship, so the water side was the safety side, as well as why the entrance was on a hill to make it harder to get the battering ram up to the gates. We also saw the cell, which was apparently rarely used and over dramatized by Hollywood films. We were able to try on knight clothing, which

Original Stairwell with Trip Stair

would've costed the equivalent of 20,000 GBP today, which is around $40,000 USD just for the uniform. What was more incredible was the cost of the sword, which was estimated in today's figures to be around $400,000 USD. It was extremely expensive to become a knight! The outfit also weighed over 50 pounds, which would've been unbearable! After the castle, we headed back to Dublin, and I was excited to get back. It was a very cultural trip, and I learned so much and saw some really cool things, but I learned that Belfast is just not the place for me, I much prefer the stability!

Front of the Castle

The "Bathroom" of the Castle...nasty