Spring Break 2009

Béal Feirste, Daire, Baile Átha Cliath

Last week, on my spring break, I got to go to Northern Ireland and Ireland to visit a friend from college. Continuing the tradition of pseudo-anonymity on this blog, I will call my friend Red. For as long as I’ve known Red she’s been a student of Irish history. She probably knows more about history than many Irish people while being not at all Irish herself. She happens to be studying in Belfast this year, and when we realized how close we were, we decided to meet up. She graciously let me visit her over spring break, and we had a grand time.

Before I go on, I’d like to make clear that Northern Ireland and Ireland are two different countries. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, as is clear in its full name, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Belfast is the largest city of NI, which is also called Ulster and sometimes the Six Counties. NI is the northeast corner of the island. The rest of the island is the Republic of Ireland, with Dublin as its capital.

I flew from Vienna to Dublin on Aer Lingus. The flight was decent; I’d read some reviews of Aer Lingus that said that the flights weren’t great, but my experience was that both flights were neither especially good nor especially bad. The one thing worth remarking on is that on the way to Dublin I was alone in my row, which was pleasant. When I arrived in Dublin and collected my bag I had to go through immigration, which is a bit treacherous at the end of a long day of traveling. I guess I answered the questions satisfactorily, because the officer stamped my passport and they let me in to Ireland.

From Dublin to Belfast is about two and a half hours by bus. The driver collected both euros and pounds for the fares--Ireland uses the euro, and Northern Ireland the pound. Only once on the trip did I think, “Crap, the driver’s on the wrong side and we’re going to hit that car.” When I arrived in Belfast Red was there to meet me, which was great, since the bus station closes at midnight and by this time it was about 1:30 in the morning. None of the buses I rode in NI had the correct time on their clocks. It was kind of amusing.

For breakfast on Sunday morning I had a Cadbury Crème Egg and multigrain Cheerios. I might as well admit now that that was one of the many wonderful things about being there: I could go into a store and get things like cheddar cheese and a wide variety of Cadbury chocolate products. I quite enjoyed that part. After breakfast we went off to look around Belfast. We saw Queen’s University Belfast and the Botanical Garden behind it, the Lagan River, City Hall, and the Belfast Wheel. The Wheel is a Ferris wheel parked on one side of City Hall. We took a ride on it and had a good view of the city. There was even a recorded commentary describing buildings and landmarks. The commentary failed to mention the most pertinent information about the Europa Hotel, though.

North Belfast with Castle Hill at top left and the spire of St. Anne's sort of at right (look left from the big red crane and you'll see it)

The Europa is downtown (as far as I can figure), a bit in front of the bus station and across from the famous Crown Liquor Saloon. It also enjoys the dubious distinction of being the most bombed hotel in Europe. These days it’s a four-star hotel, and from what I saw the interior looked nice.

We ate lunch at McDonald’s. I got a Big Mac meal and a strawberry milkshake.

unionist mural

For some reason the Northern Irish are big into painting murals on the sides of buildings. Most of these murals have a political message, especially the ones in West Belfast and Derry/Londonderry. One of the best ways to see the West Belfast murals is on a black cab tour. The cabs line up outside the Crown, and all you have to do is ask the driver if he’ll take you to West Belfast. The first cabman in line said he didn’t know much about the murals and recommended the driver behind him, who took us on a one hour tour for £22, if I remember correctly. He’d been a cabbie during the Troubles, and had driven television news crews around the area.

“The Troubles” was the time during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s when there were violent clashes between the pro-British unionists or loyalists and the pro-Irish nationalists or republicans. The unionists of the North want to remain part of the United Kingdom; the republicans want to join the Republic of Ireland. Many of the unionists are Protestants, and more wealthy, while many of the republicans are Catholics and traditionally members of the poorer classes. In West Belfast there are two neighborhoods. The unionist neighborhood branches off the Shankill Road, while the republican neighborhood branches off the Falls Road. Between the two neighborhoods is a “Peace Wall,” built high enough so that rocks can’t be thrown from one neighborhood into the other. In West Belfast is also the biggest, strongest-built police station I’ve ever seen. I thought it was a small prison at first, it was that secure-looking. Our driver told us that the recent murals have become more peaceful, but there is still at least one that features a masked man with a large gun.

republican mural featuring Bobby Sands

On Sunday night we went to the Queen’s Film Theater to see «Entre les murs», a French movie about a public high school in Paris. It was in French with English subtitles; the translated title was “The Class.” It made me really appreciate my own students, who, frustrating as they may sometimes be, are not nearly as impudent and rude as these students were. We also saw a trailer for the new movie “The Young Victoria,” which I’d really like to see. It looks right up my alley.

Fun fact about NI: They use the pound there, but some of the banks can print their own notes. Ulster Bank, Northern Bank, and Bank of Ireland all have different notes. Bank of Ireland’s twenty-pound notes have either Old Bushmills Distillery or Queen’s University Belfast on the back. The best was Northern Bank’s five-pound bill. It seems to be coated in plastic, it has transparent cut-out places, and a space shuttle on one side. With all due respect to Northern Bank, it does not seem to be real money.

The next day was rainy and blowy, because it was late winter in NI. Red and I got on a tour bus to go see Giant’s Causeway, the only UNESCO World Heritage site in NI. I recently described Giant’s Causeway to some students as “a place on the shore with interesting rocks,” and that’s what it boils down to. Geologists believe that the formations were made when lava cooled and contracted into hexagonal-shaped pieces of rock. It’s especially interesting that the rocks are on both sides of the Irish Sea; one end is in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, and the other is in Staffa, Scotland. The legend is that the Irish hero Finn McCool built the Causeway to travel to Scotland to fight a Scottish giant. When he arrived, he saw that the Scottish giant was bigger than him, and Finn went back to Ireland. Back at home, his wife dressed him in baby clothes and put him in a cradle; so when the Scottish giant showed up, she told him not to wake the baby. The Scottish giant thought that if the baby was seven feet or more then his father must be huge and high-tailed it back home, tearing up the Causeway as he went so that Finn couldn’t follow him. That’s as good an explanation as any, really.

Our tour bus first stopped at Carrickfergus, about 20 minutes outside of Belfast, and then followed the coast road to the Causeway. At one point the driver told us that if we looked out the window to the rocks on the coast we might be able to see seals, and I saw one! It was cool. We drove through Whitehead, Glynn, Larne, Ballygally, Glenarm, Carnlough, Cushendall, Ballycastle, and Ballintoy. Once we left the Causeway we paused to look at Dunluce Castle, part of which has fallen into the sea and which is a ruin now, before going on to the Old Bushmills Distillery. We only had half an hour at the distillery, which was not long enough to take the tour but a bit too long to just look around the gift shop. After Bushmills the driver took us to the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge. There is an island off the coast where fishermen have traditionally let out salmon nets, and they’ve also pastured their sheep on the island. To get to the island they used to build a new rope bridge every season, 30 meters above the ocean. So that the National Trust doesn’t get sued, the bridge is now made of steel cables. There’s a bit of a hike between the carpark and the bridge itself. When you get to the bridge you go down a steep set of stairs, then wait your turn to cross. A sign says that up to eight people at a time can be on the bridge, but we all crossed one at a time. I wasn’t scared crossing--I’d thought I might be, and I did look down, but for some reason I didn’t get afraid. The worst part was that it was windy. The whole coast was very picturesque, especially when the sun broke out for brief periods.

When we got back to Belfast we had Domino’s delivered.

On Tuesday we split up, because Red actually had school stuff to do. I got on a bus to Derry/Londonderry, the next biggest town to Belfast in NI. I know you’re asking, “Why the two names, Ahab?” This goes back to that whole republican/unionist, Catholic/Protestant thing. The original Gaelic name of the city was Daire, which is an oak grove; the oak leaf occurs often around the city. Thence came the name Derry, which is the name used by republicans and, according to one of the guidebooks, laid-back unionists. The “official” name is Londonderry. In an attempt to remain neutral, Red calls the city “Derry-stroke-Londonderry” (because that thing’s a stroke in British English, not a slash).

The name Londonderry might be familiar from a little ditty you may have heard before. The tune called “Londonderry Air” is often sung with words that go something like this:
Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen and down the mountainside
The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling
It’s you, it’s you must go and I must bide
I heard that song zero times while I was in NI and Ireland, for the record.

Derry/Londonderry is a walled city, and even though the walls are not medieval, that’s still cool. When I arrived I decided to walk all the way around on the wall, and then to look at other things, inside or outside the wall. Unlike in Rothenburg, where the wall stays the same height all around the city, this wall kind of dipped up and down, which I found unexpected. I went most of the way around the walls before I got to St. Columb’s Cathedral. I went in in part because I was cold and a bit tired of the wet weather. St. Columb’s isn’t huge, but it’s got some nice stained glass and interesting city history. In the vestibule there’s a cannonball on a stand; the story of the cannonball is that during the late 17th century the city was besieged, and the attackers sent over an empty cannonball with the terms of surrender inside. The defenders refused the terms, the siege lasted 105 days, and the city has never been breached.

Outside the city walls is a neighborhood called the Bogside, because it used to be a bog. The Bogside is the main Catholic neighborhood of Derry/Londonderry. During the 1960s, inspired by the civil rights movement in the US, citizens of the Bogside and other neighborhoods began to march for their own civil rights. They believed that everyone had the same right to jobs, no matter their religion, and that they should not be imprisoned without trial. In the ’60s and ’70s the citizens of Derry had occasional clashes with the British army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The area was proclaimed “Free Derry” in 1969. The most dramatic conflict was on January 30, 1972, during a protest march. To quote a handout from the Museum of Free Derry, “There then followed the standard Derry riot, stones and bottles against rubber bullets, CS Gas and water cannon. This was an almost daily occurrence in Derry at the time, and as 4.00pm approached the riot was petering out.” After the riot the army moved in to make arrests, and began using live bullets. Thirteen men, several of them only 17 years old were killed on Bloody Sunday, and one man died of his wounds months later. It marked one of the worst periods in the Troubles. There is a small Museum of Free Derry where you can read all about the events and circumstances in Derry/Londonderry during the Troubles. The museum has a good multimedia collection of photos, audio, and video of Bloody Sunday.

I didn’t make it into the Tower Heritage Museum, but it seemed cool. It’s supposed to have treasure from a Spanish Armada ship that sank off the coast.

If you’re trying to leave Derry/Londonderry around 4 on a weekday afternoon, be prepared to dodge veritable hordes of uniformed high school students at the bus station.

For dinner back in Belfast I got takeaway from one of the Chinese restaurants in the neighborhood. I love sweet and sour pork.

On Wednesday morning Red and I went to a café for breakfast. In lots of restaurants and cafes you can get a meal that goes by several names: fried breakfast, full Irish breakfast, Ulster/Belfast fry, etc. At Maggie May’s (really), there are two versions of the fry. I got the “bumper fry”: two fried eggs, two pieces of bacon (ham), a sausage, beans, mushrooms, potato bread, soda bread, and a bowl of chips (fries). Yes, it might kill you, but it’s traditional. With this I had tea. Here in Slovakia, when you order tea, the waitress will bring you a cup of hot water, sugar and/or honey, and your tea bag. In Belfast the waitress brought me a small metal teapot with the tea bag already steeping inside and a mug. I got two mugs of tea out of that sucker and it was great. I quite enjoyed it all. Once you have a fry, you’re pretty much set for the day. I didn’t need to eat again for the rest of the day.

After brekkie we walked across town to St. Anne’s Cathedral. St. Anne’s also has nice stained glass, and a huge Celtic cross on the outside of the building on one side. Its spire is a metal spike, for some reason. Inside the cathedral is light. It’s not terribly old. From St. Anne’s we walked back south again, and as we walked the sun came out. Belfast was blinding in the sunlight. We went in a few souvenir shops so I could buy postcards, and then Red had to get to a meeting and class. She went off and I wandered the street just north of City Hall. I went first into Boots, which is a magical place. Boots is a chain drugstore where I could read what everything was. I got apple Chapstick there. Apple Chapstick! What will they think of next? Bumming around Belfast I also went in WH Smith, a bookstore and stationer where I was really tempted to buy “Top Gear” magazine, the post office, and some used bookstores.

the police station around the corner from Red's flat

With Red’s roommate we went to Chili’s for dinner. I had a bacon cheeseburger and a margarita on the rocks. Red got mozzarella sticks, just like the old days. We talked about Berg waffles.

Thursday morning, Red and I got on the bus for Dublin and got there around eleven. It was snowing when we left Belfast, but the sun came out later. That seems to be the trend: overcast and precipitating in the morning, somewhat clear or at least not precipitating in the afternoon. In Dublin we stayed at the Paramount Hotel, just a block or two from Temple Bar, the main pub drag. Despite that, it was quite nice, quiet, and economical. Our only grievance was that we got back to the room in the evening and it was blazing hot. I’m not sure I was able to turn the radiator down successfully, though I tried. The Paramount is also across the street from the Czech Inn, which amused me greatly.

The second place we went in Dublin (the first being to O’Briens, a sandwich chain, for lunch, where I had a sandwich on a shamrock-shaped roll) was Trinity College. Why visit a school while on break from school? Because Trinity is home to a medieval manuscript called the Book of Kells. Some of you may have heard of it. It’s a copy of the Gospels and the most well-known product of the Irish monastic period. The exhibit explains how medieval manuscripts were made and who the scribes probably were. Then you go and peer into a case where the Book, now in two pieces; one half was turned to a page just with writing and some small decoration, while the other half showed a nearly fully decorated page from Luke 24 (285r). You are not allowed to take pictures, which is understandable, but I still resented it a little. From the Book of Kells you continue into the Long Room, which is an old library from the 18th or 19th century. Even there you’re not supposed to take pictures, and I couldn’t avoid the guards. The Long Room has the oldest harp in Ireland, formerly attributed to the time of King Brian Boru.

Molly Malone, AKA the Tart with the Cart, opposite Trinity

Our next stop was the Museum of Archaeology and History. The museum is in a very neat building with lots of mosaic floors and tiled doorjambs. It has artifacts from prehistoric, Viking, and medieval Ireland, including a lot of gold jewelry. My favorite display was the glass case full of iron things of different shapes and sizes, with the caption “Selection of objects.” There was also an exhibit called “Kingship and Sacrifice,” about Iron Age finds from bogs around Ireland. These finds include three bodies. They were a little icky, but not completely disgusting. Scientists have estimated that one of the men would have been around 6’3” before he was decapitated.

We rode a tour bus from the museum through Phoenix Park. Phoenix Park is the largest urban park in Europe; it’s the size of three Central Parks. The Irish president’s house is in the park, as is the American ambassador’s. The current Irish president is Mary McAleese. This is her second term, and before her the president was also a woman; Ireland has had a woman as president for over the last 20 years. Phoenix Park is also home to the Dublin Zoo, polo grounds, and playing fields. We saw some deer that might actually have been real and not statues, as we originally thought.

On the outskirts of Dublin you can visit the Guinness Storehouse and the Jameson Distillery. In neither of these places can you actually see alcohol being made. If you want to see whiskey being made you have to go to the distillery down south in County Cork, and I don’t know if there’s anywhere to see Guinness being brewed. I was tempted to visit the Guinness Storehouse to see its exhibit on Guinness advertising, which is so well-known and well-loved; but in the end I decided not to go. You see, at the end of the visit there you get a free pint of Guinness, and even if it is better in Ireland than anywhere else, I just wouldn’t be able to finish a whole pint, and I’d feel deeply embarrassed. I knew, however, that I’d easily be able to finish some free whiskey concoction, so we went to the Jameson Distillery. Before the tour we drank Jameson hot chocolates in the bar, which were quite tasty. The tour began with a video about John Jameson, and then our guide told us about all of the steps involved in triple-distilling Jameson. At the end we got our free drink, our choice of straight whiskey or whiskey with Coke, ginger ale, or cranberry juice. We were intrigued by the Jameson and cranberry, but Red went with the ginger ale and I had mine straight up. I figured that would be the best choice, to taste it without any interference. (Plus, I already know that Jameson and Coke is wicked.)

Back in the city center we bought tickets to the theater, then ate dinner. We ate at a place called Murray’s Bar and Grill on O’Connell Street. I had stew and Red had roast beef, but the menu also had halušky and gulaš. Our waitress was either Czech or Polish.

Ha'penny Bridge

The Gate Theater is one of the big theaters, the Abbey being the other one. We saw a Tom Stoppard play called “The Real Thing.” The main characters are a playwright and a group of actors who are his friends. The writing was good, and the stage was a turntable, with fairly easy set changes. There is an excellent repetition of a scene that is first seen in the play-within-a-play and then is played out twice more in the characters’ real lives. One of the other things I really enjoyed about it was the music. The playwright is asked on a radio show called Desert Island Discs, where famous people talk about what eight albums they’d take with them to a desert island. He is searching for albums that will make him sound intelligent and sophisticated, when really he likes music like Herman’s Hermits (“I’m into Something Good” was the first song) and the Monkees (“I’m a Believer” was the last). The music was mostly played over the scene changes. I think it helped me to identify with the main character more.

The term for fun or a good time in Irish is craic, pronounced like “crack.” I was aware of the word, and had heard it used (podcasts, you know), but I wasn’t sure if regular people use it or if it’s just one of those things that people trot out for the gringos to make us feel like we’re in ould Ireland. Red assured me that people do use it amongst themselves, and I saw it in the QUB student magazine and in one of the books I bought, The Commitments by Roddy Doyle, so I can report that’s it’s not just a gimmick. The craic is real, and it is brilliant.

Red and I walked into the Auld Dubliner on Temple Bar to hear two young men playing guitars and singing “I’m a Believer.” They then proceeded to play “Love Me Do,” “Brown-Eyed Girl,” “American Pie,” “Hey Jude,” “500 Miles,” and “Don’t Stop Believing,” among others. We enjoyed the music, and sang along with other patrons. But no matter how amusing your music is, or how well-played, you will not give us tourist types the real pub experience if you don’t play at least one Irish song. We got short versions of two: the venerable “Whiskey in the Jar” and the newer “Galway Girl.” I am still dreaming about my pint of Bulmer’s, which was everything I’d ever wished for in a cider. (You’d think with all of the apple trees here someone would make something like hard cider. When I get home I am going to haunt Killarney’s and Barley & Hops and BevMo looking for a cider that will measure up.)

Friday was my last day, but we still managed to get some sights in before I had to go to the airport. We walked down Grafton Street, devoid of performers in the morning, to St. Stephen’s Green, a nice park. From there we got a cab to Kilmainham Gaol (that’s just pronounced “jail,” really). Kilmainham was built in the late 18th century, and before it closed, it held members of many of the six Irish rebellions of the last two centuries. Most famous are the fourteen leaders of the 1916 Uprising; these men were executed there in May 1916.

For lunch we went to the Burger King on O’Connell St. I was not the only tourist there with bags strewn about me, which made me feel better. From there we went to the bus station, where I had to say goodbye to Red. It was very sad. At the airport, once I was through security, I bought the smallest Cadbury Fruit and Nut bar they had, which was 220 grams, or about half a pound.

My final comments:
--One thing you should keep in mind about visiting Ireland and/or Northern Ireland is that in the spring it can be cold and rainy and windy. It can also be fairly nice. Some of these meteorological conditions can occur several times in the same day.
--I felt more conspicuous speaking English with my own native accent in NI/Ireland than I feel speaking English in Slovakia. It’s weird.
--Your results may vary. When you visit Ireland and/or Northern Ireland you may not be going to visit a friend who’s traveled around the island and knows lots of history and lets you sleep on her couch. I was extremely fortunate that way, and I owe pretty much all of the success of my trip to Red.

I had a great time. NI and Ireland are beautiful. I saw four rainbows and like nineteen Škodas. It was great speaking English and being understood and understanding other people. I didn’t want to come back to Slovakia and go back to school. I miss Red. This is terribly long, but I’ve probably left important things out, so if you have questions, let me know and I will endeavour to answer them.

Next year for spring break I think will be either Edinburgh or York.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Recommended listening for this post:
1. “Crossing the Briney" by Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder

2. “Sea Image” by the Chieftains
3. “Londonderry Air” (this version is pleasant)
4. “Sunday Bloody Sunday” by U2
5. “Whiskey in the Jar” by Luke Kelly
6. “The Galway Girl” by Sharon Shannon featuring Mundy
7. “The Auld Triangle” by Dropkick Murphys (though Mountjoy Prison is the real "auld triangle," not Kilmainham)