Belfast

It is the morning of my third day in Belfast now. Drinking some coffee and getting ready to head out into another warm sunny day.

I think I like Belfast more than London actually. It feels more real here, like an actual city, not just a place that is bulit to impress and be the imperial center of the western world. London was white all around. Belfast is brick and feels more like a place where people live.

On my first day here I was a block away from the road I needed to take to get to the hostel, but deicded to try going the oposite way. I ended up very lost on Queens University campus and student housing area. It was hot, muggy and I was carrying about 40 lbs of luggage on my back and shoulders. An hour later I found Fitzwilliam St: a block away from where I got off the bus.

Yestuday I went to the city center and wandered around the trouist part of Belfast. Read a book in sun on the grounds in front of the city center. Met Paul Smyth for lunch and we chatted about Public Acheivement in Northern Ireland and the situation today. In the evening I went on one of the Black Cab tours that takes you into both the Catholic and Prodestant gehttos and along the 'Peace Wall'. This is a 40ft wall that spans between all the Catholic and Prodestant areas with huge automatic gates that close at 11:30 every night, or whenever there is a fight. There are some 84 walls in Belfast to sperate the Catholics from the Prodestants, and though they have stopped killing each other, this hast just served to make them kill themselves more often.

It was very intense and good to see the places that I have been reading and writing about for so long. The Shankill road (prodestant) still has British flags drapped over the streets and on every door front. We saw an area of development with a totally empty place right in the middle.This was where some Prodestants lived who didnt agree with the Ulster Freedom Fighters and they got chased out of the area, then their houses were bombed so that they couldn't return. In the Catholic area, there is a highrise buliding that the British government put a military watch tower on top of because the Catholic families below make it impossible for the IRA to bomb. However, two soldiers were shot in the building, and a Catholic widdow cradled one while he was dieing, and got her knees blown off by the IRA. Besides all of this Belfast is the safest city in Europe for tourists, and our guide explained that as long as you don't go into these areas after nightfall - when people will start asking questions about your ancestry - you are totally fine. I'm really looking forward to going to Derry on Friday to see that city, which I have been researching even more.

This evening I'm going to see one of the PA groups here working on one of their projects, which should be really cool. Meet some youth and see what they care about. Tomorrow I'm taking a tour bus from the hostel up to Giants Causeway and Derry for the day, then heading to Derry for real on Friday. Josie joins me here next Wednesday, when we will head to the Fowlers' Farm once she has begun to recover from being jet-lagged.