"O the bricks they will bleed and the rain it will weep,
And the damp Lagan fog lull the city to sleep,
It’s to hell with the future and live on the past,
May the Lord in his mercy be kind to Belfast."
-Maurice James Craig

Just got back from our second NYU-sponsored field trip --- this one was a whirlwind tour around Belfast. I don’t really like calling it a “tour,” since that makes it sound like a destination with novelty hats and theme parks and things like that. More like it was 26 hours in which to experience what we’ve been learning in our History, Politics, and Artistic Expression in Ireland class. And…yow.

I have to admit I was extremely nervous about heading up to Northern Ireland for the weekend. Whenever we mentioned to someone here in Dublin that we were planning a trip to Belfast, they grimaced as politely as they could, then wished us luck. Luck?!

It’s been ten years since the Belfast Agreement was signed, and I’m sure things are much better than they were during the Troubles, but it was shocking. For a few moments, I wanted to move to Belfast. It's lovely. The city center is honestly beautiful --- think of the nicest parts of Boston and add in the strong financial backing of British government, but the residential areas can hardly be explained. There’s literally a wall separating the predominantly Catholic Nationalists from the Protestant Unionists. What’s scary is that this is a hatred and prejudice that’s entirely self-policed. There’s no law that requires the two groups to live in separate neighborhood, or to eat at different restaurants. If somebody wanted to move into the Unionist side of Belfast, they legally would have every right to do so, if they were Catholic or Protestant. That doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be harassed and their house vandalized. Remember, this is a place where Beechmount Avenue is known more commonly as R.P.G. Avenue --- as in “rocket-propelled grenade.”

We went through both the Unionist and the Nationalist neighborhoods looking at the murals painted on the sides of houses and local buildings. These weren’t faded and peeling, either. Bright, recently painted colors and strong messages --- many anti-American, although one in the Catholic neighborhood featured my fellow Marylander Frederick Douglass's quote: "Perhaps no class has carried prejudice against colour to a point more dangerous than have the Irish and yet no people have been more relentlessly oppressed on account of race and religions."

What was the most startling part of the entire experience was how the city just functioned. I'm not sure what I was imagining, some kind of war-torn wasteland with fires burning in trashcans and long lines outside the welfare office. But what I found was just the opposite: Belfast still runs smoothly, and is, dare I say it, kind of booming. There are two Ferris wheels within the city center, for gosh sakes! And I've never been waved at so much in my life. Standing on the sidewalk, looking at the murals along Falls Road and Shankill Road, cars of people drove by and honked pleasantly, waving --- like we were wandering around Des Moines or River City looking for an ice cream parlor recommendation.

Belfast's people are cheery, get up in the morning and enjoy their coffee, head out to work. They eat in front of the television, drop their kids at school and walk their dogs. They do all this, however, hating their neighbors to such an extent that streets are barricaded off from each other. Kids grow up not knowing half of the city, except for the fact that the other half is to be despised. I'm sure some people are optimistic, and some are hopeful, but most are probably resigned.

Love you guys.