Northern Ireland is a different world, in my opinion, compared to the rest of Ireland. Northern Ireland, as some of you may know, is still part of the UK. There is constant argument, or more, between the Protestants (UK Unionists) and the Catholics (Irish). Without delving too far into the heart of Irish politics; the Catholics don’t see themselves as British and the Protestants don’t see themselves as part of Ireland at all.

We started our 4 night trip out in Derry (Londonderry for you Unionists). We had an entire hostel for two nights to just Johnnies and Bennies which made for some interesting nights. In Derry we visited the site where Bloody Sunday took place which was quite a moving experience. We explored the medieval town, had dinner at some of the rustic pubs in the area and took one of the best tours I’ve ever taken. Our walking tour guide was an older gentleman who was apparently an ex-taxi driver that everyone in the not-so-small city knew. He shared with us some of the very meaningful stories that centered around the murals one could see when walking down the Bloody Sunday Street. There were murals about the men involved directly with that Sunday, about men who went on hunger strike at different times, and some that were just about the life long search for peace. One mural could bring tears to even the hardest of people. One mural was painted to model picture of a girl standing in front of all the chaos looking rather lost. She died in the crossfire of the troubles that went on Derry in the late 20th Century. We’ve all heard of that kind of sad story but, this one is special, because this girl’s dad never accepted her death so everyday from the day she died until his death he would sit across the street from the mural and talk to it as if she were sitting right in front of him. In respect of this man’s loss no tour companies would allow tour groups to walk that far up the street, no one thought the tour was worth putting the man on display, and now they tell his story to keep the memories alive. Obviously this isn’t the entirety of our travels through Derry, but this sticks out most to me.

Belfast was a different experience all together. Its a much more industrial town than anything we’ve seen before in Ireland. Going down certain streets you can still see Union Jack colors and designs painted in areas where you don’t want to trot around telling people how Catholic you are. We stayed in an air-tight hostel who seemed relatively concerned about who came into the hostel doors. We found out later from our Belfast-born professor that they acted that way because he (a Catholic) still refuses to drive down the road we were on because there were many ‘Unionist’ activists known for parading around that street causing havoc. He was quite surprised we stayed there, luckily we didn’t know how bad it was until we told him where we were. Our tour of Belfast was yet another new experience. Many of us, throughout or learnings in History class, have come to have something of dislike for British, or at least we can tell when someone is being biased. Some of us picked up that our tour guide was extremely Unionist as she bashed all that the Nationalists stood for. We did learn, though, as we went down the ‘peace’ wall and up and down the Falls and Shankhill roads. It was amazing to see how a modern community can still be so literally separated.

As I said after writing about Derry, there’s probably more to be said about our travels - the Bushmills brewery, the count of pints we drank, the fun people we met who play dance with old Irish music, but it seemed more appropriate to talk about the things someone might not expect to find in each area of Ireland.