Saturday, March 9, 2013

One Week in Ireland!

 My Cross-Cultural Communication class went to Belfast, Derry/Londonderry, and Dublin for a week to learn about communication and the conflict in Northern Ireland. We got a lot of information that I didn’t include in this blog, so let me know if you have any questions or want to know what we learned! Here’s a very abbreviated summary of what we did this week!


Sunday:

We arrived at the Copenhagen airport bright and early for our fairly short flight to Dublin. As soon as we arrived, we boarded a bus to Belfast! The countryside was absolutely beautiful! It was very stereotypical with rolling green hills and lots of sheep, and it was a lovely change from grey Copenhagen.







After checking into our hotel (no hostels on this trip!), we split into groups for sightseeing on Shankill and Falls Roads. Shankill Road is the predominantly Protestant area, and Falls Road is the predominantly Catholic area with the Peace Wall separating the two. The Peace Wall is actually the longest standing wall separating communities. The information we learned from the tours would fill at least five blogs so I won’t write it all, but I got a lot of pictures of murals and I was able to sign the Peace Wall!













We went to an awesome restaurant for dinner and had some delicious Irish food (DIS feeds us really well!). It was really rich and flavourful, and I think I prefer it over Danish food (though I do love Danish pastries!).







We had some free time in the evening, so a group of us went to a pub called Fibber Magee’s for a while. It looked exactly like what you would imagine an Irish pub to be, and they had some really great live bands playing.

Monday:

Thankfully we were able to sleep in after our early start the previous morning, and we began with a tour of BBC Northern Ireland. We got to go inside the newsroom and talk to some reporters about how they remain objective when covering news on the local conflict, which was really interesting!




We went to the Titanic Museum that had just opened last year. The Titanic was actually built in Belfast, and they’re really proud of it (you can tell if you go into any souvenir shop). The museum was huge and really interactive, so it was a lot more fun than I was expecting! There was a lot of information on the history of Belfast and how it came to be such an industrial city. The only reference to the 1997 museum was at the end of the exhibit where they had the outfits that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet wore in the final scene.






After the museum, we went to the East Belfast Mission, a Methodist organization that works in both Catholic and Protestant communities to try to bring them together more. The discussion we had with the minister was really interesting, and we learned a lot about the different efforts to try to resolve the conflict in the future.
It was one of the girls in my class’ birthday, so a group of us went out to dinner at an Irish restaurant. The food was delicious (as I found most Irish food is!), and we had a lot of fun!



Tuesday:

This was actually my 20th birthday, so I was really excited to be spending it in Ireland! We started off the day going to Derry/Londonderry, which is where Bloody Sunday took place. We had learned that four bombs had been apprehended there on Sunday, but we were told it would be safe to go. We got a tour of murals in the Bogside area by two artists who told us their experiences growing up.








The sun was finally shining, so we were able to eat lunch outside along the wall (Londonderry/Derry is the oldest walled city in Northern Ireland). Then we went to The Playhouse for the Theatre of Witness. A lady works with victims and witnesses on both sides of the conflict (including former IRA members and police officers) to put on a production to share their stories across Northern Ireland.
Afterwards, we had some time to explore, so I walked along the wall and looked into local shops with some friends.




After a really depressing day hearing tragic stories and watching the Titanic to and from Derry/Londonderry (my first time seeing it, and no, I didn’t cry!), we went to a comedy club back in Belfast, which was a lot of fun! We had eaten dinner before the show and our tables were front and center next to the stage, so we became the butt of the jokes for the evening. It was all good-natured and pretty hilarious, so everyone had a lot of fun. Since it was my birthday, my class found a bar called Filthy McNasty’s to go celebrate. The name was really deceiving since it was actually a really nice place with a beautiful garden in the back!





Wednesday:

We had another long day that started with a discussion with someone at the Rainbow Project about the conflict. Afterwards, we had a delicious lunch and had a discussion of what we’d learned so far.





We had some time on our own, so Hannah and I browsed around downtown and found some neat shops. We went to the Parliament building Stormont Estate, which was pretty far outside of Belfast. Once the bus dropped us off, we had a mile hike uphill on the huge estate. Once we finally reached the top, we got a quick tour and met Chris Lyttle, and MLA and one of the members of the Alliance Party, to ask him some questions about what he does and hopes to accomplish. Then we hiked back down in the rain and had to wait half an hour for a bus to finally come. The transportation is nowhere near as efficient as Copenhagen’s!






Jen, Clara, Hannah, and I got tickets to see The Script that night, which was a ton of fun! Unfortunately, my camera was confiscated since it was “professional,” so I couldn't take any pictures. 

Thursday:

Again, we started off early and headed to Queen’s University of Belfast to talk to two professors about the conflict. They were really engaging and energetic, so we had a pretty interesting discussion.  Afterwards, we spoke to the president of the student union, so it was neat to get the perspective of someone our own age and who wasn’t alive during the riots of the 70s and 80s.





We drove to Dublin through the thickest fog I’d ever seen! At some points, I wouldn’t be able to see my hand in front of my face if I had been outside. When we could see, the countryside was beautiful!



After checking into our hotel, we went out to dinner at Ireland’s oldest inn and second oldest pub called the Brazen Head. It opened in 1198, and the only pub that is older opened around 900 outside of Dublin. I had the best chocolate fudge cake I’ve ever tasted there! It may have topped the all Danish pastries I’ve had.



We went on a musical pub crawl after dinner with two Irish musicians. We hiked through the rain (I don’t think it stopped raining all day) to some pubs where they would play old Irish songs on the violin and guitar. In between songs, they gave us some Irish music history and social rules. For example, it’s considered rude to clap when a musician is performing, and stomping your foot to the beat (called “playing the boot”) and yelling is encouraged. There are three native Irish instruments: Uillean pipes, Bodhran (a type of drum), and Celtic harp. They told us that a real Bodhran is made with goatskin, and the cheap ones sold to tourists are made of cowhide, which is cheaper because there’s been a surplus since McDonald’s and Burger King became popular. Irish pubs have “lock-ins” where they literally lock people in (we learned that it is possible to get out if necessary) during performances. The Irish also have sing-along type things where people will randomly start up a song, and everyone will join in. We tried our own American version and got The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song, Wagon Wheel, and Ain’t No Mountain High Enough going in our group. The music that the musicians played was excellent, and it was really neat to experience Irish music first hand! It was my favourite night by far!



Friday:
We began with a lecture at Trinity College with a professor who studies speech and is creating technology and robots to interact with people through speech. What he does reminded me of a modern day Henry Higgins (#MyFairLadyReference), but he didn’t sing or say any witty insults.






We went to an Irish dance museum and learned how to river dance! We found that we were pretty horrible, but it was a ton of fun! We also got to see performances by two Irish dancers, which was really neat to see in person!




We had our final meal together at a really nice restaurant, and I got a burger with blue cheese and bacon, which turned out to be a superb combination! We also got Knickerbockers Glory, which is actually what Harry Potter ate when he went to the zoo with the Dursleys in the first book!



We had a couple of hours on our own before leaving, so Edward, Hannah, and I went exploring around the city. We started at Trinity College to get pictures since it had been raining when we were there earlier. The professor from the morning had told us about the “Harry Potter Room” that was supposed to look like the Great Hall, but it was a much smaller and less elaborate version. We wanted to see the Book of Kells, but the exhibit was closed.

We found City Hall, Christ Church, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which were all gorgeous! We wanted to go inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but it cost money and we wouldn’t have sufficient time to explore. We walked around the grounds outside, and they were lovely and green!







We headed to the airport where I met Kathleen, one of my mother’s friends from high school whom she hasn’t seen in almost 30 years. She was really nice, and I had a lot of fun talking to her and catching her up on my family. 



Then we flew back to Copenhagen! It was an exhausting week in Ireland, but I had an fantastic time and saw a lot of amazing sites!