I may have forgotten to mention in a previous post that in Dublin we have been staying with Jenn’s friend, Shantanuh.
The night after we got back from Galway, before heading to Belfast, we went with Shan to his friends place for a birthday party. Everyone else there goes to Northeastern as well so we didn’t have to worry about awkward introductions and long silences in conversation. At one point in the night we were sitting down with Shan’s friend, Ebraham, who is originally from Egypt but is studying abroad in Ireland for a semester. Jenn and I got to talking about our trip and at one point he said “I wish it was that easy for me to travel places”. A little confused, I asked him to explain.
Apparently if you are Egyptian, you must fill out an application to visit most countries, even if it’s just for a vacation. Call me naive but I thought anyone with a passport could buy a plane ticket and visit another country for a short period of time. I didn’t realize that depending on your nationality, you could potentially be rejected from visiting somewhere. This was definitely a very eye opening conversation for me. I came to realize that I have been overlooking others ability to travel places. Why are people with a United States passport any different than someone with an Egyptian passport? Although I do not know a lot about the visa application process, I think that if a country wants to have an application to visit, it should be required of all travelers not matter what nation their passport represents. It had me realizing that I take some many things for granted in life and should be more aware of others’ situations.
We left Shan’s friends place and head for a bar called Quay. Definitely a very fun atmosphere. The best part was, it was open until 4:00am. We got Burger King in our way back to Shan’s apartment (first time I’ve had BK in like 10 years….) and drunkenly prepared our bags to head to Belfast in the morning.
Flash forward 6 hours to 10:00am and waking up was definitely difficult. Headache, nauseous, you know the drill….
We walked to the bus and headed to Belfast for our 2 day trip.
After checking into our hostel, we called scheduled a taxi tour from the West Belfast Taxi Tour. Just a heads up, this will be one of my more serious posts while I’m traveling. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the history, I’ll try to give a brief description of the conflicts that had, until recently been occurring in Ireland. Northern Ireland, such as Belfast, is separate from Southern Ireland, which includes Dublin, Galway, Cork, etc. Northern Ireland is part of the UK and is controlled by Britain.
The conflict in Ireland was caused primarily by the differences in religion. People from Northern Ireland being Protestant, also known as Loyalists who wanted to remain a part of Britain. The southern part of Ireland is primarily Catholics and wanted to be separated from the British state.
Anyway, until recently there was fighting going on in Belfast between the Protestants and the Catholics. Our taxi driver, Tom, a Catholic himself, was recalling the danger he experienced living in Belfast. In 1991, one of his very close friends was shot right next to him when they were driving in the city. According to Tom, taxi drivers are primarily Catholic because it is one of the few jobs in which they work for themselves. Tom took us around Belfast to the wall that divides the two sides of the city. It was interesting to hear all of his first hand experiences and to see all the murals that have been put up throughout the entire conflict.
Although Tom had experienced some difficult times and discrimination during his life, he has such a great attitude of how Northern Ireland will recover from the history of the past. He made Shan, Jenn, myself take a picture in front of the wall saying “someday you can show your grandkids this picture because when it’s taken down it’ll be as historic as the fall of the Berlin Wall”. According to politicians in Ireland, their goal is to have the wall torn down by 2023.
Having heard these stories, I was able to reflect on the differences in certain areas of the world. There are sometimes when I feel bad for myself but after hearing the first hand experiences from Tom, my situation was really put into perspective and I was humbled by the opportunity to hear his story and his hopefulness for the future.
Like I said, this will be one of my more serious posts for the trip. Traveling so far has been so much fun but it is important to learn about other people and the history of their country; personally, it helped me learn a little bit more about myself and how lucky I truly am.
travelingtrainwreck 