Belfast, Belfast, where do I even start? Easily could have been one of the most livable places in the world, yet as my tour guide had said, “its people forgot how to be nice to each other.” Few could imagine the modern UK and Europe would have places that are explicitly segregated as Belfast.
To know more about its history from people who had been through it, take a black cab tour. Get to know the perspectives of the people instead of historians’ or governments’ interpretations. My guide/taxi driver was a Protestant who grew up in the “Two by two” buildings.”
Fences, walls, gates, chaos, murders, and whole dozens of places that “he should not go” are the normality of life for my guide.
The wall murals told the stories of the turbulent past and unrestful present.
Even well-poured Guinness could not unite the causes of the different groups here.
Other buildings and art installations tell the tales of peace, knowledge, and perhaps higher pursuits.
One could try to imagine what it was like to be in Belfast in the boom days of shipbuilding. People queuing up outside of the H&W gate trying to get a day job at the shipyard.
The busy shipyard eventually gave Harland & Wolff a good enough shipyard to build the “grandest ship” of them all, the Olympic class ocean liners “Titanic” and “Britannic.”
Titanic was truly a luxury ship head to toe. First-class comes with various style décor: from Middle Eastern to French. The second class came with its couch seating and washbasin. Steerage was non-existent, replaced within the first “third-class accommodation” of its time with private washbasins and mirrors.
Inside the Titanic Museum, you can read and listen to the last messages from those onboard the Titanic. Some passengers survived and became media sensations. Some chose to go down with the ill-fated grand vessel.
The most haunting display of all was the last radio communication between Titanic, Virginia, Carpathia, and Cape Pace. The radio operator made sure to use both SOS and CQ to indicate the emergency. It was rumored that the radio operator stayed till the very end so that a nearby ship would come to rescue the stranded passengers.
Such was the determination and bravery of the human spirit. Like the “Big Fish” re-emerging from the River Lagan, perhaps there is still plenty of hope for reconciliation of the peoples in Northern Ireland and around the world.
